Talk:Baltic, Connecticut

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was page moved.  Skomorokh, barbarian  18:14, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

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Baltic Historic District → Baltic, Connecticut — - Use name of community for a merged article on community and the NRHP historic district. This is one of a number of CT NRHP HD - hamlet mergers discussed at Talk:List of RHPs in CT and in linked discussions. I believe this move/merger is now the consensus and I would move it myself, but it requires admin assistance to move. --doncram (talk) 15:05, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Clarification and request

This article and a few hundred other articles covering NRHP historic districts in CT has been subject of past dispute. An unusual sentence appears in the article: "The district and the village are substantially similar.[citation needed]". For anyone needing clarification, what that represents is a compromise accepting a merged article for now but reflecting the lack of references which actually support the merger of the village/hamlet topic with the NRHP historic district topic. In particular, it is not known from any reliable, verifiable source what is the nature of overlap in geography and relevant history between the NRHP HD and the village/hamlet.

Speaking for myself and others who participated in the previous discussions, we request other Wikipedia editors to leave that sentence in place (leaving the "citation needed" tag too, but adding no further tags), unless or until an adequately reference-supported alternative description of the relationship between the NRHP HD and the village/hamlet is added to the article. Anyone is welcome to obtain and use the NRHP application document (available for free, upon request, from the National Register) to develop the article including addressing this matter. doncram (talk) 18:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, goody! Doncram wants to use another tiny village's talkpage to rehash the discussion from the 199,552-kB page Talk:Poquetanuck. (Just what I wanted to spend the day after Thanksgiving thinking about.)

To rehash things that I have said before, all this relates to Doncram's concern that titles for historic district articles (such as "Baltic Historic District") should not be redirected to articles about villages (such as Baltic, Connecticut) unless it has been determined that the placed to which the historic district designation applies is "substantially the same" geographically as the village. Notwithstanding the epistemological challenge of trying to determine whether the boundaries of a village that has no defined boundaries are the same as the boundaries (which may be precisely or loosely defined) described in the NRHP nom form, I think everyone agreed that a village and an HD could be discussed in one article if they are "substantially the same place."

There's a very big difference between (1) Wikipedians agreeing, for purposes determining how to handle the subject matter in Wikipedia, that a village and an HD are "substantially the same" and (2) adding a factual statement to an encyclopedia article saying that the two are "substantially the same" or "substantially similar." By analogy, Wikipedians often reach consensus that a particular topic is notable (for purposes of determining how to handle the subject matter in Wikipedia), but the article does not explicitly state that the topic is "notable".

There are several problems with an article saying that a village and HD are "substantially similar". The most serious of these is that, in the context of an article, the statement makes no sense. Does it mean, for example, that the village and the HD are two different places but they are both built with the same building materials? (In the context of an article, the meaning is unclear. It is because these sentences are so absurdly unclear that I have added the "clarify" template. My preference is to delete the sentence, but that generates major tantrums, so I figure that a "clarify" template will at least let the reader know that s/he is not the only one who can't understand the sentence.) I am aware that the intent is to say that the village and the HD have substantially the same geographic extent -- or substantially similar boundaries. However, that assertion is not only unsupported by sources but it is inherently unknowable (because I believe that it is a philosophical impossibility to prove or disprove that the the boundaries of a village that has no boundaries are the same as the HD boundaries -- we might just as well ask "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?") and it is usually of no more than trivial interest (thus not something to include in the article -- short stub articles about places or historic districts should not focus on details of boundaries.)

I contend that these sentences do not belong in articles at all -- not with "citation needed" templates and not with "clarify" templates. Previously I have suggested (repeatedly) that any article about "Podunk" can include a simple declarative sentence in the form, "Podunk Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 1, 1980" (cited to NRIS, of course). That type of sentence acknowledges some sort of association between Podunk and the HD, but it requires no speculative assertions about the relationship (geographic or otherwise) between Podunk and the HD. Doncram has consistently rejected that argument and replaced my sentences with "substantially similar... [citation needed]" statements. I now understand that Doncram believes that if a person looking for for "Podunk Historic District" is redirected to the Podunk article, the Podunk article must include an explicit statement regarding the geographic relationship between Podunk and the Podunk HD. I contend that this is a needless concern. I am not aware of any Wikipedia policy or guideline that says that the article that is the target of a redirect (or a piped link) must necessarily cover a topic that is substantially the same as the topic indicated by the redirected title. Indeed, one of the recommended uses of redirects identified in WP:Redirect is "redirects from sub-topics and small topics to broader articles." Redirecting a village HD title to the article about the village where the HD is located is similar to redirecting a sports team member's name to the article about his sports team. Moreover, I can't see that this type of redirection should cause apoplexy on the part of users. When an HD article title redirects to the village article and the village article contains some content related to the HD, why shouldn't the user be satisfied that the redirect is valid? --Orlady (talk) 21:26, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Just noticed Orlady's reply. No i don't want to rehash the discussion at Talk:Poquetanuck. The agreement among some editors there (noting your disagreement) was to make a request like I made above. To other editors, please read the request above. doncram (talk) 01:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

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