Talk:William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures

Requested move

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I started this article originally with name "William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures". It was just renamed to William Aiken House and associated railroad structures". I don't want to argue for the other position, but I think it has to do with recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places#Address-based listing naming conventions proposal and style suggestion.

I request it be renamed back to the original name. The original name is the U.S. National Historic Landmark name for the site, as shown in NHL summary webpage linked in the article. It is the U.S. National Register of Historic Places name for the site. The original name is echoed in various other websites referring to this site, links to which I can add. I'll post this request at wp:Requested moves and give notice at wt:NRHP and the South Carolina wikiproject. doncram (talk) 20:37, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

• What's wrong with William Aiken House? if it's not going to used for this page, it should be a dab. We are here to write in colloquial English, not officialese, and we don't even list the structures. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Actually, there are two William Aiken Houses, one for father and one for son, both preserved historic sites, and a dab at that name is indeed needed. Okay, now William Aiken House disambiguation is created. Thanks! You're also absolutely right that there should be development of the article to cover the railroad structures that are part of the National Historic Landmark, but that doesn't change the correctness of the article title for serving its purpose of covering the NHL. doncram (talk) 04:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
    • We don't use WP:Official names. (This is a compendium of several guidelines.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Okay, now i have added a list of the structures in the historic district to the article. Thanks also for pointing to that wp:Official Names guideline, which is relevant for the other discussion. The guideline is very clear though, that often official names are appropriate names. So by your statement with its link to that guideline, i interpret you to have meant "we don't have to use official names" when there are common names that differ. The guideline is also clear that where there is an official name "It should always be given early in the article introduction. It should be bolded at its first mention and, where appropriate, italicised." So by the way, if the lower-cased version of the name was held to be a common name for the district (which has not been supported), then the intro would have to read something like "William Aiken House and associated railroad structures, known also and officially as William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures, is a historic district in Charleston, South Carolina...." Whew, now that would be a mouthful! doncram (talk) 06:04, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'm the one who moved the article. As I've explained to Doncram, I perceived this as a straightforward situation of following WP:MOS -- something that did not require discussion. William Aiken House is a proper name, but "Associated Railroad Structures" is a generic term that should not be capitalized as if it were a proper name. The fact that a term was required to be rendered in title case on the official NRHP nomination form and appears in title case in the NRIS does not, IMO, transform that term into a proper name. PMAnderson's comment that "associated railroad structures" should not be part of the title supports the notion that this mouthful is not really a proper name.
  The existence of two different places in one city called William Aiken House does not justify including the railroad structures in this title (for disambiguation); disambiguation could be easily accomplished by inserting hatnotes on each article. Regardless of name, if the railroad structures are an important element of the NRHP listing, they probably should be discussed in the article.
  There's been some related discussion of style for these types of articles at Wikipedia_talk:NRHP#Address-based listing naming conventions proposal and style suggestion. --Orlady (talk) 04:46, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I thought you said or implied elsewhere that you assumed that the name of the site was constructed by a newbie editor. If it was a wikipedia constructed name, then the lower-casing of the phrase would be appropriate, and it would have been a newbie-type mistake to have constructed a false proper noun phrase. And probably there is a wp:MOS guideline that would have been very relevant. But now it should be clear that this was named by me, not a newbie, and that I used the official NHL program name for the district. The same name is also the official National Register of Historic Places