The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep - policy based arguements outweigh dislike. Merging individual articles is possible, but forcibly merging all and redirecting is not - mergers should be decided on an article by article basis by local consensus of editors. Wily D 15:37, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

St. Boniface Cemetery, Wrought-Iron Cross Site

[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I don't believe that the individual sites have sufficient notability to support separate articles -- only a list article would be appropriate, in my opinion. See the NPS Multiple Property Submission for more details.SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:23, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am an active, productive editor developing articles on North Dakota's NRHP-listed historic sites. I don't care for SarekOfVulcan choosing now to follow closely and to begin contention in this way. SarekOfVulcan has followed closely my edits during the last year or two, opening numerous ANI reports. Coming off a block that he contributed mightily to setting up, I recently asked him not to engage in such shenanigans, and I appreciate that he refrained for a few days, until this. I ask for other editors not to condone what I think is reasonably interpretted as wp:wiki-hounding.

About the articles: I recently started multiple articles, bringing into wikipedia what is, I believe, the first coverage about these interesting historic sites displaying Ukrainian-, Russian- and other heritage in funerary wrought-iron crossess. About the first-draft articles, let me and other editors develop them. They are wikipedia-notable topics; there exists full NRHP nomination documents (which I have not yet obtained) with more detail about these sites. I have made an initial editorial decision to combine several sets of iron cross sites listings into combined articles, but I did not choose to make one combined article of them all. It is a subjective decision. I think wikipedia works better if editors give some deference to productive editors developing articles, and not second-guess them immediately on some other way to develop the local area, which is just different, not obviously better. Or even if you have an idea about a way to make something obviously better, you can just make a suggestion, and not begin wiki-legalistic processes to drag down a targeted editor. --do ncr am 20:48, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If I thought that the articles could be improved without copying the same background information into each article and severely unbalancing the data referring to the site in question, I wouldn't have nominated them. I agree with you that the subject of Russian-German crosses in North Dakota is very interesting, but disagree that any individual site (except maybe St. Mary's, if the 10K crosses turns out to be accurate after all) is notable enough for its own article. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of North Dakota-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:49, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:49, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom and make a list. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 21:16, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sarek, please could you explain why it's necessary to use the delete tool when you could simply redirect these titles to the list?—S Marshall T/C 22:19, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not Sarek, but I know that past history of interactions with the creator of this article suggests that it is inadvisable for any individual editor who has ever disagreed with him in the past to attempt to alter his work without support from a community discussion, such as this one. --Orlady (talk) 23:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, okay. It's a bit of a pity we're using AfD for cleanup but I can understand why. Redirect all to a combined or list article.—S Marshall T/C 00:15, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Because I didn't see any value in redirects with these titles pointing to the list either. Believe me, it was more than predictable that Doncram would start in about wikihounding, and I wouldn't have set myself up for that if I thought there was any reason to keep these titles.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:51, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Still "redirect all" from yours truly; there's no reason to delete that survives WP:ATD.—S Marshall T/C 00:55, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As I see it, the principal reason for redirecting all of these articles instead of deleting them has to do with the way that all of the individual titles are assiduously tracked by the NRHP Wikiproject and listed as links in National Register of Historic Places listings in North Dakota. (BTW, I believe that the obsessive way that many Wikpedians focus on systematically creating articles to correspond to every entry on some list or in some database is one of the Wikipedia behaviors that cause so few women to be active in Wikipedia. I see this as a form of male behavior that is off-putting to women. But that's not relevant here.) Keeping the titles as redirects is far simpler and more straightforwrad than piping every link that points to one of these titles. --Orlady (talk) 04:32, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly understand the point you are making, but I think it's a stretch to take one type of editing behavior out of the many types that exist and turn it into a causal factor for why women do or do not edit here, imho. dm (talk) 06:10, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'll answer on the AfD talk page (because this is an interesting tangent but there's no need for the closer to read it).—S Marshall T/C 09:51, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To S Marshall: There is no existing list-article to which all these could be redirected. I rather think there would be problems with any list-article that is created: why not include South Dakota iron cross sites, for example? Your comments at Talk page to this AFD, which seem quite reasonable to me, suggest you should be voting Keep here. Could you please clarify? --do ncr am 02:05, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent point about South Dakota. Indeed, it seems that wrought iron grave crosses are a form of folk art found throughout the Great Plains,"from the Mexican border to the Prairies of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan", according to this article from the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. There are multiple ethnic traditions involved in creating them in different parts of the region (e.g., Russians, Volga Germans, Czechs, Métis, and Mexicans), so coverage undoubtedly requires more than one article. In any event, the traditions don't stop at state lines, so the articles shouldn't be arbitarily defined by state lines, either -- much less by county lines or the property boundaries of individual churchyards. --Orlady (talk) 02:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Create an article about wrought iron crosses in North Dakota, including a list of the individual sites, merge/redirect all of these titles to that article, and protect the redirects to prevent re-creation of the articles.. These articles all appear to be based on one source, with separate articles created based on the presumption that every individual National Register listing is individually and independently notable. The source is very interesting, but it has essentially no information about the individual sites. Accordingly, in this instance that presumption of individual notability is not supported. --Orlady (talk) 23:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I found another marginal source for the first one, I presume we could find similar genealogical pages about each of the other sites. I guess I'd ask why the article is about the "cross site" and not the church, cemetery, cross sites, etc all rolled together. Unfortunately, this sort of series of very short articles is not what I was hoping to see. dm (talk) 06:07, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Create an article about all of these crosses that are on the NRHP. I would not protect the articles in case an editor finds plenty of coverage and writes an article about a specific site. --Oakshade (talk) 00:32, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I notified the corresponding WikiProject of this discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:04, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all and allow content editors actually interested in development to make sensible decisions about merging or not later, as the material they find leads them. Wikipedia-notability of these topics is not questioned, is it? There are extensive NRHP nomination documents available (not online, and not yet collected by me or anyone involved here). So what policy or guideline supports deletion of all these, besides "I don't like it"?

