Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Archive 60

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Advance notice of an estimated 200,000 new Historic American Buildings Survey images!

Hi, I have started uploading most of the HABS photographs and plans available from the Library of Congress. The images date from a year or two ago, to more than a century. Sometimes they are archives of the first photographs taken of new structures, others are surveys of buildings in ruins and they vary from architectural fine detail through to the surrounding landscape. These offer a unique resource to illustrate American history.

A "live" list can be found at this Catscan report of new uploads. The starting point was around 6,000 images in c:Category:Files from the Historic American Buildings Survey - at the time of writing here I have nearly doubled the number of available photographs. In the coming week I hope to have passed the 20,000 new images mark, making a total of around 25,000, as a conservative estimate, public domain HABS images available on Commons.

Sample gallery

• 
  San Francisco College for Women - tower restored after 1868 earthquake, 1870
• 
  Plaza Fire House, Los Angeles, 1887
• 
  Train disaster due to bridge collapse at Salt River, Tempe, Arizona, 1902
• 
  Old slave quarters, Leighton, Alabama, 1935
• 
  Stairwell at Montgomery-Jones-Whitaker House, Prattville, Alabama
• 
  Sea lions at Gorbatch Rookery, Saint Paul Island, (Historic American Landscapes Survey, 2004)

• 
  Los Angeles City Hall, 1997
• 
  Alabama Theatre, Birmingham
• 
  Bridgeport Covered Bridge, California, 1984
• 
  Dome of Quapaw Bathhouse, Hot Springs, Arkansas
• 
  Front of Quapaw Bathhouse, Arkansas
• 
  Fish conveyor in Kake Salmon Cannery, Alaska, 2000.

• 
  Drawing of train terminus, Oakland, California, 1882
• 
  San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, 1933-36 (drawing 1999)
• 
  Plan of USS Shackle (ARS-9) as in 1942, (drawing created 2007)
• 
  Geopolitical significance of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System Site II, Alaska, 1960-61 (drawing created 2007)
• 
  Redstone Rocket (Missile), Marshall Space Flight Center
• 
  Balcony detail, James M. Roberts House, Illinois

There are a significant number of plans uploaded as TIFFs over 50 megapixels but of a modest filesize (normally 1 or 2 MB). Unfortunately the WikiMedia software does not current create thumbnails for TIFFs of this very large resolution, however derivative versions can be easily created as PNG files which can display on Commons, by downloading opening in your image editing software and saving as a PNG at precisely the same very high resolution, then uploading it as a derivative. See c:Category:Uploads by Fæ (over 50 MP) and the Wyman Bridge example image above.

As readers here have a special interest, I would welcome your feedback on the batch upload before it finishes, probably best to drop me a note at c:User talk:Fæ. Categorization is difficult to automate. I have been adding geolocation tags on the image pages, as well as an appropriate geographic Commons category. The geolocation tags means that clusters of the images can be viewed as pin points on an Open Street Map. When the upload is complete, or near completion, I'll put a more public note about the collection on the Commons village pump.

Thanks, --Fæ (talk) 14:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it is possible, but it would be a great help to add commons:Template:NRHP to each of these files, along with their reference number in the NRIS. That way if any of these pictures are of sites which have not yet been illustrated on our lists, the bot will pick them up and alert us that they need to be added. I don't know if HABS is in any way linked to the NRHP, but if the reference numbers are easily available, this would be great. If not, don't spend too much time on it.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:01, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Alternately, if there's a way to determine which sites are on the NRHP but you can't get the refnums, adding that template without the refnum will put the files in commons:Category:National Register of Historic Places without known IDs, where they can be sorted out manually. It's more work for other editors and I'm still not sure if that would be possible, but it would be a help nonetheless. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 07:22, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Unless LOC has begun providing more information, there's no way to determine NR status automatically; back when I was uploading lots of HABS/HAER images, I had to check the all the items on each NR county list against all the items on each HABS/HAER list, and sometimes address comparisons were necessary. Nyttend (talk) 03:47, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm open to suggestions if automation is possible, preferably by someone explaining/spelling out a possible work-flow which I could then add in at upload, or add to other house-keeping I'm sorting out. I am currently limited to whatever appears on the Library of Congress catalog page.

A possible way forward is to make better use of geolocation. The Commons API can show geographically close images, so if lat/lon were available on a table of NRHP refs, it should be reasonable to work out which photographs or plans were identified as physically nearby. A large proportion (I have not worked out the actual ratio yet, perhaps something to look at when uploads are complete) have geo coordinates added on the Commons image page as a post-upload house-keeping action.

PS my 20,000 estimate, is looking like a gross underestimate based on uploads this weekend (at about 5% complete and am approaching 10,000 images already). I'm not sure why yet, so I'll tease this out before making an announcement on the Commons village pump. --Fæ (talk) 04:43, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd estimate 250,000+ images on HABS. You can get an idea by searching by state e.g. http://www.loc.gov/search/?q=habs+il gives about 9,000 images for Illinois (use the state postal code abbreviations for the last 2 letters). Alaska has over 4,000; Pennsylvania has 32,000.

Almost all the pix have counties listed in the HABS data, or title, so categorizing them at Commons by county and state would really be helpful, e.g. HABS photos in Cook County, Illinois. This would allow us to make fairly easy comparisons with our county lists, e.g. National Register of Historic Places listings in Cook County, Illinois with the Commons cats. Be aware that US "counties" and "county equivalents" can be a bit confusing, e.g. in Louisiana they are called parishes, Alaska is very confusing, in Virginia most cities are officially counties, even when they share a name with the surrounding county, St. Louis, Mo, is very important and very confusing.

Of the 250,000+ pix, I'd guess at least 70% of them are for multiple pix of one site - so maybe 80,000 sites are coved. These sites will overlap with NRHP sites - perhaps 40,000 of them are also NRHP sites. For perhaps 30,000 of these sites we have already uploaded at least one pix, but that leaves says 10,000 sites that still need some of these pix. And that's just from a "all we need is one pic per NRHP site" perspective - which is a very limited viewpoint - we do want all the pix! Of course these numbers are just the roughest of rough estimates. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:45, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I had made a crude estimate last night of around 100,000 new images from my uploads, it may be significantly larger, so this magnitude looks right. My initial estimate was way off as I was using the "parent" record which may contain sets of images. I default to skipping records without TIFFs, some records don't have publicly available images, and there may be other oddities of record layout on the Library of Congress catalog causing skipping too. I'm focusing on the obvious and easy run through, it would be possible to go back and pick up the remainder later on, if they are significant and people raise examples for me to check over.

My upload rate is something like 2,800 images per day, plus the additional PNG format conversions I am creating for TIFFs over 50 megapixels resolution (so they can be displayed on-wiki) which are all site plans and similar document scans rather than photos. Consequently I see this taking a few weeks more rather than a few days, though it should make for a case study for me to discuss when presenting at Wikimania in August to show what a single independent volunteer can do with the GWToolset without any other special support or funding.

Update I have revised my original estimate of 20,000 to 200,000. Right now I have uploaded around 31,000 new files and created about 2,000 PNG versions of large TIFFs (slow as they have to processed via my 7 year old macmini and a freebie 1GB USB stick) and I estimate I'm only around 12% done, so even 200,000 might be a conservative number.

Notice now posted on Wikimedia Commons' Village pump, which will hopefully attract more volunteers to help categorize and suggest improvements. --Fæ (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

• Milestone As of this morning, there are over 100,000 photographs and drawings in Category:Files from the Historic American Buildings Survey. This is over 16 times more than we had available to Wikipedia 3 weeks ago.
• Milestone This weekend we exceeded 250,000 photographs and drawings and the final total is likely to be close to 300,000. Perfect timing for Wikimania.

Very nice. A few thousand quickly went into New York City's category, and I have begun slowly spooning them down into subcats. I haven't yet found one that fills a vital gap in an article, but remain hopeful. I assume everyone else's best loved cities and regions have received similarly heavy loads of treasure.

NRHP in HABS uploads

After some experimentation yesterday, for photographs where the Library of Congress has identified a NRHP reference in their catalog, this will be gradually but systematically added using the Commons template. You can track the current numbers identified using this catscan report. --Fæ (talk) 09:29, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

That's great news about the ability to add the reference number to some of the images. This will probably mean Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images‎ is about to blow up haha.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 12:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Not for long though :-) Agathoclea (talk) 12:42, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

If the bot that maintains the Unused images list is supposed to pick up Commons images in c:Category:National Register of Historic Places with known IDs then it may be worth giving it a 'kick'. There are over 800 unused images in the catscan report above and this is going to get a lot larger quite quickly, while the images list only has 4 in it right now. --Fæ (talk) 13:06, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

The bot runs every night around midnight. However, not all of the 800 images in the catscan report above are actually tagged with the NRHP template for some reason. Going to the very bottom of the list I find many that are only in two of the three categories you selected. Not sure if that's a bug with catscan or what, but there aren't 800 newly tagged images for sure. Also, it may be that a large fraction of the 800 images you've uploaded already have images in NRHP lists somewhere. If a list already includes an image for a particular site, any other image that matches that site is not reported on the unused images page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:17, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Ah, that can be explained as the catscan report includes images where they appear in a category that itself has been marked with the NRHP template rather than the image itself. The bot might need a bit of tweaking to compensate for this scenario, however my housekeeping should get around to marking all images with NRHP templates where the LoC includes a reference to it, even those in a marked category.

As a comparison there are just over 80 images which catscan picks up here without checking parent categories. --Fæ (talk) 13:25, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

When the bot just ran it picked up two unused images of #76001987 Colt Industrial District in Hartford, CT that were uploaded in this campaign. Both of them, though, are of the attic of one building and I don't think adequately illustrate the district, so I did not add them to the list. It appears the other 80 images (now it's over 450) were of sites that already had images in the relevant county list(s), or they weren't tagged at the time when the bot updated its database. Either way, everything is working as expected, so that's a good sign. Thanks again, Fae, for taking the time to systematically upload and sort these files!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:57, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Many of the HABS photos are detail shots of rooms or features such as windows or ceiling roses, rather than general shots of the building or location, fortunately with the recent search function on Commons improving, a search against the HABS number can show all related images, for example this search of the Cape Canaveral Launch Complex. The revised 'housekeeping' seems to be identifying NRHP references quite nicely, after a hiccup overnight due to a minor bug, this ought to be able to quietly churn through at a consistent rate. Note that these are applied to photos but not drawings, if I get a bit of time in the next week or two, I'll take another look at whether there are any differences worth sorting out. --Fæ (talk) 07:15, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Colt Fire Arms Company, East Armory Building

I checked the survey that the attic photos came from, and there's a nice exterior shot of one of the buildings that I've added to the list. I'm not sure why the attic photos were the only two from that survey with the NRHP template, but thanks for giving me the idea to check. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 07:56, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

The reason is that the 'housekeeping' that is adding the NRHP numbers to HABS images is relatively slow, taking an average of 40 seconds per image (there are 100,000 images now, I hope this will end up as more than 200,000), only a small proportion have NRHP numbers (<10%?) and they are being tackled in alphabetic order. In the case of the useful example you found, it begins with "V" and I'm only up to "B". At a guess I think it may be more than another 4 weeks before the HABS uploads are complete and there can be a final run through. It's a big project. --Fæ (talk) 10:27, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I think it is more important that the images are in caterories that are tagged, than the images themselves to be tagged. Dudemanfellabra's script picks up all images in a category and presents them for selection. Agathoclea (talk) 17:51, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for highlighting how this works. It explains why though over a thousand photographs have been marked with NRHP numbers in the last 48 hours, only a handful appear in the report. Another report showing Commons images without parent categories with NRHP numbers and clustered by NRHP number would be a useful way of showing where new categories are needed. I can imagine how to create this, but probably don't have the time to sort it out at the moment (or indeed before Wikimania). --Fæ (talk) 05:19, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Redstone Rocket test stand, Marshall Space Flight Center, built 1952. NRHP 76000341.

I have now extended adding NRHP numbers to drawings. All sheets of the same HABS drawings are being cross-linked using the other_versions parameter. On Commons this makes for easy navigation to help read an entire drawing pack. Details from the drawings would make excellent illustrations of more unusual building architecture for articles. HABS drawings include plans for historic ships, bridges and even rocket launch pads. --Fæ (talk) 07:11, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

For all the work you're doing, you deserve much more than a cookie! Thank you for your tireless efforts to improve the quantity and quality of images about sites on the NRHP for us!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 11:35, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, cookies and barnstars always appreciated.

The Unused images report has updated, with the majority of new NRHP images coming from the HABS uploads (41/48). Unfortunately this includes 11 which are a number of >50 megapixel sized TIFFs that the MediaWiki software will not render thumbnails for (it may in the future); note that due to a old bit of code, the thumbnails show a warning that the limit is 12.5 MP, this is the previous limit. These TIFFs will (eventually) have equivalent PNGs created which will render without losing original resolution, so can be ignored for the moment. Though it is not possible (due to LoC limitation) to work out which these are before upload, they are being retrospectively marked with c:Category:TIFF files affected by MediaWiki restrictions and could be filtered out on that. --Fæ (talk) 07:23, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I see the updates now, and because of the inability to generate thumbnails, the script I use to add images to the lists breaks. I'll work on adding in a check for if the thumbnail is actually generated (as it stands, I just assume it is) to restore functionality, but are you sure there is no way to check the size of the image before upload? File:North_and_East_Elevations_-_Hantz_House,_855_Fairview_Drive,_Fayetteville,_Washington_County,_AR_HABS_AR-54_(sheet_5_of_12).tif has dimensions of 14,443 × 9,600 pixels = 138.6 MP. I would be very surprised if there is no way to check that before uploading.. If there is indeed a way to do that, I would say that if a TIFF is larger than 50 MP, it just shouldn't be tagged with the NRHP template until I can patch the addition script. That, or just forego semi-automated addition of images and rely on manual for the time being.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:33, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Scratch that. It was easier/faster to add in that check than I expected. The script just won't show that these >50 MP images are tagged since it can't generate a thumbnail. All is good.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:24, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks for the work-around.

It is an odd and annoying gap. The LoC catalog page gives an indication of file size, but not scan resolution. As I am using the GWToolset, I do not download the file locally (otherwise this upload would take all year rather than months), and the LoC does not appear to keep MODS records or similar for the HABS archive. Consequently I can only test for this after upload to Commons (at that point the Commons API nicely returns image size data).

To minimize the number re-writes to an image page (remember this is >200,000 files!), for new uploads I am detecting the NRHP when the XML file is generated for the GWToolset, i.e. the template is in the image page text on upload, rather than added later (example). Keep in mind that WMF development may "fix" this at some time in the future by resolving the outstanding bug request to improve the TIFF rendering software. --Fæ (talk) 14:29, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I have set up another routine, which I will run in an ad-hoc way (perhaps once a day for the next week or two) which examines all HABS images identified with NRHP numbers and checks which have categories that have themselves been marked with NRHP references. It then adds that category to all other HABS images using the same NRHP number. This means that once a volunteer has categorized one in a series of images, that the rest will 'inherit' it later on. See example history page. --Fæ (talk) 14:45, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

HABS "category wanted" backlog

This backlog page is being generated to make it easier to see where Commons needs new categories for some NRHP registered sites. Remember to add {{NRHP}} to the new category page. --Fæ (talk) 11:09, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Questions:

• It looks to me like the upload process is going state by state, in alphabetical order, and about half of the states have been done. Is that correct?
• One image from this HABS page has been uploaded to Commons, but there are 9 more images that presumably will be uploaded when "Tennessee" comes up in the alphabetical sequence. Is there anything I can do to help the process by associating that page ID (or any the IDs for other pages I am aware of) with an NRHP ID?
• If I upload additional images from that HABS page now, will they just get uploaded all over again? --Orlady (talk) 01:53, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

1. Yes, this is the order that the archives appears to have them in, and I'm just following that list. Note that the GWToolset has had a bug for the last week (bugzilla:68506), the job queue has not been scheduling the uploads so the HABS uploads have paused for the moment. There is a patch due to be released by WMF development that will probably solve this.
2. If you associate a relevant Commons category for the building/place with the NRHP number, then I have a routine that should apply the same category to all images in the same "album" on the Library of Congress catalogue. See the report and its introduction at c:Commons:Batch_uploading/Library_of_Congress/HABS. This has not been run for a few days, there is a minor format bug that I'm sorting out, but this will be running again in the future and maintains the report and the categorization of images by NRHP numbers.
3. There will be no duplicate created if the previously uploaded file is the TIFF image from the LoC. The relevant check is of the file checksum, which the Commons API provides. If there is a match, these are skipped. Files which are not digitally identical might be uploaded, so crops or visually identical jpgs existing do not stop the original TIFF from being uploaded. Unfortunately the HABS image ID is not "unique enough" to make it worth searching on by itself to avoid duplicates.

--Fæ (talk) 03:08, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. Your answer #2 leads me to understand that the property needs to be associated with a Commons category in order for the new images to be matched. I guess that means it would be helpful if folks like me created some one-item categories and added the NRHP numbers to those categories, in preparation for the new file uploads. For HABS records that were created before the NRHP was invented, and that may use different property names (e.g. Sabine Hill, which HABS documented in 1936 as the General Nathaniel Taylor House), wouldn't it be helpful to associate the category with a HABS ID number, too? --Orlady (talk) 03:56, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, c:Category:Sabine Hill is a good example of how to set up a category for a NRHP numbered location, though adding c:Template:Object location would be handy too, as the location that the LoC gives may not be very accurate. The HABS reference to use would be the survey number rather than the image numbers. There might be variations in image number, but the survey number is (probably) unique. Note that for large sites with lots of buildings, there might be more than one category with the same NRHP number. I have no automatic way of checking for these (rare, I only know of one so far) occurrences, so drop a note on my Commons talk page if you spot any, as I ought to manually add them as exceptions to avoid issues. --Fæ (talk) 10:18, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Elkman's infobox generator seems to be down

I just attempted to generate an infobox using Elkman's infobox generator, and it returned the following error:

"Invalid query: select arstyl from arstyle where arstyle.refnum = 98000977;Table 'arstyle' is marked as crashed and should be repaired"

Is anybody else experiencing this error? @Elkman: Any idea what's causing this? TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 08:13, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I came here to report the same. I've mentioned this at Elkman's talk after testing several different searches and getting the same results; as far as I can tell, something's crashed at his physical computer, although of course it's not all crashed, or www2.elkman.net would return some sort of error and we'd be unable to reach the generator. Nyttend (talk) 11:38, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I've fixed it now. I'm not sure how the table would have crashed, since the database is never updated, but I was able to run a MySQL "recover table" on it. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 12:47, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Still trying to convert NHL lists to row template format

I'm not getting any responses above, so I decided I'd make a new section to see if I can get any more attention. I have modified {{NRHP row/sandbox}} and {{NRHP header/sandbox}} to allow for compatibility with our NHL lists. I have also created a script I have been using to convert the current tables to use these row templates. I have placed the output at various places in my userspace for review before making the code go live and beginning to actually convert the lists. I have run the script on every state alphabetically through New Hampshire, including the city of Boston, for which the new "county" column has to be hidden. I would like for people to look over this output and see if it is satisfactory. If so, would anyone be willing to help me start adding refnums to each of these rows to make the links to Focus work? After the refnums are added and the row/header code is copied to the main template to go live, we can begin copying/cleaning the script output from my userspace pages to the actual lists themselves. Anyone want to help?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:28, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I can help starting next week, assuming it will be clear instructions.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:27, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for being willing to help! Basically all I'm trying to do is make sure that the script generated tables match the hard-coded tables on the existing lists. If anything is missing, I'm adding it manually to the script generated tables. I whipped up some code to search through the linked articles to find refnums to add to the rows, so most of those have been added (though they still need to be checked manually against NRIS), but some are still missing if, for example, the article was a redlink or if it didn't use {{Infobox NRHP}}. Other stuff like citations for dates or names or something might also need to be added. Right now, having heard no objection, I am about to copy the sandbox into the live template to make the NHL-supporting code go live. I may even go ahead and begin converting lists if I get time.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:57, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Would it be easy to collect all links to the relevant pages in your user space on one page?--Ymblanter (talk) 06:19, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: When you say relevant pages, what do you mean? All the links to my userspace are above, and I've just been going down the table on List of U.S. National Historic Landmarks by state. I think I've done three states so far. I don't have time to do any more at the moment because I'm on vacation with my wife's family, but I will rejoin the effort in a few days. All I've been doing is checking for differences in the script table and the live one. If I find any, I make the script table match the live one and copy it in, deleting it from my user page. If you have any trouble, let me know, but like I said, I don't really have much time this week to do anything online.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:10, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I see, thanks. I thought these links are just examples. Now it is fine for me.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:21, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: I see you have looked at the script output in Iowa and have said you are ready for it to be moved out. I'm working in alphabetical order and so haven't gotten to that yet, but just now looking, it appears as if you didn't add the refnum for one site that was missing it. It is technically fine to go ahead and move that out (though the page would be placed in a cleanup category), but I have been finding and adding the refnums that are missing before doing so. I have also been checking the existing refnums for accuracy and if the listing date doesn't match the refnum (e.g. a listing date in 2001 with a refnum starting with, say, 76), I check the accuracy of the listing date. I've been using the NHL database to check most of the information, but for newer listings, I've been falling back on the weekly actions lists. I went ahead and added the missing refnum to the Iowa list but haven't checked the other refnums. If you did so, feel free to move out the table. If not, I'll get to it alphabetically soon. Thanks for the help!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 13:46, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I do not mind checking the refnums (note that most of the active refs lead to 404 links). Concerning this particular refnum I tried to google but was not able to locate it (and somehow the NHL database did not help much). I will see what I can do.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:51, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

The NHL database is very out of date (I think like 2011-ish, but I don't know exactly), so newer items like that one won't be in there. This PDF is more up to date. You can get the listing date off of that and then use Template:NRHP Weekly List to get the weekly list for the relevant date (I usually just edit a page and preview instead of saving to get the link). That list has the refnum and should confirm that the site was NHL designated on that date.