name for the district. So it would no longer be a clear wp:MOS matter. If you are suggesting that it is a clear wp:MOS matter now, would you please point to the relevant MOS guideline(s)? Note, because the capitalized phrase is an official name for the district, it is repeated in various websites, and the official name is likely to be the most common name for the site. It is repeated, for example, in the NHL summary website for this district, linked in the article, and here in this private NRHP.COM website that echoes NRIS data. To support a different name being the common name for the district, a good amount of evidence would be needed to overcome the head start that the official name has. In this discussion so far there is no evidence whatsoever yet suggested in support of the lower-case version being a common name for the district. It's okay for you to have made a mistake in assuming that the page name in place was a newbie error. If that was all that was going on here, it would be most helpful if you'd just acknowledge that and agree to renaming it back to the original, official name. But methinks you still don't like that name. Anyhow, if you want to continue the discussion, then I think you need to find and support a different common name for the district. doncram (talk) 06:04, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Also, I don't see where Pmanderson/Septentrionalis said what you attribute Pmanderson to have said. Pmanderson commented, as you do also, that there should be discussion of the railroad structures in the article, some of which I have now added. Pmanderson also asked what's wrong with one name and has (appropriately in my view) refrained from stating a final-type judgment. I presume that Pmanderson is experienced in discussions of this type and is waiting to make a vote / final-type judgment until there's more information forward clarifying the basic issues here. doncram (talk) 06:04, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• I say leave it as is, with the non-proper part of the name in lower case or just move it to William Aiken House. The MOS is pretty clear on the use of official names, and I highly, highly doubt anyone talking about or writing about this place outside of the U.S. government ever refers to it as the William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures or William Aiken House and associated railroad structures. Calling this the common name is really a stretch.--IvoShandor (talk) 07:36, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• For Doncram's benefit, what I told you earlier was: "I noticed William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures and reacted that the name was a mistake by someone unfamiliar with WP:MOS, so I renamed it as a maintenance measure. I did not look at the article history and I am sorry to hear that my action offended you, but it truly looked to me like a clear violation of the style guidelines." I still feel that the capitalization in that version of the title was contrary to style guidelines. I continue to contend that that NRHP's practice of using title case for every property listing does not convert generic descriptions into proper names for Wikipedia's purposes.
  It's good to see that the article now includes some information on the railroad structures. --Orlady (talk) 14:26, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
• Additional musings: If this historic district were called something like the "South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company Historic District", use of title case would make sense. In fact, it's entirely possible that this is what it's known as locally. I'm a bit skeptical of NRHP-listed names in large part because the community I live in includes two NRHP historic districts and several listed properties, including one NHL, whose NRHP-listed names do not reflect local usage. For example, the Woodland-Scarboro Historic District combines the Woodland neighborhood, the Scarboro neighborhood, and a US government-owned contributing property that lies between the two neighborhoods. These three areas have distinctly different histories, but were lumped together for NRHP listings. There are several properties called "Checking Station" (e.g., Bethel Valley Road Checking Station) on the National Register that everywhere else are called "Gatehouse" (including by local preservation groups and by the federal agency that owns them); the term "checking station" is used to mean something entirely different. Also, I had never heard the Graphite Reactor (an NHL) called the "X-10 Reactor" (the title that the article had until I changed it) until I saw the Wikipedia article. --Orlady (talk) 14:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Orlady for also adding other material to this William Aiken House etc article about the district. It's pretty clear there's plenty of material about the house alone to justify a separate main article about the house, by the way, but it is also okay to leave the house in this article about the district.

