Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Historic Landmarks in New York/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by User:The Rambling Man 20:02, 8 September 2008 [1].

List of National Historic Landmarks in New York[edit]

I am nominating this list-article for Featured List status as I believe it has been ready for FL status. It is an important article for wp:NRHP, covering more than 10% of the National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) nation-wide. Together with the List of National Historic Landmarks in New York City article that it links to, it comprehensively covers the 256 National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) in New York State, and includes 242 photographs collected (134 in the non-NYC list alone, 108 in NYC). Major contributors are Daniel Case, Dmadeo, Lvklock, Cg-realms and Mwanner, and me in probable rough order of number of non-NYC photographs contributed (Dmadeo probably contributed the most photos if NYC photos are included), and most development and editing by Daniel, Dmadeo, Lvklock and myself. It benefited greatly from peer review, with peer review comments (and later copyediting) by Ruhrfisch.

For simplicity, this nomination is for the New York state-wide list named, and is not also for the New York City list in its separate article. The New York City one is ready for FL as a separate list, or it is nearly ready, and involves the same editors, so side comments about it would be appreciated as well. doncram (talk) 18:26, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support As noted above, I peer reviewed this and made some copyedits to it. I felt at the time it was of FL quality and has only improved since then. I also think this will be a great model for other state NHL lists. My only quibble is that "National Monumnets" is a red link in a reference 61. I am surprised there is no article on this topic. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:07, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! There is an article, U.S. National Monument, which i just now pipelinked to, to remove the redlink from the footnote. doncram (talk) 03:17, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you - I could not find the article somehow. Good work on the list. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - well written and referenced. Nice work. Dincher (talk) 00:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • May I suggest you use the ref group= syntax to sort out your informational footnotes from the actual references? As it is now, the actual references are swamped by purely informational references.
Reply Thanks. I will look into how to apply that group syntax. doncram (talk) 15:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Applying tips in wp:REFGROUP and in documentation of "template:reflist", done. Now have informational footnotes under "Notes" and source footnotes under "References". doncram (talk) 16:23, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, I'm not sure that "Date of listing as National Monument or similar designation, from various sources in articles indexed." (Current ref 66) is a valid source reference. Hate to be a pain, but Wikipedia articles are not considered a reliable source.
Reply No doubt that Wikipedia articles are not WP:RS, but this article is essentially an indexed list to other articles (much like DYK if you think about it). If you want us to bring references forward from each of the sub articles, that's going to be another 150 - 200 or so references since *none* of them would be repeats. dm (talk) 12:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, you were being more specific than I realized. The reference for the location column in the National Monuments table does not have a handy one place to look up list of dates. My suggestion, remove the reference. dm (talk) 12:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reply That reference is about Date Established for the other NPS areas. I was always uncomfortable about those dates here and in the corresponding articles on the individual NPS places. Found and added a good PDF source from the NPS, "National Park System Areas Listed in Chronological Order of Date Authorized Under DOI", that covers all 13. Four of the dates previously listed seem to be incorrect. Updated here and in their corresponding articles now. Thanks for pointing out the problem. doncram (talk) 15:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise sources look okay. Links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:12, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments The list generally looks excellent, but I didn't review its guts yet. As so often happens in my reviews of FLCs, I got stuck in the introductory text:

  • In the first sentence, what is the significance of "other sites of equivalent landmark status"? Clarification is needed; if this is identified as a list of NHLs, it should not include sites that are not current or former NHLs. If this "other sites" statement is intended to refer to Historic areas in the United States National Park System, make this aspect of the scope clear in the lead sentence. (However, I think it would be preferable to put those in a separate list article about NPS units in the state.)
  • "There are 148 NHLs in upstate New York or on Long Island, and 108 within New York City (NYC)." - Outside NYC, New Yorkers happen to think that upstate and Long Island are totally unrelated places. Accordingly, please list their NHL counts separately. (If that's not convenient, say there are 108 in NYC and 148 in other parts of the state.)
Changed to "There are 135 NHLs in upstate New York, 13 on Long Island, and 108 within New York City (NYC)." That 135-13-108 order highlights the upstate and Long Island ones which are covered in table in this article first. I'd be happy to have it in 135-108-13 order if that reads better. doncram (talk) 08:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good fix! --Orlady (talk) 14:44, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Copy-editing is needed. For example, I see several "which"s that I think should be "that"s; phrases like "outside of NYC" beg for trimming of extra words; locutions like "the NHLs in NYC are in this companion article" could use a better verb; and I don't think that the first and most recent NHLs to be designated are correct described as "the first New York NHLs" and "the latest NHLs" (they are the earliest and most recent designations, not the first and "latest" NHLs). I am curious to know whether "landmarked" is truly a verb that means "designated as a landmark."