Anyhow, the treatment of historic architecture and craftwork of Ukrainian-, German-, Russian-, Norwegian-, and other-European immigrant pioneers in North Dakota, and about other historic topics and sites in North Dakota, is barely begun in Wikipedia. It is a Good Thing to get started by developing short articles with links to great NRHP nomination documents for the NRHP-listed historic sites in the state, indexed at List of RHPs in ND. I have been doing that, and recently filled in all missing redlinks from List of RHPs in ND#Bottineau County, List of RHPs in ND#McIntosh County, List of RHPs in ND#Benson County, List of RHPs in ND#Adams, List of RHPs in ND#Barnes, National Register of Historic Places listings in Emmons County, North Dakota and List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in North Dakota. For all the bridges, houses, and many other types of historic sites, the great NRHP nomination documents are available on-line, and I link to those documents and begin to draw from them. It happens that for the iron cross sites targeted in this AFD, that the NRHP nomination documents are not immediately available on-line, so these targeted articles are less good and harder to develop immediately. I imagine that many of these topics can and should be absorbed into bigger articles about an entire church and its grounds, or larger historic districts, as Dmadeo suggests in his comment above.

For example, I would be happy to see a local historian or other positive content developer choose to cover the NRHP-listed Old St. Mary's Cemetery, Wrought-Iron Cross Site topic as a section in NRHP-listed St. Mary's Church Non-Contiguous Historic District. That's the only one where I immediately see that there is an article (a new one created by me) about the corresponding church. --do ncr am 13:14, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Um, yes, Doncram, I am questioning the notability of these articles, which I specifically stated twice above. Wrought-iron crosses designed by Russian-German blacksmiths in North Dakota -- obviously notable. Particular crosses, or collections thereof -- not so much, as their notability is NOTINHERITED from the parent topic.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:35, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
KeepJeffrey Beall (talk) 14:08, 15 July 2012 (UTC).[reply]
Comment Now also notified WikiProject North Dakota--Ymblanter (talk) 14:22, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep As I see it, editor 1 writes articles in one acceptable way; editor 2 says it should be done another acceptable way. The issue is quickly raised for the community to consider deletion.

The notability issue was solved by the NRHP registration. This involved a state and national level review. One can argue that the decision was flawed, but we can no longer argue that an independent body decided that the site should be on the National Register of Historic Places. The current articles are little different than those for many NRHP churches, cemeteries, and other buildinga from both rural and urban areas. The article may be considered uninteresting or the site be considered not notable to some individuals, but each site was reviewed and put on the Register.

