Talk:Rodney, Mississippi

Anyone who wishes to help.

Fell free to help out with my article anyway you can. I really need some pictures if anyone knows of a good place.

Rewrite

I am considering doing a significant update/rewrite of this article. Notes, concerns, or objections are welcome, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 21:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: The NRHP template should be removed (the article is about a populated place). Magnolia677 (talk) 22:05, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

That is a good point. I've begun drafting here, and am merging in your improvements: User:Rjjiii/sandbox6[1] Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:18, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Ghost town?

Secondary sources describe the area as a "ghost town". The lead currently uses "unincorporated community", but I think that gives a stronger indication of a human presence and community than the sources support. Is the concern that various meanings of "ghost town" could give the wrong impression that the area is uninhabited? (This would be false as several homes or camps on stilts near the bayou are clearly still in use.) If "ghost town" is too ambiguous because it can mean uninhabited or largely abandoned, we could just spell it out "a largely abandoned town" and optionally wikilink that to ghost town. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:42, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 18:56, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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Alston Grocery Store is one of the few remaining structures in Rodney, Mississippi.

• ... that Rodney, Mississippi, became a ghost town after the Mississippi River shifted about two miles away? Source: McHaney, Pearl Amelia (Spring 2015). "Eudora Welty's Mississippi River: A View from the Shore". The Southern Quarterly. 52 (3): 66–68. "A few years later, Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State listed Rodney as a one of the state’s thirty-fi ve extinct towns and described it as “a ghost river town that died in 1876 when the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R.R. was built. Prior to the War Between the States, Rodney with a population of 4,000 supported a wharf, a boat landing, two warehouses, and numerous stores and dwellings” (WPA 330). Many factors in addition to the war and the railroad line, however, led to the decline of the port by the time Welty visited Rodney in the nineteen thirties and forties. Yellow fever killed many of the citizens in 1843 and 1847, and in 1869, fire destroyed many buildings. The principal demise of the town, however, was brought about by the action of the Mississippi River itself when it changed course in 1870, developing a sandbar and rendering the port two miles from its shore. [...] Rodney was one of the flourishing towns of the period, but Welty’s characters were unaware that it would give way to the river’s power, so she gives the ghost town she had roamed and photographed with her friends the commerce and feel of her contemporary Natchez, set back in time."
  • ALT1: ... that Rodney, Mississippi, came just three votes short of becoming the capital of Mississippi? Source: Ghost Town on the Mississippi. The Steeple. PBS. 11 January 2013. Archived from the original on March 3, 2024. Retrieved 3 March 2024. "In fact, when Mississippi was admitted to the union in 1817, Rodney was almost its first capital, losing to Jackson by three votes."
  • ALT2: ... that the restoration of a historic church in Rodney, Mississippi, placed a replica cannonball into a hole in the wall? Source: Ghost Town on the Mississippi. The Steeple. PBS. 11 January 2013. Archived from the original on March 3, 2024. Retrieved 3 March 2024. "The United Daughters of the Confederacy acquired the Rodney Presbyterian Church, after it stopped being an active church, in order to try to preserve it. Several restorations have been completed on that building. During one of those restorations is when the false cannon ball was placed on the front wall to signify the damage that was inflicted on it during the Civil War. In recent years, a new group, the Rodney History and Preservation Society was formed to help bring attention to Rodney and save structures there. And they were able to acquire title to the Presbyterian Church from the Daughters of the Confederacy."
  • ALT3: ... that cotton receipts became de facto currency in Rodney, Mississippi, due to a shortage of legal tender? Source: Logan, Mary T. (1980). Mississippi–Louisiana Border Country (Revised 2nd ed.). Claitor's. LCCN 70-137737. "By 1807 the cotton receipt became legal tender [...] because there was not enough actual money in circulation with which to do business."
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Bridger Zadina & Template:Did you know nominations/Anders Bure
  • Comment: Three brief notes:

1. Regarding images: There are color images in the article that show extant structures in the town. All of these have free licenses. There are no broader-scope images depicting the whole town or a down-the-street view.
2. Regarding sources: ping me if you need more of Logan or McHaney. The PBS documentary has a transcript linked below the video, so you don't have to watch it to verify.
3. Regarding expansion: the article was around 280 words prior to expansion. An older version had large chunks of content removed for copyright violations. When I began expansion there were still 2 sentences (about 36 words) of copyrighted material very closely copied from a sign in front of the church.

5x expanded by Rjjiii (talk). Self-nominated at 03:38, 9 March 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Rodney, Mississippi; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Full review to follow, but my preference is ALT1. Though I would suggest mentioning in that hook as well that it's a ghost town now to make the contrast even more dramatic (like something about going from almost the capital to becoming a ghost town). Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:14, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
  • @Narutolovehinata5: Like this? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 14:57, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
  • ALT4: ... that Rodney, Mississippi, went from a major river port that nearly became the state's capital in 1817 to a ghost town after the river changed course? Using McHaney as a source: "Rodney was nearly voted as the state capital in 1817, [...] In 1930, Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo signed an executive order declaring that Rodney was no longer a city. A few years later, Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State listed Rodney as a one of the state’s thirty-five extinct towns and described it as “a ghost river town [...] The principal demise of the town, however, was brought about by the action of the Mississippi River itself when it changed course [...]"
• Apologies for the later review as real-life matters came up. The article is adequately sourced and I am assuming good faith on the sourcing, though the excerpts check out. I didn't find any close paraphrasing, and ALT4 is in the article and sourced. This is a bit of a weird case in that the article was previously a lot longer before being cut down due to copvios, and thus isn't detected as a 5x expansion by the DYKcheck tool. However, because the rule talks about expansion from the state when expansion began and not from the beginning, and the article was expanded 5x from that point on, that should work. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 14:33, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
  • It's all good Narutolovehinata5; real-life has to come first. For the convenience of other editors: The article was at 1775 words on March 9, 2024.[2] One-fifth of that is 355 words, and the article was never over 355 words after copyright-violating content was stripped in 2021.[3] I figure this is fine as WP:5X says, "This calculation is made from the last version of the article before the expansion began, even if text from the original was deleted in the process (unless the text was a copyright violation, in which case it does not count towards the size of the original)." Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:40, 31 March 2024 (UTC)