--Orlady (talk) 04:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Very pointed and helpful comments, we'll see what we can do to tighten this up before asking you to take another look at that. For the sake of argument, if you scan through the rest or article, any other trends jump out? Thanks dm (talk) 05:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reply To respond, firstly, a lot of consideration went into choosing to set up this list this way and choosing its title, with some rehashing at peer review, and I think the current setup is really pretty good. I agree some wordsmithing can improve the intro and the rest of the article, but the questions of what should be included and what the overall title should be are the most basic and important here. Orlady, I recognize you did not consider the whole list-article, and some of your concerns might be addressed when you get through it all and see it as a whole. But for a whole picture about why this list is defined as it is, you also have to consider the organization of related Wikipedia articles at higher and lower levels. I guess i need to expand a bit on why I think the basics here are pretty good, and how they fit in with the other articles, and what you'd need to consider if you really wanted to argue with the basics here (not saying you necessarily do, and perhaps i am too defensive already).
The list-article as written is in fact more than just NHLs in NY, it is three lists: 1) nationally-historically-important sites designated as both NRHPs and NHLs (current ones), 2) equivalently-nationally-important historic sites in the state (designated both as NRHP and another Federal designation of historic type such as National Historic Park, and 3) former nationally-historically-important sites (which happens to be just former NHLs, there are no former National Historic Parks in the state). By the numbers, there are 256 current NHLs, 20 equivalents (of which 7 are NHLs among the 256), and 3 formers.
This seems (to me) like a good group to cover in one list-article. It is all the "NHLs or higher", if you look at National Historic Sites (NHSs) and National Historical Parks (NHPs) as being "higher" than NHLs for the fact that they are Nationally Park Service operated, while most of the NHLs are privately owned. It is all of the nationally-historically-important sites in the state, and they all appear on one Google map. A reader interested in learning about, or visiting, nationally-historically-important sites in the state can find them all together here. There is not much difference between the NHLs vs. the NHSs. In a general reader's perspective, St. Paul's Church National Historic Site in Mt. Vernon is roughly the same as St. Paul's Cathedral, in Albany; it's a bit random which ones are NPS-owned and operated vs. not. In one article, we can cover them all, and it is better for the reader than having separate parallel lists and Google maps for each (one for NHLs only, one for NHSs only, one for NHPs only, and so on).
What's not in the list-article? Well, NPS-administered areas which are not of national-historic-importance, such as Gateway National Recreational Area, are not included. Only the NPS areas which are indicated in the NPS's own list of NHLs are included (yes, to emphasize, the National Park Service's PDF list of NHLs itself makes a point to include the National Parks, NHSs etc. that are of historic importance but which are not NHLs, and it omits the National Parks etc. that are not of historic importance). Note, there does exist a Wikipedia list-article on NPS areas, grouping all the NHSs together, all the NHPs together, etc., nation-wide. That is List of areas in the United States National Park System, a higher level list. Also, not included in this list-article are sites which are merely NRHPs without additional designation, at lower levels. The criteria for NRHPs further being designated NHLs are stricter, requiring more nationally-oriented historical importance, more integrity of the sites, etc. And there are many more NRHPs. For New York State, we have a separate list-article covering the NRHPs in each county (with New York County divided into 5 segments, and some other counties split out further, too). Each one of these includes the NHLs and higher designations in the given county, so there is overlap the same way as including the higher ones in this NHL list.
It was considered before and during the peer review of this article, whether to include also a list of New York State-operated historic sites (SHSs) which are NRHPs. Some SHSs are also NHLs and are included, but after developing out a separate list of the other SHSs (mostly me trying on that), many seemed to be of lesser importance, and I somewhat reluctantly dropped that list. (Its remains survive in List of New York State Historic Sites). So the article focuses on Federally-designated nationally-historically-important places only.