As for checking the already present refnums, you can simply click the link generated in the row template, which will take you to the NPS Focus database. I've found it that the server there is spotty, though, and sometimes it doesn't return any results. I've found the NHL database much more reliable and faster. Whatever floats your boat, though.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:09, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Just to add that for me the NPS Search worked perfectly.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:49, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Ymblanter and I have made it through Maine so far. My process has been to compare the names in the script output to the ones on the existing list to see if they match up first. If they don't, I use the |name_extra= parameter to make them match. With it, you can add anything after the main link, even another link (e.g. for an NHL about two sites, both of which have articles). I also use the |name_extra= parameter for keys such as daggers^† used in several NHL lists.

After checking the names, I do a quick glance at the descriptions, counties, and addresses to make sure they match up with what's already there. Then I spend most of my time checking the NRIS reference numbers using the NHL database. If I find any that are present but incorrect, I fix them in the article (that's where my script pulled them from) and then on the list itself. If any are missing, I add them. Then I check the listing dates against this PDF and I'm done. I cut/paste the table into the relevant list, and after I make sure I didn't orphan any references, I delete the old table's wikitext. I then preview the page to make sure the references are fine and save it.

It takes about 10-15 minutes for most states so it's a bit long, but I've gotten into kind of a rythym. I don't really have much time to dedicate to editing at the moment, so some help from others would be appreciated. I realize this is a voluntary project, but I'm surprised no one wants to jump in here. Making the lists use templates makes them much easier to update, especially via scripts and bots, including my automatic renumbering script for when you've added a new listing and don't want to fix 2083409328 cell tables, my script to add images and commonscat links where the file/category has been tagged on commons with the refnum, the addition of the items to the c:Commons:Monument Database which can be queried with an API, the use of the NRHPstats script which I plan to update to also activate on NHL lists after the conversion is complete, and a host of other future possible applications. The benefits of a little work now are numerous, and the faster I can get them converted, the faster I can get to working on those future applications haha.

So please.. anyone want to jump in here? </begging>--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:41, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I'll take a crack at Maryland, which is next on the list in altsandbox. Generic1139 (talk) 16:02, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I've looked through New Hampshire; modulo a few things that were wrong in the original list, it looks good. Magic♪piano 17:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I will take Michigan tomorrow.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:53, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I made changes to Maryland as needed (added several refnums, corrected one date, and didn't correct another, see below), and I moved the sandbox to live. My experience was that the NPS focus DB today was spotty indeed, sometimes I needed to refresh 4 or 5 times before it returned a page populated with data, the number of attempts required seems random. The NHL DB was always gave a result, but using it is harder than just clicking through. One property, Ellicott City Station had a date issue I didn't reconcile, the focus db and the nomination form give a date of 11/24/1968, the NHL PDF gives the date as 10/18/68, I left the table at the November date, and didn't change it to the October date. Generic1139 (talk) 20:02, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! I see Maryland and New Hampshire have been completed. I'll look into that date on Maryland in a little more detail later. Thanks again!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:02, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Will do North Dakota and Ohio Generic1139 (talk) 14:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Just wanted to point out that I added the ability to the NRHP row template to display key items such as daggers in the number column rather than in the name column, as most existing NHL lists show them there. You can use the |key= parameter to do this, as shown on List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama. @Ymblanter: I think Michigan uses these, so be sure to include them before moving the table out. Thanks again, guys, for the help!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:05, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

North Dakota and Ohio are done and moved. No major problems. In the case of two Ohio entries that have a different number for the NHL and NRHP lists, I added the NHL number to the refnum field first, followed by the NHRP number. --Generic1139 (talk) 06:52, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Michigan done, will next take Montana. What do we do with former listings? The Michigan list contains three, and I can not easily convert them since the new format does not have the delisted date as far as I can see.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:38, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I will try to get to the Boston list today, Massachusetts this weekend. Magic♪piano 15:10, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: I've been just leaving the former listings alone for the time being. If the NRHP row template is later modified to be able to handle them, there aren't that many to convert throughout the country, so the process can be done manually.

@Magicpiano: I did MA and Boston earlier today. About to start on Minnesota.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:49, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. Let us do it later.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:55, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Done Montana, next I will take New York State, but it is going to take some while, it had 150 landmarks.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:03, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

I did Rhode Island. Magic♪piano 01:18, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Doing West Virginia. Generic1139 (talk) 00:21, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

West Virginia is done. See its talk page for a discussion on the numbers for the Davis and Elkins Historic District. Generic1139 (talk) 01:32, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

New York State done (but not NYC), next will be doing Oregon.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

South Carolina ostensibly done

Good morning --- happy to report all stub articles completed except the few without NRHP nomination forms posted to the SCDAH website.--Pubdog (talk) 10:39, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Great news! Thank you for all the work you do with creating stubs for properties in all these states! Which one is up next? If I might make a suggestion based on OCD, how about North Carolina?

Also, on a somewhat related topic, I was alerted to this page's existence via Pubdog's edit to the Progress page. Apparently we had been missing it this entire time. In order to account for its existence, I need to update the bot's code, but before I do so, I thought I'd ask if this page is really even needed? I mean it has only 5 sites on it, and the county list only has 90. I agree with splitting out the city of Charleston with 91 properties, but North Charleston with only 5 doesn't really need to be split out in my opinion.. Am I alone?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 14:41, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Nicely done! You might expand your reach on sources, especially for recent listings like the Robert Smalls School in Chesterfield County, whose listing is available from the NPS here. Most listings from 2013 and 2014 are available via the weekly lists; unfortunately, the NPS is lagging pretty badly in digitizing recent listing, since they've only done this year through the end of April. Magic♪piano 15:37, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

The only reasons to have a separate list for a city are that the county list is too big (e.g. Charleston) or that it's an independent city; the former obviously isn't the case here, and South Carolina (like 45 other states) has no independent cities. Nyttend (talk) 15:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed on both counts. I don't see why the list can't be merged back into the larger list. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:41, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys --- I have no opinion on the North Charleston list; it only has four unique entries. It was created before I started on SC and I simply edited and carried forward. I have no objection to remerging into county; the four unique No Charleston listings were at the county previously. Overall SC NRHP template will need to be edited. Cheers .... --Pubdog (talk) 23:34, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Bravo! Encore, encore! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:15, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Since no one opposed, I went ahead and merged North Charleston into the county list.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:17, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The Broadway Hollywood Building

There is a building at Hollywood and Vine known for its "Broadway Hollywood sign". I believe the address in 1645 Vine Street. It is now an upscale loft building hosting celebrities like musician Dave Navarro. According to this the building is on the National Register. Apparently, it must be listed by a former name of the building. Alternatively, it could just be a contributing property to the Hollywood Boulevard historic district. Can someone help me figure out what the status of this building is.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

It appears to be a contributing property to the "Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District", referred to as the "Dyas Building". PDF, see PDF page 24. At the time of the nomination, its address was 6300 Hollywood Boulevard. Magic♪piano 15:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

• I have come across a 2005 resource from the City of Los Angeles which the above source seems to mirror. That source indicates the building was both and NRHP building and a California Historic Register (which I believe means listed at http://parks.ca.gov) building. The building then underwent major renovations to be converted from commercial officespace to residential loft condominiums. I am unable to find the work listed on the CA historic register. Might the building have been listed on both as an individual building and lost its status during the conversion to condominiums?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:16, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

It's been a while since I did Sec 106 work, but I seem to recall that placement on the NRHP automatically puts it on the California register. Einbierbitte (talk) 23:48, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

New photos

For the first time ever, I added photos to Commons! They look OK. My photos are for the Keyes Bungalow and Farnsworth Park. I put them in the Altadena, California category in the Commons. Unfortunately, the Keyes Bungalow is hidden from the street by a fence and then a jungle of vegetation. I don't know what anyone can do with it. Anyway, I tought I'd help. Einbierbitte (talk) 23:52, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Awesome! I've done quite a bit of photography in that area, so it's great to see more pictures. I went ahead and created Commons categories for both, and I added the pictures of the Keyes Bungalow to the article and the county list. You can still see the house's roof line in the pictures, and since that's one of its distinguishing features the pictures are still helpful. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Hooray! That reminds me - I've just uploaded to my computer (finally!) most of the pictures I took on vacation a few weeks ago. I've got some nice shots of both Weir Farm National Historic Site and Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site to add to Commons. (Weir Farm has been one I've longed to "get" for a long time, actually. It was nice to finally be able to visit. I've got 60-odd, I think; I managed to get at least a shot of each of most of the major structures there.) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:18, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Green Hotel, Woodbury, Gloucester County, NJ?

Just checking if anybody knows about this hotel that's being torn down newspaper article with pic, and according to the article on the NRHP. It is definitely not the G. G. Green's Block [1] in the same town (different address), and there are no HDs in the town. Not on NRHP focus. Any ideas? We don't have a pic. It will probably take me until at least Friday to get there. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:02, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

According to Preservation New Jersey, it's "a contributing building within the Green Era Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places, and the municipally designated Woodbury Historic District." So just a misunderstanding by the newspaper. Ntsimp (talk) 14:06, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks - that looks like a good source. I may still go down there Friday. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:56, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Napa Valley NRHP sites; What survived the quake?

I'm sure everybody saw the footage of the 2014 South Napa earthquake, and some of the damaged buildings I've seen looked historic. So which buildings survived, and which ones will inevitably be torn down and delisted? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Not sure, but even if they were removed, they are historic and important to cover for posterity. I know that NRHP has buildings listed on it that have been gone for years, one over a decade. The NRHP is not as update to date or proactive in assessing the inventory listings. It will likely be years before damaged buildings are repaired or torn down if not destroyed outright. Though it was only a 6 and many smaller structures can survive much worse. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 13:30, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Some of the damaged NRHP listed places shown in the news include the Alexandria Hotel and Annex, Sam Kee Laundry Building, First Presbyterian Church (Napa, California), Goodman Library and the U.S. Post Office (Napa, California). No doubt other properties have been damaged. Acroterion (talk) 13:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I've been using this article to update the articles for the damaged buildings. The Napa County Courthouse Plaza also took some damage, and it's likely that some others outside of downtown Napa were damaged but not photographed. It's still way too early to say what can be repaied and what can't, but it sure doesn't look good for a couple of those buildings. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:54, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

ChrisGualtieri, you need to start looking at destroyed Ohio buildings. The Lockington Covered Bridge was arsoned when I was a toddler, but it's still listed; the Exchange Hotel in Sandusky (photo) burned in 1977, but it's still listed; Holy Rosary Catholic Church (St. Marys, Ohio) was destroyed by the owners during the listing process in 1978, but it got listed anyway a year later (how many destroyed buildings get listed as buildings and not as ruins?), and I've photographed dozens of empty lots for buildings that got destroyed on unknown dates. Indiana's a lot better; the Sweet Gum Stable took twelve years to get delisted, but The Chadwick in Indianapolis was delisted just two months after its destruction by fire (note that they use my photo :-) in 2011. Nyttend (talk) 14:20, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Question. Did you submit this to the NPS so that it can be removed from the NRHP? It seems to be a fairly straight-forward process, but I have not done it yet. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:30, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I found several demolished buildings in my Florida roadtrips. I reported some to the state historic preservation agency, and they forwarded the info up to the NPS. That way the status got documented locally and nationally. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Inspector General ‖ 14:48, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

We reported numerous batches of destroyed properties to NPS a few years ago, and if I remember rightly, they said to submit such reports to SHPOs. The Ohio SHPO (Ohio Historical Society) is aware that many have been destroyed, and some it says are delisted — for example, the Fenwick Club Annex is marked as delisted on its OHS profile page (they're having server errors, so check back), but it's still in NRIS as a listed property. I contacted OHS some time back about the discrepancy, but they never replied. Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I contacted NPS once upon a time about this sort of thing. They said the SHPO has to nominate a property for removal first and then forward it on to the NPS Einbierbitte (talk) 01:08, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Just checking, WPA=HABS??

WPA Architectural Survey??

This photo is convincingly labeled as being from the WPA Architectural Survey, which I've never heard of. Does anybody know anything about the WPA Architectural Survey? I'd guess it really means HABS, but thought that HABS had always been under the NPS, rather than the WPA.

I'm not asking about copyright,it's PD either way. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:13, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Different bodies, both have PD materials. I uploaded a heap of WPA images (maps and posters) from the LoC, this was a special Federal project, see Works Progress Administration and c:Template:PD-USGov-WPA. I cannot recall an overlap between HABS and WPA, I would stick with the WPA license unless there there are clear records claiming that one of the projects came under the NPS. --Fæ (talk) 16:37, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

A little more info - it was a Federal Writers Project (WPA) project in Connecticut only. The state library http://cslib.cdmhost.com/cdm/landingpage/collection/p4005coll7 seems to have 5,000 downloadable pix online. Should be almost enough to get the 500 non-illustrated sites in CT. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:18, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

This would be a nice batch upload project. If nobody is picking this up, it might be an idea to log a request at c:COM:BATCH. After some recent nasty Wikimedia politics, I am reducing my commitments to our projects for the coming month. I am not made of Teflon. --Fæ (talk) 11:11, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Requested move of Sabine Pass Light

I have requested a move from Sabine Pass Light to Sabine Pass Lighthouse. Please weigh in on the request. Otr500 (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Photo contest?

I have heard precious little about U.S. participation in Wiki Loves Monuments this year - maybe it was pre-empted by Wikimedia DC's Summer of Monuments. But that's no reason WP:NRHP can't hold its own repeat of last year's NRHP photo contest. I would be happy to set up the project page and the first couple challenges, if other people would like to participate. Is there any interest out there in doing so? — Ipoellet (talk) 04:52, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

From what I read about it, Summer of Monuments absorbed WLM in the US this year, but they aren't going to promote it in the same way as WLM until September 1 (which explains why I haven't seen the usual flood of contest uploads on the unused images page). That said, I'm all in favor of another photo contest; I can't promise that I'll have time to get pictures, but I can probably set up a challenge or two. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:40, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not feeling a lot of enthusiasm with only one response. Anyone else? — Ipoellet (talk) 18:04, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I do have limited time these days, but am up for something. I'd even be wiling to sponsor another scavenger hunt challenge. I does look like we won't be able to start it on Sept. 1. Maybe for the month of October - then we might even be able to have a Halloween/Cemetery challenge.

I'm not sure how well the Summer of Monuments is going this year, but I know that with very limited objectives - "let's have some fun and take some NRHP photos" - that the NRHP photo contest has always been successful. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:02, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd be for it. Probably wouldn't be competing in as many categories as last year, but you never know... Magic♪piano 23:07, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I probably wouldn't be able to participate in an October contest as aggressively as I could in last year's event (which coincided with a cross-country trip), but would try to get in at least a few categories. Of course, there's perverse-incentive potential here: I'm slowly working my way through a set of photos that I took while crossing Nevada last week, and I might be tempted to hold them back and upload them during the contest... Ammodramus (talk) 01:16, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Royalbroil started last year's project page on 8/27, so it appears a contest this informal can work on short notice. I'll set it up for 9/1-9/30, and if folks feel that's strained we can extend a week or two into October. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:48, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:58, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I was just noticing that it was almost Sept 1 and was starting to think about a contest. I was distracted after recently getting back home after traveling all the way east (including an 880 kilometer shortcut across Canada) to the place of the "nation's first sunrise" in Maine. I'm glad to see that the page was started! I'm thinking about what challenges that I could add. Royalbroil 04:46, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Not fond of participating in contests myself, but I'll still be doing a ton of uploads — I'm in the middle of processing photos from four different trips, and lots of those will be going online when I get the time. Nyttend (talk) 20:52, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Photo contest!

