Talk:List of courthouses in the United States

previous list and its deletion

A previous version of this list article was considered and deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of courthouse buildings in the United States: A. The list was never intended by any developer to be at the title it was at when AFD'd. This version is a redraft, using the original obtained by wp:REFUND request. --doncram 23:42, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

issues

While developing this list in Draftspace now, I am wondering about various issues. Drafting out the Arkansas section first. Comments welcome.

On coordination of this list vs. List of Federal courthouses in the United States, this is set up to interlace, with a link from each state section here to the corresponding state section of the Federal list. This list is to directly include county courthouses and all other (unless county ones are split out, in which case this includes all other (state, city, town ones). The Federal list is organized by state sections, then sorted by name, and it provides city but not county.

For the county lists, I so far plan to follow List of county courthouses in Alabama format, probably best of those existing. Fields are:

• Courthouse
• Photo
• County
• Location (Street address, City, coordinates)
• Built (Year built)
• Notes (e.g. "NRHP-listed.", or "Part of the Seth Lore and Irwinton Historic District (NRHP).")

Questions

• In the Federal list, add county to location column?

Although this would not be sortable by county, it would help readers find correspondence. --doncram 21:59, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

• In the Federal list, add coordinates for each?
• In this list (county and all other), how get as much NRHP ones as possible? How get non-NRHP ones?
• Should every county be included somehow, even when don't have a notable courthouse identified?

• Splitting out state ones: all need to be split?

It is fairly certain that we will end up needing individual articles for each state. bd2412 T 21:40, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not positive every state will need its section split out, but it doesn't matter for now. Planning to develop each here, then split out. Question though: should "county courthouses" be split out, leaving behind any odd state, city, other jurisdictional courthouses, here. Or split out "County and all other" (besides Federal ones)?

Believe me, I'm positive. I did the lists for the federal courthouses, and every state has more state courthouses than federal courthouses. bd2412 T 15:56, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

• Should each state get a separate page, moving (or copying) the Federal section for the state there, to appear as a separate section along with the "County and all other" list?

Each Federal section could be in a separate page where it is to be edited, but have that block appear twice, i.e. by insertion (or what is the term for it to be replicated?) into the List of Federal courthouses in the United States article, and insertion into "Courthouses in STATE" article. This may be deferred until later, but I wonder what you think, @BD2412:.--doncram 21:59, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of transclusion. bd2412 T 15:57, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

• There should be separate lists for the state, county, and federal courthouses. That way, the federal courthouses can continue to transclude into the master federal courthouse list, and state and county courthouses could do the same for individual lists. I don't expect everything to transclude here, however. Ultimately we're talking about thousands and thousands of entries, each potentially having an image. This will end up being a textual list of lists. By the way, is the intent of this list to include only current courthouses? The federal lists contain former courthouses (repurposed, demolished, etc.) so long as there is a record of them. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:16, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

• Argh, lost everything I wrote in an edit conflict. From Talk:List of United States federal courthouses in Arizona, now I understand more. Two points:

1. I am not currently planning to expand this list to include every county courthouse. So far I have been adding NRHP-listed ones (bluelinks and redlinks) and other notable ones (bluelinks). That is a lot shorter than what you envision. So I don't think there is going to be a need very soon to split out each state's county courthouses list for reason of size alone.

2. I see what you mean about having transclusion units, building blocks, for each STATE's Federal courthouses, each STATE's State courthouses, each STATE's county courthouses. Those can support 3 big lists. But, can the three transclusion units for one state exist on just one state-specific page, i.e. move List of United States federal courthouses in Arizona to List of courthouses in Arizona, then add a section for notable state courthouses (if any) and add a section for notable county courthouses. Can that work, with how transclusion works? (i.e. can 3 big lists each grab one Arizona section?) I want to avoid having relatively useless pages that are just too short, such as just the notable state courthouses in Arizona (0 or 1 or 2 in number). --doncram 20:35, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