The advantage of individual listing is the hope that local people will take interest, take photographs, and help fill in the information that led to the individual listing. This may be done by obtaining the actual nomination or other documention for the site.

Wrought Iron Crosses in Western North Dakota, Wrought Iron Work of Jeff Malm, Survey of Iron Cross Cemeteries in North Dakota, Wrought Iron Crosses, Wrought Iron Cross, Plains Folk: Iron Crosses, etc. show that there is existing academic and artistic interest in wrought iron crosses and their place in our history and culture. KudzuVine (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep NRHP listings are notable, documentation is available (if not always easy to access). If proposer thinks articles should be merged or replaced by redirects, there are other protocols in WP for having that discussion. Magic♪piano 18:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The general interest in the topic of wrought-iron crosses does not make every place where one happens to be located automatically notable. It looks to me like most of these are never going to be more than two sentences long, and that does not justify a separate page for each. If the sources are just lists, where each is mentioned only as part of that list, then they are not notable individually. There should just be a list, and if an individual cemetery (the whole cemetery) merits a page, then that page can mention that the cemetery is the site of wrought-iron crosses, but the nomination is correct here that solely as sites of wrought-iron crosses, these are not individually notable. The naming of these is also odd - why Old Mt. Carmel Cemetery, Wrought-Iron Cross Site and not simply Old Mt. Carmel Cemetery? - appending to the name of a location the reason you happen to be interested in it is not exactly the preferred method for picking a page name. As redirects, these are not very likely namespaces, and there is no justification for creating a separate page for the part of a barely-notable (if that) cemetery that happens to have this type of monument in it, rather than (or in addition to) one for the cemetery itself. Agricolae (talk) 23:47, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is believed to exist one to four separate, long NRHP nomination document(s) (not yet obtained), say like this one for a North Dakota church. but perhaps longer plus corresponding photos document(s) such as this, but perhaps with more pics for each of the targeted places, giving more information for each separate article. Plus additional other local historical papers. The deletion nominator has not requested any of these, which are available upon request, for free. The belief of me and some others is that there is the possibility for multiple new local photos as well. Merging into any separate article about the corresponding cemetery or church, if it exists, is fine by me, and does not require a world-wide AFD imho. --do ncr am 00:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't those NRHP submissions be primary documents? That's a problem, policy-wise. Agricolae (talk) 04:45, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, they're secondary -- they normally cite the other sources that were used to prepare them. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:59, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per the arguments of Magicpiano, and also so these articles will show up in handheld applications displaying Wikipedia geolocated articles. I go out of my way to look at cultural heritage sites wherever I am, and have spent time in graveyards in (among other states) Wyoming, South Dakota, and Missouri. This nom for deletion is exactly the sort of thing I personally find highly discouraging in my work on Wikipedia, though I don't believe this is a case of hounding (I have never heard that term before here). I believe it is a miscommunication and it is necessary to state somewhere that all NRHP listings deserve their own article just on the basis of the listing, no matter how similar the object is to some other object at some other location. I have had similar problems with WP:WLM articles in the past, so this is a generic cultural heritage problem. I believe the only proper resolution is to create an article on the cultural heritage of South Dakota which explains the bureaucratic process of how objects obtain a listing. These articles can then link back to that article. Starting from that basis, you offer article patrollers a general quick-reference as to why these objects are notable, so that these AFD's won't occur. As for naming conventions, the title should be as listed here, which is correct. Jane (talk) 08:35, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: The issue of wanting the coordinates to show up in handheld applications is an interesting and important one, albeit unrelated to WP:Notability. This is the first time I've seen this raised in an AfD (although I don't follow nearly every AfD). Since many topics that are geolocatable are traditionally covered in broader articles, this concern is one with the potential to affect many other corners of Wikipedia. IMO, the best way to handle this general concern would be to create some sort of link/redirect function that includes the