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Table-izing

I just inserted a National Register Information System (NRIS)-based table for the first county, alphabetically. This is to begin a big process of table-izing all. I'll expect to revise this towards being like, say, List of RHPs in MT, another NRHP list-article already table-ized. Perhaps others will join in, too. Please note: any old listings will be checked by me, before i delete them. Often the old list items here reflect useful pipelinks to articles already created, or corrections of errors in the NRIS system, which are to be noted at wp:NRIS info issues, etc. If anyone is watching here, please feel free to help in the processing and/or to comment here. Thanks. doncram ( talk) 20:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC) reply

I like the idea of table-izing this article, but personally, I think these tables are aesthetically horrendous. The top of the article is now 82 lines long when it was only 5-6 before this. I like tallying how many RHPs are in each county, but the huge table at the top is very ugly. Why not just keep the county list the way it was before (Like the one on Mississippi Landmarks), and just put Adams (118) - Alcorn (___), etc. This, in my opinion, is much more aesthetically pleasing and doesn't make the page as long. As for the tables themselves, why must they be so huge? Do you need hidden comments for every single cell? Do you really need a column of just numbers? (They're not the NRHP reference number or for that matter connected with the RHP in any way whatsoever)... Also, why is a description of every single site necessary? Aren't all these things supposed to be in the articles themselves - not this list?-- Dudemanfellabra ( talk) 05:08, 17 April 2009 (UTC) reply
Ah, well, don't hold back now! :) Certainly there would be other ways to present these, it's not written in stone anywhere. I'd be happy to see you construct a different implementation.
I do happen to value, highly, having the small-size row numbers, which are used in both the "tally table" (that's what I've been calling the one at top) and in the county tables. I view them like row numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. They provide a verifiable way to establish how many items there are in the table. I like the way that makes it obvious, to anyone, how many there are, which is a big accomplishment. Note, that is seeming to get us avoid other editors insisting that we cannot state how many NRHP listings there are in a county / state. If we don't make it obvious that way, then we would need a source stating the current number, and in fact there is no source besides our work in wikipedia that is available. At least not in general; perhaps some states have a separate tally. But, I carefully worked through a big reconciliation between National Register and other sources vs. one state's list, at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon, and found a number of errors in the state's own tally (and identifying a bunch of items where the National Register was wrong too). The National Register simply does not provide county, state, or nation-wide total tallies. So I would especially value it if you could make something work that also provided that functionality which the current tables do provide. doncram ( talk) 05:59, 17 April 2009 (UTC) reply
I just edited the table of contents to the method I was talking about. I believe this looks way more aesthetically pleasing. Also, the old method involved floats that didn't appear correctly (at least on my browser); the image overlapped the table, which in turn overlapped the other image, making the article look like a jumbled mess. I removed the pictures from the top, seeing them as unnecessary.
I'm still thinking of how I want to attack the county tables, so I'll get back to you on that. How do you like the TOC?-- Dudemanfellabra ( talk) 15:45, 17 April 2009 (UTC) reply
Well, I hope you don't want to "attack" them in too negative a way. :) About the TOC, I'll accept and work with that for now, pending more thought and discussion and development. I'll add tallies for other counties to it, and see how/if it can handle duplications.
Currently, advantages I see for your TOC version include:
  • compact
  • works fine as a navigation aid
  • conveys the asserted number of NRHP listings in each county
  • avoids floating image problems
Advantages for the tally table version:
  • serves okay as a navigation aid (though not as well in terms of not being as compact and obvious as being a navigation aid as the TOC format
  • visually interesting? I think some readers like this format, with a few intriguing pics...
  • conveys asserted numbers of NRHP listings in each county
  • demonstrates by enumeration that 82 counties have at least one NRHP listing (without that, I think a source is needed for statement in text that every county has one)
  • handles, in one "duplications" subtraction row, clearly, the issue of double-counting any properties listed in more than one county
  • conveys confidence, definitiveness in total state-wide tally, by use of spreadsheet-type format
I was thinking about the last, psychological factor some last night. I think it's like the way bank buildings are designed to look solid, authoritative, secure, which helps people trust that their money will be safe. Here, a spreadsheet format with numbered rows and a total at the bottom, appears just like an accountant's spreadsheet or an Excel spreadsheet whose sum formula people tend to believe in. In the TOC format, if the total is given, I think it is less likely to be believed as being the actual directly-formula-calculated total of the county individual asserted tallies. And editors will tend to demand a separate reference source for the total, which is not available. So, overall, I currently still prefer the tally table version. I do agree it has some formatting problems and it should be improved somehow. One other approach to take would be to make it more compact by making it a wrapped, multi-column table. For example it could be 25 rows tall, with 3 columns of 25 counties and a continuation column to include the last 7 plus a duplicates subtraction plus the overall total. That would provide for more compactness. Could that be an adequate compromise? doncram ( talk) 17:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC) reply
I just think having a table at the top will only add to the massive number of tables on the page, making it overwhelming. Tables can be good in articles, but I'm pretty sure there's a WP page that says something about using too many. About the advantages of the table over the list(ish) style, pictures can be added to the article right above the TOC or right below it. There will already be pictures in each row of the table (once all the pages are created at least), so the page will become increasingly more time-needy when loading, but I could go for adding a picture or two at the top of the article.
I don't really agree with the enumeration thing. The lead says the listings are distributed among ALL of the 82 counties, so that should suffice. There will also be a number by each county. If a county doesn't have any listings (in another state of course), it shouldn't be linked but bolded (see Issaquena County in the List of Mississippi Landmarks again), and it should have "(0)" beside it. This will definitively show that there are no listings in that county. I don't see any foundation for your "less likely to believe the total" claim; If I see a list of numbers with a total under the list, it doesn't matter if the list is vertical (as in a table) or horizontal (as in the TOC format), I'm going to believe it.. And even if an editor doesn't believe it, he can do the math himself.
I'm not sure about the duplications thing (are there any in MS? I don't think that's a regular phenomenon is it?), but that seems to be the only thing better about a table to me. There could probably be a way to fit it in, though I can't think of any right now haha.-- Dudemanfellabra ( talk) 18:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC) reply
I'm going to start splitting out any counties with 20 or more listings, as main page size has grown over 112,000 bytes. 100K is top recommended. Wikipedia server errors start kicking in already when approaching 100K. May have to split out counties with >15 or some lower cutoff. doncram ( talk) 18:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC) reply
Split out those from 15-19 listings too. Add tables for all remaining, now about 110K. doncram ( talk) 07:16, 25 April 2009 (UTC) reply

