![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.
All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot ( Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
In some articles the descriptions and/or the history of the historic places are to some extent taken word by word from the NRHP nomination forms. (One example is Boxhill (Louisville).) Are these forms considered to be in the public domain? I doubt this, since the person preparing the form seems not to be a worker of the NPS or any other agency of the Federal government and is rather working as an architect or for the local historical society which nominates the property. -- Matthiasb ( talk) 11:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
This came up once, so I emailed the people at the NRHP a couple years back, I'll dig up the emails if they'll help. What they told me was that the photographs are NOT public domain, that the individual who took the photographs retains copyright over them. When I followed up and asked about the text of the nomination forms he thought it was funny that I would even ask. He had never had the question, as no one has ever tried to assert copyright over the information in the nomination forms, making them, effectively public domain. I forget his exact wording but he conjectured that it would be unlikely that the material in the nomination forms would even qualify for copyright. IvoShandor ( talk) 05:19, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
The nomination forms ARE reviewed. They are reviewed by the SHPO staff - there are both historians and archaeologists on SHPO staff. Then it goes before whatever board each state has. There it goes through public hearings. Only then does the SHPO sign off before it even gets to the NPS. Once at the NPS it's reviewed again. Then it gets published in the Federal Register for more public comment. Only after all that does the Keeper (or a designee) sign off. Einbierbitte ( talk) 22:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Nyttend ( talk) 18:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)Our policy: Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.
<outdent>Coming late to this discussion, I've had some of the same concerns about the NR forms that Ottava's expressed. I've seen obvious errors, boosterism, sloppy research, confused genealogy, rumor and misinformation. On the other hand, I've seen meticulous, professional research, solid sourcing and excellent documentation. The answer is, it depends. Where I've been unsure about the usefulness of the noms, I've stuck to three-line stubs that state what, when and where and little else. Other noms contain enough for a B-class article (at least for content) and have references for further research. This conversation appears to be hung up on primary vs. secondary sourcing. Most of the noms are compiled from primary sources, i.e. public records, interviews or informal histories. I would argue that the noms are reviewed secondary sources of highly variable quality, in both production and review. In that they are no different from most other published sources, and represent a step up from many of the sources I see around the wiki. I would rather have an article that is sourced to an NRHP nom than no article at all. If a book was published on the subject, that's wonderful, but there are only a handful of such works, and many of those were published by the local garden or historical society, and aren't subject to even as much review as the NRHP noms. You work with what you have. If you doubt a fact, leave it out.
I am, however, opposed to copying verbatim, as rewriting forces the editor to consider the subject with greater care, and I'm not convinced that the noms are really public domain. Images that accompany them certainly are not.. Acroterion (talk) 20:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
In a conversation with User:The Anome, I asked about how wp:NRHPers might possibly identify all the NRHP articles in a state like Tennessee which don't yet have coordinates identified. These would mostly be articles that need an update of the NRHP infobox using Elkman's tool. Older NRHP pages often do not include coordinates. The Anome replied: "CatScan is your friend here: try this CatScan search, which I believe will do what you want in a more direct way, by finding only those articles that do not transclude the coordinate-link-producing {{ coord}} template either directly or indirectly, regardless of whether I have tagged them with {{ coord missing}}. You can adapt the parameters, and the output format, to suit your needs. -- The Anome ( talk) 01:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)" Ain't this neat? I am going to try it on the New York State NRHP articles. doncram ( talk) 02:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I'll try this again. Can someone tell me what "DR" means in regards to the Infobox generator? Example: search for #73002307. APK How you durrin? 03:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
If DR is from the National Park Service, it means 'DATE RECEIVED/PENDING NOMINATION' 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 21:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Going through National Register of Historic Places listings in Douglas County, Nebraska I noticed that there is a combined listing for two ships named U.S.S. HAZARD and U.S.S. MARLIN, added in 1979 and a seperate listing for the USS HAZARD (AM-240) designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. It does not appear the USS Marlin was made a NHL at that time though. Currently both entries link to an article for each respective ship. I think there should be a combined listing for both ships as the 1979 NHRP listing, but how to handle the case of one being a NHL and not the other?-- Marcbela ( talk) 15:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there are good summary someplace of the workflow or data pipeline that begins with the NPS database and ends with "finished" Wikipedia articles? Is it entirely a manual process other than the infobox generator? How is the weekly NPS list processed/integrated into the end result?