The WP:NRHP Fall 2014 Photo Contest will kick off at midnight eastern time on Monday September 1! This is an opportunity for all folks with a camera (or a sketchpad and scanner, doncha know) and an interest in the National Register to just have some low-key fun and maybe get some barnstars. Come submit some photos or pose a challenge to your fellow editors. And maybe, just maybe, along the line we'll improve the encyclopedia... (Note that while this contest is intentionally concurrent with Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 and the Wikipedia Summer of Monuments, there ain't gonna be no cash prizes or press releases here. But compete in 'em all if you like - we won't be jealous.) — Ipoellet (talk) 22:43, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Great. I have a whole pile of stuff I took on vacation last month (and some before) that I need to upload; this will be the perfect excuse to wait for a couple more days. :-) So I promise you'll have some images. Whether or not they are good I leave to others... --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:29, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I also plan to take a photo trip or two. Generic1139 (talk) 20:10, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

While we're at it, can we sort out all the pics in Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images? I wish I could say I was planning to participate in the contest, but I can't. Everything I want to take pictures of is a long drive away, and I have no chance of taking pics of these sites before the contest ends. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 01:22, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Lincoln Place Apartment Homes

Anyone know anything about Lincoln Place Apartment Homes (in Venice, near Los Angeles, CA). The article says it is on the NRHP list but gives on refnum, but I can't find it in any of the usual sources on or near the dates mentioned, and also haven't seen anything it might be a part of. There seems to have been a bit of sturm und drang about it, so I don't want to just remove the reference. Generic1139 (talk) 20:31, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Why not give it the ol' {{Citation needed}}? Ntsimp (talk) 20:49, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Will do, What I really want to do is remove the nrhp info box so that the page doesn't show up on the list of infoboxes needing clean up, or, preferably, get a refnum). Generic1139 (talk) 21:43, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I checked National Register of Historic Places listings in Los Angeles, California (and National Register of Historic Places listings in Los Angeles County, California in case of errors) and found nothing listed on the claimed date of 2011-12-15; the only location with a nearby date was the Karasik House in Beverly Hills, which got listed a week later. I've removed the NR statements. PS, I also checked recent listings for the period — in many cases, a place will actively not get listed (e.g. "Owner Objection") but still show up in the lists, and sometimes people think that it's a real listing. It didn't even show up on any of the lists. Nyttend (talk) 22:02, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Hope you don't mind I took out a couple of dots. I think there may be some confusion and some rush when the discussion just started. This was listed today, a reply was to supply a tag, and an affirmative to do that. In 5 plus hours, it appears to me, a tag was placed, removed, and a NRHP template removed. Now, and again, I may be mistaken, but in less than a minute I found a listing here that shows:

• Lincoln Place Apartments (added 2003 - - #03000239)

Bounded by Penmar Ave., Lake and Frederick Sts and alley N of Palms Blvd. , Venice

"IF" this is the same place then there is information that was asked for, and I will ask for a self-reversion to place the template back. "IF" it is not the same place let me know and I can look a little longer. I will add this to the talk page also.

Other references: Earthlink here, and the Los Angeles Times here. The site referenced as #1 is a general site link but the specific link is here and list 35 acres. The article list 35 acres but the Los Angeles Times lists 38 acres. The Santa Monica Daily Press for some reason returns broken to me. Court documents here list 33 acres. I just tossed in a few references I found because there is so much unreferenced content. Otr500 (talk) 02:18, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, especially for finding the refnum 03000239. Surely this is the place mentioned at nrhp.com, but this is a great example of why we don't rely on it — the website fails to mention the NRIS database's status for the site, which is "Pending/eligible". As noted by the Earthlink page, it was deemed eligible by NPS, but the nomination was returned for additional input, and as far as I can tell, they never returned this additional information. At any rate, it definitely isn't listed on the NR at the present time, and it has no chance of future listing without additional paperwork by the nominator(s). This occasionally does happen; see the Breslin Building (downtown Louisville, Kentucky), which was nominated in 1983 but not listed due to an owner objection. It ended up being listed just last year, thirty years after the original nomination, so the passage of ten years after a failed nomination definitely isn't too much time. Nyttend (talk) 02:57, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

You are welcome. So --you have found that is was not, as of yet, actually listed on the NRHP list? If that is the case it will be sooner than later because in the court settlement the owners were agreeable to the listing as part of the settlement. Glad I could help. Otr500 (talk) 00:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Template:Infobox building maps

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Architecture#Template:Infobox_building_maps regarding improving the mapping functionality of {{Infobox building}}.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:13, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Utah Territorial Statehouse wants some help

Folks at Utah Territorial Statehouse are looking for some help on how to properly contribute to Wikipedia. They contacted User:Pigsonthewing, so you probably should contact him.

The article looks pretty good right now. It seems to have grown organically since 2006 when half of it was written, and might even be a candidate for GA. Of course somebody should check whether the 1st half wasn't a copyvio. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:03, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks; I just passed the message on via Twitter, so please feel free to contact them direct, @OSMHBoston, if you're involved in GLAM outreach and local to them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:26, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Elkman generator

Just a quick note that Elkman's generator is temporarily down; he's been attempting to change around some things on his server, and it didn't work quite as planned. For the moment, please use http://www.elkman.net/nrhp/infobox.php and run all searches by refnum; I was consistently getting good infoboxes when I searched by refnum, but searches by property name were returning errors. Nyttend (talk) 11:18, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Splitting and merging a list from two counties

National Register of Historic Places listings in Carbon County, Utah has 214 listings, but it's dominated by the 194 archaeological sites in Nine Mile Canyon. The 9 August pending list shows there's another 103 coming. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to split off National Register of Historic Places listings in Nine Mile Canyon (or a similar title, maybe specifying the state). Such a list would also include 34 of the 37 listings from National Register of Historic Places listings in Duchesne County, Utah. Do we have any multi-county lists that split off part of the regular county lists like this, or only supplemental ones like National Register of Historic Places listings in Canyonlands National Park? Ntsimp (talk) 15:57, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

We don't, and I would disagree with the idea because it would cause fits for the WP:NRHPPROGRESS script. Since they're all Address Restricted, I think we can here make an exception for the length of the page; they don't make the page code very huge, and the lack of coordinates means that the GeoGroupTemplate map won't be overloaded with tons of sites. Nyttend (talk) 16:27, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

The closest thing we have to a precedent is National Register of Historic Places listings in Kansas City, Missouri, since Kansas City spans multiple counties. The Jackson County listings (which covers most of them) are at National Register of Historic Places listings in Jackson County, Missouri: Downtown Kansas City and National Register of Historic Places listings in Jackson County, Missouri: Kansas City other, while the handful of Clay and Platte County listings are included with the rest of those counties' listings. We could split off a list like National Register of Historic Places listings in Carbon County, Utah: Nine Mile Canyon, and have National Register of Historic Places listings in Nine Mile Canyon be a disambiguation page for the two counties. That said, there are only 10 listings in Carbon County that aren't part of the canyon; is splitting the list actually going to reduce the size by much? TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:37, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Policy on the HABS imports?

Looking for guidance from the project here. I added an info box to Buckeye Station, saw that it had a historical marker for the image, and went to look for an actual image of the house. I found several like this one, presumably from the big import of HABS images. How are we going to use those? In this case, it is easy, a photo of the house is better than a photo of the marker 1/2 mile away. But what if the existing image had been a low res photo of the modern crumbling ruin? Swap in the high res historical tif? Do we want two images, then and now in the info box?

The HABS tifs all have black boarders, usually frowned upon in articles. Do we need to crop before using?

Can we establish guidelines for their use in articles? What takes precedence:

high res current photo
high res HABS historical photo
low res current photo
photo associated with, but not of, the subject

Or is it just a judgment call on each one? Generic1139 (talk) 17:38, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Surely the last should be lowest in priority. Aside from that, it really needs to be a judgement call. High-res current photos are often better than low-res current photos, but there are definitely exceptions — when the low-res looks better at a resolution that's useful in the article, it should get used instead. Look at Metropolitan Block (Lima, Ohio) for an example; when I wrote it, I used File:Metropolitan Block in Lima low resolution.jpg (800x600) instead of my own File:Metropolitan Block in Lima southern and western sides.jpg (2816x2112) because the low res image is a substantially better image, i.e. if the resolution weren't an issue, it would be all-around superior. When we have to decide between a current photo of the crumbling ruin and a HABS photo of the building in decent shape, we absolutely must make the decision on a case-by-base basis, since there are enough factors in play that we can't possibly create a consistently useful standard. Nyttend (talk) 05:45, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It is quite normal to crop off borders of a photograph on Commons. For the HABS upload, if an image has intrusive borders, please do edit the image in whatever editor you have (or use Cropbot) and upload the cropped version over the original, so long as the whole photograph is shown and you have not reduced the resolution of the photograph area. The file history still has the original version uploaded from the Library of Congress. If you think a crop to show detail is more useful, for example focusing just on a building in a wider shot, then consider making a new file on commons and link it to the original.

For the general question, if the current building is a ruin, then having a photograph in the lede of the building as it was when built is probably a lot more useful. However I would still want to see photographs of the ruin, along with any other shots of detail in the article itself, even if only as a gallery section.

Don't forget to consider any drawings that may be available. I have uploaded around 20,000 detailed drawings of NRHP sites, some of buildings that have since been demolished, there is a wealth of detail in the drawings that is of potential encyclopaedic value. --Fæ (talk) 07:01, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

As you may know, Fæ uploaded tens of thousands of images as part of this project; presumably he didn't have the time to crop off all the borders. I would generally support using the historic image as primary rather than the current photo of the ruin, but part of the reason I have to qualify that support is that buildings just don't come in "good" versus "ruin" states. Where is a specific building on the continuum from "great shape" to "complete ruin"? Sometimes the building is completely gone, and a contemporary photo shows just an empty lot or a new building (see Port Jefferson School and Holy Rosary Catholic Church (St. Marys, Ohio) for an example of each one), and in such a case I'd definitely want to use the historic image if it were freely licensed or PD. However, imagine that we had a HABS image of the Clayton Hoover Round Barn when it was intact; would you prefer using that image, or would you prefer File:Clayton Hoover Round Barn.jpg? Or consider the Van Wert Bandstand, a structure in good condition that has been moved from its original site; would you want the hypothetical HABS image showing it in its original place, or would you want File:Van Wert Bandstand.jpg, depicting it at its current location? There are good reasons for either one, and we shouldn't attempt to make a blanket statement to cover all situations of this sort. Nyttend (talk) 12:17, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Good points. By the way, I have automated cropping borders for other uploads, it's not impossibly tricky, however the HABS photographs really need a person to take a look and think about each case, so cropping "by hand" makes sense. Some photographs have an odd lip or tab with a valid chunk of photograph in it, that spans the border area, and other photographs have had annotations in the border that may be of interest, and certainly validate the HABS identity.

In general the borders are not terribly intrusive, so although we could try and automate cropping a good proportion of the 290,000 uploaded photographs, it probably would give problematic results in many cases. If anyone sees a large sub-group where automated fixes might be useful, I'll happily consider automation, though I probably will not have much time until Oct/Nov time. --Fæ (talk) 15:47, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I see no urgency in the cropping question. Only a small fraction of the uploads will ever be used in an article, and those few can be cropped and otherwise processed as appropriate to their use. Nice that our botmasters can provide so many choices, but choice and usage are editorial, ie human, decisions. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:05, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Outside of the issue of cropping, do you people have any idea how many new categories I've had to create with all these? I think Jim knows all too well, and I still have many to go. New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties, and even occasionally Philadelphia have had my touch. The last I saw, Philadelphia still had over 9000 pics. BTW Jim, did you bring NYC below 4000, or did I do that? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 23:41, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

So much fun available; so few hours in a lifetime. I always bite off more than I can chew. Old NYPL maps also get some of my time, and my own pictures, and I should have turned off the computer half an hour ago to hop on my bike and head for Yonkers. Might snap some pix of People's Climate March on the way, but there's just too many pleasant and important things to do that can't fit into one little lifetime. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:25, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

U.S. Border Inspection Stations MPS

Friday's new listing dump included a whole bunch of customs-station buildings at smaller border crossings, primarily on the Canadian border, with one large one (Laredo, Texas) on the Mexican border. There are 10 in Vermont, five in New York and Maine and two apiece in North Dakota and Washington, all small brick Colonial or Georgian Revival structures built during the Depression in response to increasing traffic over the border during Prohibition.

These present, I think, some issues for us as a project in writing articles about them:

• First, do we need separate articles at all? When I added the five in New York to the appropriate county lists, I linked them to the articles about the border crossings themselves. I think this might be the better way to do it, with an embedded infobox or one in a separate section going into detail on the U.S. building (This would be especially justified for at least one of the newly-listed ones, Trout River, NY, where the corresponding Canadian border station is also listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places). For some of those in the West, however, we don't yet have separate border crossing articles, so this might be a time to start one.

  But if we do decide the border inspection stations merit separate articles, we then have to go through the same discussion we did with all the post offices: They are listed as "U.S. Inspection Station–LOCATION". Do we spell out the "U.S.", or not? I'm still not sure that was the best decision for the post offices. Again, another good argument for not having standalone articles on them.

• Where we don't have any photographs, or don't have any good current photographs (which covers almost all of the ones I've looked at so far where there are articles about the border crossings), we will obviously want some, and indeed these buildings are very photogenic. However, as you might guess, in post-9/11 America this is just not simply something you go and do. While there are some of these where you could photograph them without having to commit to crossing the border (the two surface-road crossings near Rouses Point, NY, which I have personal experience with, come to mind—the main one on US 11 can be photographed from nearby or the U.S. 2 bridge from Vermont, and the inland Overton Corners crossing has a duty-free shop right across the road, where you could park, shoot then leave by turning right along New York State Route 276, which runs just south of the border for the next mile and a half or so), a lot seem like it would be easier to photograph them from the Canadian side, which of course means you have to have the proper documentation to cross. Do we necessarily want to be encouraging people to do this during Wiki Loves Monuments contests or something for which they may not be prepared?

  And then, of course, is the issue of security. The Customs and Border Protection people might understandably get a little suspicious of someone who just pulls over across the street and starts taking pictures. In fact, this is not just doing their jobs—I found out the easy way at Rouses Point that "unauthorized electronic surveillance" within a mile of the border can get you in a lot of federal trouble (though this may apply mainly to video ... I'd hate to think what would happen if you used a drone or something). Addendum: See this ACLU press release.

  So I would strongly recommend that anyone who wants to take pictures of these buildings at the very least ask the customs staff on duty for permission. These are, as I said, lower-traffic crossings so they may not be so bureaucratic about it, but in some cases it might even be better to ask someone higher up first. And if shooting a bunch of different angles of the building, be careful about where the actual border is (between the stone markers and the border vista, it's very easy to tell (that's the idea)—you don't want to accidentally go too far over it. You may just want to take some shots from the Canadian side (my experience, which may not be everyone's, is that the Canada Border Services Agency people will be more laid back about it as long as you remember you actually have to go through formalities before you go back).

  Again, another thing to think about in a WLM context.

And another thing to think about here: is it time we had a WikiProject Borders or something like that? We've got enough articles on borders, border crossings, border barriers, former borders, enclaves, exclaves, border disputes and things like that to justify a project. Daniel Case (talk) 15:26, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me that the smaller crossing points, especially those where the historic buildings are still in active use, we should just redirect the designation name to already-existing articles, most of which are stubs anyway (as I've been doing with the Vermont ones). We even have pictures of some of these already... One other consideration is that the photos in the nomination forms (once they become available) may be usable, assuming they are federal government works. Magic♪piano 16:01, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Can someone provide a link to the post offices discussion Daniel Case mentions? Thanks.

I agree with Magicpiano with regard to the photos. Since these are (mostly?) federal properties, the photographers for the nominations could well be federal employees, and therefore the nomination photos in the public domain. — Ipoellet (talk) 16:13, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I have found it to not always be the case that nomination photos for federal government sites are PD. I have seen government documents (other than nom forms) that were drafted by contractors, where the terms listed in the document state that the contractor essentially retains copyright, but grants the government unlimited rights. If I see a nom form prepared by a consultant (e.g. that for Thayer Lake East Shelter Cabin), I don't use the photos, because we don't know what the terms of the contract are. I personally think these contract terms are a PITA and the federal government should not cut the public at large out of such works done on its behalf. Magic♪piano 17:06, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

And of course, sometimes the PD photos you can get are pretty close to crap. Daniel Case (talk) 03:51, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

I absolutely agree on all points. Even with regard to federal properties, great care must be taken with regard to copyright. — Ipoellet (talk) 17:24, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm generally in favor of redirecting the inspection stations to the border crossings, as long as we're careful about the edge cases. For instance, consider US Inspection Station-Calexico in Imperial County, California; it was retroactively included in the MPS, it hasn't been an active border patrol station since the 1970s, and it's partially considered significant for its architecture. Though it might fit in Calexico West Port of Entry regardless, there's a pretty good case for that one having its own article, and there are probably a few other buildings like it. (As for the naming issue, I don't care terribly much about how either the inspection stations or post offices are named, as long as it's sensible-looking.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:23, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

I should have clarified that of course former inspection stations no longer in use should probably have their own articles. Daniel Case (talk) 14:21, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

The cover sheet for the MPS was listed on Sept 11 along with 2 crossings in Arizona (Douglas and Sasabe) and one in Idaho (Sandhill). The MPS has refnum 64501205. A consultant firm (Jones & Stokes Associates) was hired by the GSA to complete the nomination. No doubt they own the copyrights to any photos. Einbierbitte (talk) 04:37, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Seriously, can someone point me to the discussion about post offices? — Ipoellet (talk) 23:06, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Highway historical markers

Sorry, I suspect this has been talked to death in the past, but I've spent some time reading through old arguments about copyright for state historical markers with no firm result. Is there a list of states where the signs are PD because they've been read into the public record or some similar PDification process? The immediate image at issue is this one, a Virginia Department of Historic Resources marker placed in 2001. Unless there is some exemption, it would seem to be copyrighted by default and not PD, and therefore not suitable for commons. Any guidance? Generic1139 (talk) 19:44, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

This website has been claiming copyrights on its images of Virginia historical markers since 2008 with no apparent problems. Has there ever been an instance of a state government objecting, let alone litigating, to lay people distributing photographs of historical markers? Or does the potential objection result from the fevered imagination of theoretical copyright legalists? Monumenteer2014 (talk) 21:39, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• I generally don't think that state highway markers, or any other sign, adds much to most articles. Take pix for yourself and they'll give you more info, but for articles they are pretty weak IMHO. But there are exceptions
• The text of Delaware signs is read into law, but I'm not sure what that means to copyright. Look for a date on the signs: if there is not a copyright symbol and you can date it to before 1977, then it is pd
• Anybody can claim copyright and there is no real penalty for them!
• I doubt that any states have litigated or even sent a take-down notice, but that doesn't help us. There is a private add your own pix website of historic signs, I doubt they've ever had any problems.
• We do have a few copyright legalists, and they generally are upheld here.
• You might send a nice letter to the state historical sign commission. It might help.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:56, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Monumenteer2014, the opinion of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, for example, is that the text on PA historical markers is copyright protected, and written permission must be obtained for use of images of the markers. See [2]. You can easily fall down the rabbit hole of when sign was installed, and if it has a copyright mark on it, and if what the PHMC wants is binding, but in recent years text is automatically given copyright protection. Actual litigation though? Don't know. I agree with Smallbones that the sign doesn't add much to an article, that's why I'm wondering about the value of bending the rules to find a place for this image of a 2001 sign (which I forgot to link in above) by a new user. Generic1139 (talk) 22:17, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

commons:Category:PD-USGov license tags (non-federal) might be of interest. It contains PD license tags related to state works. Of the tags included, only California and Florida seem to be comparable to the federal government in the breadth and automatic nature of their releases to PD, although Massachusetts seems to be close. Of course, I'm not suggesting that the category is necessarily comprehensive - definitely not a final answer to your question. I also note that the wording of the tags for CA, MA, and FL does not make clear whether the law in those states differentiates between state-level agencies and local-level governments for copyright purposes. The sign in VA appears to be a work of the state government, but a lot of "official" historic markers may be the work of local governments or even private historical societies. So ya gotta pay close attention to the source.

Monumenteer2014, I get that the niceties of copyright compliance can be frustrating. I think we've all run into a block of that sort on the Wikimedia projects at some point or other - I certainly have. But like it or not, that "theoretical copyright legalism" is a foundational principle of Wikimedia, to the point where a precautionary principle has been written into Commons policy. That policy specifically rejects the "they aren't going to enforce it" argument.

Even if we can't upload photos of a historical marker, it could well be that we can treat the marker's content as a reliable source of information for WP prose content. There's even a {{Cite sign}} citation template! And I can't think of any reason why Commons would need a photo of a sign before we can reference it's content. — Ipoellet (talk) 22:59, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Copyright protected or not, I agree that sign pictures don't add much to articles if there's nothing else in the shot, and in most cases shouldn't be used in the lists. (The exceptions are signs at archaeological or demolished sites where there isn't a structure to take a picture of, and even then there should usually be some surrounding landscape.) Given the multitude of government agencies and private associations that place historical markers, and considering that the government agency may not have written the marker text in the first place, it's probably best to use caution when uploading those. Of course, I uploaded one for an archaeological site last week, so maybe I shouldn't be talking here. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:31, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

The Lydia is different, as a ship that's functionally buried under the city; you got the precise spot where it's located, and rather than getting some empty pavement, you got the chunk of the area that commemorates it. This is radically different from, say, using File:Legionville monument.jpg to represent Legionville instead of using File:Fields at Legionville.jpg. Signs in general — I actively try to photograph the PD-US-no notice historical markers (I can't remember ever seeing one with a copyright notice) and upload them to Commons, but I agree that they're rarely suitable for use in an article, unless it's long enough that we have room to throw in the sign as an example of how the location has been commemorated. I also agree about the signs as reliable sources; the Ohio Historical Society (our SHPO) has the signs online, so I've cited those webpages when writing articles such as McDonald Farm (Xenia, Ohio) or Beam Farm Woodland Archaeological District. Indiana does the same (example), and I would use them likewise if writing an Indiana article. Finally, note that at least PA and IN have lists of officially state-placed historical markers, e.g. List of Pennsylvania state historical markers in Beaver County and List of Indiana state historical markers in Monroe County; you're always welcome to submit marker photos for them, either closeups of PD markers or scenery shots for copyrighted markers. Nyttend (talk) 04:32, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could cite a relevant decision in a United States court system indicating that photographs of text displayed in public cannot be disseminated, licensed into Creative Commons, etc. Monumenteer2014 (talk) 07:24, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

It's not a court decision, but commons:Freedom of panorama#United States explains the relevant law. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 16:49, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Sign at the Lollipop Motel, Wildwoods Shore Resort Historic District.

I agree with Nyttend above, but there are always exceptions. This pic shows signs on motels (part of the architecture, so not restricted by "Freedom of Panorama" laws) in a state historic district. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:56, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

An unusual copyright situation

I was looking through the latest batch of unused Summer of Monuments images, and one photographer watermarked several of their photos (such as this one) with "2014 All Rights Reserved". The photos are clearly taken by the uploader, and he released them under a standard CC-BY-SA license, but the watermarks make me think that he may not have understood the conditions of the license. I've asked him for clarification but haven't gotten a response yet. Is there any precendent for what to do when somebody sends mixed messages like this about copyright? (I realize that the photos are now under a CC-BY-SA license legally speaking, but I'd like to respect the uploader's wishes here if possible.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 17:19, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

That's a tough one. Maybe raise the issue at commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright? Personally, I wouldn't use a watermarked image in an article regardless of what the watermark said - seems kind of unduly distracting. — Ipoellet (talk) 20:02, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

TheCatalyst, thanks for the parenthetical clarification — until I read it, I thought you were asking about their legal status. I agree with your legal comment, and I think I agree with your "respect" comment too. Ignoring that and just addressing the watermark-as-watermark issue, I don't see it as a problem; we could simply crop out the watermark, at least on images such as File:Samuel M. Lane House 1.jpg in which it obscures nothing except a little bit of the house's lawn. Nyttend (talk) 03:37, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I ran into this a couple of years ago for WLM. There it seemed that professional photogs wanted to mark their photos as copyrighted - which they have a right to do - in fact they MUST be copyrighted by the uploader to be uploaded, if not already pd, cc, etc. It confused me and them for a bit - I didn't fully understand the "Must be" part and its implications at the time. The flip side is that we are allowed to trim the watermarked notice. Roughly it worked out as follows - I notified them that us common folk really didn't like watermarks on the pix, they understood that we can remove them, and then they decided whether they still wanted to upload them. Previously uploaded pix could always ask for a courtesy deletion, I guess. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:47, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of photographer watermarks, and even the occasional copyright marker, in WLM images that I'm used to that by now. I personally feel that unless it affects the image quality, leaving a photographer's watermark as attribution is harmless; it's the mention of "all rights reserved" in this one that worries me, since that explicitly goes against the terms of the CC license. If the photographer doesn't object, or doesn't respond at all, this one probably is worth cropping just to avoid confusion. (I think all the watermarks are small marks in the bottom corner like that one, so they probably won't take anything important with them.) I'm a bit hesitant to bring this up at one of the major Commons boards, since I remember from previous discussions that there are a few people who stubbornly oppose courtesy deletions, and I don't want this blowing up if the photographer did misunderstand the license. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:23, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

While the photographer hasn't responded, he appears to have re-uploaded most of his photos without the watermarks, so it looks like there's nothing to worry about. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 06:31, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Given the reupload without watermark, I filed a DR for the watermarked one, and I've left the uploader a note explaining the reason for the DR, saying basically "because they're so similar, we don't need both". Nyttend (talk) 00:00, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

District boundary increases and rename

The Central City Historic District in Salt Lake City, Utah, originally listed in 1996, has had two boundary increases, in 2001 and 2003. All three nomination forms are at Focus (original, first increase, second increase). That last one also renamed the district, to the Salt Lake City East Side Historic District, although the boundaries given are just those of the part being added on. Right now, National Register of Historic Places listings in Salt Lake City, Utah has 2 separate entries for these, one as Central City Historic District plus the first increase, and the other as Salt Lake City East Side Historic District. I'm thinking they should be combined under the new name. That would be standard practice, right? Of course, it's possible that I misunderstood and the last one doesn't actually constitute a boundary increase but a separate historic district. Either way, our lists only give one reference number per listing, hence only one nomination form link. Should there be an option for multiple numbers in the case of boundary increases? Ntsimp (talk) 16:36, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

As long as NRIS and/or the nomination calls the new one a boundary increase, it should be combined. Occasionally I've run into listings that are boundary increases but aren't so marked in NRIS; the Springfield Historic Commercial District and Springfield Main Street Historic District (KY) are a good example, as I learned that the Main Street HD was an increase/rename only after looking at its nomination and (initially) marvelling that it seemed to encompass the entire Historic Commercial District. See how it appears at National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington County, Kentucky, if you're curious. We already can add multiple numbers, but only one appears, although if you want the increase's number to appear, you could always stick it in the summary line. Another example is the Jesse Whitesell House (original) and J.W. Farm (increase), which is even trickier because House is just in National Register of Historic Places listings in Fulton County, Kentucky, while Farm straddles the road to the south and gets added to National Register of Historic Places listings in Obion County, Tennessee. See discussions about this property in Archive 27 (minimal) and Archive 59 (extensive). Nyttend (talk) 17:31, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I've gone ahead and made the change to the list. Ntsimp (talk) 18:15, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Advice needed on location of historic places near Crescent City, California

Hi, could someone familiar with Crescent City in California advise on the location of the bridge at South River Middle Fork (and maybe some other locations nearby)? See c:User_talk:Fæ#HAER_images_in_Category:Crescent_City.2C_California. If we can work out the correct location(s), there are probably several photographs on Commons that will need renaming and having their geolocations fixed as the Library of Congress record appears dubious. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:00, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

New NHLs

Yesterday's recent listings included several new NHLs. I haven't checked for most of them, but one — the Duck Creek Aqueduct in Indiana — has a bunch of HABS images at Commons:Category:Duck Creek Aqueduct. Nyttend (talk) 12:17, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I note we don't have an actual article on the Duck Creek Aqueduct. Should we now that it's an NHL? Daniel Case (talk) 15:49, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

One of the others we don't have an article on is the Perkins Homestead, the summer estate of Frances Perkins in Maine. NHL News has links to the announcement and nomination forms. Magic♪piano 13:30, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I have updated two of the articles (Lydia Pinkham House and Baltusrol Golf Club) and the relevant state NHL lists (MA and NJ) already. If doing this yourself, note that most of the NHLs were formally designated Aug. 25. Daniel Case (talk) 14:03, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Since that post, I have also made all the necessary changes to General Motors Technical Center and Brown Covered Bridge, as well as their related list articles. Daniel Case (talk) 16:36, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Milestones

As of the latest update of the Progress table, there are now over 60,000 illustrated listings. Good work, all of you; it's only a little over a year since we reached 50,000, so we're making pretty fast progress. It also looks like we hit 50,000 articles sometime in August, though it went unnoticed at the time. Thanks to everyone who's been contributing! TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:27, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

After being away from the encyclopedia for a while due to business in real life, I found time to update all the graphs/charts on WP:NRHPPROGRESSHISTORY today. Keeping with the theme of milestones, I decided to run a linear regression on our progress to estimate a date in the future where--if we keep going at our current rate--we will eventually have articles and images for every site on the register. The results of my projection are kind of disheartening, but I decided to share them nonetheless. Our current pace for creating articles puts us at 100% coverage by the date of July 13....... 2022 O.o haha. For images, it's a little better since we already have more of them. Our current pace for uploading images puts us at 100% by September 5, 2018, almost 4 full years before we finish articles.

Of course these are just ballpark figures and in no way intended to be accurate down to the day. If anything, I would just go with the year-level degree of accuracy and even take that with a grain of salt. These projections assume linear trends when real life may be some other function, e.g. a Gompertz function which flattens out as we get closer to 100% coverage. Regardless, the idea I'm trying to convey is that we have quite a loooooong time before we "finish" our job here. And don't even get me started on %Start+. We'll be here forever with that one at our current pace!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 08:25, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

One of us heavily-active photographers will need to move somewhere such as southwestern Missouri or northern South Dakota for this to happen; I've recently moved myself, but to heavily-illustrated Pennsylvania, and even when I try to get some of the few unillustrated spots, someone else comes along, literally just a few hours earlier, and steals my thunder :-) I've not been doing much Ohio writing lately, due to lots of photo trips since the late spring (it seems that I've always got a backlog of images to upload), and I'm really more concerned with Start+ upgrades for stuff like John Herrington House and Herrington Bethel Church than with starting new articles; I think the last new one I wrote was Garver Brothers Store, and I don't remember the last one before that. Nyttend (talk) 12:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The real issue, in my opinion at least, is that the NRHP is huge; over 1% of Wikipedia articles are within our scope, and it would be close to 2% if all the unarticled sites suddenly had articles. Meanwhile, we have a handful of editors trying to write and illustrate everything, and it's naturally taking forever. With the photos we at least have WLM to help us out, but it seems like the articled % for certain states will stagnate for months if there isn't a regular actively pushing them along. I really worry about what's going to happen to that trend if we start losing the regulars; depending on who's active and who's not, it seems like 3-5 people are writing 95% of the new articles at any given time, and if that drops to 2-3 2022 is going to seem optimistic. (Not to mention the fact that the articled count is inflated by ~7000 from NRIS-only substubs...) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 17:16, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

That's why I've been concentrating on expanding the NRIS-only and barely-better stubs. Nyttend (talk) 17:32, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I looked at Dude's "disheartening" numbers and assumed that he must have made a mistake in his calculations. But actually 3-4 years for "completely illustrating" all 90,000+ sites (as it will likely be then) is not so bad. Of course we have to realize that it will be impossible to get every single photo, e.g. of off-limits airbases in Alaska, or of boats that sank 25 years ago. But I think we can come up with a realistic definition of "complete" that is possible in 4 years. Yes the last pix are harder to get, but would 90% of our county lists being at least 90% complete be "complete enough"?

If so, I think it's clear that getting photos in the "out-of-the-way states" will be the major challenge. Only 15 states (30%) are 80% or more complete. Getting all states up to 50% will be quite a challenge (11 states aren't). I'll be interested to see how the Summer of Monuments project worked out this year, in any case some sort of outreach will be needed. Person-to-person outreach might be best. We only really need 3 fanatics in Texas, 1 in Oklahoma, 1 in North Dakota, etc. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:46, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

That's the one advantage that article progress has; geography and restricted access aren't really an issue, and you can theoretically get a good source for any listing (even if it means bulk-requesting nominations from NPS in a few states). I suspect that we'll hit 90% and maybe even 95% illustrated a few years before 90% and 95% articled, but we'll probably still get to 100% articled first. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

As far as the articles, a stub generator could be useful to publish some basic info at least. Concerning the images, a cooperation with the National Park Service to publish their images under PD-USGov-NPS could help. Pietro (talk) 08:37, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Um, Pietro, have you read higher in this discussion? Our biggest problem as a project is piles of what are essentially autogenerated stubs, which are outright harmful for numerous reasons; we're better with redlinks than with autogenerated stubs. NPS holds rights to almost zero images: the ones they produce are already PD-USGov-NPS, and virtually all the nonfree images they have are actually owned by other people. Nyttend (talk) 11:35, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

A stub generator is not useful (and, as Nyttend says, sometimes harmful) unless you actually have up-to-date information (Elkman is fine for basic form, but not content). Where do you propose to get this up-to-date info? The discussion archives here are littered with examples of NRIS failing to provide such. Things like addressing information are at best sporadically corrected/updated by SHPOs, assuming the SHPOs even know that, for example, a new roadway alignment has resulted in an historic house now being on "Old Route 1" instead of "Route 1". NRIS also doesn't tell us "basic info" like: how big is the house/building? what is the primary exterior building material? which side of the road/junction is it on? which of two or more styles listed is the dominant one? is the date a construction date or of some other significance? (I use all of these to help guide me to the correct property when street addressing is ambiguous.) And, of course, NRIS hasn't been updated since 2010, so it is getting staler and staler. 90% articles when 50% have what is basically crappy sourcing looks good on the progress chart, but lousy in terms of actual usefulness. Magic♪piano 13:04, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering how Florida all of a sudden became 100% articled a few weeks ago (that change stuck out to me when updating this gif). Now I see from Pietro's contributions that in mid-September, he just NRIS-only stubbed the rest of them. Actually he even removed NRIS-only tags from several articles that were later re-added by the bot when it ran after I got back. The problem is his new articles are not technically NRIS-only stubs because he generally added a link to the nomination form to them, so they won't get tagged by the bot, but there is no more content in these articles than "classic" NRIS-only stubs. It's no wonder with this type of article creation habits, he's suggesting the tired idea of a stub generator.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:16, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Is there any chance of adjusting the algorithm for net quality rating so that stubs are downgraded? In other words, make it so that (aside from the presence of an image) most of the quality depends on start+ status? Right now, tons of ND articles (as well as these new Florida stubs), and smaller numbers of comparable articles nationwide, count most of the way toward completion just because someone put the nomination form in <ref></ref> tags instead of *[single brackets with a bullet point]. What if stubs only counted for half of what they do now? If I remember right, a stub counts half of what a start+ article counts toward completion; what if it were changed so that it counted as a quarter? Yes, I know I'm biassed (I write smaller numbers of start+ articles, rather than larger numbers of stubs), but it still doesn't seem correct to say that North Dakota is substantially closer to being done than Nebraska, which has far more images and a start+ rate that's almost double North Dakota's. Nyttend (talk) 16:31, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I think that using "readable prose size" (from WP:DYK rules) with a threshold equivalent to about three sentences being treated as equivalent to NRIS-only might also be a way to penalize minimal-content articles in the statistics. Finding these sorts of articles via script would be useful. There are many stubs (like those that Pubdog produces) that are noticeably more useful, and would rise above a properly-designed threshold. Magic♪piano 17:05, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

This came to mind a few days ago, even before seeing this discussion, as a result of working with Washington County PA stubs — most of the county's 90+ sites (see Doak-Little House for a typical example) are just "The {{PAGENAME}} is a historic [property type] in [place]. It is designated as a historic [historic function] by the Washington County History & Landmarks Foundation", but since the second sentence cites a WCH&LF document, it's not NRIS-only. Nomination forms aren't cited (I just went around adding them as an external link for ~60 of them) and the National Register isn't even mentioned. Yes, I know that the stubs written by Pubdog and TheCatalyst31 are normally a good deal better than this, but they're the exceptions. Moreover, how is Dudemanfellabra's script supposed to know what's what without taking ten hours to run? It already has to spend a couple of hours just to determine the current rating for each article; having it count sentences, or something like that, is reasonable for single-article processes such as DYK but impractical when you have many thousands of articles. Nyttend (talk) 17:24, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

They might be the exceptions now, but going forward I feel like most of the new stubs are going to be of the good quality variety; most of the creators of three-line stubs (NRIS-only or otherwise) either moved on or were topic-banned, and most of the new stubs now are coming from Pubdog, Magicpiano, myself and a couple of other editors who write good stubs. I'd love to see a good way of identifying the three-liners besides manually digging through the list, but if we just put a penalty on stubs, then improving one of those two-liners into a quality stub wouldn't improve the statistics. I like the "readable prose size" idea, assuming it's technically feasible, though it seems like the sort of thing that could be gamed; this article, for instance, is about as long as some good-quality stubs but says nothing that can't be found in NRIS. The only other thing I could think of would be to allow NRIS-only tags on articles that also cite a state/local list that essentially mirrors NRIS, but that only solves half the problem and seems a bit like template abuse. I agree that the end goal needs to be getting every article to start-class, but the stats show we're many years away from that one unless we get more help. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:36, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I realized (as Nyttend rightly points out) after writing the above that the "readable prose size" algorithm might make updating the stats display on a list even more painfully slow than it sometimes is already. That said, a "find short articles" button on lists might be a useful thing to develop that leverages the existing stats script infrastructure. Magic♪piano 19:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's definitely the big problem in my eyes with this kind of thing; I just don't see how it could be done by a computer without taking an inordinate amount of time. I can't understand what you're envisioning with a "find short articles" button; could you explain? And I wasn't trying to suggest that we put a penalty on stubs (I'm sorry that I made you think that I was), but that we simply reduce the benefit gained by writing one. Right now, the statistical benefit of writing something like this (a really minimal stub, but it cites something else for one factoid) is just as big as the statistical benefit of converting that two-sentence stub into this version, as full as I can make it with print and digital sourcing from several locations; I'd like to see stub-writing still produce a benefit, but less of a benefit than it does now, in order to encourage stub-expansion or the conversion of redlinks straight into Start-quality articles. Nyttend (talk) 20:01, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to support Nyttend's suggestion that we reduce (but certainly not eliminate) the points awarded for a stub. Right now, as I understand, a photo adds 0.25, a stub adds 0.375, and expanding a stub to Start+—even to GA—only adds an additional 0.375. If it's not technically feasible to distinguish two-sentence robo-stubs from quality stubs of the sort produced by TheCatalyst, Acroterion, and others, I'd suggest that stubs be re-weighted so that they only add 0.2 or 0.25, with a Start+ counting for 0.5 or 0.55. Under this weighting, an illustrated stub would only count for half (or a little less), and expanding a stub would count for approximately twice as much as creating one. This would be an imperfect solution, since it wouldn't distinguish between quality and otherwise stubs, and it wouldn't be immune to gaming (recall that when we introduced the 1/4–3/8–3/8 system, a certain editor unilaterally decided to redefine the stub-start boundary). However, I think it'd better reflect both the amount of editorial effort and the utility to the reader of stubs vs. start+ articles. Ammodramus (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to reweighting to reduce the value of stubs (I write both stubs and longer articles, so I've no particular affinity either way), but might suggest even weighting a small amount (around 0.1 or even 0.05) for B-class, which would make achieving 100% NQR a more notable feat. The idea I'm floating above is a button (a la Dudeman's renumbering script), which when pressed would populate a box like the one the evaulation script creates with the results of its analysis. This way the (potentially time-consuming) assessment for parsing articles can be done under user control, rather than running when the page loads. (The parsing could also presumably be cut off when the desired threshold is met.) Magic♪piano 21:17, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

NQR? Net Quality Rating? I wouldn't be as comfortable with requiring anything beyond Start for full article-quality rating, simply because of the nature of what we're writing about — for many of these sites, sourcing simply doesn't exist for writing something better than Start. We can get almost all of them up to Start (and the few exceptions, e.g. the William Sinn Round Barn, where NPS doesn't have an individual nomination form, can be merged with related articles to produce a Start-or-better page), so I'd be most comfortable with requiring only Start for full rating. I agree with Ammodramus' closing point: a good stub provides some useful resources, such as the nomination form, but since by definition it's "too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject", we ought to give more priority to Start+ articles than we currently are, simply because they're substantially more useful to the reader. Nyttend (talk) 22:13, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the heart of the matter is that there are really two different quality levels of articles that are both being called stubs: the three-line stubs like the one Nyttend mentioned, and "decent stubs" like many editors are writing (e.g. this one). I know the idea of a "sub-stub" class was brought up before (and was a contentious issue, to say the least), but maybe redefining the quality scale is something that should be considered. If we can't create any new categories, maybe redefine what we have along the lines of counting anything that doesn't have more information than can be found in NRIS as a stub, articles with more information but still incomplete as start, and more complete but not B-class would be C. And the NQR equation could be changed to give 0.2 or 0.25 (or less, or nothing) to a "new" stub, 0.375 to a start (an old "decent stub"), and .75 to C+ (old start+). The main problem might be that it would require reassessing a metric ass of articles. My inkling is that if we went through and separated "bad" stubs from "good" stubs that there would be a lot fewer "bad" stubs than some might expect. Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 02:15, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

As I recall, we had a rather contentious discussion about bumping the quality stubs up to start-class about a year ago, and the consensus was that we shouldn't be redefining our assessment criteria just because there are a bunch of low-quality articles; while it's good for a stub, something like this is most definitely a stub. We could maintain some kind of list of bad-quality stubs in place of a substub category, but that still requires a ton of effort that could be going toward improving articles. That gives me an idea, though; might there be a way to use NationalRegisterBot to generate a list of short articles based on readable prose size? Using the bot, which is only run every so often anyway and already takes care of some huge jobs, might avoid the problem of slowing down the script. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:46, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If we were going to take the time to go through all the stubs in the project to sort them into "good" and "bad" stubs, we may as well just improve the bad stubs as we come across them. While changing the net quality formula may be desirable, I would like to stay away from that if possible for continuity at WP:NRHPPROGRESSHISTORY.

I actually liked the idea of using prose size to determine the quality of a stub, despite others' assertions it would be impractical. While yes, if we were to include prose size as a statistic on the progress page, it would cause the update script to take substantially longer than it does now because it would have to query the text of all the pages, that problem is not so bad for the bot that tags NRIS-only articles. It already queries/parses the wikitext of every single article in the project to determine if it has only one source, and adding this simple check for the number of characters in the text would be a very minimal addition to its tasks. In fact I've already come up with a short routine in my javascript sandbox (along with some other stuff, so I would advise against installing that script unless you plan to delete it later) to extract the prose size of any article that pretty much matches the standard script even though it uses different methods (the standard script uses the parsed HTML on the screen while I would need to look at the unparsed wikitext itself).

I could add this routine to the bot's code and output a list of all articles with less than 1500 characters of prose (the DYK cutoff) where the bot already outputs unreferenced and single-referenced articles. I can also envision a section with NRIS-only articles over a certain length, which probably means they have a lot of references, just not inline citations. Yes, it wouldn't be live-updating, but it would be a place that everyone who is interested in expanding stubs could look to help out.. If that's something the project could use and think would be a good thing to have, I can see about adding it into the bot's code.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

And after the edit conflict, I see TheCatalyst31 and I were thinking on the same page anyway haha :P--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the idea! I'm not going to tell you that it won't work, since you're the bot operator :-) If we could autosort ministubs such as Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church or the Doak-Little House so that they're treated like NRIS-only, I would be quite supportive. I still think we ought to improve the importance of start+ articles versus the importance of stubs, since even the best stub is still only minimally useful to the reader, but it's not quite as big of an issue if we can get the poorer quality ones automarked as poorer quality. Nyttend (talk) 04:15, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

New bot output

Ok I have now added a function to the bot's code to check the prose size of articles and generate a list of articles with less than 1500 bytes of prose.......... and maybe that was a bad idea (you've been warned before you click on that). Out of the 50536 articles total that are linked from the county lists, a whopping 36832 of them (72.9%) have less than 1500 bytes of prose. Of that 36832, only 6314 are technically NRIS-only (another 442 articles that are tagged NRIS-only have more than 1500 bytes of prose). There are 30518 articles that have less than 1500 bytes of prose but are not tagged NRIS-only, which is in my opinion waaay too many to start any kind of improvement drive like I was intending this list to be. Looking at those statistics, maybe we should lower the 1500-byte limit to something a little more manageable like, say, 1000 or even 500? Then after we have "fixed" all those really bad articles, we can slowly increment the prose size limit to encompass more and more of the eventual 36K articles that are under 1500 bytes, i.e. the only kind of bad articles haha. In the mean time, I will configure the bot to output this list to a new subpage (probably User:NationalRegisterBot/Substubs) so that the other stuff on the page (unreferenced, single sourced, etc.) isn't taking up as much room. What do others think of this output/idea/conundrum?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd go along with reducing the number of bytes that we filter for, per DMFB's suggestion. I checked a dozen or so from the list of <1500-byte, not-NRIS-only, and while there were some serious pooches among them (e.g. Palmer Site), even that small sample turned up some very decent stubs (e.g. Genoa Building, George Ferris Mansion). Going down to 500 bytes would allow us to focus on the worst of the robo-stubs: the ones that read as though little Bobby's mother had told him he couldn't go on Facebook until he'd finished his Nebraska History homework sheet... Ammodramus (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Looking through the stubs, I'm seeing a lot of the "quality" stubs like A.S. Cooper Farm and A. P. Hill Boyhood Home rather than a bunch of short stubs. Keep in mind that 1500 characters is the minimum standard for DYK, which isn't supposed to feature stubs in the first place, so making that your upper bound is going to catch a lot of decent stubs. I'm also in favor of dropping the limit to 500 bytes for now; we can always increase it once we deal with some of this backlog. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok I have lowered the limit in the code to 500 bytes and will output to the subpage linked above. I'll run the bot again now. It should take about 3-4 hours, and I'll post the results here when it finishes. Thanks for the feedback.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:04, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

So when you refer to "prose", what does that include exactly? I assume infoboxes and message templates are excluded. But does that include or exclude trailer sections such as see also and external links? Does that include or exclude citations enclosed in <ref> tags? And so forth. Also (pardon my ignorance), is it the case that 1 character in the edit window = 1 byte? — Ipoellet (talk) 03:17, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

To determine prose size, my code gets the wikitext of each article linked from each county list and does the following to it:

• Strip out anything in ref tags
• Strip any HTML comments
• Get rid of external links/see also sections
• Strip all section titles, even those in the body of the text
• Strip any line breaks and multiple spacing (i.e. collapse two spaces in a row to a single space for counting purposes)
• Ignore categories and images, including the captions of the images
• Strip wikicode for wikilinks (including piped links), external links, bold, and italic formatting and just keep the actual displayed text
• Strips all templates, including infoboxes. Unfortunately, this also means templates like {{convert}} are removed entirely instead of expanding the text visible to the reader, but I'm not sure how to account for that without putting in special cases that would bloat the code. Regardless, templates like this won't affect the prose size tremendously, and to-the-character accuracy isn't really necessary for this as we are just trying to distinguish good stubs from minimal ones.

After it has done all that, it counts the number of characters remaining and calls that the prose size. For example an article with only the text "SITE is listed on the National Register of Historic Places" would have a prose size of 58 (assuming I didn't miscount just now, but you get the idea--one character=one byte). If an article has less than 500 bytes of prose, it will be included on the list. There are some limitations, though. In addition to the issue mentioned with the convert template and others like it, things like tables are not ignored (although that would be easy to add, but really tables aren't that common in our articles as far as I can tell) and other little issues like HTML tags or other markup. If anyone has any suggestions for additional things to ignore/strip when calculating the prose size, please let me know, but again, to-the-character accuracy isn't really necessary in my opinion since we're just trying to get a general idea of the length of the article.

And as I have typed this response, the bot has finished its run and dumped the new list at User:NationalRegisterBot/Substubs, By lowering the limit to 500 from 1500, we have shrunk the list from 30K+ to a more manageable (though still extremely large) 11255 not tagged as NRIS-only. There are also 1268 articles tagged NRIS-only that have more than 500 bytes of prose, more obviously than before, but this list can still serve as a starting point to look for NRIS-only articles that likely have other references than the NRIS but just don't have inline citations. What does everyone think about the new output? In my opinion, the output is much better.. there are markedly fewer "good" stubs listed, but I think we could actually even go a little lower to start off since even 11K articles is a huge list... maybe something like 250 bytes? It's insane how many of these small articles there are out there! We could decrease the cutoff more and more until the list becomes manageable (c. 1000 items?) and then after most of them have been tackled, increase the limit, rinse, and repeat. Anyone have a problem with me lowering the bar even more? Haha--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:02, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

If you have the output, you should be able to plot the number vs size and identify the cliff. dm (talk) 04:41, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't exactly work that way. When I query each article, I calculate its prose size, but I only check to see if the number is greater or less than 500, not actually save the number itself anywhere. I could maybe rework the code to save the prose size and sort the list by that.. let me see what I can do in the next day or so. Then instead of having a cutoff, I can just output the 1000/[insert desired number here] smallest articles and be done with it. Actually I like that idea better anyway. Thanks for the suggestion!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:50, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Looking through the output, I'm afraid you're right and that we are going to need to lower the bar more. We're still catching things that look like decent-quality stubs (e.g. Alderson Bridge and Algoma Coal and Coke Company Store), and that list still seems a bit long. Before we do another run, it might be worth considering what we think a too-short stub looks like so we can establish a better cutoff point. By approximating your code with an online character counter and some manual deletion, I looked at a bunch of the articles, and it looks like the drop-off point is somewhere around 300-350 characters (with a bit of variance due to alternate names and long addresses). Anything in that range is probably a decent starting point, but 250 seems a bit low (this article, for instance, is 254 and IMO a definite substub). I'm not sure getting it to 1000 items is even feasible yet, since the NRIS-only section is still five times that. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:50, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree that there are way more than 1000 out there that need to be improved, but if we have a list of 10K or even like 5K articles, it's hard to say to the project "Hey, let's improve all 10K of these articles!" Most people will just look at the list, become disheartened, and decide not to do anything because they feel they'll never make a dent in anything. If we shrink the list and instead say "Here is a list of the 1000 (or 500 or 50 would be even better) worst articles in the project. Let's improve them first and then maybe later we can expand to 5K or 10K", I feel like we'd get much more involvement. I have a little time right now, so I'm going to try to modify the code to sort the items by prose length and only output the smallest X of them. I can also keep the existing list and shrink it to a threshold of let's say 325, but I feel like the list sorted by prose size would get the most attention, and deservedly so.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:18, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I like that idea. I feel like we've had that problem with the existing NRIS-only category; it has 7000 articles in it, and it can be hard to find a good place to start tackling it without getting overwhelmed. I'd suggest that you still keep separate "shortest" lists for the NRIS-only and not-NRIS-only articles, because I don't want either category to get ignored (even if I suspect that there's a big clump of NRIS-only articles around a certain size, since so many have the same format). That, and you also might want to keep one of the "long NRIS-only articles" lists around if it doesn't slow down the bot too much, since that's useful for different reasons. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:53, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

You brought up some good points that made me change the code after I had already started the bot again haha, so I cancelled it and will restart now. It will output a list of the 100 smallest articles in each category (NRIS-only and not-NRIS-only). I also kept the long NRIS-only list, although it will undoubtedly grow since I lowered the bar to 325 bytes, probably to the point of being almost useless. Since the bot will take 3-4 hours again, I will be asleep by the time it finishes, but when I wake up tomorrow I will check the output and comment here. If for some reason everything goes haywire, anyone feel free to revert the bot if need be. It is also entirely possible I screwed something up to the point that the bot will fail and not output anything, so if that's the case, I should have it fixed and run again some time tomorrow. Either way, expect output soon.

As far as the current NRIS-only category being too large, that's one of the benefits of having the Progress page, which breaks them down by state and even county, and it's part of the reason MA doesn't have many NRIS-only stubs anymore ;).--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 06:18, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I like the 500-character cutoff idea; could the NRHPPROGRESS script run through such a list and count its entries toward completion percentage at a reduced rate? Nyttend (talk) 12:19, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I ran the bot overnight and woke up to its output for a limit of 325 bytes. The list is now much more manageable having shrunk from its initial 30K to 11K to now a little under 5K non-NRIS-only substubs. I did output a list of the smallest articles, but there was clearly an error with my calculation routine because it came up with several articles it asserted were 0 bytes long yet were actually quite large. I have spent a few hours this morning improving the calculation by re-ordering and including more/smarter removal and will re-run the script again this afternoon. For now the lists at the top of the output can be used, but just ignore the unrealistically small single-digit-byte articles. Once the bot runs again, these errors should be fixed, although undoubtedly new ones will show up. Such is programming.

To answer Nyttend's question about the Progress page, I don't plan on using this list to factor into the NQR (I quite like that acronym by the way), partially because of the rough nature of its calculations. As I pointed out above, some of these articles are being tagged 0 bytes when they are actually several thousand long. Maybe if I get all the kinks worked out and we are certain that everything on this list should be on this list (and that there isn't anything that should be here and isn't), then I can see about factoring it into the NQR. The way that would be done would be to simply check if the bot's subpage links to the given article, counting it as sub-stub if it does. But the main point is that for the immediate future, this list is just a worklist, not something that I feel comfortable using as a definitive rating scale.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:45, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

The bot has now run again, and the output is at User:NationalRegisterBot/Substubs. The list is a little bit smaller than on the last run, shrinking from ~5K non-NRIS-only articles to 3640. This is probably due to the improvements to the counting algorithm, which has also taken care of the single-digit-byte articles. It turns out the shortest non NRIS-only article is Old Livery Stable at 61 bytes. The smallest 100 articles only get us up to 119 bytes, so we have quite a lot of work to do. I will run the bot ~weekly as usual, so as these smallest 100 articles are expanded, more will fall into their place on the list. I think a link to this output would be something good to add to our to-do list for editors looking for something to do. If anyone finds an error in the output, let me know, and I'll see if I can fix it.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:57, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Yikes, we have a lot of work to do. I didn't expect the 100th-smallest articles in each section to be only four bytes apart, and those are some pretty stubby articles (Henderson Street Bridge's prose is shorter than the location description in its infobox!) Thanks for all the work you put into getting this list up - now we know what we need to work on, at least. I went ahead added it to the to-do list. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:36, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Okay, if the list won't be used for the net quality rating, then I agree that it shouldn't use a 500-character minimum size. I agree that we don't want to have thousands and thousands of articles marked as needing improvement when (unlike the NRIS-only) they don't have potentially serious problems with the content that's currently there. Nyttend (talk) 02:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to me that there's any need to adjust the NQR formula at this point, provided we really work on the two sections "Smallest 100 articles by prose size NOT tagged NRIS-only" and "Articles tagged NRIS-only with more than 325 bytes of prose". Doing that will go a long way toward making the NRIS-only component of the NQR formula more meaningful. I'd be hesitant to add a byte-size component to the NQR formula, since that is at best an imperfect approximation of what makes a quality stub: it values run-on blather over a few information-dense sentences. On the other hand, using byte-sizes the way the bot is set up now will help editors identify individual articles that are highly likely to need the most help.

I'm a little bit shocked at how my state (Oregon) dominates this version of the bot output. For example, it appears Oregon accounts for over half of the articles in the 100 smallest non-NRIS-only articles. I guess I'll need to start attacking that issue. That said, I'd like to solicit some opinions: many of the short Oregon articles that are not tagged NRIS-only have only one source in addition to the NRIS: a PDF report from the Oregon SHPO that is nothing but a simple database list of the NRHP sites in the state (as I recall it was just name, location, year built, refnum, listed date), and that PDF is no longer produced by the SHPO or available online. Shouldn't all these articles get the NRIS-only tag, since that list would qualify as a "mirror" of the NRIS? — Ipoellet (talk) 16:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

If the source no longer exists at all (i.e. it's a dead link), I would say just remove it since it doesn't have any more information than the already existing NRIS source. If you add the NRIS-only template to these articles without removing that source, the bot will remove the tag when it runs again because they technically have more than one inline citation. If you remove the non-existent source all together, the bot will tag the articles automatically, though really if you are going to visit the articles one-by-one anyway, you could just add the template then.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:32, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

The source appears to still be online to me, though it hasn't been updated since 2011. While it effectively has the same level of information as NRIS, it doesn't have the same errors that NRIS does, so I'd hesitate to call it a mirror on that basis. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:38, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

What do we consider to be the greater problem with NRIS-only articles: the lack of depth or the potential inaccuracies? I had always thought in terms of the former (although I in no way discount the latter). My bad about whether the PDF is still online - I must have just assumed it was taken down after they brought up the web interface for the whole database (a vastly better database than either NRIS or NPS Focus, btw, though still not perfect).

Anyhow, I guess I'll just grit my teeth and attack those stubs directly rather than worrying about reclassifying them as NRIS-only. — Ipoellet (talk) 19:07, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I would say that stubs for unphotographed properties should include (1) up-to-date location information (i.e. reflect changes in street names and addressing, with correct lat/lon if possible) and (2) enough of a description of the principal structures/features to identify it properly in the field. After that, relevant historical or architectural significance. Magic♪piano 21:37, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

For my part, I tend to focus on historic significance in stubs and leave aside physical description. My logic is that in a stub it is most pressing to state why the topic is important enough to warrant an article (above and beyond the minimum criteria of WP:NOTE). Physical description would then become essential in a longer stub or a start+. — Ipoellet (talk) 23:43, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Ipoellet, see articles such as Beulah Methodist Episcopal Church and Echo Methodist Church. They had a link to http://www.oregon.gov/OPRD/HCD/NATREG/docs/oregon_nr_list.pdf (which is apparently spotty; when I click the link, half the time it loads, half the time it gives me a 404 error), which gave even less than NRIS. With this in mind, there's no benefit to linking the list when NRIS does no worse, and replacing the citation to the state list makes the article no worse and causes it to appear more accurately in WP:NRHPPROGRESS. Nyttend (talk) 00:33, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Good point. I should have thunk of that. — Ipoellet (talk) 04:07, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Save an article?