Duplicates

1200?

This page says there are over 1200 listings in MS.. After we get all these tallied up, I'd be interested in seeing how accurate that number is.-- Dudemanfellabra ( talk) 01:01, 21 April 2009 (UTC) reply

Looks like it is going to be about 1299 total =1302 sum - 3 duplications. The Mississippi state page is not far off, in fact not off at all if their goal is to say, to nearest 100 beneath actual total. It could be helpful to do a complete reconciliation between their PDF document of the state-wide listings, by county, vs. these lists. Unfortunately their list doesn't have county totals or a state-wide total, so it is not that helpful. In Oregon, a detailed reconcilation between the state-provided list vs. the NRIS-based wikipedia tables exposed some NRIS errors of omission (such as simply not entering some announced NRHP listings into NRIS) and many other NRIS typos, and exposed some state errors. doncram ( talk) 08:46, 28 April 2009 (UTC) reply

De Soto county question

Research issue: from old list in De Soto County, there was, in Olive Branch, Mississippi, listed: Maywood Beach. It appears this is not in NRIS-based table. Is this not NRHP-listed, or is there an NRIS error? doncram ( talk) 16:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC) reply

Doing a quick search shows that Maywood Beach was added at 23:09, June 11, 2007 by User:Frog47. There is no edit summary, and a Google/NRHP search doesn't return any hits (other than for this article) that show Maywood Beach as listed on the register. I think Frog47 just added it, not knowing what this list was. If you're not convinced, you can ask him on his talk page, but I doubt he remembers something from that long ago.. I say we just remove the listing. -- Dudemanfellabra ( talk) 17:04, 25 April 2009 (UTC) reply
I removed it already, and just moved the note about it to here for resolution. Nothing to do then, done. Thanks! doncram ( talk) 17:50, 25 April 2009 (UTC) reply

Scan

All tables for counties with 1-3 listings scanned for links and images. Nyttend ( talk) 14:52, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

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