Talk:Octagon House

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[edit] Purpose of this page

I see this page is now linked to Octagon house and I note the serious historical research behind it. However I ndon't see the purpose of the page. It's not disambiguation, just a list of historic buildings, all of them as far as I can tell falling within the scope of Octagon house. A better researched list than that in the article, to be sure. I'd suggest a merge is in order, See also section included.

Unless there is a genuine resason for keeping this separate? In which case the names need to be different, it is not good having two pages with only a capitalisation to distinguish them. ProfDEH (talk) 13:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a reason for keeping them separate and yes, it is a disambiguation page for various United States National Register of Historic Places. The core is Octagon House and the list was generated usingElkman's National Register Tools. It serves as a map to create articles on NRHP octagon houses.

The Octagon house article is a generic article defining what an octagon house is (or was according to the article). Basically, the purpose of the two articles is completely different. In my experience, when an NHRP list is merged with another article, it gets diluted and loses its purpose. Certainly the two articles complement each other, but in my humble opinion, it's better to keep them separate. clariosophic (talk) 14:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Initially I thought the Octagon house article was too centered on the American examples, but in fact there are no other octagonal houses that I can find, certainly not as a regular cultural trend. All the houses on the list are octagon houses as described in the Octagon house article - American, dating from mid to ate 19th century. The one exception on the list is The Octagon (Roosevelt Island, New York) which is not a house and belongs elsewhere - in List of octagonal buildings and structures where it is already listed.

Don't see what there is to disambiguate - 'octagon house' is not an ambiguous term - it's a house with octagonal plan shape, and the term means the same thing in every case. 'Octagonal house' is descriptive, but is never used as the name of these houses. This is simply a list - which presumably can be added to from other sources.

It is not good to have two articles with the same name apart from capitalization. I'd suggest this should be called List of octagon houses.

ProfDEH (talk) 21:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd support moving this article either to List of octagon houses or Octagon House (disambiguation). Like ProfDEH says, it isn't good to have two articles with different purposes differing only by capitalization. Regarding whether "Octagon House" is a proper name for a structure: it might be, but First Baptist Church is also the official name of a lot of places, so we have a disambiguation page for it. There are several different properties on the National Register whose name is "Octagon House" and several more whose name contains "Octagon House".

I revised the introductory sentence to indicate that "Octagon House" is a specific name for the generic type of "octagon house". I'm leaning more toward naming the article Octagon House (disambiguation), but I'm not decided one way or the other yet. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 22:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I support moving this to List of octagon houses, or to a narrower definition such as List of U.S. Registered Historic Places that are octagon houses. However i prefer the first, more general definition which would allow the addition of any other octagon houses that individually meet wikipedia notability criteria (which NRHP sites all do already). There are lots of paired articles about some type of thing and a list of instances of that type. The Octagon house article deserves to have a paired article that can grow longer than the short list that it includes in one section.

By the way, i like the organization by state and city, but note that should be clarified in the lead of the article. Or, perhaps better, make it a sortable table. doncram (talk) 22:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] how many o. h.'s

hey, i think i created the majority of the octagon house articles so far! of 9 linked from the Octagon house section list, i took the pics for 1, i created 7 articles, and i contributed to the other 2 articles. there are only 12 so far linked from this list-article, including the same 7 i think, not sure if i created a couple more of the rest too. someone else could run out and create more articles on the red-linked / non-linked ones, but i have a good lead.... And, hmm, i want an octagonal house icon created so i can slap up at least 7 of them on my User-page.  :) doncram (talk) 23:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Clariosophic has scored several, also, but i may still be the only o.h. ace. :) doncram (talk) 23:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)