Talk:Rhyolite, Nevada/Archive 1

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This article is weak. Rhyolite is one of the most famous ghost towns in the United States. Please expand in anyway possible. A mcmurray 05:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

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Tomorrow I will add to the article, though much of my knowledge of the city (not "ghost town") is from non-scholarly sources. --Desertphile 03:50, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

GA next perhaps

I'm trying to get this article up to at least GA standards. I believe it's there. I hoped not to tread on toes by removing the gallery. The Manual of Style recommends working the images into the main text and eliminating the gallery if possible. The original article wasn't long enough to accommodate many photos in the main text, but that is no longer the case. In addition, some of the images in the gallery had license problems, which probably would not have survived the eagle eyes of reviewers. User:Tillman made a helpful change yesterday by splitting off the new mine stuff into a section of its own. If anyone else has ideas or suggestions for improvement, please post them. Finetooth (talk) 00:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks and congratulations on the Good Article, which appears to be almost all your good work. Quite a change from the old article! Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 22:54, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I just ran it through peer review, which yielded quite a few more good suggestions that I finished incorporating today. I will probably nominate the article for FA tomorrow. I need to let it cool for a few hours, give it another read-through, and then go for it. Finetooth (talk) 23:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Gallery removal

I thought I should explain why I have removed another image gallery from this article. A lot of people have taken photographs of Rhyolite, and it's tempting to add collections of them here. However, WP:IG advises against adding images or collections of images that do not directly illuminate an article's content or that are repetitive. In the case of the gallery I just removed, other problems were also evident. For example, the image of the ghost rider with the bicycle is not part of Rhyolite but rather part of the Goldwell Open Air Museum and is protected by copyright. A photo of it cannot be legally published on Wikipedia and must be removed. On the other hand, properly licensed photos can be uploaded to the Commons, a huge repository of varied images with a category specifically devoted to Rhyolite. Please see Commons:Category:Rhyolite, Nevada. I would urge photographers to set up Commons accounts and to learn how to upload and license their favorite self-made photos to the Commons, where readers can see them by clicking on the links like the one in the External links section of this article. WP:COMMONS is a good place to begin to learn how all of this works. It includes a link to a tutorial that explains how to set up a Commons account and get started. Finetooth (talk) 20:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I should add that I'm not objecting to the quality of the photos that I just removed. I especially like the old car from that five-photo set, but I don't think it illuminates this particular article. Finetooth (talk) 20:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The article really should have a photo of the bank, which is iconic for Rhyolite. There's a good one at File:Rhyolite-banque.JPG, but it needs to be cropped. I'll do it (eventually) unless you beat me to it.

As far as the Goldwell sculptures -- I'm pretty sure that they can't restrict 3rd party photos, as they assert on their website. The sculptures themselves are copyrighted, of course. The place to ask is Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

I'm glad to see these have been preserved, and added to. The Last Supper group appeared near the old depot on Halloween in the mid 1980's and were very entertaining. The bicycle-riding ghost appeared about this same time, and I never knew the story behind them -- I was working on the old Montgomery-Shoshone then, trying to find enough reserves to reopen it (didn't work out). Anyway, they're a part of the Rhyolite story, and merit a section, imo -- maybe a separate article, if someone is so inclined?

And congratulations on the Featured Article! I need to get back by Rhyolite sometime soon. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 04:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Tillman. You make a good point about the bank. One of the five photos I removed yesterday was Image:Rhyolite Cook Bank.jpg, and I could re-add it as a single. I don't want to clutter the page with too many photos, so perhaps the bank could go in, and the school could come out. Does this sound reasonable?

Sounds good to me --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:40, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. I'll tweak it later today to remove the writing at the bottom of the image. If you think another image of the bank is better than this one, feel free to make a swap. Finetooth (talk) 20:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Copyright law is hideously complex, and I'm not a lawyer. However, I'm learning about some aspects of copyright law as it applies to Wikipedia bit by bit. In the United States, there is no "freedom of panorama" that applies to art. I learned this when I took a photo of an outdoor sculpture, published it on the Commons, and had it taken down by an editor who explained "freedom of panorama" to me. An explanation can be found at Commons:Freedom of panorama#United States. In part, it says, "... any publication of an image of a copyrighted artwork thus is subject to the approval of the copyright holder of the artwork... ". There are exceptions, too complicated to go into here (and possibly too complicated for me to grasp), but the Commons article explains them.

The ghost bike rider and the Last Supper sculptures are the work of Albert Szukalski, a Belgian artist who fell in love with the Nevada desert. The Goldwell Open Air Museum has published a film, Death Valley Project, that's available on DVD. It has footage of Szukalski and his companions making the Last Supper sculptures in the road in front of the Rhyolite train station. (I need to add a sentence about this to the Rhyolite article with a citation to the film.) Most of the other sculptures at the museum were also made by Belgians who, if memory serves, knew Szukalski and made trips to Nevada with him to add new pieces. I think there's enough material to create a separate article about the museum and probably too much to fit into the Rhyolite article without damaging the prose flow. I thought about doing a separate article, but I realized that the obvious photos of the art itself would be taboo, and that stopped me. I will give it some more thought.