geolocation data. If this hasn't been raised with Wikimedia technical gurus, that needs to happen. --Orlady (talk) 13:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is no way to add geocoordinates to a redirect, and that is completely unnecessary when you create well built stubs like these are. There are lots of stubs with geocoordinates, though most of these are in Europe where the stub is interwiki-linked to a longer article in the native language wikipedia. I really don't understand your need to merge, though I am relieved to see that notability of NRHP is no longer in question on this issue. Jane (talk) 06:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep for now. All of these sites are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which has much higher standards for inclusion than Wikipedia does. If these sites are all significant enough for the National Register to deem them worthy of preservation, they will pass the general notability guideline, and documentation of their notability exists in some form. That being said, I have no objection to merging if they turn out to all be on the National Register for similar reasons; however, there's no article to merge these to yet, and the titles should at least be kept as redirects. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 09:29, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, all of these sites are indeed listed for the same reason, as documented in this one multi-site nomination. These are graveyards that include one or more wrought-iron-cross grave markers. The fact that there is no general article about the gravemarkers is the reason why several of us previous !voters have included a statement like "create a general article" in our statements. --Orlady (talk) 13:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I doubt you're interpretating that correctly as Multiple Property Submission states that a MPS consists of related properties that share a common theme and can be submitted as a group Thuis, the nomination of individual properties in an MPS is accomplished in the same manner as other nominations. And that's what the German-Russian Wrought-Iron Cross Sites in Central North Dakota MPS is doing, to establish the basis of eligibility for related properties. However, Doncram might not obtain the individual National Register of Historic Places Nomination Forms as for those properties I looked up an the NRHP focus database website no coordinates are given and the adresses are restricted (though they are entered in the USGS database, obviously one government agency does not take care of the measurements of another). --Matthiasb (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge all, individual notability has not been demonstrated, but there is no obvious reason to delete anything. If more sources on one of these places can be found, I don't mind them having individual articles; as they stand, they are all a bit weak (and repetitive). —Kusma (t·c) 14:27, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Nothing wrong with the article topic, but the creation of these substubs is disruptive behavior by the creator that has repeatedly been the basis for substantial blocks, due to his persistence in creating them against opposition from virtually everyone else who's weighed in on the subject. We don't need substubs that tell us nothing substantial, especially when they're text dumps that will take longer to clean up than to create anew. Nyttend (talk) 19:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The articles in question are about sites that have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For a site to pass the review process and receive such designation, I believe there should be a presumption of notability. While the articles could use further development, they are not "bare bones" one-sentence stubs that previously created some furor. St. Boniface Cemetery, Wrought-Iron Cross Site in paticular is in pretty good shape for a newly created article. I perceive these articles as a postive contribution to Wikipedia rather than "disruptive behavior." I'm not aware of any policy on how we should or must deal with National Register of Historic Places#Multiple Property Submisssions such as this (is there such a policy?). If the articles are not kept, then another reasonable alternative would be to create an article for the German-Russian Wrought-Iron Cross Sites in Central North Dakota MPS and merge the content there. However, the content should not be deleted. Cbl62 (talk) 19:37, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Merge into single article on the MPS. My guess is that if you do get the individual nomination forms, they'll all be single paragraphs that refer back to the cover document. Einbierbitte (talk)
Comment I've added a bit now to each of the articles, mentioning in most of them something about the individual named blacksmiths whose work is identified. I expect that the individual nom forms are actually pages from a Section B of the MPS document. They might be extensive or brief. I hope/expect that they would include photos of the iron crosses, possibly 62 photos for 62 objects at one site, and more particulars about which blacksmith artist did which one, how you can tell from the individual style of work.