Also, I'm working on getting the NPS database loaded into Freebase which should provide a more structured view than Wikipedia, but something a little easier to access than the NPS database. The stuff that's loaded so far is at http://usnris.freebase.com/home and the stuff I'm working on is at http://usnris.sandbox-freebase.com/home For the time being, I'm mostly concentrating on annotating things which already have a Freebase topic (many of which are derived from WP articles). It's got a little bit richer set of data than the WP infoboxes, but much of its the same. After I finish loading the geo data, I'll probably circle back around and create entries for things down to at least the State level of significance (ie International, National, and State). Not sure whether I'll go all the way to the Local level, but I probably will. The entries link back to the National Park Service scanned applications, but the NPS has only scanned a few states.
If anyone has suggestions or wants to talk about coordinating, feel free to contact me on gmail. The account there (and most places) is tfmorris. 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 21:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Don - would I have to pay you to get you to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Assume_good_faith or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_legal_threats ?
If you want to try and extort money from Metaweb/Freebase, leave me out of it. Sorry to have encroached on your own personal little corner of Wikipedia. I'll update the main NRHP page when my work is done. 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 19:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Some clarification on photo policy from the National Register, perhaps including removal of that phrase "public domain" within the PDF Focus database field for "restrictions", is coming out soon, fyi. This was mentioned to me in passing, not in response to any specific request from me. Perhaps others have contacted the NPS directly given recent discussion, or just the recent discussion was noticed by the NPS. I am hoping the clarification/changes won't go too far in the opposite direction. doncram ( talk) 00:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
I've just been informed by User:Doncram that my tagging archeological sites with {{ coord missing}} using User:The Anomebot2, part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates process for soliciting the addition of geographical coordinates to articles, might not be helpful in some cases. I'm afraid I hadn't considered the possibility of places which need their locations kept secret when working on bot-tagging these articles. I'm currently looking for a technical solution to this. Perhaps we could have a special invisible tag for places which need their locations kept secret, with a name like {{ coords not wanted}}, or a centralized blacklist of such articles? -- The Anome ( talk) 02:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
As I've said above, I completely accept the argument for security-by-obscurity in this case. I've now downloaded the entire NRHP database, and, as far as I can see from parsing PROPMAIN.DBF (which is in the DETAILS.EXE self-extracting zipfile), there are 88412 records in the database, of which 5089 contain the string "restricted", all in various variations on "Address Restricted", "Address Information Restricted", "Restricted Address", as well as in typos like "Addess Restricted", "Addriess Restricted" and so on.
I'll compare the records in my bot-tagging logs against the names of those 5089 restricted-address records. More soon. -- The Anome ( talk) 12:02, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
I believe the National Park Service uses the coordinates for geocenter of the county containing the restricted site for their Google Earth files if that helps folks decide what they'd like to do. 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 21:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I note the above comment about NPS using county geocenters for the address restricted sites in a county. That could be misleading if we used those in wikipedia. I'm not sure if we could label those adequately clearly, and am also not sure how they are labelled/appear in Google Earth.
An NPS rep also pointed me to http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/Download.html for the improved version of NRHP locations data. This reflects a lot of location corrections from a geo-coding project, especially for NRHP sites which are buildings that have a street address. I believe this is different than the NRIS coordinates provided in/with the NRIS database, reflected in our NRHP infoboxes via Elkman's nifty system. Not sure what can be done with this. Has anyone been using either the download or the Google Earth source for locations to put into NRHP articles? Can any Google Earth user tell whether it is possible to transfer NRHP locations from Google Earth to wikipedia, in any way? doncram ( talk) 19:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Stubs for all articles under National Register of Historic Places listings in Maryland are done.-- Pubdog ( talk) 01:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.
