Talk:Bear Spring House, Guardhouse, and Spring

Recent edits

Hi Doncram, okay take a look at this one if you do not mind. It's difficult to paraphrase the descriptions sometimes, so I quoted the descriptions. If you do not mind taking the time to look and let me know your thoughts, I'd appreciate it. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 22:24, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Sure, here are some thoughts:

• Although I am not yet completely evaluating the current article vs. the NRHP text, I basically like the quoting. Some others might prefer those passages to be rewritten and to be taken out of quotes, but IMO that's not necessary. It would be fine if someone wants to, maybe that could be stated at Talk.
  • Not sure whether I've gone about this specific point elsewhere, but there is sort of "nearly-PD" status on NRHP documents like this, in that they seem non-commercial and that many/most people including the authors themselves think of them as PD or PD-like. For no NRHP nomination ever has anyone sought to profit off the writing, AFAIK. Here there is no evidence of any commercial interest which anyone wants to protect. So, the way copyright law works, it is more okay to quote longer passages from such "nearly-PD" stuff, than if it were a commercial work.
• Interesting there's mention of a hydraulic ram; i learned about such only a year or two or three ago in connection with a historic one in Washington state, and I ended up contributing a bit at that article. Personally I'd be interested in more about this, because they are unusual.
• Very interesting also that it's at Apache Pass, of Battle of Apache Pass fame. It should be mentioned at, or at least be linked from a "See also" section of, the battle article and/or the Fort Bowie National Historic Site which the battle article mentions. The reservoir, at least, was built in 1874, it says... was that built by soldiers stationed at Fort Bowie?

• Added the see also info. The reservoir and guardhouse were both built by the military. I've added that fact into the article.

• It starts off "The Bear Spring House, Guardhouse, and Spring is a late 19th century ranch...", but the NRHP site of that name is not a ranch. Change to saying it is a historic site preserving part of a ranch, or better to say part of the historic "X Ranch" or whatever ("Dickson Ranch"? "Knape Ranch"? it's odd the article doesn't mention any ranch name AFAICT). If there's substantial info available about the ranch, it would be fine to move the article to "X Ranch" or whatever and to cover the NRHP place in a section. Or is it, was it, could it be, considered part of Fort Bowie, and if so say that?

• On page 4 of the nomination form it says, "The boundaries of this nomination have been drawn to encompass all of the significant natural and man-made elements included within the present boundaries of the 1500+ acre Bear Spring Ranch." So, I think that it is okay to leave that description in the lead. There is not much info out there on Knape Ranch, just some mentions in newspapers which show that it was called that in the 1930s. Same for the Apache Springs Cattle Company. It was never actually part of Fort Bowie.

• Did you, or could you, do a quick search to find a current/recent source which would establish what the place is now? Maybe the historic ranch no longer exists. My quick search finds multiple "Bear Spring Ranch" places in different states, by the way, but also I think there is something more recent that is useable. There is a published topographic map which may show it (I didn't click all the way through to verify that's the Arizona place); it might work to say this is the place known as Bear Spring Ranch as of 19xx or 20xx, where that is the year of the topo map, more current than 1983.

• I always do a Newspapers.com and Google Books search on these properties to see if there is any other info available other than the NRHP docs. For this, the only other thing is a 2014 dissertation from the UofA about cattle ranching, which mentions the ranch in several places, overlapping with the info in the NRHP doc. I'm not that good with maps, so I hesitate to add them to articles.

• The 1981 photo of the reservoir which I see at Commons is nicer (but needs to be deleted), but there is another photo, File:Old Bear Spring from the top.JPG, at Commons which shows some of the reservoir wall, and I think including it would add.
• The article currently includes one of the copyvio photos. Could you please remove that? It is part and parcel of the current article, and it is not fair, or something like that, to ask me or anyone else to review the article with it present. You need to remove it, and be okay yourself with how the article comes across without it, before getting anyone to review. Perhaps, say, if you remove the photo then you may realize you want to say something more or differently in the text, to compensate. Sorry, I had not figured out that you did remove photos, in your recent changes. Thank you for doing so!
  • Oh, hmm, the photo currently in the infobox is identified as being from c.1915. And at its Commons page I see that it was found at https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/a1639681-4515-4b55-8f9f-bc0853e85ce1 and was uploaded by you. You used a PD template in the uploading which states (falsely) "This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17...". However it probably is PD, for different reason that it is from before whatever is the relevant number of years, beyond which stuff is no longer copyrighted. Could you possibly please see to having that changed? You or i or anyone else who could join this process oughta fix everything like this, as we go along.

• -fixed the PD tag on commons.

• The article currently includes (false) claim that the NRHP text is PD, as part of the templated statement that the article includes text incorporated from that source. That must be removed, because it is false, setting aside my preference that such a template should not be used even if the text were PD. Would there be any difficulty at all for you now to do that (it could be difficult, perhaps, for reason that the article does in fact still include text incorporated from the source)?

• Fixed.