I also imagine that there exist local histories and compilations of works of different blacksmith-artists out there. We have only just started something here. Leave the pages up, and more will be added as local historians see that it is acceptable to add about particular blacksmiths.

Imagined (or imaginary) sources are not suitable sources for Wikipedia articles. --Orlady (talk) 23:15, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

About accusation of these being "text dumps": that is hogwash. No one present here besides me created any one of these. I used expertise developed out of years of work to do these relatively efficiently and effectively. The very first draft of each of these is improved considerably upon what any available automatic article generator would enable a novice to do, and it is nonsense to say that what is present would be an obstacle to someone who wanted to create a "real article". Go ahead, try it. Fill in some other of a remaining 100 or so unstarted articles in North Dakota.

Is there any North Dakotan present, by the way? Who are the critics here? I imagine that local North Dakotans, when they notice these articles, will be thrilled to have some information provided, something good started.

About a possible MPS-based combo article, I don't happen to like the idea of it being titled the name of the MPS. This is a criticism of a few existing MPS-based articles: the MPS is one study, one work, one report, like a book, which I don't think should be exagerated in importance. We don't write a wikipedia article about every nonfiction book out there. The appropriate topic for a wikipedia article should be general, accomodating other instances of iron crosses like the MPS author Timothy J. Kloberdanz discusses must exist. And probably not limited to North Dakota. Or, it could focus upon the blacksmiths themselves, many of which are individually notable I bet. If an article about the MPS is created, that should not preclude there being individual short articles on the sites, as have been created, which should link to the MPS one. These individual short articles serve good purposes, among them being to clarify to locals that they can add photos and other material to them. --do ncr am 21:23, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if anyone wants to listen to a reasoned argument, but I'll post it here anyway: Merge unless and until enough unique data can be found on each of these sites, as opposed to the multiple property submission in general. For example, in Cuyuna Iron Range Municipally-Owned Elevated Metal Water Tanks, I created one article for all five of the water tanks in the Cuyuna Range, even though each of the towers is separately listed on the National Register. I didn't feel it was necessary to create five separate articles when the rationale behind nominating each of them was so similar. Now, on the other hand, if I had enough information about each of the buildings in University of Minnesota Old Campus Historic District, I'd consider breaking them out into separate articles about Eddy Hall, Burton Hall, Shevlin Hall, and so on. (Oh, and Pillsbury Hall, which is a really neat Richardsonian Romanesque building.) But, nobody is reading at this point, so I'll let you guys continue arguing. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 22:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reading, and I think Elkman has given some excellent examples of how these topics should be handled. --Orlady (talk) 23:15, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's the kind of article I think the sourcing we have would support. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am reading and again I disagree with the merge proposal. Though I appreciate your work with the water tanks, I feel each water tank should have its own article that links back to the one you created. We are discussing specific heritage locations and these need to have their own article page with geo coordinates, otherwise this information will not be found easily by people in the field in or near the locations. Please see this link for information on how to view Wikipedia articles based on geocoordinates in Google maps. Jane (talk) 06:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but merge - I think we should keep the majority of the content but merge it into one article. If we merge the information together I think there is enough to present a decent article on the subject(s). I agree with some of the comments above that being NRHP sites they are notable but I'm not sure if we A) need them all to be individual pages and B) Have enough info/references to support them as individual pages without them being Permastubs. Kumioko (talk) 23:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all individually. Each of the articles describes a cemetary (at least those six or eight I looked at). Cemetaries are geographical features per se (compare feature class definition on the Geographic Names Information System website) and notable of their own. --Matthiasb (talk) 07:00, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

PS: For example, the first of those article above is most likely identified as U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: St. Boniface Cemetery and located some 7000 yards to the northeast of Selz in neighbouring Benson County already (that's the nearest of the six St. Boniface Cemeteries in North Dakota), so also a merge with the article Selz, North Dakota is not appropriate. --Matthiasb (talk) 07:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep/Merge Inclusion in the Register is an official declaration of notability which I see no reason not to honor. That said, this was added to the register as a group nomination, and we have ways for dealing with lists of locations. If this causes some issues with the rest of the internet, well, let them deal with it. Mangoe (talk) 12:54, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Merge Per Mangoe's argument above. These sites are best covered in a single, all-inclusive article. Bms4880 (talk) 13:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to a single list/article, or to articles about the individual cemeteries if the cemeteries are notable. Theoldsparkle (talk) 13:21, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep the content and redirect the individual pages to a single merged article. FonsScientiae (talk) 14:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An observation on the article naming

[edit]

All of these articles seem to be based on a very small set of sources, and in particular the nomination form itself. It's possible that I am mistaken, but I did not find a list of specific locations in it. It lists the counties involved, and it lists certain towns, but I saw no specific cemeteries named. I therefore have to question the articles listed here because I do not see evidence that any of them are actually encompassed in the NRHP listing. Without a source that names these cemeteries, I think they ought to be deleted in favor of an article which does not name specific sites. Mangoe (talk) 13:18, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To respond:

