Talk:List of National Historic Landmarks in California

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[edit] Organization of article

Other state lists of National Historic Landmarks are being organized now in sortable tables, with the sites being alphabetical and county being just one sortable column. See List of National Historic Landmarks in New York for example. I am inclined to reorganize this article that way. Would be happy to discuss. doncram 22:08, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I am in the process already. I'm building the table off-line, then will import it whole cloth. Ipoellet 14:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I like your new organization of the article, it is great. I see you went through a lot of trouble, though, to add a separate link to the National Park Service summary for each NHL, which I think is redundant to each article's linking to its own summary. (Each article does not yet have such a link, but I am working on ensuring that it does, as well as having a NRHP infobox, and a link to NRHP text and photo sets where those are available. For example, article on The Ahwahnee has all of these now.) Do you mean for those links to be kept, or are they just there until it is verified for each article that it does have such a link? I would prefer the latter. The documentation of each NHLs summary description is naturally its own wikipedia article; it is not necessary to point the reader away to browse the NPS summary, which in general will not be as rich with information and links as will be the wikipedia article for the site. doncram 21:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. My intent in including those external links is to have something in the "description" box, even if no editor has yet been able to work up a line or two of text. Once that's done, the external link should of course be removed. But it's only my own prejudice that redundant content is preferable to a blank box. If there's consensus to blank the boxes, then please do so, and I will somehow manage to bear up.  :-) -Ipoellet 02:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quality rating of article for NHRP

To start a discussion, the article is currently at "Stub" class quality rating on the Stub/Start/B/FL scale for WP:NRHP, per discussion-in-progress in Talk page for WP:NRHP. Per the proposal there, to get "Start" rating, a list-table article like this one must: (with current status indicated in CAPS)

1. be useful in sense defined at WP:WIAFL YES
2. that is factually accurate as far as it goes. Support for description of items can be supported by an item's article, or can be footnoted separately (although support by the articles is preferred and required to achive B class rating). MAYBE
3. that is nearly comprehensive YES
4. there should not be controversy about its scope, for example what items are to be listed YES
5. displays photos of some of its items YES
6. has an article of at least Stub class for every item on the list that is an NRHP: NOT YET
7. reference(s) supporting near-completeness must be provided. NOT SURE

To get start rating then, completing out the missing articles is the main thing to be done, IMO. doncram 14:29, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The status for #7 above should be "YES".

Yes, I agree. I just added new external link, being link to PDF file at NPS that lists the California NHLs. It is a more precisely relevant reference. Note, reconciliation is needed, as it reports 135 vs. there being 133 listed current NHLs in the article. doncram 01:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The article has footnote references with inline links in the column headers of the table. The documents referenced are official documents from the NPS NHL Program, primarily their published comprehensive list (ref #2) of all NHLs nationally. The WP list may be verified against the published list for completeness, and is complete. (Where an entry in a column is not supported by the references cited in the column headers, an inline citation is placed in the specific table cell that is an exception.)

I'll make comments about the particular selection of criteria applied later at WP:NRHP Talk. -Ipoellet 18:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer that all those Header footnotes be eliminated. All the facts in the table can be supported by the corresponding articles about the NHLs, and that would be better style-wise. It will take some time, of course, to bring all the corresponding articles up to quality that accomplishes that. doncram 01:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I cannot agree that the footnotes should be eliminated at all. If the article can't stand on its own without reference to other Wikipedia articles, then it shouldn't be a separate article.

In any event, I have inserted in footnote #2 the reconciliation between the 135 count and the 133 count. Basically, the PDF list states a count of 135, but actually lists 137, of which 4 are deducted (de-designated, moved out of state, or listed primarily under another state) to arrive at 133.

BTW, I also removed the addition of the California-specific PDF in the External Links section, because it is doubly duplicative: (a) it is just an excerpt from the comprehensive national list cited in footnote #2, and (b) the existing External Link National Park Service listings of National Historic Landmarks is the parent NPS page that links to the comprehensive national PDF, as well as all the state-specific excerpts, including California. -Ipoellet 06:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that reconciliation! doncram 05:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I see there was duplication. I would have removed the nation-wide list and the external link, rather than the California-specific PDF list. I think it would be better to switch to that, for use in footnote number 2, because it is specific to this state and a reader checking it would not have to wade through all the rest. Would that be okay in your view? doncram 05:22, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think either way is "wrong", precisely. That said, I do have a fairly strong preference for using the nation-wide list as a reference. It is the ultimate source document, after all, and the state-specific lists are just out-takes from it. It provides the title page and (very important) edition date, as well as the appendices that each apply to multiple states. And it provides the overall NHL context to the reader, who very likely isn't all that interested in being restricted to viewing only one state at a time if they can help it. And, let's face it, any reader who is sufficiently interested in the details to start clicking on the links in the references section is probably also perfectly willing to do a bit of wading once they get to the source document. -Ipoellet 07:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