No, because how would you transclude just the federal courthouses into the federal list and just the state courthouses into a state list? It would be possible, and in fact advisable, to have a separate federal, state, and county list for each state, and transclude these three into a "List of courthouses in STATE" page for that state, since there is no limit to the number of pages to which a single unit can transclude. bd2412 T 21:22, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Like this. bd2412 T 21:30, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Neat. But I still dislike having all the necessary mini-lists (which would be good targets for AFDs, too), and I thought there oughta be a way to avoid that, and reading through wp:transclusion eventually I get to where it explains how: WP:SELECTIVETRANSCLUSION. Not that i have read that yet, but it seems possible at least! --doncram 03:37, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't see why they would be AFD targets. I have made lists for all the federal courts, and have never faced an objection to them. I would strongly oppose moving those pages or adding material outside the federal courts to them, particularly if that would lead to inconsistencies across the pages. It took me years to get them to the state they are in now, with the balance that they have. bd2412 T 04:22, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

• I think that probably each state should have its own article. This one will be too long. This article could link to each state. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:56, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

• I concur with previous remark. Missouri is now as complete as I can make it, and thus ready to be moved into a separate article (like Alabama?) by someone with more expertise than I have. All 114 counties are included, and all have at least one known non-federal courthouse (notable or not). Almost all have either an existing photo or a built year to demonstrate existence of the building(s). (Photo of Benton County Courthouse is on Benton County Website, linked from Benton County page here.) (Photo and built year of St.Louis County Courthouse to be supplied, as I live in that county. The 1876 separation of St.Louis city and county still has unfortunate consequences reverberating!) Primary resource was existing articles on counties and county seats (following existing pattern of linking those); secondary resource was waymarking.com, which has a Courthouses category and reasonably accurate contributors. Other external resources were not used except to find built dates not otherwise available. STLbells (talk) 18:45, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

worklist

• To get data,
• run big report for NRHP-listed ones:
  • "County Courthouse"  Done (got lots)
  • try for "County Court house"?  Done (got about 20 more)
  • "State court"?  Done (got 1 in New York State, its court of appeals)
  • "City court"?  Done (got 2)
  • "Village court"?  Done (none)
  • "Parish court"  Done got about 15 Louisiana ones
  • "Borough court" got a couple but not any in Alaska
  • Paste each into Excel.
• Other non-NRHP ones? There are photos collected by that Federal employee who made a hobby of it.
  • Try Commons photos? Or only after have built the lists?

Excel

• with one row per courthouse
  • sort by state, name
  • spell out "State"? No, don't display state. Revise "City, ST" to "City, State|City".
  • add county column and fill
  • resort by state, county, name
  • adjust with multiple "[[" and "|" and coordinates form, etc. into Wikipedia table-format
  • saved in Dropbox
  • Paste into Draft:List of courthouses in the United States-work Done

Word:

• add line-breaks, remove tab characters
• replace "^t" by ""
• replace "|-" by "^11|-^11"
• replace "||" by "^11|"
• saved in laptop
• re-paste back to Draft:List of courthouses in the United States-work  Done

Wikipedia

• • Copy-paste back state sections. (Arizona done)
  • Run Dabsolver carefully. Watch for other courthouses to be added and note those separately. What about adding courthouses to the dab pages, at the same time, where Dabsolver shows there are others not listed? Use this DabSolver application to this draft list.
• If a state-specific separate list exists, grab its pics, coordinates.
  • e.g., Arkansas, Alabama
• Scan over article names to see if pics exist for any not having pics here.
  • Visit articles to grab pics.
• Coordinates?

Try Commons photos? Cross check if there are modern, other ones having photos, not in the list.

Update Template:U.S. political divisions county courthouses. Create redirects as needed.

courthouses to add

Found from running DabSolver: *Craighead County Courthouse (Lake City, Arkansas), NRHP-listed, currently a redlink on Craighead County Courthouse dab page.

• Franklin County Courthouse, Southern District
• second Randolph County Courthouse, not the Old one

--doncram 22:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

From DabSolver on Alabama:

• Cleburne County Courthouse in Alabama, the other one besides the Heflin one.
• Macon County Courthouse, the one in Maplethorpe?, not the one in Tuskegee

--doncram 14:52, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Need dab page Kings County Courthouse to cover Kings County Courthouse (Hanford, California) and Kings County Criminal Court (New York City Criminal Court).