It's not required to follow local usage in wikipedia article naming, although as a practical and political matter I think it is usually best to follow local usage. An exception would be if Northern New Jerseyites adopted a local nickname, derogatory or otherwise deliberately different than worldwide usage, for the Statue of Liberty. The world "owns" that more than the locals do. Anyhow, for me it's fine for NHL/NRHP article titles to use local names, although the article needs to reflect the official name(s) as alternatives in the intro text and the official name should appear in the NRHP/NHL infobox (NHL name taking precedence over NRHP name if they differ).

Again, there's no support for any other common name for this particular district yet presented in this discussion. Trying a google search on "William Aiken House and associated railroad structures" yields many hits on the capitalized version of the name, and only the current wikipedia page on the downcased version. A typical usage, from a google cache version on the second page of hits, is: "The History Workshop designed a series of outdoor panels that highlight the architecture and history of the William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures National Historic Landmark in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. This historic landmark is significant for its role in the development of the national railway industry...." doncram (talk) 16:38, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

If you can find an example of such use from outside the historic preservation or education field, post it. As such, I found about 2,500 hits on "William Aiken House"+Charleston, suggesting it's in rather common use down there ("We went to a wedding at the William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Properties last week that was so lovely ..."). Daniel Case (talk) 20:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

While I initiated the talk page discussion, I had nothing to do with renaming it in lowercase ... in fact, I didn't even know this article existed until I followed the link from the talk page.

And I agree with Ivo ... leave the name at William Aiken House. That's apparently what it's known as locally ("As Charleston’s premiere venue, The William Aiken House has become the setting for the Southeast’s most enchanting affairs., from its website, linked in EL as "The William Aiken House"); its domainname is williamaitkenhouse.com and not williamaitkenhouseandassociatedrailroadstructures.com. I have said we do not need to use the NPS's "Complex" and "...And Rectory" constructions when writing church articles* because they're not part of the churches' proper names. To me this is the same thing. We can use the full, official listing title boldfaced in the lede. Daniel Case (talk)

• OK, I did use Hoornbeek Store Complex, but for a lack of any better name. And it isn't a church. Daniel Case (talk) 20:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Ivoshandor and Daniel Case's comments in favor of using "William Aiken House" are disregarding the fact that this article is about a much larger historic district. As i noted above, it would be fine if someone wanted to create a separate main article about that one house in this district. This seems like drive-by commenting, where the commentators seem not have read the article or the prior discussion. It remains, William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures is the only name for the district with any usage documented. Daniel's stated quote even cites this full name, although i think perhaps he was being funny and trying to suggest that is an awkward potential quote. However, finding usage of the name "William Aiken House" for the house named that does not speak at all to what is common usage for the much larger historic district. In fact, there probably is not much local usage anyhow, about the district. It probably just is an official district which has some consequences for tax credits on renovations, and so on. doncram (talk) 21:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Don, that last quote was, as I think you understood, a joke intended to point up that no one uses it in casual speech nor are they likely to. Yes, it's a historic district. So are many of our other NHL articles, including those that aren't called "historic districts" in their listings (Harmony Mills, from my work, for example). We don't automatically add "Historic District" to their names. Daniel Case (talk) 02:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I question the necessity of maintaining a one-to-one correspondence between NRHP listings (including NHLs) and Wikipedia articles. In this instance, it might turn out to be better to provide the information in each of two separate articles:

1. This article could be refocused to be an article about the William Aiken House, focused on the house but also including information about its NHL status and the other properties included in the historic district.
2. The article about the railroad, South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, could (and, in fact, should) include information about the NHL historic district in Charleston that commemorates the history of this railroad. Indeed, the current article about the railroad would be improved by incorporating information about the "associated railroad structures" into the article, together with the references cited in the current article about the historic district.