I rescued the article for J.G. Evans Barn from deletion via copyvio, but it still needs a LOT of TLC from people who are familiar with editing articles on historic places. This isn't really my forte or anything I'm particularly interested in, so I figured that I'd ask if one of you guys would like to try fixing it up some. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:00, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for rescuing the article.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:31, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

The Forum (Inglewood)

The Forum was just listed on the NRHP (see the Weekly List), but I'm not sure how to embed the information into the infobox on the Forum's page. The LA county list also needs to be updated. Einbierbitte (talk) 18:22, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I updated the LA County list last week to add The Forum. As for the infobox, you can place {{infobox NRHP}} at the bottom of the current infobox and set the 'embed=yes' parameter to embed the NRHP infobox into the current one. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:54, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

'K got it! Einbierbitte (talk) 21:43, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Remaining coord conversions

While preparing User:Nyttend/Pennsylvania NRHP and subpages (for myself, to find spots that I've not yet visited), I discovered that some of our Pennsylvania lists still use {{coord}} for coordinates, rather than using the |lat= and |lon= parameters of {{NRHP row}}. I requested a bot to produce a list of pages that do this, and with the help of John of Reading, this list is now at User:Nyttend/NRHP row and coord — it's far from being only in Pennsylvania. As a result, I'd really appreciate it if people could start tackling items on this list, pulling out your calculators and converting the DMS coordinates into decimal and moving them into the |lat= and |lon= parameters. You'll note that there are almost 300 pages on the list, but don't be daunted; lots of them have just one or two entries, with the |lat= and |lon= parameters being used properly for most listings. When you've cleaned a page, please remove it from the list. Thanks for the help! Nyttend (talk) 14:00, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

I made a script (it's kind of my thing :P) in my javascript sandbox to do this semi-automatically. It works like the renumbering script where you just click a button at the top of the page labelled "Fix coords" and it edits the page for you, letting you know when it's done. It just did this, which would have taken a human quite a bit of time. I did the first few on the list, removed them, and will do more later if someone else hasn't done them already. Feel free to use the script if you want to.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:47, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I was looking at doing a script as well - doing it by hand is tedious and error-prone. Generic1139 (talk) 18:20, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Did the counties in PA, took a close look at the first few I did, a cursory check of the others, no anomalies detected. Real life has now intervened, I'll do more later if there are any left. Generic1139 (talk) 20:18, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Dudemanfellabra, there may be a problem with the script, it didn't remove the old lat/lon on this page: National Register of Historic Places listings in western Puerto Rico. I reverted the changes the script made. Generic1139 (talk) 21:23, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Responded on my talk page. You can still remove them manually if the script doesn't catch it. The most difficult part of the conversion is changing from DMS to DEC coords, which the script does even if it doesn't remove the coord template.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:37, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Done. There may be some coords left in lists that had old-style former listing tables that also also had some in the new NRHP row tables, the script would not have noted those, and I didn't start looking for that by hand until I had already done a bunch. You might want to run the bot query again. But, that aside, the task is complete. Generic1139 (talk) 02:58, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I asked John of Reading for a re-run, so that we could see if we'd missed any. Just nine pages remained; most were the result of weird formatting, e.g. a couple that gave the address and then the coordinates without any of the <br><small>, or one that had those but didn't have the </small> at the end. I've manually checked all nine and converted everything; anyone object if the page is deleted? Thanks so much to everyone who helped; I began encountering them and was afraid that it would take a long time to fix, not two days. Nyttend (talk) 12:47, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility determinations

Is there an existing consensus about whether we should be identifying determined-eligible-not-listed properties in an appendix-like section of the county lists? If not, ought we have such a discussion? Context is that Nyttend recently removed such a section from National Register of Historic Places listings in Clackamas County, Oregon. I have also seen some other county lists that include some determined-eligible properties at the bottom. Although I am not personally invested one way or the other on whether to include determined eligible properties, I reverted Nyttend's edit pending the outcome of this query. In the absence of a consensus, I'm inclined toward inclusiveness in this area: if one editor saw fit to add the information, a consensus is the best way to remove it. (Full disclosure: The determined-eligible property on the Clackamas County list was added by me in the first place. But I reiterate that I'm not personally invested in keeping it there.)

Pros of listing determined-eligibles: They are often legitimately significant historic properties worthy of attention, and the eligibility determination is a defined process in the NRHP program resulting in (these days) an entry on the Weekly List when a positive determination is made. Also, substantial documentation often exists because an NRHP nomination form was completed to move the property through review. (The "often"s however suggest such a property isn't automatically notable enough for an article or redlink.)

Cons: Sorting out the notability of a property may require editors to divine the reason the property wasn't actually listed, which probably isn't a useful expenditure of effort. Including properties that weren't ever listed adds clutter and complexity/confusion to the county lists. NPS records of eligibility determinations are spotty and incomplete, which will result in potentially incomplete or chaotic determined-eligible lists.

So. Thoughts? — Ipoellet (talk) 19:24, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Oppose The scope of this project is already vast. Verifying some of the corner cases of actual NRHP listings, and especially the delistings, is difficult enough. Including the "coulda woulda shoulda"s could never be made consistent or comprehensive. Ntsimp (talk) 20:14, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• Strongly opposed to including these. These places were never listed on the National Register, plain and simple. This is hugely different from former listings, because at least they once had NR status: as far as official NR status, these places aren't substantially different from other historic locations. I don't know about Oregon, but at least in Illinois and Indiana, the status of such places is sometimes ambiguous. Consider the Obadiah Jones Log House in Grant County IN — the IDNR received the nomination, but because it doesn't have its own profile page at SHAARD (I can show you how to get there, if you want to know), we can't know whether the DHPA determined it to be eligible. Meanwhile, the HARGIS map for Illinois marks sites that the IHPA has determined to be eligible (see its record for the Lincoln Memorial Bridge), but there are significant discrepancies between this and NRIS. The Lincoln Memorial Bridge is in DOEMAIN, for example, but what about the Bridge over Indian Creek in Edwards County? DOEMAIN has two Bridges over Indian Creek, and the table provides little enough information that we can't know which one is in Edwards County, or if they're both in other places. This is true of almost every DOEMAIN item — aside from archaeological sites with Smithsonian trinomials, almost none of them have enough to specify the state, let alone county and/or city. It's simply not possible to account for places that have never been listed on the National Register. Nyttend (talk) 21:42, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose While these properties are generally notable and historically significant, the lists are for properties listed on the National Register, and the "determined eligible" sites are not and never were listed on the National Register. I'm all in favor of incorporating the documentation into articles on these sites, but eligibility seems to be a loose criteria to group them by. (I can see limited exceptions to this, like in an article on an MPS where one or two properties had owner objections.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:56, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• That's a good point. We might do well to mention Holy Trinity Catholic Church (commonscat) in Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches (it wasn't listed as part of the MPS because of an objection, and when it was later listed, it wasn't marked as being in the TR) even if it had never been listed, both because it was supposed to be part of the original grouping, and because it's very much a part of the cultural region that this MPS documents. Nyttend (talk) 23:07, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose The list is expansive enough already. The NRHP project criteria is simple - a property is (or was) on the list, or not. Notability is established. Keep the NRHP lists to NRHP listed properties only. Generic1139 (talk) 00:22, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose these lists should be for registered and delisted properties only and no speculation about what could be. Royalbroil 00:41, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
• Comment Just to clarify, I don't think the question I posed should be thought of as variable from state to state, nor am I talking about determinations made by an SHPO or about generic eligibility. I mean official, announced determinations made at the national level by the NPS with an NRIS reference number (such as here for the Oregon City Masonic Lodge). Anything else would be nearly impossible to define, undoubtedly out of scope, and not even worth asking the question about. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:27, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

• If you've not already, please check the DOEMAIN and PROPMAIN tables in the downloadable NRIS, since my comment won't make much sense otherwise. All sites in this table (almost 10,000 of them) have refnums, and they're marked as having determinations of eligibility. How are they different from the eligible properties in PROPMAIN? NRIS gives no indication of any differences between these properties, on one hand, and the eligible but (Pending/Listed) or (Owner Objection) or (Pending/Eligible) properties in PROPMAIN: as far as I can tell, they've all been given NPS determinations of eligibility. The DOEMAIN properties aren't in Elkman's generator because (as far as I can tell) he's not concerned himself with that table, since none of its sites are listed. Either the NPS determination basically just reflects what each SHPO (funnily, pronounced "shippo", at least in Indiana) has determined, or these SHPOs have simply reflected what NPS has said. At any rate, eligibility largely depends on the SHPO, at least for Section 106 purposes (see http://www.achp.gov/106summary.html), and NPS apparently gets involved only when the SHPO's decision is appealed or when the NR-listing process has gotten to the federal stage before objections arise. All of this is just part of my reason for opposing: my primary reason for opposing, as it is for other people, is that these properties have never been listed on the NR, and our lists should only be current and former NR listings. Nyttend (talk) 01:59, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

• OpposeDOE's are important in the Sec 106 (also Sec 4(f)) process, but I don't see them as important here. Einbierbitte (talk)

Fall Photo Contest

Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRHP Fall 2014 Photo Contest says judges must announce their decisions before October 15, but that never happened. Is anything going to happen with the contest? Ntsimp (talk) 14:17, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

My bad. Real life distractions happened, but my fault alone. I'll tend to my challenges right away.— Ipoellet (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Shoot, sorry about that. Real life got in the way for me too, and the contest slipped my mind; I'll judge my challenges within tonight. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation}

Major update on NPS digitization

The NPS announced that they've been digitizing more nomination forms, and nominations from all but 11 states are now online. I've found out from my own personal communications with the NPS that they're actively digitizing the remaining states (most of which have all their nominations online already), so we're very close to having online nomination forms for all 50 states! In the meantime, we now have forms for most of the states with absolutely nothing online. Now I don't have to request every Wisconsin form I want, and we can start working on states like South Dakota and New Mexico that had no resources and were stuck at the bottom of the article progress table. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:52, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Cool. I've been sitting on photos of a handful of NM and SD sites because I couldn't find nom forms or other documents/photos to confirm that I'd shot the right buildings. When those states are digitized and online, I'll lose my excuse to put off working on them. Ammodramus (talk) 00:46, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Looks like we need to update WP:NRHPHELP then!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:08, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

"We have not yet digitized the following states: ... Michigan ..." Well, eventually this will happen. The state historic sites summaries are okay, but the nom forms would be really useful (especially since a handful of photos on the state historic site are verifiably wrong). Chris857 (talk) 14:32, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Michigan HSO website down?

I just noticed today that Michigan's HSO (Historic Sites Online, covers state- and NRHP-listed sites), appears to not be working. http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/hso/ (Internet Archive) is redirecting to http://www.michigan.gov/mshda/ and has broken all the links. Chris857 (talk) 18:54, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

"Upload image"

Are we planning on leaving the "Upload image" links indefinitely? No objection to having something of the sort, but the links still go to the Summer of Monuments campaign: if we want to leave the text and link, we ought to modify the target so that it's not referring to WSM. Nyttend (talk) 23:13, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I've been wondering the same thing. I like having the link there, especially since we're still getting a few photos from new users, but that upload page is outdated now. If we do leave it in we should allow the uploader to change the license from CC-BY-SA if they want to. I'd like to have the option to automatically fill in some of the NRHP-related info, but I haven't used the link since Summer of Monuments ended since I'd rather release my photos into the public domain. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:14, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

If we don't have an upload campaign specified, there are more options — among other things, we have CCBYSA 3.0 and 4.0, CCBY 3.0 and 4.0, and CC0 as licensing options, rather than just CCBYSA 3.0. On the other hand, it doesn't presupply the NRIS number, Category:National Register of Historic Places, or Category:Uploaded via Campaign:wsm. If we could simply adjust the WSM form so that it permits all the licenses that are available normally, I think it would be best. I've literally never gone through this form before; I always go straight to C:Special:Upload and fill in the fields manually. Nyttend (talk) 23:26, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Summer of Monuments/WLM actually works

Those two quick jumps in the %Illustrated line show that WSM/WLM are effective!

I just found time to run the bot, update the progress page, and update the history subpage as well. Since WSM/WLM has been over for almost a month (they ended at the end of September), we have enough data now to show the overall improvement in our image coverage throughout the country. I think the best indicator of this progress is the image shown to the right. As you can see during the month of September, the %Illustrated line jumps up much faster than during the rest of the year. We now have two years of progress shown, and the same thing happened last September, although there are only two data points that year, one before September and one after (some of you remember why.. I'd rather not bring that whole deal back up..). I don't think anyone has really claimed that WSM/WLM don't "work", but just in case anyone thought that was true, this graph proves otherwise. If only we could keep up that rate of contributions for the entire year!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:48, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Some more data from Commons:Commons:Monuments database/Statistics which has a slightly different database, but goes back farther so we can include the 1st US WLM:

• Aug 31, 2012 44.6% of total sites illustrated
• Oct 15, 2012 50.7% +6.1% (since Aug 31)
• Aug 30, 2013 57.1% +6.4% (since Oct 15)
• Oct 15, 2013 60.6% +3.5%
• Aug 31, 2014 65.5% +4.9%
• Oct 15, 2014 68.5% +3.0%
• Oct 27, 2014 68.7% 61,382 sites illustrated

A few observations:

• the number of US photos (not sites illustrated) during WLM has decreased from ~20,000 in 2012, to ~10,000 in 2013, (something over 12,000 but not all NRHP sites) in 2014. I think that is fairly normal as the unillustrated sites go down, and also people have seen WLM before.
• The WLM period accounts for almost as many sites covered as the rest of the year!
• I think our goals and experience are fairly different from most other countries in WLM, e.g. we started with a full set of tables and many articles. The UK is probably most similar. I'll ping @MichaelMaggs: of the UK to see if he has any comments.
• By far the hardest part for me during my involvement in WLM was the preliminary screening of the photos before they go to the jury. I'd either de-emphasize the prizes or figure out a better way to screen.
• Probably the most dissimilar thing we have, and our most pressing need, is the big wide-open spaces in the Great Plains, Texas, Alaska, etc., but there also appears to be a cultural thing in parts of the South.
• The real gain for the project is NOT the number of sites illustrated in September or the number of photos (with all the repeats of the Washington Monument, Statue of Liberty, etc), but in getting just a few photographers who continue the work year round, e.g. User:KLOTZ (on Commons only) who's taken photos of over 3,300 sites
• WP:NRHP has a lot of folks who work real hard in Sept, e.g. placing photos in lists and articles, but we've never had more than a couple planning and organizing the US WLM, which does take a commitment ahead of time. WLM would be more effective for our goals if we participated in the planning.
• The DC Chapter's organizing is going along the right lines now with their concentration of effort into the Plains and the South and in the cooperation with institutions.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:24, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the analysis, Smallbones. I'm happy to see that WLM/WSM is effective in improving the illustration rate and not just increasing the raw number of pictures. What would be the easiest way of figuring out those metrics for the Summer of Monuments focus states in particular, going back to the original WLM if possible? Harej (talk) 00:51, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress (better data)

• 10 target states, June 1 start, October 15 end (allows time for photos to be put in lists)

• Arkansas: 569 (illustrated sites), 22.3% (on June 1); to 717, 28.1% on Oct. 15
• Oklahoma: 357, 28.9%; to 520, 41.8%
• Kansas: 456, 33.5%; to 600, 43.7%
• North Carolina: 859, 30.9%; to 1,069, 38.1%
• Mississippi: 440, 32.5%; to 490, 35.8%
• Missouri: 718, 33.5%; to 858, 39.9%
• Kentucky: 1,446 , 43.6%; to 1,844, 55.6%
• Georgia: 851, 41.0%; to 1,064, 51.1%
• Tennessee: 1,029, 50.8%; to 1,192, 58.7%
• Louisiana: 593, 43.6%; to 685, 50.0%

Looks like Arkansas and Mississippi are the laggards, Kentucky, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia all increased by over 10%. Not all of this is directly due to SoM of course, e.g. I bet Nyttend had a lot to do with Kentucky :-)

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:12, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

True :-) I've seen 443 new-for-me Kentucky sites since 1 June; not all of them were previously unillustrated (especially a bunch in Lexington that I saw on 21 June), but I definitely uploaded photos of a lot of them. The benefits of record-keeping; it took 5 minutes to figure out how many I'd seen in the last five months :-) Nyttend (talk) 04:30, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

template change last night?

I didn't notice this last night, but did this morning. The last 3+ columns in the tables (starting with coords) are not working correctly, putting in 2-3 extra columns and leaving the previous last 3 blank. You might have to scoot over to the right to see it.

I've checked Middlesex and National Register of Historic Places listings in Cape May County, New Jersey, and Delaware County, PA and the state list and Douglas County in Nebraska. Someone who knows templates better than I do should check this out. It appears to go back several years, so it must be the template rather than individual changes to the list. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Smallbones, I've looked at all the pages you mention, and I can't see anything like you describe. Perhaps a caching or browser issue? I'm using IE11, and everything seems normal. Nyttend (talk) 14:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

It's a system-wide issue. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#Coordinates display appears to be broken. Ntsimp (talk) 14:54, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I see. Clearly a caching issue on my part, and now that I've edited Cape May, it's displaying the issue. I've requested a sitenotice, since this is affecting literally almost a million articles. Nyttend (talk) 15:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

All should be fixed now; the developers saw this as an emergency and dropped everything else to fix it. Nyttend (talk) 15:44, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Note that you may have to purge pages on which you saw the problem to make it go away. Magic♪piano 15:54, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

On the plus side, it made it easy to see that Cape May County had a row that was missing coordinates. Is there a list of county lists that are missing cords - because, kudos to the project's scripters, the maintenance lists are worthwhile. Generic1139 (talk) 15:56, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic_Places/Archive 51#Require coordinates in lists. At one time, any entry without coordinates was marked as an error, unless we'd marked it as being undoable (address-restricted sites and locations that simply couldn't be figured out), and it was later removed as part of a simplification procedure. I'd appreciate having this feature restored. Nyttend (talk) 16:49, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

We already add lists that have a row missing a refnum to Category:NRHP list missing refnum. It would be very simple to do the same for sites without a lat/lon parameter, i.e. add them to Category:NRHP list missing coordinates (the category even already exists!). If we come to a consensus to add the function, I can put it into the code.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

It seems worthwhile to me, which the proper exceptions for address restricted. Generic1139 (talk) 01:37, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Although it shouldn't be something specific for AR sites; we ought to use the nolatlon=yes parameter for anywhere that we can't possibly locate with NRIS, e.g. the Dr. John Parson Cabin Complex example I gave in the previous discussion. The system ought to flag entries that we simply haven't attempted to locate; if we actually can't do it, there's no reason for it to be marked for cleanup. Nyttend (talk) 04:32, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I think using the cleanup category is a good idea, as long as Nyttend's point is addressed. Places someone has made a reasonable effort to locate should be markable so they don't trigger the category inclusion. Magic♪piano 15:24, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Nyttend has a point, but, as with Dr. John Parson, new data becomes available and the location is revealed (in the nom form in this case). There are four cases, position present, address restricted, unable to determine, and position missing. Present and restricted don't need to be on any maintenance list. Position missing (things we haven't attempted to locate) is the list we're talking about. Unable to determine is a notional list that Dr. John Parson would have been on. It would be nice to have that list as well, for those who like data spelunking, a list to be revisited from time to time. Generic1139 (talk) 16:01, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

New Pictures

I went out to get some new pictures around the Altadena, California area. I couldn't get to Scripps Hall (California) as it's on a school campus and set back away from the street. Also a new listing, the Michael White Adobe, is located in the middle of the San Marino High School campus. Schools really don't like strangers walking around their campuses with cameras. Anyway, I'll soon post the pictures that I did get soon. I got new pictures of the Andrew McNally House, the Woodbury-Story House, Case Study House No. 20 and the recent listing Villa Carlotta, and the Dorland House designed by Lloyd Wright Cheers! Einbierbitte (talk) 20:56, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Are you a baseball fan, by any chance? The baseball field is next to the adobe. If you're strongly interested in getting the adobe, and if you have time in the spring, you might try showing up to a high school baseball game and snapping a few photos of the adobe between innings. Surely plenty of family members show up for both teams; Einbierbitte+camera won't be seen as suspicious. Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

(EC) Try going to the schools on weekends. They're usually not worried about people taking photos of buildings, but of students. No students, no problem. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:35, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Glad to see someone's taken my place as the Pasadena-area photographer! I agree that the schools should be easier to photograph on weekends, assuming they aren't gated off then. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:05, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Gates are the key. I've seen lots of schools simply closed off on the weekends, whether here in PA, or in IN, IL, OH, or KY. Maybe it's done differently 2500 miles to the west, though? Nyttend (talk) 03:08, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I put my pictures on the Commons in the Altadena, California category: Andrew McNally House, Case Study House No. 20, Villa Carlotta (Los Angeles County), Crank House, Woodbury-Story House and Lloyd Wright's Dorland House. I'll try again another time for the others. Einbierbitte (talk) 23:49, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Further east of you (in lots of New England, including urban, suburban, and rural settings), public primary and secondary school campuses are rarely gated. In places where I'm concerned about a possible security response (VA facilities and areas near active prisons come to mind as recent examples), I just drive into the parking lot, try to be discreet about what I'm doing, and don't stay too long. Magic♪piano 01:12, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Archeological sites

Archeological sites seem to not be listed on the NRHP focus pages and I understand the concern with posting the information able to identify a specific location, but is there anything I should do to obtain said documents? My local libraries do not have them either. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:09, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

You can request a copy from NPS with the address information redacted by emailing nr_reference@nps.gov. I've gotten quite a few address-restricted nominations that way. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 06:34, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll put a few requests in. I did a bunch of CT and a few RI ones because they had them whereas the New York nominations were not accessible. I hope I can fill out an entire county with GAs! ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:06, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Be aware that you can often get data about them from other sources. See the citations that MagicPiano has been adding to lots of articles (e.g. Moosup River Site (RI-1153) and Thomas Carr Farmstead Site (Keeler Site RI-707)), or citation #10 (for the Sassafras Site) that I added to National Register of Historic Places listings in Providence County, Rhode Island. Some of them can be found through decent academic journals, and your library may well be able to help you with getting articles via interlibrary loan. The Sassafras Site article cites an issue of the Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut, which has numerous issues online (e.g. http://www.connarchaeology.org/ASC62.pdf). Nyttend (talk) 12:17, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

If you have access to JSTOR, you can find many archaeology journals. Einbierbitte (talk) 16:43, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I've not found JSTOR's database of journals to be of much use in researching RI and CT archeological sites. (While Chris is doing the GA thing, I've been busy improving stub quality in RI, and may eventually do the same in CT.) I suspect many of the RI sites will require nomination forms (which, even redacted, ought to provide a fair amount of information). Magic♪piano 17:27, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Expanding the stubs (super-stubs really) is great help Magicpiano, most of those 2 sentence lines do nothing more than set the stage for useful information to be added. By your expanding these near-useless stubs, you actually impart information to tell why it matters. GA writing is not easy and I would not be expanding these from non-existent pages! My nominated pages from May are being done so I think I'll hop back on the Good Article train and do a bunch more. I just don't want to forget these sites. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:41, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Archeological site photos

Policy question. We seem to be drifting towards publishing location information and photos, even for NRHP properties that are marked not for publication, and are listed as "address restricted". Just because we can ferret out this information, from journals, sloppy redacting, state databases with photos, DoD documents, etc., should we?

We have many articles and county lists that give locations of address restricted sites, and in some cases, photos. I've already added a photo of a restricted site that already had a location on the county list, (though it is intentionally less clear that it could be). I was planning to take a take photo of another site on my next trip past it, but am having second thoughts. Sure, if one of us can find or make a good guess at the location, anyone can, but should we make it trivially easy for someone who wants to go arrowhead digging or to engage in generic vandalism?

Should we be revealing the locations of NRHP sites that are marked address restricted by NPS by adding coords to the lists and articles, or adding photos? Generic1139 (talk) 05:13, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

If the information has already been published. Don't go publishing something new, of course, and you can feel free not to add information, but the core policy page WP:NOT prohibits censorship of information that's been added with proper sourcing. Wikipedia will not remove content because of the internal bylaws of some organizations that forbid information about the organization to be displayed online. Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia, since Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations. NPS is prohibited by law from displaying location information for these sites, but even aside from the fact that they publish location information for some sites (accidentally? carelessly? some other reason?), we're not NPS and bound only by the not-censored policy. Nyttend (talk) 05:34, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Since photos don't really reveal the location unless they're geotagged, I wouldn't worry too much about those. As for the locations, it depends on the site. NPS restricts the addresses on just about any site with archaeological significance, even if the address is widely known. For instance, this picture of mine is of a placard that tells visitors they're in a NRHP-listed archaeological district, but the site is address-restricted. For some other sites, it might be important not to mention the location of certain sensitive parts, but it's OK to mention a general location since it won't help the pot hunters. There might be a few where it's not a good idea to mention the location at all, though. (The only questionable ones IMO are the obscure sites where one of us has special access to a document with its location - and I'm even guilty of posting a few of those, so I can't really talk.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:58, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Often, places that are subject to on-going studies are very well-known and are typically common knowledge. Exceptions exist for certain and very special locations, but as a rule of thumb - the county or town is usually known and should be sufficient for most details. Most of these historic sites are not on a busy street corner and are typically more remote and without clear roads or paths in and out of. If it is difficult to get to and requires specialized knowledge that is not published - keep it so. That is different from censorship - it is respecting the owner and government bodies that own such areas. One can definitely appreciate and make an excellent article on a subject without giving a GPS coordinate to within 10 ft of an important site likely to be targeted by treasure hunters. Nighthawking is the UK name for a specific type of this activity, but it does occur in important and well-known sites all the same. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:51, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I offer this just for dimension: A few months ago, I was at a meeting of my state's commission that reviews/approves/disapproves NRHP nominations before the SHPO forwards them to the NPS. At that meeting, the proponent (an archaeology professor) presented the nomination for the Paisley Five Mile Point Caves, and address restrictions became a point of discussion. The essential theme of the professionals' comments was that there was nothing about the address restriction that would actually suppress public knowledge of the caves' location, but that at least they could avoid spreading location information yet further through NRHP listing. A very realistic and clear-eyed mindset in my opinion.

As editors, we as editors could draw two opposite conclusions from this anecdote. (a) The location information for many sites is out there anyhow, and the address restriction can't change that, so we shouldn't pay attention to the address restriction if we have a reliable source on the location. (b) Although location information may be out there, we should consider respecting the address restriction to avoid unnecessarily spreading location information further. — Ipoellet (talk) 17:52, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

My personal practice is: if the location is locally published, it can be published here (e.g. if its location is given in public planning documents, or there are historical markers nearby). If the location is findable outside WP by 5-10 minutes of internet searching, it can be published here (RS, of course). Exception is made for copies of unredacted nominations that a third party has published; these do not necessarily live on. Places located in relatively obscure publications (e.g. the source I used to write up Clarke and Lake Company Archeological Site, which has detailed maps, or small-scale scholarly publications) also get a pass. Magic♪piano 00:42, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

If you're not comfortable with a photo of the site, an alternative might be a photograph of an artifact excavated from the site. Bms4880 (talk) 23:24, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest that we consider the nature of the site and the loot potentially obtainable therefrom when we decide whether or not to publish its location, or information that might make it easy to find. A site that's yielded nothing shinier than posthole remnants and charred corncobs is unlikely to draw relic-hunters, and its location could safely be published; a site that's produced peace medals and brass Army buttons is likely to attract people with metal detectors, and we should avoid giving any clues to its location. Ammodramus (talk) 03:36, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Most detectorists understand that is an off-limits area. You can be sent to jail for 10 years for digging up artifacts in these locations! Though I still do not think making detailed location data that is purposely kept out of state encyclopedias and other publications by such prudence should be overlooked. Those have no obligations to keep said secrets (like the NPS) and still they are kept out for such concerns. Disturbing the grounds could destroy key evidence and there are hoaxers that could plant such things as well. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:17, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

A listed property in the formerly listed section?

Marley Neck Rosenwald School in Anne Arundel County, Maryland is listed under the "former listings" section with a delisting date of June 24, 2005. While trying to find the refnum, though, I found the weekly listings page for its listing, which shows it was actually listed on June 24, 2005. The NRIS seems to indicate that it's still listed, and it was photographed standing in 2009. Does anyone know if there's a reason it's included under the delistings? (@Pubdog: you moved it there in the first place, is there something I'm missing?) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:40, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for the message. I'm afraid I don't know why it was placed under the delistings. From your research and the availability of the MHT description, I would say it was moved there in error ... --Pubdog (talk) 11:05, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Marley Neck Rosenwald School

A separate section at Good Articles for NRHP?

The NRHP list of good articles is growing, steadily I might add, and it is getting to the point that a sub-section for NRHP properties on the GAN and GA list might be to our favor. If it helps, we already keep track of the GA pool so it should be easy to implement. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Where do you mean? Adding a National Register section to Wikipedia:Good articles/History? Nyttend (talk) 00:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that will do. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 22:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Many of our GAs aren't listed under the "History" heading. Of my four GAs on NRHP sites, none is at "History": one's at "Warfare", one's at "Art and architecture", and two are at "Geography and places". I suspect that this is the case with many other NRHP GAs: for example, sites notable chiefly for their architecture should almost certainly be listed thus, and battlefields and military installations would reasonably be listed under the "Warfare" category. — Ammodramus (talk) 23:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Two questions

Is there another way to generate infoboxes since this doesn't seem to be working? I also can't get any results using this page. Is there another page where I could find the nomination forms? APK whisper in my ear 21:08, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I think everybody's been making infoboxes by hand. The best way to get to a nomination form that's actually at Focus is to use a URL of the form http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/79002504.pdf, where the number is the registration number of the property. Ntsimp (talk) 21:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

http://www.elkman.net/nrhp/ (note missing "2") works. Magic♪piano 21:52, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both. APK whisper in my ear 22:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

APK, this is the result of a crash at Elkman's server; when he put it back up, it was (intentionally or unintentionally) at a different URL. Nyttend (talk) 13:12, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Infobox fields

In creating articles, many of us have been using the infoboxes generated by Elkman's valuable tool. However, I wonder whether we should be deleting some of the fields that it produces. Per MOS:INFOBOX,

...[K]eep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize key facts that appear in the article. The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content...

There are some items in the Elkman infobox that I think hardly count as "key facts". One of these is "Governing body". In most of the cases I've looked at, this line conveys very little information to the reader; indeed, I'd question whether a reader not already associated with this WikiProject would know whether it was supposed to indicate the ownership of the property, or the governmental jurisdiction in which it lies. In particular, the line doesn't indicate whether the site's open to the public, which is the one good reason I can think of for including it in the infobox.

Another item that I think should be left out in most cases is "Area". Although that might be a legitimate key fact for things like battlefields, extensive archaeologial sites, HDs, and other locations covering considerable ground, I suspect that for most individual buildings, it's "Less than one acre". This doesn't strike me as one of the few key facts that we want the casual reader to take away from a perusal of the article; and I suspect that in most well-developed articles on individual buildings, the acreage of the NRHP listing isn't included in the body text.

I'd also question whether the date of addition to the NRHP is a "key fact". If I were taking a local-history course and cramming for the historic-buildings exam, my index cards would include things like construction dates and architectural styles and connections with historically significant events and people. If the instructor blindsided me with a question about the NRHP listing date, I think I'd have a legitimate cause for complaint. It's a fact that belongs in the article body, but it doesn't strike me as significant enough to include among the few things that we really want the reader to remember. — Ammodramus (talk) 09:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

For governing body, we definitely shouldn't remove it from the actual code that we add to articles — it's equally relevant to all listings, so it deserves to appear in all infoboxes or none of them. If it doesn't belong, we should instead consider removing its code from the infobox template, which would have the effect of causing it to disappear from the infobox that displays in all articles. Area I think is useful, even for single buildings; if it's bigger than an acre, the figure conveys a rough sense of how big of a building we're talking, and while that's not hugely important for normal-sized buildings, "less than 1 acre" conveys the sense of "yes this is just a single building, not a complex". Finally, I think the listing date ought to be included, because it's of critical significance to the NR status itself, and for all but the most important properties, the NR listing date is one of the most important dates in the property's history. Nyttend (talk) 13:18, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

There are what I would call "technical details", and "historic details". The technical details include things like the governing body (assuming it's actually kept up-to-date), refnum, listing date(s), and inclusion in districts. Historic details include the date(s) of significance, stylistic information (at least for architecturally significant properties), and relevant people and events. Arguably, the former are not "key details", despite their importance in the NRHP listing process. What's important is why it was listed, not when. That said, the technical details should be presented somewhere, and it would seem odd (to me, anyway) to have them somewhere other than the infobox.

By the way, I do run into the occasional misuse of the "area" field in the infobox -- it is sometimes filled with address/neighborhood information. Magic♪piano 14:20, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Something that would have been nice to have had in the infobox for NRHP properties is the URL to the nomination form and the photos doc. It would make it a lot easier to have a bot report which articles don't have one, and I can't think of any reason why an article on an NRHP listed property would not want the reference included if the document is available. It would make it easier to bot-add the URL newly available states, and easier to bot-make changes if/when a state moves its archives. It will probably always take a human to ferret out the author and other data for a full format citation, but having that link in the infobox template would save a lot of cutting and pasting. Generic1139 (talk) 16:06, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Magicpiano makes a good point re differences between "technical" and "historic". I'm still not comfortable saying that governing body is technical detail that we need to present, but the refnum is technical to the point that it doesn't warrant mention anywhere else, and the listing date and HD contributing status, if applicable, are somewhat on the edge: they should definitely be mentioned, but they don't need presentation in the intro of an FA (you'd say "It's NR-listed" or something like that, but not mention the date or CP status), and yet we still ought to present them for technical purposes. Nyttend (talk) 19:39, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Also, I agree with Magicpiano's "What's important is why it was listed". It would be helpful to add a parameter for the listing criteria: we just type A, B, C, or D (or any two, three, or all four of them), and it displays something like "Qualifications: Historic context, Person, Architecture, Archaeological". Nobody will care about the letters of the criteria (we shouldn't display simply "A", "B", "C", or "D"), but a site's criterion/criteria are among the most important details about the listing: much more significant than the governing body. In the interests of full disclosure, let me note that I suggested this some time ago, but it wasn't enacted, although some people's objections about original research aren't applicable because NRIS provides the criterion/criteria for each site. Nyttend (talk) 17:24, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Mayo Building (Tulsa, Oklahoma) and Petroleum Building

There are two articles that refer to the same building, Mayo Building (Tulsa, Oklahoma) and Petroleum Building. Both articles are within the scope of this WikiProject. I have proposed merging them at Talk:Mayo_Building_(Tulsa,_Oklahoma)#Merge_with_Petroleum_Building. Your comments on how to best handle the merger (i.e. which should be the canonical name and which the redirect) are appreciated. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 01:18, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I responded more fully at Talk:Mayo Building (Tulsa, Oklahoma)#Merge with Petroleum Building. Summary: Do not merge - these actually are two different buildings, one block apart. The photo on the Petroleum Building article was actually the Mayo Building, but misidentified - probably the source of the confusion. — Ipoellet (talk) 01:55, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Request withdrawn. Nyttend (talk) 17:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

NRIS code

Anyone know what listing status "DR" means in the NRIS? — Ipoellet (talk) 21:31, 20 November 2014 (UTC) I'm asking because of National Register of Historic Places listings in Guam#NRHP-related.— Ipoellet (talk) 21:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

If I remember, it's Delisted-Removed. The "latest" edition of NRIS, produced c. 2010 if I remember rightly, doesn't use these abbreviations and instead spells things out. Nyttend (talk) 22:12, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

With regard to those two rows on the Guam page, do you (or someone else) have access to the NRIS data to confirm the listed date/delisted date/refnum? — Ipoellet (talk) 23:05, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Go to Elkman's generator, type "gilan" and pick state GU, and click the "search for delisted" checkbox, and you'll get both sites. Turns out that I was wrong: both sites are "Pending/Listed". Harmon Village, 99001185, has a date of 1999-08-27, while Dededo, 77001632, has a date of 1977-09-15. Nyttend (talk) 00:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

WP:NRHPFAQ has all of the NRIS codes defined there.. "DR" is "Date Received/Pending Nomination", whatever that means.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:15, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Scripps Hall Altadena

I finally got photos of Scripps Hall. I put the photos in the Altadena, California category in the Commons. I waited until the Friday after Thanksgiving and was able to access the campus. I think that is all the missing photos from Altadena. Einbierbitte (talk) 00:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll put the above pic in both the LA County list and in the article, but feel free to make your own choice. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:57, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

NRHP list missing coordinates

Following the discussion up above, I've decided to restore the feature whereby a tracking category is added to a list when it has one or more entries with no coordinates and no parameter saying that the list should be exempted. Not being the technical person, and remembering what difficulties Dudemanfellabra showed me I caused when last I made incorrect edits to {{NRHP row}}, I've made the changes only in the template sandbox, rather than in the real template. Please see this test diff, where I transcluded the sandbox version of the row onto a normal NR list: you can see how it displays for current listings with, current listings without, former listings with, and former listings without coordinates. Any technical objections to how I did it? Any objections to the fact that I did it in the first place? Nyttend (talk) 13:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I like having the tracking category there, but I'm a little less sure about the "Coordinates missing" text. It seems a bit redundant for the address-restricted listings and possibly problematic for the handful that we don't want anyone adding coordinates to. (Granted, I'm not sure if there's a way to fix that without adding a new parameter or removing the text entirely, so it may be worth living with.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 16:57, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I really don't feel like it is worth living with. It's sort of like airing our dirty laundry for all our readers to see. And for address-restricted rows and the like, the laundry isn't dirty, we're just saying it is. Category, yes. Text, no. — Ipoellet (talk) 02:58, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

This is why we once had a nolatlon parameter: if we restore this "coordinates missing" feature, we need to restore nolatlon. When a line has no coordinates, but when |nolatlon=yes, the "coordinates missing" and category do not appear. We should be nolatlon-ing the entries that are AR and the entries with locations so vague that we are unable to find them: this feature is meant to mark places where we've simply omitted the coordinates, not locations where we can't provide them. Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I suppose that helps a lot, though it's not my favorite solution. I've been using {{Address restricted}} in the |address= of the table rows -- it would be easy enough to insert the |nolatlon= argument into that template to minimize the hassle of removing the "coordinates missing" text from AR rows. (I.e. {{Address restricted}} transcludes |nolatlon=yes into {{NRHP row}}.) — Ipoellet (talk) 07:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

We should avoid, if at all possible, showing Address Restricted and Coordinates missing in the same location entry. Adding nolatlon to the address restricted template is a good idea. We then need to find any rows that use some other way of showing Address Restricted and fix them to use the template. Finally, the tracking category needs to have the three types of missing coordinates to be useful, 1) Address Restricted, 2)Address not currently available 3)Address not present. I envision this being used mainly by maintenance editors who look at the coordinates missing category then find and add the coordinates if possible, otherwise marking the row with a nolatlon value as need. We need three values for nolatlon, Yes, Lookfor, No. Yes does not show the missing coordinate text and uses the restricted category, Lookfor shows Coordinates unknown and uses the address unavailable category, No shows Coordinates missing and uses the coordinates missing category. The "No" choice, the default, is the true error, someone built the row but failed to enter a coordinate or an explicit non-empty nolatlon Generic1139 (talk) 15:49, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see a good reason to have more than three options: (1) we just haven't gotten around to adding coords [|nolatlon=yes is absent, and coords are also absent], (2) NRIS information is insufficient for determining coords [|nolatlon=yes is present], to be used for address restricted and an NRIS address that's truly useless, (3) we have coordinates. Maintenance editors, which probably includes me, don't particularly need to know why coordinates can't be determined; we just need to know whether the lack of coordinates is to be accepted (nolatlon=yes) or whether it's an error that we need to fix. Categorising truly unavailable locations doesn't seem particularly helpful to me: tracking categories are generally for fixable problems, and no-coords AR sites are either a non-problem or a problem that can't easily be fixed. Nyttend (talk) 00:28, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

With old nomination forms coming available online from time to time, locations can be found that weren't available before (as in Dr John Parsons in the Daggett County list). We have a class that is missing the coordinates, these should be evaluated as they occur and be fxied or moved to another class. We have the class that never needs to be looked at again, address restricted/address permanently unknowable. Then we have the class I'm interested in, the class that isn't knowable now, but will be in the future, or would be if someone had the time to request a paper copy. We can't leave them in the error class of simply missing them, and we don't want to lose them in the never look at them again class. I don't know how many are in my between "fix now" and "fix never" class. There was at least one, Dr John Parsons. Generic1139 (talk) 01:49, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure we actually need a class for sites with unhelpful NRIS addresses, nor do we need to lump them in with the address-restricted listings. Now that all but three states have online nomination forms, it's pretty easy to just access those and get the location information, and nomination forms usually at least have UTM coordinates or something similar that can be used to calculate an address. It's not worth making a special category for sites that take fifteen minutes' worth of research instead of five, and it won't hurt to leave the handful of cases with really bad nomination forms (or those from the last three states) in the error category for a little while. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I just edited the row sandbox to implement this in what I think is a better way. What you had done before, Nyttend, would have erased the existing coords if nolatlon was set but really lat and lon were actually there in the template. The way I changed it first checks if lat and lon are specified and only then does it check to see if nolatlon is set. If it is set, it suppresses the category; if it isn't, the category is added (and only if the article is in mainspace).

As for this talk about address restricted, I can't think of any way to make the template automatically know that the site is address restricted. One thing the template might be able to do to automatically exclude some of them is to check if the image is the AR image (the exact name escapes me at the moment). That won't catch all of them, but it's a start. It may be possible using Module:String to check if the address parameter has the word "restricted" in it, which would catch all the templates Ipoellet mentions above as well as just normal text. That might have the unintended side effect, though, of false positives for any site with "restricted" legitimately in the address (though the number of sites to which that would apply could probably be counted on one hand if there are any at all). Really, though, I would just say let's enable the category without any exclusions and go through marking all AR sites with nolatlon=yes to get them out of the way. There can't be that many, can there?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:14, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, Address restricted.PNG is used in about 300 lists by the looks of it, plus we have quite a few sites that don't use that image (and the handful of properly illustrated address-restricted sites). I'm not sure what percentage of the sites with no coordinates they'd make up, but whether that's too many depends on whether we can get enough people to help mark them. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:15, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I've added code to the sandbox to check if the image or the address parameter contains the word "restricted". If one does, the cleanup category is suppressed. Template:NRHP row/testcases (rows 4, 5, and 6) shows the output. What does everyone think?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Looks ok. You need a test case for nolatlon. You are also using the row/sandbox for the two delisted tests, both are missing lat and lon, but neither show the missing text. Do you also suppress the text for delisted rows? Generic1139 (talk) 20:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I just made row 7 set nolatlon=yes. Thanks for pointing out it wasn't working with delisted rows. It wasn't just delisted, but any row that was missing an image or address, so that would have been a huge problem. I've modified the code to fix this problem, and now the text is showing on the delisted rows as well.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:29, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem with depending on the AR.PNG file is that it's thoroughly unhelpful: it skews the stats, sometimes significantly, by making it look like we have images when we don't, and if someone has an image that they'd like to upload, it gives the appearance of saying "Go away; we don't want your image". Quite different from depending on image-or-address, which doesn't have either of those problems. And on the sandbox changes I made — I just erased what looked right, quite unsure whether it really were right. This is why I only edited a sandbox :-) Nyttend (talk) 04:19, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone oppose this idea? If not, I'll move the code into the actual template rather than just the sandbox soon.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:16, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry it took so long, but I've just updated the NRHP row code to include the category. Now we just wait for it to be populated.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks good so far, I've added a (former) location based on the tracking category, Central High School in Dubuque . 1080 Pages in the category. Generic1139 (talk) 03:38, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Considerable mess at Red Bird River Shelter Petroglyphs

Please see discussion on talk page concerning accuracy of article. Mangoe (talk) 20:14, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I responded, but of course others ought to chime in if they have an opinion. Nyttend (talk) 21:25, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Mangoe has conclusively demonstrated that this is a different NR location (formerly listed), so I've moved it to Red Bird River Petroglyphs. Nyttend (talk) 22:29, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

The MPS

This location is, as far as I know, not listed separately; it's part of of the Prehistoric rock art sites in Kentucky MPS, for which we do not appear to have an article. This is the only specific site that has an article, and it appears to have been created to promote the pre-Columbian contact theories promoted at the rock's current location before it was picked up and turned more into an NRHP article. At the moment I can't get my hands on the MPS nomination but my recollection is that it doesn't have a list of sites.

My current theory might be to make an MPS article and then merge this article into it, as long as I can find something that does say what sites belong to the nominations. failing that I'm not sure to go, and as I have never done an MPS article I could use some advice about how to write it. Mangoe (talk) 20:00, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

The MPS nomination document is available at the Focus site ( pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/64500243.pdf ) and, you're right, there is no list of the individual properties on the NRHP. Einbierbitte (talk) 04:28, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The 1989 weekly listings have most of the listings in the week of 9/05/89, though at least one is in a later week. If someone has a backup of NRIS, there should be a way to query the database for all sites in the MPS too (Elkman has an example of such a query on his site). Iron County MRA is a good example of how to write an MPS article if you can't find enough info to justify separate articles on each site. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:04, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Mangoe, I'm quite confused because you said in the discussion that you had the nomination? This is Red Bird River Petroglyph (15CY51), NRIS refnum 89001182, delisted in December 2003. There's plenty of information, and together with the Swauger et al book that you found, we can put together a proper article that's substantially better than a stub-sized entry in an MRA list. Nyttend (talk) 06:53, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry I haven't gotten back on this; things have been a bit crazy. I do not have the original nomination forms for this site, but only for the MPS. I'm working on an article for the latter using the announcements document you pointed me to, and presumably Swauger et al. Mangoe (talk) 14:54, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Need help with article title

Wiki-NRHP team: I’ve just finished an article on NRHP building. It's listed on the NRHP as “Sisters High School.” However, the historic high school was replaced long ago with a modern high school which is already listed in Wikipedia under that name. Is there a common practice way of titling an article like this...e.g. “Old Sister High School” or “Sisters High School (historic).” One other choice is to name the article after the building's current function...i.e. “Sister School District Administration Building.” Do you folks have a standard solution for this situation? If not, any recommendations?--Orygun (talk) 06:06, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

In my case the extant version was "Old (place name)", but "Old Sister High School" probably wouldn't work. I'd simply use "Sister High School (original)" and make a link to it from the Sister High School page to clear up the issue of anyone arriving there. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:11, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

According to the nomination for that building, Sisters HS was established as an institution somewhat before the NRHP-listed building was built. Therefore "original" would be misleading for your article. I suggest using the building's construction date to disambiguate the article title: "Sisters High School (1939)". This same approach has previously been used in, for example, United States Post Office (The Dalles, Oregon, 1916). — Ipoellet (talk) 08:12, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Why wouldn't "Old Sisters High School" work? Are you thinking that it would look like <Old Sisters> <High School>, rather than the <Old> <Sisters High School> as it should? If "OSHS" isn't reasonable, I agree with the (1939) idea. Nyttend (talk) 14:47, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

At the University of Illinois there used to be the Old Men's Gym, though folks now insist that it was the Men's Old Gym. It is on the NRHP. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:54, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

My concern with "Old Sisters High School" is that I'm not aware of any reliable sources where that particular formulation is used (WP:COMMONNAME). If editor-composed disambiguation is needed, it is always done in parentheses at the end of the title. So according to Wikipedia conventions, "Sisters High School (Old)" would be comparatively more acceptable, although its sound is too informal for me. — Ipoellet (talk) 20:08, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I'd go with the current building name -- see Talk:Polly Rosenbaum Building for a previous case of hashing this out at some length. My second choice would be the disambig by year. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:16, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

There's a big difference, however, in that there doesn't appear to be a separate article on the El Zaribah Shrine Auditorium building that replaced the Rosenbaum Building; we already have an article on Sisters High School. The closest corresponding situation that comes to my mind is in Ohio; Piqua High School is a new building, and the place listed as "Piqua High School" has its article at Old Piqua High School. Nyttend (talk) 15:39, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

A lot depends on conditions on the ground. How do people in the town refer to the historic building? Do they call it the "old Sisters School Building", or have they refer to it by some new name that reflects its modern usage (remember, names of buildings can change). Blueboar (talk) 00:29, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Another option... shift the focus of the Sisters High School article, so it talks about both the old and new institutions/buildings... discuss the historic (NRHP listed) building in a historical context within that joint article... as a section (or perhaps even as a sub-section within a broader "history" section on the school as a whole). We don't necessarily have to have a separate stand alone article on every building in the NRHP... the goal should be that every building is covered somewhere in Wikipedia, but if it makes sense to merge it into a related article, that's OK. Blueboar (talk) 00:41, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The current high school and Sisters High School (1939) should be separate if it would be at all confusing (which I think it would be). The date qualifier is standard with the rest of the Oregon NRHP articles from way back, and there doesn't seem to be a project guideline for this. Valfontis (talk) 01:10, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I'm waffling a bit. I'm pretty sure we have several NRHP articles that are at the site's current common name, with an intro that says something like: "The Sisters School District Administration Building, listed on the NRHP as Sisters High School, is a blahblahblah." With a {{confused}} hatnote for the current school. That's my final answer. (Googling, I found a few references to "Old Sisters High School" but current usage favors calling it the administration building.) Valfontis (talk) 01:31, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

• Given there's no standard way of dealing with this situation, I'm thinking about using Sisters High School (historic) for title. This uses same title that's found in NRHP nomination (i.e. "Sister High School") while connecting title to NRHP status (i.e. "(historic)" which is what makes the building notable). I'll include other 2 common names ("Old Sister High School" and "Sister Public Schools Administration Building") in the intro. Here's what intro says:

"The historic Sister High School (also known as the Old Sister High School and the Sister Public Schools Administration Building) was built in 1939 as a public secondary school for the community of Sisters, Oregon. It was built using United States Federal Government funds provided through the Public Works Administration. The old Sisters High School was listed on National Register of Historic Places in 2006. Today, the facility has been converted into an administration building for the local school district."

Any problems with this?--Orygun (talk) 02:02, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

It's not what I would have done, so it's obviously completely wrong. :-) Seriously though, that seems like a completely reasonable solution. BTW, be sure you're saying "Sisters" and not "Sister". — Ipoellet (talk) 03:36, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I think both Orygun and Ipoellet are wrong. So obviously it should be done my way. ;-) Just kidding. I agree it should be spelled correctly though. :-) Thanks for checking. I'll make some redirects so it will be easier for people to find it, whatever they call it. Valfontis (talk) 15:46, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

If we're disambiguating with parentheses, we ought to do it in line with other articles, and (1939) is much more common than (historic). Nyttend (talk) 05:55, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

• After I saw Ipoellet’s note above I went ahead and uploaded article as Sisters High School (historic); guess I should have waited for more comments. Also, I just submitted DYK so changing title now may screw that up. Sorry!--Orygun (talk) 06:31, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

• Meh, most things are not of a very serious or permanent. The page can be moved if needed or at a later date. I wouldn't worry about it. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:40, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

New Pictures from November 2014

As I mentioned on the Wikipedia NYC Public Transit talk page, I went on a mad photography spree on a recent drive to and from the New York Tri-State Area. However, of all the subway stations I snapped pictures of, only two are listed on NRHP; The Mott Avenue Control House and Simpson Street Subway Station and Substation #18 (IRT). Most of the historic sites I captured were on Long Island, and they consist of Haviland-Davison Grist Mill in East Rockaway, Pagan-Fletcher House in Valley Stream, part of the Main Street Historic District (Roslyn, New York), primarily the Van Nostrand-Starkins House, one brief image of the David Conklin House, Rafael Guastivino House, John Mollenhauer House, both in Bay Shore, the Masury Estate Ballroom, and more of the Terry-Ketcham Inn in Center Moriches, and finally the controversial non-NRHP site known as Casa Basso in Westhampton. I also snapped an interior shot of Grand Central Terminal or two, and I might be forgetting some landmarks here. On the way up, I was able to increase the number of images for Emporia, Virginia just a bit. However, as of this writing, Wilson County, North Carolina needs images far more than Emporia. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 02:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: I just remembered that one of the other sites I took were several pictures from the Long Island Motor Parkway. Sadly, I didn't get enough Vanderbilt Parkway images. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 02:22, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Importance assessment for World Heritage Sites

I was looking at the overlap between the NRHP and World Heritage Sites and noticed that, in general, those articles are assessed at Top-level importance for WPNRHP. However, there were three exceptions: Monticello, University of Virginia, and Poverty Point, which are all assessed at High importance. I recommend that we re-assess these 3 articles at Top importance. Also, should we insert WHS status as a default criterion for Top importance in the table at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Assessment#Importance scale? Thoughts? — Ipoellet (talk) 20:48, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why not. I was going to say the "University of Virginia" has a lot more content than we want, but see that yourlink redirects to The Lawn, which satisfies that minor point. Not sure we need to put this in the assessment scale, since that probably completes the class of all cases. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:19, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Smallbones. The scale already grants "Top" to Sites agreed at wt:NRHP to have truly exceptional importance, and you can't get more exceptional than being significant to all of humanity. "High" is already granted to NRHP-listed sites with NPS designations (NMON, NHS, etc.), so we ought to make a one-step-higher class rating to places with the one-step-higher designation. Nyttend (talk) 18:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

All right: thanks. I've upped the assessment for the three articles, and I'll leave the WPNRHP importance table alone. Just for information, here are the NRHP listings that are on the current U.S. tentative list for WHS nomination:

• Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Bethel Baptist Church, 16th Street Baptist Church (Civil Rights Movement Sites)
• Huffman Prairie Flying Field, Wright Cycle Company and Wright & Wright Printing, Wright Flyer III (the tentative list actually says Wright Hall, which is the contemporary building that houses the Flyer III), Hawthorn Hill (Dayton Aviation Sites)
• Fort Ancient State Memorial, Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, Newark Earthworks State Memorial (Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks)
• Poplar Forest, Virginia State Capitol (Thomas Jefferson Buildings)
• Mount Vernon
• Mission San Antonio (The Alamo), Mission Concepcion, Mission San José, Mission San Juan, Mission Espada (San Antonio Franciscan Missions)
• Serpent Mound
• Unity Temple, Frederick C. Robie House, Hollyhock House, Taliesin, Fallingwater, S. C. Johnson & Son Inc. Administration Building and Research Tower, Taliesin West, Price Tower, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Marin County Civic Center (Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings)

All these were already assessed as High importance except a couple of the missions, which I upgraded. Also, I understand the NPS is currently in the process of revising the tentative list, so this is likely to change in a year or so. — Ipoellet (talk) 20:36, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

It occurred to me that the 3 Micronesian associated states also have their own World Heritage tentative lists, and they include some NRHP listings as well. For the sake of completeness, here they are:

• Nan Madol, Leluh Ruins (Ceremonial Centres of the Early Micronesian States: Nan Madol and Lelu)
• O'Keefe's Island (part of Yapese Disk Money Regional Sites)
• Debrum House (part of Likiep Village Historic District)

— Ipoellet (talk) 02:49, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

First-time NRHP editing help

Hi everyone; I recently expanded "Centennial National Bank," my first time significantly editing an NRHP article. Could anyone comment on the current layout and suggest additions in terms of content? I have my eye on a relevant image or two, and the history section could use more work, though I've run into a bit of trouble with sources--most seem to focus on the Centennial Bank building, whereas I am also curious about the Centennial Bank institution. Knight of Truth (talk) 11:57, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

P.S.: I think the article should be able to move from stub to C-class, as well, but I defer to your assessment.Knight of Truth (talk) 12:05, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Great to see others expanding NRHP articles. The article is certainly above stub class and there would probably not be an issue to moving them up to start class. I am a member of WikiProject NRHP and can certainly elevate that one but someone in the other two projects would probably need to raise them. I would hope someone involved in all three can do that. Otr500 (talk) 03:35, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

(EC)Looks good so far. To get a re-evaluation of the class just remove the old class, somebody should get around to reviewing it. You might want to say hello to BoringHistoryGuy who does a lot on Frank Furness. Tracking down info on old businesses might be fairly hard - especially if you confine yourself to the internet. If you are in Philly, there are several libraries. If you need more current photos let me know what you are looking for. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Y: Removed stub rating. Otr500 (talk) 04:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Help rate pictures for Summer of Monuments

Hello everyone!

After much delay, I would like to invite you all to help rate submissions for Wikipedia Summer of Monuments. We received over 10,000 pictures during the upload period, and we would like to narrow that down to 500 for review by the jury.

• Step 1: Create an account here.
• Step 2: Begin rating pictures here. A picture will load; hover your cursor over the pictures and you will have the option to rate between 1 and 5 stars. Rate pictures not just on their aesthetic quality but also their ability to illustrate what the monument is in an encyclopedic manner.

If we work together, we can work through the backlog in no time!

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Harej (talk) 21:26, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Address restricted?

Some things say "address restricted" for no apparent reason. For instance, Fort Morris at National Register of Historic Places listings in Liberty County, Georgia. This is a state park. They give the address and lat/long on their webite. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:34, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

That's a byproduct of the way the National Park Service publishes its listings. If a site is significant for archaeological reasons, the NPS usually lists its address as "Address Restricted", regardless of whether there's actually sensitive archaeological material at the site. If you see a listing like that where the address is clearly public, feel free to add the address to the list. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:59, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The one I talked about above is clearly one. I believe I've seen others. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:21, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I did that obvious one. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Input requested

For anyone interested, please give your input at Talk:Lincoln Memorial regarding the number and size of images in the article. Thanks. APK whisper in my ear 05:51, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

New Pictures for the New Year

I went out during the holidays and got pictures of the Padua Hills Theatre and the Glendora Bougainvillea. I put them in the Commons in the Claremont, California and Glendora, California categories. I hope they're useful! Einbierbitte (talk) 00:11, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

White House

There's a discussion taking place at Talk:White House regarding the infobox image. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks. APK whisper in my ear 00:19, 3 January 2015 (UTC)