Also, the contents of this list-article are chosen with an eye to what works for other states, in terms of what is included and not included. In other states, there is less info available about state historic sites, or the state programs are just less developed, or the state programs vary significantly in other ways so it usually would not work to include state sites in the same list-article. In NYS, there are more NPS areas, and yes you could have a separate article about them. But on average there are 3 or fewer NPS areas of historic importance in each state, so having a separate state list would not usually work. And, even if you have a separate state list, I think i would still want to include a then-duplicative table of them in the list of NHLs and equivalents in the state, so that the reader gets to see all the nationally-historically-important places in the state, in one article. So, I come back to having the Federally-designated NHLs-or-higher, current-and-former, in one article per state.
Okay, then if you accept the nationally-historically-important definition and the 3 tables within the article, then what about the title? Well, "List of National Historic Landmarks in New York" is pretty good, I think. You don't have to have everything in the title, and 256 out of 272 (256+13+3) items in the 3 tables are really-well-described by the title. The 13 and 3 others are pretty well related, and don't need to be mentioned in the title. If you have an article of that title, the contents are what i would want to put into it. If you have the contents we have, I would want that title.
Briefly about the wordsmithing: it is not possible or desirable to put all the specific information into the first sentence, or into the first paragraph. The exposition progresses from general to more specific statements: the intro sentence is intentionally general and not too specific about the non-NHLs. The 3rd paragraph in the lead section provides more specifics about the non-NHLs. The intro to the section titled "Historic areas in the United States National Park System" provides more specifics. And footnotes provide even more. So, while the first sentence can be tweaked to be more specific, that's not necessarily good to do. Too much information about the exceptions, too soon, takes away from getting across the biggest facts about the article.
About Long Island and upstate vs. NYC, it sounds like some word-smithing could be helpful. Sure, we can report the total number of NHLs in the combo of Nassau and Suffolk Counties separately somehow, perhaps in an informational footnote.
About landmarking as a verb, dictionary.com gives definition: "tr.v. land·marked, land·mark·ing, land·marks To accord the status of a landmark to; declare to be a landmark. "
My print dictionaries don't list it as a verb. Neither do most of the online dictionaries I consulted. The vast majority of the google hits for "landmark" as a verb turn out to be New York City blogs and articles. IMO, it's not an accepted English word yet. --Orlady (talk) 14:44, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So, in summary response to Orlady's comment's, I agree that some wording adjustments can be made and could clarify the article. And i will try to make adjustments that would lessen the negatives triggered for Orlady. But, in these comments, i don't see compelling arguments that would necessitate basic organizational changes. The set of related Wikipedia articles, higher and lower, could be organized differently, but this is a pretty good way to go, I have argued here. And I think in the end you have to give some discretion to the editors involved for organizing it this way. Orlady stated a potential absolute policy: "if this is identified as a list of NHLs, it should not include sites that are not current or former NHLs", but i don't want to follow that dictum too strictly. It is easy to compose other absolute dictums, and this article follows, instead, the dictum: group all Federally-designated nationally-historically-important historic sites in a state together in one list-article. Orlady, I hope this works for you; I really hope we can do some copyediting and then have your support. doncram (talk) 07:57, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wow -- that's a long response to a short review! I don't have time to respond to all of your points today, much less write a similar-length essay.
However, please note that the article title uses the proper noun "National Historic Landmarks", but the broader scope you are describing would better be titled with the more generic noun "national historic landmarks." After reading your defense of the scope, I feel more strongly than before that the scope too broad. Focus on the designated NHLs, and put the other sites in other lists.
You correctly note that I did not comment on the whole list article. However, I happen to believe that a nicely formatted and thoroughly sourced table is not sufficient for an FL; every FL needs a good lead section, too. Furthermore, I don't think it's too much to ask for this list to clearly define its scope in the first paragraph, if not the first sentence.
--Orlady (talk) 12:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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