All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot ( Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
In some articles the descriptions and/or the history of the historic places are to some extent taken word by word from the NRHP nomination forms. (One example is Boxhill (Louisville).) Are these forms considered to be in the public domain? I doubt this, since the person preparing the form seems not to be a worker of the NPS or any other agency of the Federal government and is rather working as an architect or for the local historical society which nominates the property. -- Matthiasb ( talk) 11:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
This came up once, so I emailed the people at the NRHP a couple years back, I'll dig up the emails if they'll help. What they told me was that the photographs are NOT public domain, that the individual who took the photographs retains copyright over them. When I followed up and asked about the text of the nomination forms he thought it was funny that I would even ask. He had never had the question, as no one has ever tried to assert copyright over the information in the nomination forms, making them, effectively public domain. I forget his exact wording but he conjectured that it would be unlikely that the material in the nomination forms would even qualify for copyright. IvoShandor ( talk) 05:19, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
The nomination forms ARE reviewed. They are reviewed by the SHPO staff - there are both historians and archaeologists on SHPO staff. Then it goes before whatever board each state has. There it goes through public hearings. Only then does the SHPO sign off before it even gets to the NPS. Once at the NPS it's reviewed again. Then it gets published in the Federal Register for more public comment. Only after all that does the Keeper (or a designee) sign off. Einbierbitte ( talk) 22:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Nyttend ( talk) 18:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)Our policy: Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.
<outdent>Coming late to this discussion, I've had some of the same concerns about the NR forms that Ottava's expressed. I've seen obvious errors, boosterism, sloppy research, confused genealogy, rumor and misinformation. On the other hand, I've seen meticulous, professional research, solid sourcing and excellent documentation. The answer is, it depends. Where I've been unsure about the usefulness of the noms, I've stuck to three-line stubs that state what, when and where and little else. Other noms contain enough for a B-class article (at least for content) and have references for further research. This conversation appears to be hung up on primary vs. secondary sourcing. Most of the noms are compiled from primary sources, i.e. public records, interviews or informal histories. I would argue that the noms are reviewed secondary sources of highly variable quality, in both production and review. In that they are no different from most other published sources, and represent a step up from many of the sources I see around the wiki. I would rather have an article that is sourced to an NRHP nom than no article at all. If a book was published on the subject, that's wonderful, but there are only a handful of such works, and many of those were published by the local garden or historical society, and aren't subject to even as much review as the NRHP noms. You work with what you have. If you doubt a fact, leave it out.
I am, however, opposed to copying verbatim, as rewriting forces the editor to consider the subject with greater care, and I'm not convinced that the noms are really public domain. Images that accompany them certainly are not.. Acroterion (talk) 20:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
In a conversation with User:The Anome, I asked about how wp:NRHPers might possibly identify all the NRHP articles in a state like Tennessee which don't yet have coordinates identified. These would mostly be articles that need an update of the NRHP infobox using Elkman's tool. Older NRHP pages often do not include coordinates. The Anome replied: "CatScan is your friend here: try this CatScan search, which I believe will do what you want in a more direct way, by finding only those articles that do not transclude the coordinate-link-producing {{ coord}} template either directly or indirectly, regardless of whether I have tagged them with {{ coord missing}}. You can adapt the parameters, and the output format, to suit your needs. -- The Anome ( talk) 01:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)" Ain't this neat? I am going to try it on the New York State NRHP articles. doncram ( talk) 02:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I'll try this again. Can someone tell me what "DR" means in regards to the Infobox generator? Example: search for #73002307. APK How you durrin? 03:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
If DR is from the National Park Service, it means 'DATE RECEIVED/PENDING NOMINATION' 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 21:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Going through National Register of Historic Places listings in Douglas County, Nebraska I noticed that there is a combined listing for two ships named U.S.S. HAZARD and U.S.S. MARLIN, added in 1979 and a seperate listing for the USS HAZARD (AM-240) designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. It does not appear the USS Marlin was made a NHL at that time though. Currently both entries link to an article for each respective ship. I think there should be a combined listing for both ships as the 1979 NHRP listing, but how to handle the case of one being a NHL and not the other?-- Marcbela ( talk) 15:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there are good summary someplace of the workflow or data pipeline that begins with the NPS database and ends with "finished" Wikipedia articles? Is it entirely a manual process other than the infobox generator? How is the weekly NPS list processed/integrated into the end result?