There exists an individual nomination form justifying the national historical significance of each site, but not one of them has been obtained by anyone commenting here. For a property to be listed on the National Register, it must meet local and national criteria for one or more of four types of significance; there is a public manual (linked from National Register of Historic Places article, I think) which details these types and the processes which must be followed. Each site actually listed must have passed state (and perhaps local) review by multiple persons, and then pass National level review.
Years ago, it was publicly argued that the National Register nomination process was not systematic. Addressing that, the National Register adopted a process of commissioning studies of historical resources sometimes known as Thematic Resources (TR) studies or sometimes known as Multiple Property Submission (MPS) studies. These studies consider a historical topic and/or geographical area. They often explicitly consider a number of individual historic sites and come up with criteria to distinguish between which sites are of national historic importance vs. which ones do not. For example, of covered bridges in a given state, it may be determined that bridges which are intact and have never been disassembled and moved by preservationists will merit National Register listing, but that others do not maintain sufficient historical integrity to be listed. Maybe ones that have been reconstructed with less than 20% new materials will be allowed, say.
The on-line document already linked from each of the AFD-targeted articles is one of those studies. Such studies sometimes only define the criteria for listing of future individual sites. Some such studies embody, within themselves, the listing of sites that are immediately deemed to meet all criteria and to pass all administrative hurdles. It is often the case that ownership questions or other issues prevent the immediate listing of certain other sites. Associated with each TR or MPS eventually are numerous individual historic site listings. For each one, there exists a passage, page, or multiple pages within the original TR or MPS itself, plus accompanying photos, or there exists a later, separate individual NRHP nomination document that references the TR or MPS.
IMHO, there should be a strong presumption of wikipedia notability for any individually listed NRHP historic site. This does not dictate that every individual site must have a different wikipedia article. I prefer, personally, to leave a lot of discretion to individual content editors such as Elkman or myself or Pubdog or Daniel Case or Cbl62 or SmallBones or others, whether to choose to create a combined article unified by the theme, or not. The existence of a list-article, too, does not dictate that each site article should be eradicated. Each site has, actually an atomistic, undivisible independent nature, with a specific location and other unshareable facts that . Each atom is usefully linked from the local town article (as each of these is already), from a List of NRHPs in the county (as each of these is already), from an architect article if relevant (there does not yet exist an article about Krim or any one individual blacksmith-artist here), from list-articles of cemeteries or of cemeteries having iron-crosses or of others. It often doesn't work to sweep them all into any one list-article (which relevant list-article, for each one?). Would you merge one into a church article, others into a list of cemeteries, others into NRHP geographical list-articles? A redirect to a general list-article serves poorly for the link from a NRHP geographical list-article, or from a town, IMHO. Some sites could be members of multiple TR or MPS studies, hypothetically such as a courthouse designed by an architect having an MPS (like Buechner & Orth) which is also a courthouse in North Dakota (which has an MPS) which is also in a geographic area having a geographical-area-based MPS.
Editing by AFD proposal, immediately upon creation of new articles in an unexplored area, seems like a poor practice. There is a fallacy of reasoning here, that if there were a wonderful list-article, it would be wonderful to have everything covered there. This is like a common fallacy in government program planning. It is unfair to suppose that some new program, operating perfectly, will be started successfully, justifying the cancellation or merger of typically-poorly-functioning programs that are just muddling along. The new program will not function perfectly. Here, if I had first created a list-article, I believe it is quite likely that someone would have nominated it for deletion. There is an issue of appropriate scope, of name, and so on, for such an article, which could be criticised.
There is a rush to nominate for deletion and to rush for judgement implementing a coercive "solution" here, which the community should be wary of. I do support someone actually interested in North Dakota history to develop, first, an article or series of articles about the iron crosses of the region and perhaps about the artists and peoples/congregations that created them. It could naturally include links to these separate articles, which can naturally carry additional detail not suitable for an overview article. --do ncr am 14:16, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Doncram, I was with you all the way up to "Editing by AFD proposal...". Too bad you couldn't resist adding those last two points. Jane (talk) 14:59, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, i just changed one word in what i wrote there which could possibly make a difference for you. What's wrong with the analogy about government program proposals, or about supporting someone beginning by developing an article about the topic of iron crosses (without at first merging these new articles into it)? --do ncr am 15:22, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think we could have done without everything past the statement that "there exists an individual nomination form justifying the national historical significance of each site." I see that, as usual, NRIS doesn't actually produce any of the documentation submitted for the sites, nor can it even find some of the sites, at least not by reference number. I'm therefore having a bit of a problem here because it appears you have created these articles from documents which you haven't cited: they don't actually exist in NRIS, and the information that we can see on the multiple listing documentation doesn't say what's at each site or even what the sites are (the latter association only comes from the NRIS listing on each location). I would also note that of the ones I've found in NRIS so far, they are all listed as "address restricted", which would make producing geolocation data for them rather difficult. So I'm having problems getting past the arguments here. I don't think an article on the multiple listing would be seriously challenged; right now, though, I'm having to assume good faith that some of these sites even exist. Mangoe (talk) 16:49, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Private website "NRHP.com", which posts public domain NRIS data plus a few ads, lists the St. Boniface Cemetery, Wrought-Iron Cross Site one at http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/nd/Benson/state.html. Navigate from state-level http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/nd/state.html to get to all others; you have to know which county each is in. Does that help you? --do ncr am 20:47, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote above that most if not all of those site mentioned above are listed within the Geographic Names Information System maintained by the United States Geological Survey, search page ist at http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/ and just enter the name of the cemetery, Saint spelled out and without the NRHP-added appendix after the comma and without the prefixes like old, I guess. --Matthiasb (talk) 21:07, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I see those listings, but they don't seem to have anything other than what would be in NRIS if they appeared there. That leads me back to (a) why doesn't NRIS show them? and (b) I'm still left wondering where the article content is coming from. Mangoe (talk) 21:25, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