• You know it is false, right? Or is your including it, with statement "This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain ...", suggest at all that you in fact think it is valid, or that you are not sure? If you are only going along with making changes in sufferance regarding views of mine which you think are not valid, please do say so right now!
  • - no, after you brought it to my attention, I realized I was making the sophomore mistake of conflating plagiarism with copyright violation. I get what you're trying to say, or else I'd tell you to go take a flying... .
• The NRHP document reference (footnote #2) and the PD template state that the text includes material from a text titled "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form". That is not a thing. Or that is 90,000 things. Or that is just the name of the blank Federal form which has been filled out 90,000 times. Yes there is a link to a currently-valid URL of a specific document, but the URL could go bad, and it is still not good writing not to give the specific title for the source you are trying to cite.
• Using as title "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Bear Spring House, Guardhouse, and Spring / Knape Ranch" would be okay by me; that is what I personally would do. There's room to quibble if that is exactly the best statement of, interpretation of what the title should be, I grant, and some NRHP editors would interpret it somewhat differently. I would be willing to facilitate a discussion (probably best at wt:NRHP, or at least with notification thereto, if you'd like. But no one, yourself included, can possibly think the title is "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form".

• Fixed ref title to read: "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Bear Spring House, Guardhouse, and Spring", since I think that's enough, adding the Knape Ranch, since it's an alt name I don't think was necessary.

• The document has authors (and a date of preparation), and it is arguably wrong not to name them ... in fact, now that I think about it, it is technically arguable that there's an issue of plagiarism not to do so, because the authors are not being given the credit due to them. The document's section 9 gives: "Form Prepared By / name/title: Kenneth M. and Anne F. Cooper, Owners / Edited by SHPO staff organization". What I would use is "author=Kenneth M. Cooper" and "author2=Anne F. Cooper" and "author3=Arizona State Historic Preservation Office staff". (Maybe "editor=" oughta be used for the latter, though, I dunno.)

• I was actually wondering about that, as I was unsure who was the author of what. But I think your solution of giving the couple as the author and the staff as the editor works. Let me know if you disagree.

• Section 9 gives "date November 1982/January 1983". I would use "date=January 1983" in the reference. The article currently asserts that the document is dated March 18, 1983, which cannot be true. The listing was accepted, it was listed, by bureaucrats on March 18, which is different. Sometimes a listing happens multiple years later than the date of writing of its nomination document.

• Okay, that makes sense. There were two dates I was looking at- 3/18/83 which is the date it was entered into NRHP, and therefore was the date it was "published" or 2/7/83, which is the date the form was received by the NRHP.

• By the way the Section 9 also gives organization "Bear Spring Ranch", which I think means that's the name of the ranch owned by the Coopers in 1983. "Knape Ranch" is given as an alternative/common name at the top of the document, although that could mean it was a common name in the historic era, consistent with NRHP document preparation guidance given in an NPS manual, which instructs one to name a place by historic era name or a name generally associated with a place, not merely a temporarily current name. It looks like the historical name is Bear Springs. The dissertation talks about the ranch being called that back in the 1920s.
• The NRHP reference given omits mention or link of the photographs which were part and parcel of the nomination. Other prolific NRHP editors have sometimes or almost always failed to do that, I must say, but I think it underserves readers who would likely want to see them, and I think it is "wrong" not to give a complete reference. You found that the photographs were at https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/a1639681-4515-4b55-8f9f-bc0853e85ce1 and that URL still works, and there's probably also an archived version at Wayback machine. Although (besides the old photo which is possibly okay) I don't want to see those photos included in the article, I do want to see them included in the document reference. You could revise the reference to be like the draft reference you could get for this place at www.elkman.net/nrhp (which includes a separate link for the photos). Or, better, per how i have mentioned elsewhere, you could link to the NARA version which should exist, which would provide text + photos in one PDF.

• I'll work on that, and see if I can figure out how to do it.

• By the way, I see the article includes Category:Articles using NRISref without a reference number, which looks like an error-type message. That's a hidden category: are your preferences set to that you see those? The infobox does properly include the NRHP reference number; this message is about the whether the reference number is also included in the NRIS reference within the infobox, instead. About this, there is unresolved dispute about the nature of that reference, which you don't need to get into (IMO the NRIS reference is misleading and wrong in fact, in what it shows if it is used when including a reference number; resolution would change, one way or another, what appears in this and many other articles). It is actually fine and good that this message shows on this article for now.

• I don't have the hidden cats displayed.

• I'll stop now, without doing a complete and final comparison of the current article vs. the NRHP text. Which is probably the main thing you were asking for. Could you make changes, as you see fit, on the current article, and then ping me again, though?

Thanks again for revising the article and inviting me to comment. You really are being quite decent about all this, not minding me too much, thanks again for that. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 04:36, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed reply. Will go through this later today after I do my NPP patrolling. Will ping you when I finish. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 10:38, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay, Doncram - took your suggestions and incorporated them into the article. Also responded above within your text (hope you don't mind) to each of your comments. I appreciate the time you're spending on this.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:18, 22 January 2023 (UTC)