Also, I'm working on getting the NPS database loaded into Freebase which should provide a more structured view than Wikipedia, but something a little easier to access than the NPS database. The stuff that's loaded so far is at http://usnris.freebase.com/home and the stuff I'm working on is at http://usnris.sandbox-freebase.com/home For the time being, I'm mostly concentrating on annotating things which already have a Freebase topic (many of which are derived from WP articles). It's got a little bit richer set of data than the WP infoboxes, but much of its the same. After I finish loading the geo data, I'll probably circle back around and create entries for things down to at least the State level of significance (ie International, National, and State). Not sure whether I'll go all the way to the Local level, but I probably will. The entries link back to the National Park Service scanned applications, but the NPS has only scanned a few states.
If anyone has suggestions or wants to talk about coordinating, feel free to contact me on gmail. The account there (and most places) is tfmorris. 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 21:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Don - would I have to pay you to get you to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Assume_good_faith or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_legal_threats ?
If you want to try and extort money from Metaweb/Freebase, leave me out of it. Sorry to have encroached on your own personal little corner of Wikipedia. I'll update the main NRHP page when my work is done. 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 19:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Some clarification on photo policy from the National Register, perhaps including removal of that phrase "public domain" within the PDF Focus database field for "restrictions", is coming out soon, fyi. This was mentioned to me in passing, not in response to any specific request from me. Perhaps others have contacted the NPS directly given recent discussion, or just the recent discussion was noticed by the NPS. I am hoping the clarification/changes won't go too far in the opposite direction. doncram ( talk) 00:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
I've just been informed by User:Doncram that my tagging archeological sites with {{ coord missing}} using User:The Anomebot2, part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates process for soliciting the addition of geographical coordinates to articles, might not be helpful in some cases. I'm afraid I hadn't considered the possibility of places which need their locations kept secret when working on bot-tagging these articles. I'm currently looking for a technical solution to this. Perhaps we could have a special invisible tag for places which need their locations kept secret, with a name like {{ coords not wanted}}, or a centralized blacklist of such articles? -- The Anome ( talk) 02:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
As I've said above, I completely accept the argument for security-by-obscurity in this case. I've now downloaded the entire NRHP database, and, as far as I can see from parsing PROPMAIN.DBF (which is in the DETAILS.EXE self-extracting zipfile), there are 88412 records in the database, of which 5089 contain the string "restricted", all in various variations on "Address Restricted", "Address Information Restricted", "Restricted Address", as well as in typos like "Addess Restricted", "Addriess Restricted" and so on.
I'll compare the records in my bot-tagging logs against the names of those 5089 restricted-address records. More soon. -- The Anome ( talk) 12:02, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
I believe the National Park Service uses the coordinates for geocenter of the county containing the restricted site for their Google Earth files if that helps folks decide what they'd like to do. 24.181.239.60 ( talk) 21:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I note the above comment about NPS using county geocenters for the address restricted sites in a county. That could be misleading if we used those in wikipedia. I'm not sure if we could label those adequately clearly, and am also not sure how they are labelled/appear in Google Earth.
An NPS rep also pointed me to http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/Download.html for the improved version of NRHP locations data. This reflects a lot of location corrections from a geo-coding project, especially for NRHP sites which are buildings that have a street address. I believe this is different than the NRIS coordinates provided in/with the NRIS database, reflected in our NRHP infoboxes via Elkman's nifty system. Not sure what can be done with this. Has anyone been using either the download or the Google Earth source for locations to put into NRHP articles? Can any Google Earth user tell whether it is possible to transfer NRHP locations from Google Earth to wikipedia, in any way? doncram ( talk) 19:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Stubs for all articles under National Register of Historic Places listings in Maryland are done.-- Pubdog ( talk) 01:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)