For Alaska: Rabinowitz Courthouse

Need to browse all of Category:Courthouses in the United States by state

New York ones probably not caught in NRHP big list to include:

• City Hall Post Office and Courthouse (New York City)
• Members of Category:County courthouses in New York including:
  • Bronx County Hall of Justice
  • 1841 Goshen Courthouse
  • Tweed Courthouse
  • more from that category

--doncram 15:42, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Florida: Baker County Courthouse:

• Redlink Baker County Courthouse (Florida)

Missing column

I like this list. Many of the counties in Georgia are missing the "built" column. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:05, 25 June 2016 (UTC)  Fixed

Kansas, Loiusiana, Maine, Maryland, Mass, etc have similar problems. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:05, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The rest got  Fixed, too. :) --doncram 21:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Illinois

Effingham County in Illinois needs a dab. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:38, 25 June 2016 (UTC)  Fixed

Disambiguation links

All the disambiguation links need to be fixed before this will be ready for mainspace. bd2412 T 20:37, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I think the list is well more than half done with that. And let me assert there would be no remaining dablinks by now, if the DabSolver tool had remained available. It's been out of service for at least a few days. Apply DabSolver to this list currently yields no ambiguous links and the message "There seems to be a hardware fault which I'm attempting to track down." There are other tools/approaches for disambiguating, but I'm personally reliant upon that tool. Hopefully User:Dispenser will be able to fix it (and Dispenser, if you read this, thank you for having it in operation in general, and for specific help here already).

What's needed to complete out basic coverage of all states is to move Draft:List of courthouses in Nebraska to mainspace (List of courthouses in Nebraska, and check List of county courthouses in Nebraska). I personally would be more motivated to further improve that if it were in mainspace, and I dislike working for any long period of time in Draftspace because I have doubts the work will ever get to mainspace, so why bother. For an example of what happens, I did encourage another editor to put their draft List of courthouses in Texas or is it List of county courthouses in Texas into mainspace, which they did, although it's less complete than Draft:List of courthouses in Texas, which needs to be merged. --doncram 19:26, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

New Mexico county courthouses

There is Draft:List of county courthouses in New Mexico under development, yay! To replace a redirect currently at List of county courthouses in New Mexico to the section here. --doncram 03:01, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

county seat wars

Dixon County Courthouse in Ponca, Nebraska is one more where there was a county seat war going on. The construction of the addition was the last salvo in a war between Ponca and Allen, Nebraska about which town would be county seat.

References

--doncram 19:41, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

List of courthouses in Nebraska; standards for state-level lists

Please participate at Talk:List of courthouses in Nebraska. This list-article has recently been developed by an i.p. editor, for better overall probably, but causing issues. --Doncram (talk) 18:22, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Owen County Indiana Courthouse.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:22, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Complete rewrite

This list needs WP:TNT.

• It mixes current and former courthouses with no significant distinction, e.g. in Ohio, the Old Meigs County Courthouse appears (under a confusing name) while the Meigs County Courthouse doesn't, and the Perry County Courthouse appears while the Old Perry County Courthouse doesn't — and the Montgomery County Courthouse is a museum, but it's not indicated as former
• There's an obsession over historic designations; just look for "refnum"
• It's got tons of gaps, e.g. since when does West Virginia, with 55 counties, have just 30 courthouses?
• It claims to mix county courthouses and other kinds of courthouses, but where are the Virginia city courthouses? Some of them even have historic designation, e.g. the Lynchburg Courthouse, but they're all omitted.
• The names are a bizarre mix: what is the 1841 Goshen Courthouse, for example? Why is "Indiana" included in the name for the Ripley County Courthouse? Why are all those war memorials included? How did courthouse boundaries get increased?

Nyttend (talk) 12:19, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything. Here are my thoughts:

• The list should start over with just county courthouses. Maybe also start another list of municipal/city courthouses, but don't mix them up.
• I think the notes section is totally unnecessary. There's no reason on this kind of list to discuss historic designations or boundaries. The list should just be name, location, year built, and picture.
• If it is just proper county courthouses, it shouldn't be terribly difficult (but maybe a bit slow) to fill in most of the gaps.

