Wikipedia:Peer review/Minneapolis, Minnesota/archive1

Minneapolis, Minnesota
Hello. I would like to be sure the article size at over 60k, use of templates, and references and footnotes are all right. If there is a city model we would use it. WikiProject Cities looks good. Thank you. -Susanlesch 02:11, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Regarding size - other FA city pages range from 59 to 90kb. The Famous Minneapolitans section is quite long for what it is. I would create a List of famous Minneapolitans subpage (such as List of people from Minnesota), and add only one paragraph on famous people and mash it in with Pop culture, or you could just provide a "people" link in the Mlps nav template. From my experience "Famous X" sections are quite the spam magnet and moving that section to a subpage will help keep the main article stable. -Ravedave 03:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Great, then not to worry about article size. Thank you for the reference points, Ravedave.
 * Re: famous Minneapolitans, if you are interested in the history of this section I can track down some links for you. The short story is this section hasn't been spammed in quite some time for some real reasons: 1) the article has criteria for additions to this section (plus a request to discuss first on the talk page), 2) a cap on the number of people, and 3) what was a list has been transformed into prose. Also, as you've seen in the to do list, citations will be required quite soon. Also, you are looking not at editable text but at a template, once removed from stray edits. So I think we're very safe. That reminds me, Dr. Cash's GA review asked for better citations in this section (they are for the most part there but not quite as visible as other cites) and I'll fix that right now. Thank you again. Best wishes. -Susanlesch 06:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * re: "References" from article talk page
 * I will also move this conversation to the peer review page. You wanted a peer review so I am giving one, if I can add sources I will but for now I am trying to review the page and give you as much advice as possible. It doesn't matter if Mr.Fisk is the pope, personal webpages are not good sources. Attribution, the items you are supporting with that reference are not that exceptional and should be able to be found somewhere else. The same goes with the EB link Attribution/FAQ, there are much better sources out there. -Ravedave 14:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Pardon me but there must be some mistake. Please see the article edit history. National Climatic Data Center (NOAA) data that another editor (perhaps accidentally) removed at 06:03, 31 March 2007, was restored in edit 05:36, 2 April 2007, about 12 hours ago. Is National Climatic Data Center (NOAA) data acceptable to you? And regarding the dismissal of a reference, I am sorry to have to disagree with your assessment. (And by the way, the National Climatic Data Center (NOAA) for Los Angeles/Oxnard, California and Chicago, Illinois are both linking to Charles Fisk. But thank you very much for your comments. Best wishes. -Susanlesch 17:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)a
 * Regarding what used to be ref #21, yes the NOAA is fine for me, however the particular page linked was not, because it was just a landing page with no info, but I see it is removed now. I guess we'll just have to disagree on the Fisk page. Is there any reason multiple cites are grouped into single refs? I have usually seen one cite one ref. I'll try and do a read through soon for copy editing. -Ravedave 05:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No, if one looks at the edit history, the "particular page" was exactly the same links. Another editor added the landing page and I removed it after the restoration, thanks to your suggestion. Multiple cites are used in short passages where a whole lot of footnotes would render a sentence or short paragraph difficult to read. Not any easy technique, and one that I am learning thanks to a WikiProject Biography peer review. I imagine there is room for improvement and can look up the examples they gave me if you need them. -Susanlesch 05:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I made my first pass today; it had been quite a while since I had read the whole article. Kudos for those who have worked on it - I think it's quite good.  I certainly think the article has reached A-class quality.  I have a couple of gripes though. 1) The last paragraph in Demographics compares MPLS with U.S. averages wrt race, income, etc.  I think it would be much more useful to compare the city to other urban areas.  Several of the categories would lead to opposite conclusions.  I don't know of a good source, but if one can't be found, I would lean toward deleting the paragraph, as it's somewhat misleading.  2) I think the sentence about the 45 degree marker on Golden Valley Rd. is superfluous trivia.  