From http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreghome.do?searchtype=natreghome maybe?? Enter St. Boniface Cemetery in search field, click on search, find one result for this specific one, click on it and voila. (It isn!t possible to link directly, only to the PDFs which would be at https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/89001686_text and https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/89001686_photos but in this case they're only placeholder files. Or search for Wrought-Iron Cross Site and you get a longer list, probably all of those (didn't check it). --Matthiasb (talk) 23:53, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Searching where Mattiasb suggests on "iron cross" within state=North Dakota yields mention of all these sites (but not all of the fields of NRIS data) and a link to the MPS document. The links to the individual site documents do not work, unfortunately, for these NRHP listed sites (while corresponding links do work for most North Dakota sites to get you to their actual nomination documents. Note i combined several sets of 2, 3, or 4 NRHP-listed sites into combo articles already. There are 14 articles covering 21 sites, or somehting like that. Wrought-iron cross sites of Holy Trinity Cemetery (Strasburg, North Dakota) is a title composed by me to cover four NRHP sites, Holy Trinity Cemetery, Wrought-Iron Cross Site A, B, C, etc.

Mangoe, I don't get what you are driving at. NRIS is a database, which requires database software to read and use, if you don't want to rely upon others' reports from it, such as the "NRHP.com" reports. The National Park Service does not provide any web interface that gives access to all of the fields of the database. A few parties here, including me, have the database downloaded and use software to extract info. The info cited to NRIS appears in the database. I put the info into sentences, e.g. from a date field for listing date I expanded that to state in words that it was listed on that date. The info cited to the MPS document appears in the MPS document, linked, at page number given in the reference. And now there are additional other sources linked from several of the separate articles. If you want to download and use the NRIS database yourself, you are welcome to get assistance, perhaps posting at WikiProject NRHP. If you want to question what appears in the standard wikipedia reference to NRIS, post there and/or at Template talk:NRISref (where u can see links to some past discussions). I think this is going off-topic, unrelated to the AFD? --do ncr am 00:38, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Some sort of documentation will always exist for NRHP listings. It's not always immediately available online, but if something is on the register, someone already did a lot of research. You can't always write a FA-length article, but you can write something that's reasonably informative and interesting. Perhaps a merge is appropriate, especially if the sites are similar and in the same general area, but I don't think there's an immediate need to make that decision. See how the articles develop. Zagalejo^^^ 00:50, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.