Thanks, that seems pretty clear-cut. Too bad. You (or I) can always ask for permission from Goldwell, waiving their $25 fee -- fotos would be good for their business... --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:40, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

They would have to release permission into the public domain with no commercial restrictions. Since they sell T-shirts with images of the art on them, I don't think they would be willing to license the images for commercial use. Any non-commercial clause in the license would make the art images unusable by Wikipedia. Finetooth (talk) 20:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

You never know till you ask. They might be willing to release one or two low-res shots. Or we might be able to claim fair use for a photo or two.... --Pete Tillman (talk) 02:51, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

A good point. I'll try to work up a separate article about the museum over the next week or so. A fair-use rationale for at least one image needed to make the museum make sense sounds pretty reasonable. Having an actual article for people to look at might also make it easier to ask for free-use low-res images. Finetooth (talk) 03:35, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Please let me know what you think about replacing the school with the bank. Finetooth (talk) 17:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Bank shot looks great! Thanks -- striking photo. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Glad you like it. I'm hoping it makes the photographer happy too. I cropped the photographer's name and the copyright symbol from the original per WP:IUP#User-created images and re-uploaded the image. I'd like to upload it to the Commons, but uploading from Wikipedia to the Commons is something new for me. I normally upload directly to the Commons from files on my desktop. I tried Commons helper and a couple of other things but got nowhere. I'm sure I can eventually figure out the entanglements, but I'm flummoxed this evening. Do you know how to do this? Finetooth (talk) 03:35, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry -- I've never done it, either. I think there's an automated routine around... Good luck! --Pete Tillman (talk) 03:56, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

User:Feydey moved it for us, and I have sent a "thank you". It's really nice when help arrives unexpectedly like this. Finetooth (talk) 18:42, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Rhyolite land ownership

"The Goldwell Open Air Museum lies on private property just south of the ghost town, which is on public property overseen by the Bureau of Land Management." -- from the lead.

My recollection is that the Bottle House, Train Depot, and a few other parcels are still privately-owned, but all of my Rhyolite files are in storage. Anyone else? TIA, Pete Tillman (talk) 18:19, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Good question. To be safe, I'll remove "public" from the claim in the lead. I didn't run into any documents that said that parts of the ghost town were in private hands, but it's possible. BLM volunteers or part-time employees were giving tours of the Bottle House in February and March 2009, and the train depot and Bottle House were fenced off and watched over by those same volunteers. The land was all private at one time and passed to the BLM I know not when. It may be that parcels within the town did not pass to the BLM and are still in private hands. I just don't know. By the way, User:Lx 121 has made some changes to the article's images and captions over the past few months. The latest was the substitution of the three-panel image for the single-panel image (the center panel of the three). Any opinion on which, one-panel or three-panel, is better? Finetooth (talk) 19:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I like the three-panel -- amazing detail in the full-resolution version! I built test-leach columns on the old millsite -- I imagine they're still there, two 20-foot columns of (ims) 4-ft diameter concrete drainpipe.

Quite an operation, in the old days. Pity it never made any money. Best regards, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Something prompted me this time around to look at your user page. I am impressed not only by the list of articles but the wonderful photos. Too much to take in all at once, but I'll be back. I'm not a geologist, but I have an amateur fascination with the subject. Finetooth (talk) 03:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Did you get to User:Tillman/Favorites gallery? I've become quite the Flickr (and archives) photo prospector.... Cheers -- Pete Tillman (talk) 04:06, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

re: land ownership cannot remember which site it was on, but one of the main rhyolite (volunteer/supporter) sites had an extensive set of images of the restoration of the bottle house, in the 2000's (forgot the year too! >__<) the same site (pretty sure it was the same site... ) mentioned that there had been a land swap (or some deal) with barrick gold in the early 2000's(?) with the train station (previously barrick property) becoming a part of the park. the plan was to restore it & use it as a visitor's centre, etc. ...when they get the $ to fund the work. the fencing seems to date to barrick's ownership & is probably still in place for safety (& anti-vandalism) reasons (& possibly a bit of inertia). the more recent photos of the station showed some decay & wear; hopefully it's mostly cosmetic, but some large trim pieces were missing from the exterior decor, & there were a few cracks that did not look good. don't think it's going to come down (hope not!), but they probably don't want people to wander thru & risk getting brained by a lovely chunk of early 20th century spanish-colonial-revival masonry...

sry this is so vague; i skimmed thru the material briefly, months ago (don't have time to go dig it up atm, when i do i'll add links).

the info seemed pretty solid, tho: unless the station decays (or gets torched/vandalized/etc.) beyond repair, it should end up getting a full restoration & inclusion in park operations "some day".

also; i've got more pd-pre-1923 rhyolite media (photos) to upload @ wmc, but i need to backtrace the site links where i found the stuff & i've just got too much else on my plate right now. will add to the cat @ wmc piecemeal, as i can. (aside from the S&M mill & mine 3-panel) i've got 2 general views of the town circa 1905-8 & a 1908 town plat/map uploaded thus far.

@ tillman: agreed with finetooth; you do good work! :)

Lx 121 (talk) 23:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!

Did you ever get a chance to post your historic photos? Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)