Just as it's easy to overlook serious problems in an article when one is continually reverting vandalism, I think it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when we are focused on creating articles in order to fill in the blanks on a list. The NRHP is part of a bigger picture that is the history and architectural heritage of the U.S. This may be a case where merging information about an NRHP listing into a history article fulfills the bigger-picture objectives of the NRHP Wikiproject more effectively than writing a stand-alone article about the NRHP listing. --Orlady (talk) 21:38, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am definitely going to remain focused on keeping a separate article on each of the 2,443 NHLs in the US, all of which have been created. Again, it is fine to do a separate article on the house which is not by itself a NHL, but there is a legitimate wikipedia need for an article to explain what is the NHL of this name. Every NHL is itself notable and worthy of a separate wikipedia article, if only to explain what each NHL is in a very simple, direct way. Yes, the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company article could and should cover this district. I just added 2 photos and started a section in that article. Currently the section is pretty much a copy of the current NHL article. However the NHL article contains some detail about non-contributing structures which is appropriate in an article about the district but not helpful in an article about the railroad. And other too-detailed-for-the-railroad info can be added to the NHL article. In a big sense, I agree with you philosophically that NRHP/NHL specifics ought to be woven into other articles about history and bigger places. I believe that big purpose is supported in an important, indirect way, by basic work of creating and maintaining narrow, specific articles about NRHP/NHL places. Some overlap and duplication is a necessary consequence, and is not a problem. doncram (talk) 22:24, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Having defended the creation of a Storm King Highway article separate from New York State Route 218 over the weekend at Wikis Take Manhattan 2 (which generated a lot of badly needed pics of NRHPLs in Manhattan, including some I took, BTW), I generally understand your perspective on that. But there are some cases where the project's purposes are served by not having a separate article on the listing ... Chautauqua Institute, which didn't require a separate article on the historic district even though it doesn't totally overlap with the institute grounds (it excludes some newer buildings on the periphery). Daniel Case (talk) 02:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, don, your argument that the name you promote yields many hits is true, sort of. It yields a lot of mirrors and a whole bunch of official websites, your evidence shows that this is the official name, and I agree with Orlady that a large number of NRHP listings are named in some strange way that does not reflect common usage, sometimes not even close. I remain skeptical. This book talks about the house in proper noun terms but just notes the outbuildings, it doesn't call them "Associated Railroad Structures", capitalized or no. But you're really arguing semantics concerning the capitalization. I will never be convinced that "Associated Railroad Structures" is a proper noun. If you keep it, our style guidelines are clear and are not overridden by the NPS' asinine naming scheme. --IvoShandor (talk) 04:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, the google book is a nice source about the house, although it is not about the district. And the outbuildings to which it refers probably mean the coachhouse and perhaps some small buildings on the house property, not the Camden Depot and other railroad structures which appear to be far larger than the house. Also, I agree that "Associated Railroad Structures" is not a proper noun phrase, but "William Aiken House and Associated Railroad Structures" is, because it is the official (and seemingly only) name for the district. I'm not sure its helpful to comment here about the NPS' naming scheme very generally; among other things it seems many names are those proposed by nominators. doncram (talk) 17:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Regardless, and you know I appreciate all you do around here, but I will never agree with a consensus that supports your views on this matter. My feelings are known, I will abide by consensus, but it's obvious where my opinions lie. --IvoShandor (talk) 07:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Leave as is until concensus can be reached under scope of NRHP wikproject on how to name articles. I am not sure that the issue has been thought through. For example, if you think the title should follow WP:MOS over the convention used by NRHP, then it should be Ashley River historic district, not Ashley River Historic District, or Robert Brewton house not Robert Brewton House. So those who are saying that Associated Railroad Structures should not be capitalized contradict themselves unless they are changing every title that capitalizes the words "house," "residence," "property," etc. (with the exception of the historic sites that have become museums or tourist sites under some formalized or widely-accepted capitalized name (like the William Blacklock House which has been named formally by the College of Charleston here)). For now, there is a redirect from the capitalized title. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 02:59, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks PennySpender1983.

I tried and found that it was still possible to make the move back to the original capitalized spelling, moving over redirect. I did this despite the lack of a general consensus in this discussion, because I think that the only consensus possible is to use the official and apparently only name for the district. Reasons to oppose don't make sense to Pennyspender1983 or to me, and I think that some opposition was, to be polite, not thought through. Or the opposition was about something else, not stated here. It is justifiable for administrators closing wikipedia processes to declare a consensus despite opposition, if the opposition is unreasonable. While the discussion here may have been helpful in some way, I think further opposition here would be unreasonable. And, while it would be helpful if the participants would concede, I don't really want to somehow force people to admit they were wrong, just so this move can be made. Anyhow, the default should be the original and official name. If someone wants to do research and identify a different common name and propose that, they could make such a proposal, but the default should not be to leave this at an incorrect name that is unsupportable. There never has been a different proposal. I will follow up somehow at wt:NRHP, also. doncram (talk) 03:49, 13 October 2008 (UTC) }}

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.