Talk:Rockford, Illinois

Fixing things up a bit
For the most part, the talk page seems to be very dormant, so any feedback is appreciated. As far as a "to-do" list, the article does have a few things that need attention: --SteveCof00 (talk) 22:08, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The reference to the largest city outside of the Chicago Metropolitan area is a bit misleading despite being factually correct. It makes the appearance on a first read that Rockford is the 2nd largest city, when in fact its 3rd.  Maybe I'm nitpicking here a bit but even I fell victim to the way its written.  Instead of referencing the Chicago Metropolitan area, why not just state Rockford is the third largest city outside of Chicago and Aurora respectively? Dpalme (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 17:18, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The History section runs on and on; breaking it up into subsections based on periods of time in Rockford's history may make it better-organized and easier to fill in the gaps (after the establishment of the Chrysler plant 45 years ago, it pretty much runs right into the present day)
 * The Law and Government section would be a good place to elaborate on the type of government Rockford utilizes; currently, it is not identified in the article, there is just a list of aldermen and crime statistics (this is worth expanding on instead of deleting)
 * The section that talks about District 205 might need a re-write from the ground up. Although it offers some nice statistics, its explanation falls flat right after that.  In the long run, District 205 probably will need its own article space.
 * The section dealing with rail transportation is somewhat out of date; it's 2010, and there are no passenger trains running through here, so "as soon as 2010" needs to be replaced with current information.

Talk Page Archived
As there hasn't been anything new in the past 2-3 years and the discussions have pretty much been resolved, I've archived the past discussions.

--SteveCof00 (talk) 05:10, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Healthcare information
This is somewhat of a missing section. In articles about cities of comparable size, it does go into the healthcare systems seen in the area, and I've noticed that there is nothing to go on so far (even though Rockford has 3 hospitals). --SteveCof00 (talk) 05:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Law and Government section
Currently, this consists of a list of aldermen and a table of crime rates...any suggestions for expanding this? It would be worth looking the same sections into other articles of larger Illinois cities for comparison. --SteveCof00 (talk) 22:14, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

"Forcible" rape?
Is there even such a thing as unforced rape? By definition, rape is forced sexual intercourse (or other sexual activity). The "forcible" part should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.212.252.255 (talk) 03:32, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * These statistics were something that came from the FBI website (although it appears the link may have changed; it would be nice to get data more recent than 2007). I'm not sure of the logic behind calling it that, but it was not the decision of the editor who included the crime statistics here.  -SteveCof00 (talk) 07:51, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * FYI: in some states, any criminal sexual conduct is called rape (not sure about Illinois), so yes there certainly is rape that is not forcible.  Statutory rape, for example. John from Idegon (talk) 08:22, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Looking into the future section
Seeing as the whole Cheap Trick guitar museum content is starting to border on vaporware, I think this section needs to be redone from the ground up. Any ideas for real-life content? --SteveCof00 08:17, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Timeline 2000-present
This section is in dire need of attention and reconstruction. For one thing, there is no sense of chronological order to the present day. Additionally, to say the section has neutrality issues is an understatement. Yes, the Forbes and WSJ entries may be true, but there are ways of not having them dominating the section without sugar-coating the facts as well. -- SteveCof00 "suggestion box" 09:49, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Updated City Council
I updated the city council members since it was flagged as not current. I'm new to this so I'm not sure how sections get flagged and un-flagged.Mellieclem (talk) 19:56, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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History of Rockford: separate article?
At this point, this section of the article is starting to become worthy of its own and is certainly worthy of splitting into an article of its own. (This looks more towards the organization of Chicago over the Illinois cities of similar size; most have far less content). In addition to give this content its proper space, it allows for editing and expansion of additional content; currently, things seem to stop past 2002.

Thoughts? --SteveCof00 (talk) 10:17, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

I Agree on this as someone who lives in Rockford I know that the history of Rockford is extremely important And believe that there should be more information on Midway and Germanicus Kent And Possibility Some information on The east side as well as a run down of the clock tower — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.87.31.242 (talk) 15:11, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I cannot think of another example where a municipality of less than 200,000 people gets its own history page. I think it sets a bad precedent—there's a lot of history everywhere, so are we going to create separate history pages for all 200 cities as big or larger than Rockford? Seems silly to me.BestSince1996 (talk) 13:08, 24 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree it is a bad precedent. Plus, I think it would be harder for users to find the history of Rockford. 2601:247:C501:CD0:6DED:775F:5FFA:2A6A (talk) 00:13, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose split and seeing no consensus I suggest we close this proposal and remove the proposal tag on the article which has been there for years. Jusdafax (talk) 02:30, 4 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I do think it is a bad idea to split this article. It is better to keep it as just "History." Plus, Rockford has much less than 200,000 residents in population. It's not as well known as other cities like, say, Winston-Salem, or Toledo. NoobThreePointOh (talk)

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red light district
Rockford is well-known for its active prostitution subculture. Why doesn't the article mention this?

I've attempted to add some basic information. These edits were reverted initially on the grounds that the material was unsourced. (It should have been given a ref-needed tag instead of simply reverted, but never mind.) So I provided three references. Then it was reverted again on the grounds that they violating wikipedia's "notdirectory" rule, I guess because I had mentioned some locations with too much specificity and the names of its brothels. So I removed those specific items.

Now the edits have been reverted again on the grounds that they could be said of "nearly every city in North America." But since when is that a reason to revert an edit?

And besides, it's just not true. Not every city has an active red light district. And even among those that do, Rockford's RLD is a heck of a lot more active than most. And how many cities have two active brothels?

I think these edits are just being reverted because it makes Rockford look bad, and because prostitution is a touchy subject to begin with. But those aren't good reasons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.36.84.82 (talk) 2019-08-05T21:52:07 (UTC)


 * Not to start a big discussion here, but the "basic information" is being blown way out of proportion. A few arrests related to prostitution stings do not make a brothel make (one of the articles is also sourced from 2003...); we need information from this decade to be more accurate.  --SteveCof00 (talk) 10:52, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Section about historical reenactment?
There is a pretty big historical reenactment scene in rockford, such as a reenactment of the christmas truce and several ww2 reenactments every year Should it be mentioned? Viesna14 (talk) 19:07, 6 April 2021 (UTC)