Is there any good reason to keep it? --Appraiser 20:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Your work on the article is a great improvement. Thanks for identifying a good place to improve it more. The 45th parallel is gone now, as it is in Geography of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Re: demographics summary, DiversityData has data but in alpha order (requires too much original research to interpret). So I am copying one of the city of Baltimore's sources, the Brookings Institution comparision of 23 Living Cities for a high level overview. More detail can of course go into the child article Demographics of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Most everyone near the top of Google results (sorry I don't feel qualified to go deeper than that) uses census year 2000 data, except the U.S. Census American Fact Finder (what was used for the 2005 comparison to U.S. averages that caught your eye). I hope this helps. -Susanlesch 01:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Woops, sorry about that, DiversityData has sort options. That site may work, too. -Susanlesch 01:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * A high level summary is in place from the Brookings Institution executive summary. Thank you again. -Susanlesch 18:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Do you think we are ready for FAC? Would one of you like to do the honors and rate the article again if you think it has improved since GA? I am on my way to double check that the refs are right and working. After that nomination I am thinking of working on one of the multitude of child articles (some had to be created so the city is only cited material) maybe Geography of Minneapolis, Minnesota. -Susanlesch 02:06, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Right before you are ready for the FAC, the one last think you should do is go through and do a wikilink cleanup. (yeah, real fun!)  Stuff should only be wikilinked one time (with the possible exception of infoboxes and the like), and it should be done the first time the subject appears in the article.  (I just did a really quick glace and saw that General Mills was linked twice)  Also, don't overclutter or underuse them, try to find the nice balance, whatever that may be.  It's important to do this right before the nomination, because if you end up moving text around again the location of the links will change and then you could end up having to move them again. Gopher backer 03:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Gopher backer, thanks, extra wikilinks have been removed (there were a few you are right -- unless someone wants to remove all the names of countries and U.S. states, this is done). -Susanlesch 04:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * comment - It might be worth mentioning there were Dakota settlements in the Minneapolis area before the Europeans came. .  I don't think the sports section needs the table of professional teams, as they are already mentioned in the text. Why are the wild and thunder mentioned? They are St.Paul teams. -Ravedave 17:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your comment. The first sentence of the article, after the lead and under History is "Dakota Sioux were the region's sole residents until explorers arrived from France in about 1680." Also, the article's first image is of a Dakota chief, captioned "Taoyateduta was among the 121 Sioux leaders who from 1837–1851 ceded what is now Minneapolis." -Susanlesch 18:13, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * "in the region" doesn't make it sound like they had settlements in Minneapolis, just in Minnesota. The page I linked specificlly mentions some of their settlements in Minneapolis. For a culture that was around as many years as white settlers have been in the state I think more than a sentence should be used. -Ravedave 19:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Re-added "The Dakota were hunters and gatherers and soon found themselves in debt to fur traders. Pressed by a whooping cough outbreak, loss of buffalo, deer and bear, and loss of forests to logging, in 1851, the Mdewakanton sold the land west of the river and ceded the east side, allowing settlement in 1852." which was moved to History of Minneapolis, Minnesota on 10 March. A copy may be in two places now, but this is the part I know (and wrote, incidentally, based on the same Minneapolis Public Library citations you give). I think that we are fast approaching too much Dakota history in the necessarily very short History section in the Minneapolis article. -Susanlesch 20:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Regarding the Wild and Thunder, I can only offer my opinion that their presence may answer questions (the Wild was a frequent addition to the page's table until the table moved to a template) and that they are doing no harm. One might want to know where the hockey team is in a northern city for example. Taking the question to an extreme would it mean that Humphrey Terminal could be mentioned but not Lindbergh Terminal (the main airport) because their address is in Saint Paul? -Susanlesch 02:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Seeing no other replies to your comment, I looked at the U.S. cities that are featured articles and find no compelling reason to keep or remove the pro sports table -- some have them and some don't. -Susanlesch 02:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)