Talk:Federal building

Unintended deletion

When editing the page to make referencd to the management by the General Services Administration, the article was too long and without sections (at least, one for Canada and other for the U.S.) and partly deleted. But I cannot revert (again cuts) using my mobile device.--Nopetro (talk) 08:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

restored. thanks for your posting here. --doncram (talk) 13:38, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Reorganization, possible merger

User:MB noted their being perplexed about existence of Federal Building and Federal Building and Post Office disambiguation pages at my talk page, and notes there is a lot of overlap. I created both as disambiguation pages a long time ago. Perhaps the Federal Building disambiguation page should be revised to be a list-article about Federal buildings?

Also, there are multiple places named exactly "Federal Building and Post Office" so it is appropriate to have a disambiguation page for them, but perhaps not with all of the entries that are not exact matches for that phrase. It could "See also" link to a list-article about Federal buildings and to the list-article about U.S. Post Offices. --doncram 19:09, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

There are disambiguation pages like Old U.S. Post Office and U.S. Post Office and Courthouse which continue to serve as disambiguation pages about places having those specific names, even though all of their members are covered in List of United States Post Offices. This is appropriate. All of the Federal Building and Post Office members are probably also included in the list-article of U.S. post offices.

I suggest now to finish converting "Federal Building" to being an article about what a Federal building is, and to include a list of notable ones. Not sure if it should be about United States ones only...probably yes, but with "See also" links to any Canadian examples. MB, any comment? --doncram 19:54, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

This article is titled Federal Building, yet only a few share that exact name. Most of the others entries have some combination of Post Office or Courthouse in the name. The same is true of Federal Building and Courthouse; most of the entries don't have that exact name. Both articles have all sorts of entry names (city, honoree, "old"). What they have in common is that they are "Federal Buildings" that combine one or more of the functions Courthouse, Post Office, Federal Office Building.

Update: There were a number of entries appearing not to have "Federal Building" in their name; I have now updated all those to show that "Federal Building" does in fact appear in the primary name or at least in a secondary name role, for the buildings which were listed here. Originally, they all showed that way, I am sure, but random editing over the years has changed what was appearing here. --doncram 18:53, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is a good reason for a article about Federal Building - it sounds like mostly a definition. To aid in navigation, we could combine all the entries in both these articles into Federal Building, keeping it as a dab to list all building that have "Federal Building" in the name. Federal Building and Courthouse could just redirect there. MB 21:49, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe technically it would be a wp:SIA Set Index Article? Anyhow there is definitely room / legitimate need in Wikipedia to have a List of Federal buildings or List of United States Federal Buildings or List of United States Federal buildings, because there obviously are a lot of notable ones. And usually for a list of X, there is an article about X itself, or X itself is covered in the same article. I don't mind which it is titled, there can be a redirect to the list-article to the article or vice versa.

Now that this has been discussed, I guess I want for there to be a list-article, and for it to include pictures and references and for it not to be a disambiguation page.

But about "Federal Building and Courthouse" or "Federal Building and U.S. Post Office" or other combinations where there are in fact multiple places specifically of that combo name, I think that having a disambiguation page is still appropriate.

Do you want to invite others to comment? By this ping to User:BD2412, I hereby invite them. They were the main force changing over "U.S. Post Office" from a disambiguation page to a list-article, if i recall correctly. I wonder about posting notice of this discussion to wt:NRHP or wp:WikiProject Disambiguation and/or elsewhere. --doncram 00:24, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we have multiple issues here. You make a case for a List of Federal buildings and that is certainly fine. But I'm a little unclear of what that would include since there are already List of United States Post Offices and List of United States federal courthouses. Presumably, most federal buildings are already on one or the other of these, some are on both, and a few might not fit either. Would it have only buildings NOT on either of these lists, (e.g. Pentagon, FBI headquarters, and other noteable federal buildings), or be a more comprehensive list? Regardless of where you go with this, Lists are to provide information, not for navigation.

So regardless of whether we have a List of Federal buildings, there is still the original question of these two DAB pages. I maintain that they need some kind of cleanup, perhaps as a SIA since they are all buildings, or if they remain DABS then something to reduce the overlap. Will ask for further opinions. MB 02:56, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

What 2 DAB pages do you mean? Of two DAB pages that were the original focus, one will go away ("Federal Building" will be converted to a list of Federal Buildings). It seems fine to me to have the specialized disambiguation page(s) like "Post Office and Federal Building" continue as disambiguation pages; i see no issue/problem with having them. --doncram 17:45, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I would define the List of Federal Buildings to cover the multipurpose places known at least sometimes as "Federal Building", and for it to cover the many notable, significant modern Federal Buildings such as the one bombed in Oklahoma, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. I believe that there are a lot of these, not many of which are listed yet in the current list (which skews to historic, NRHP-listed places more than 50 years old). The lede can mention the existence of other Federal, single-purpose buildings such as pure U.S. Post Offices and pure U.S. Courthouses by linking to lists about them. --doncram 17:42, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind, but I am semi-boldly going ahead and beginning to transform this article (Federal Building) from a disambiguation into a regular article (which includes a list of notable examples). There are GSA webpages about their management of Federal Buildings to be added as references, etc. I think, knock on wood, that we agree at least that this one should be changed, while we may still differ about related other disambiguation pages. --doncram 18:02, 13 August 2017 (UTC)