kennethaw88 • talk 18:53, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

I created this list-article and have done a lot of development in it, and in split-out state level lists and in other related lists. And have created hundreds, certainly, of linked articles about individual courthouses. Calling for this to be deleted is, I think, a way of expressing disdain and dislike, for sake of being mean perhaps. I literally created the essay wp:TNTTNT which explains why wp:TNT is, well, stupid in my view, and confirmed by numerous others who defended that essay. Calling for TNT is not meant seriously, I think, as no reasonable editor would seriously accept deletion of this by AFD or by blanking and re-starting. User:Nyttend did successfully put a prior version into play for deletion by moving it to a nonsensical title, which eventually was noticed and caused an AFD (which sadly did lead to deletion from mainspace of the list-article). The current version was re-created by me from the deleted version and was expanded by me. It is an accurate compendium of thousands of verified-to-be-notable courthouses with their names, photos, coordinates, etc.; it would be ludicrous and worse to simply discard it. Complaints that it omits some county-equivalents courthouses in Virginia would naturally be addressed, by, well, adding them! The complaints contradict themselves, actually.

About complaints that this includes current and former buildings, well let me copy in my statement at Talk:List of county courthouses in Texas:

And yeah, there has been plenty of consideration in Wikipedia about whether "former" vs. "current" buildings or other items in a list of notable places should be kept together or split. The consensus always or almost always has been to keep them together, in general keeping geographically-nearby ones together, and to divide by region/area if necessary. The most recent full discussion/decision that I am aware of was in 2018 at Talk:List of Masonic buildings in the United States#Split vs. merger proposal, where there was overwhelming consensus that former vs. current Carnegie libraries, Masonic buildings, etc. be kept together. Note there are at least two kinds of "former", ones no longer serving their original function vs. ones destroyed and gone. Both types of former are kept in with current ones in all or most list-articles I am aware of.

Actually there is one exception that I am aware of, a list-article developed by Nyttend which provides IMHO an incomplete list of courthouses somewhere. They chose to delete and not to discuss the addition of former ones, and I chose not to open an RFC or otherwise make a stink, there, some years ago. It is hardly obvious that including just current ones (many of which are clearly less notable than historical ones, and hence often not Wikipedia-notable at all), is a better way to go for Wikipedia.

There are ongoing efforts to develop sections (including sections that have been split out), e.g. see Talk:List of county courthouses in Texas.

About the Notes column, I completely agree that it is not necessary to state permanently the NRHP refnum there. It is highly appropriate to include some brief description of individual courthouses, hopefully drawn from separate articles that have since been created, to inform readers' decision to click through and see more about a given item. The statement of refnums is an artifact of Nyttend's efforts to delete everything, actually; they and other editors know that in many many similar list articles like List of Methodist churches in the United States and numerous other lists in Category:Lists of buildings and structures in the United States that I have created, and in the huge system of National Register of Historic Places listings in the United States and sub-lists that I and Nyttend and others developed, that I do not ever elsewhere choose to appear to make a big deal of refnums. Here, putting them in was easily done by how I created this from a certain source, and I believed it would head off continuing opposition to the list from ill-informed (IMO) persons who had participated in the AFD. I believe that worked to address the "fake news" type opposition. Clearly each one of these is a significant item; the specific refnums emphasized each of these really really really was NRHP-listed and then there would probably exist extensive documentation from NRHP nominations online.

Now, as long as serious opposition to existence of this list-article and to inclusion of all the NRHP-listed items is gone, which I rather think it is, it would be fine to remove those refnums. But, as in the Methodist churches list and many others, it makes good sense for the NRHP listing years to be stated in a "Years" column along with "built" years where those are available. And the refnums for the most part provide the listing years, because until relatively few years ago the first 2 digits gave the year within the 1900s that the place was NRHP-listed. So a "Years" column within each state table should replace the "Built" column, and the NRHP listing years should be added there at the same time the refnums are deleted from the Notes column. Already there are many many items where sensible brief descriptions are provided, either supported directly by an inline reference or supported naturally by referenced content in corresponding articles.

So, I'd welcome sensible development by others here, but deleting everything or causing another AFD would be unhelpful and would fail. As in effect the previous AFD provoked in my opinion by deliberate sabotage of the previous version eventually failed, in effect. And mindless deletion of the refnums without capturing the years should also be avoided. --Doncram (talk) 03:15, 19 May 2021 (UTC)