About the footnotes, well then we have an issue of pretty big importance to sort out, because it applies to all the NHL state list articles. I see these list-table-articles as indexes to the NHL articles that they cover. In my understanding, the description of each NHL relies upon the article, which may have many references. We don't want to have to include in this index article, all of those references, that would be awful, stylistically. If, instead of using the articles as sources, we artificially limited each description to the info in the NHL summary for each one, and included one NHL summary footnote for each one, well, that would impoverish the descriptions, because the NHL summaries are not always that great. (BTW, as you may know, the NHL summaries themselves are usually snippets from the more extensive NRHP text documents, or NHL nomination documents, that most of the articles will reference.) Can you explain more on your view, that an article which relies on other wikipedia articles, essentially an index of them, doesn't deserve to be an article? doncram 05:22, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, and I don't mean to be intrusive here, but you seem to have some unresolved tension in your thinking. On one hand you're saying that these lists are just an index to other articles and don't have a lot of independent existence, yet on the other hand you're treating the lists like full-fledged articles and worrying about "impoverish[ing] the descriptions". These two models are really not all that compatible, because the "richer" you make the information in the list-article, the more intense becomes the need to adhere to the Wikipedia requirements for verifiability and proper citations.

My take is that:

1. Whether bare-bones index or more fully-developed repository of information, a list on Wikipedia is still an article. Somewhat specialized in format and style, but just another article nevertheless.
2. Because the NHL lists have something of an adjunct role - as indices to the individual NHL articles - the descriptions do not need to be fully detailed, since that is covered by the linked article. In fact, the reader who comes to the NHL lists looking for a means to quickly review the listings (i.e. an index) will actually prefer a briefer description.

Taken together, these points mean that we should target the descriptions to give the reader a quick impression of the nature and significance of each NHL, without digging into the "rich" detail that the reader can find with a single click to the site-specific article. BUT, that whatever is said in the description column must be supported by reliable sources just like any other article. I absolutely agree that the NHL summaries are not always terribly great for an in-depth understanding of the NHL (and some few are just atrociously inadequate), but they are a reliable, third-party source, and usually provide enough information for the quick description required. The few cases where the NHL summary (which is itself designed to be an index-like description, leaving the rich detail to the NRHP nom doc) simply must be supplemented with another source are relatively uncommon. I accomplish this by the reference note in the column header, with just an unobtrusive handful of supplemental notes in the individual cells.

Resorting to the legalisms, item 1(c) in the featured list criteria requires references for a list-article to be presented within the list-article itself, and specifically blesses in-line citations where needed. And the guidelines for reliable sources reject internal Wikipedia cross references (such as a reference to the individual NHL article) as reliable sources. Thus, we must present our sources in the list-article, and, if necessary, we have to copy across the outside sources that are used in the individual NHL article. (But that shouldn't be necessary all that often.)

-Ipoellet 08:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

You make good points. I don't know what to conclude, right now, on whether column-header and/or in-line citations are needed in the NHL list-table articles. I frankly dislike what I feel to be excessive citations in the List of Chicago Landmarks article, in lieu of having adequately developed articles on each landmark that it covers. There seems to remain some tradeoff: the better developed the NHL articles covered, the less need for in-line citations in the state-wide list-article. Perhaps we could discuss this more over in the talk at WP:NRHP. doncram 00:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm hoping one of the state NHL list-table-articles—perhaps the MN one—will go through the Featured List process, sometime, then we'll find out better. For a while, I will just plug along slowly on the articles supporting this CA list and others. doncram (talk) 19:02, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I uprated article to START now that a stub article has been created for every NHL, meeting last of original list of 7 suggested requirements. doncram (talk) 22:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Photos, to drop portraits of people

Hey, I want to drop the images that are just portraits of people, and which are usually not even included in the articles about the sites. I think a blank is better, for clearly communicating we want a picture of the site, and the people pics are not helpful. If there are no objections, i will delete them soon. doncram (talk) 00:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I just dropped 5 portrait photos. doncram (talk) 19:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC)