Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of Minnesota

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 16:41, 26 March 2007.

History of Minnesota[edit]

I originally started this article as a section within Minnesota when we were getting that article up to FA status. Ravedave decided that the text made a better History of Minnesota article than what was currently there, so I began the process of expanding the article to its current status. It isn't all my own work, though. I'd like to recognize the contributions of Mulad, who wrote many sections that are now in the article, Appraiser, who has helped out with several topics, and others in Wikipedia:WikiProject Minnesota. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 04:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Uf-da. Just looking at the article, without reading it, is there any way to cut down that lead section? It's really big and moderately ugly. Grandmasterka 06:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Although after looking through a couple featured "history of" articles, I note that the introduction in these kinds of articles is very hard to write without sounding awkward. I'm thinking about how I might help this one, by merging some of the intro content into the lower sections. and cleaning up the prose. Grandmasterka 06:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I did some wordsmithing on the introductory sentence and the first few paragraphs. Let me know what you think. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 14:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Not enough inline references - there are many some unreferenced paras. The lead is indeed a little too long (fails my 'rule of thumb' - doesn't fit on my screen). Glacial history of Minnesota should be moved from see also into a separate section - it is notable and related enough to be discussed in the article, I feel.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  18:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I disagree on inclusion of either the contents or a summary of Glacial history of Minnesota in the article. Undoubtedly that is significant, but it is not part of the scope of this article. The candidate article is about History in the conventional sense of that term, i.e., human history, not natural history. Kablammo 19:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think including stuff about glacial history in this article would be silly. This is clearly an article about human history and is more than large enough without throwing in all sorts of crap that happened before there were any people in Minnesota. As to my original comment (not an objection, but a comment) I'll have to review the article again, but it does seem that there might be no good way to cut down that intro. It summarizes the rest of the article nicely. Grandmasterka 19:41, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've updated the introduction, based on the discussion on the talk page. I also went through and found specific references to the MNHS TimePieces series for the uncited paragraphs. Much of the older content of the article came from TimePieces, and I think I was just using one generic citation for several paragraphs in a row. I've now linked to the specific articles within TimePieces. As far as Glacial history of Minnesota is concerned, I disagree that it should be included. The content doesn't really fit within the scope of a general article on the history of Minnesota, since it's at a finer level of detail. Some topics of specific detail, such as this or Sioux Uprising, or the history of Saint Anthony Falls, are better treated as their own articles. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 02:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support now that the intro has been cut down. As to Piotrus' third objection... It's clear to me after reading it that the "unreferenced" paragraphs begin an idea ended in a referenced paragraph. There's no need to litter this thing with a lot of redundant references, even though I do it sometimes. Grandmasterka 05:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]


  • Comment. I've only read the article through the "Territorial foundation and settlement". I've found the following issues, but asides from those the article looks good to me. I'll read the rest of the article within the next few days.
  • "Minneapolis grew from the waterfall's power, and by innovating milling methods, became the "milling capital of the world."" That sentence sounds a bit odd to me. What waterfall? How does a city grow from a waterfall's power?
  • "The Great Depression brought [...] trouble in labor relations" That's POV. Leftists might not consider strikes to be trouble, but rather as evidence for "class consciousness" or whatever. "Tensions" or something like that would be a more appropriate term.
  • "The site may be one of the oldest known archaeological sites in the Americas" That sounds ambiguous to me. I'm assuming you mean that what is being researched there dates that far back, but the sentence could also be read to mean that scientists have been researching there longer than anywhere else in the Americas.
  • "The practice of depicting people and animals by carving into rock faces emerged, continuing well into the 2nd millennium." The second millenium BC or AD. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Carabinieri (talk • contribs) 12:11, 27 February 2007.
Thanks for the suggestions on wording -- I've incorporated them into the article. As far as the second millennium is concerned, I'm not even sure whether it was BC or AD, and the reference doesn't say, so I just lopped that sentence out. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 18:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with caveat - I am on wikipeoject:MN and I contributed a couple sentences. I re-read the whole article (phew thats long!) and it looks good to me. I hate to bring it up, but might it be worth splitting the article like History of California? I am guessing it would be a ridiculous amount of work considering how the article is written by topic rather than time period.-Ravedave 07:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: the prose quality is still lacking. I've gone through a section hitting some high points, but more work is necessary. --Spangineerws (háblame) 06:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changing to Support --AnonEMouse (squeak) 13:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC). Object, I'm afraid. Wonderfully thorough, but needs improvement in prose quality, and organization.[reply]
    • "Following the American Civil War and the Sioux Uprising, the state's natural resources were tapped for logging and farming." Implies the latter is a consequence of the former.
    • Native American inhabitation section starts with distinct tribes, even to 1855, then suddenly goes back to 9000 years ago? Needs reorganization
    • "Meanwhile, trouble was brewing in Minnesota as the Sioux Uprising of 1862 broke out." - conversational
    • "tribes of Ojibwa" and - "group of Ojibwe" - not obvious you mean the same people. Pick one term.
    • "white traders" links to European people?
    • Sporadically, the fort imposed new restrictions, forcing the squatters to head downriver.- clumsy, rephrase. Unnecessary broken with inner clause, and the combination of "squatters head downriver" made me chuckle, surely not what you had in mind.
    • How did Eliza Winston get freed when Dred Scott wasn't, at basically the same time and circumstances? Needs at least a comment.
    • St. Anthony needs a wikilink, same place.
    • Fort Snelling section, starting with 1805, is earlier than Minnesota Territory section, starting with 1783, Lousiana Purchase in 1803 in latter section also explains why FS was built in 1805. Reorder these. In fact, does one fort deserve such a big subsection to itself? It has its own article, after all.
    • Early white settlement is in the Early statehood section? How's that again? Surely white settlement precedes statehood by quite a bit!
    • 439,000 - needs a closer cite
    • Populist, Ignatius L. Donnelly - no comma
    • but by 1900, Minnesota mills were grinding - either one more or one fewer comma
    • middlings - wikilink uncommon term
    • Jesse Ventura section has no citations whatsoever, and could use another sentence or two about why specifically he was important - one of very few third party governors, and the only former professional wrestler ever. Mondale/Coleman needs a cite.
    • Why does Guthrie Theater lead off Arts and Culture section? Why not chronologically? In fact, why is Arts and Culture between two "postwar" subsections? Reorder.
    • Putting Northwest Airlines in the Postwar Economy section implies it wasn't that important before then - clearly untrue from their article. Reorganize.
    • Our Camp Savage article doesn't say it was for "Japanese-American soldiers", rather to teach Japanese to American soldiers.
    • One of the reasons the Depression hit hard in Minnesota... - the rest of the paragraph doesn't specify why it should have been particularly hard on Minnesota.
    • Hotbed of medical care - Ow! Terrible mixed metaphor
    • Dr. William Worrall Mayo emigrated from ... - don't you think you should say "founded the world famous Mayo clinic" pretty darn early? I had to click on his article to see why he was important, and only then found the Mayo Clinic link in a completely different paragraph. Reorganize, possibly by just shortening from 3 paras to 1. They each have their own articles after all, this is supposed to be the section on medical care in the whole state, instead it's about one family and two hospitals. If they're "it", then the state isn't much of a medical care hotbed (ouch again).
    • The Homestead Act in 1862 facilitated land claims by settlers, which was regarded as being cheap and fertile. - The act was regarded as cheap and fertile? The claims? The settlers?!? (I got to get me to Minnesota...) Rephrase.
    • Falls of St. Anthony, Saint Anthony Falls, or St. Anthony Falls? Pick one, throughout. Possibly first use is forgiven as an archaicism, but not the mixture other two.

This isn't to say there aren't more issues, I'm just tired. Good try, very thorough, but needs a re-edit and re-organization. In fact, it may be too thorough - if some of the details were shortened, the organization task would be easier. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments. I've done some reorganization and rewording as you suggested. In particular, I've clarified that the modern economy (including Northwest Airlines) and that arts and culture aren't strictly postwar developments. I also reworked and shortened the Mayo Brothers paragraph (it's no longer a "hot bed"). I want to address a few points:
  • I've linked middlings, but I need to write an article for it (because featured articles shouldn't have red links).
  • Actually, I wrote an article on middlings purifier instead. It turned out to be a better explanation of the topic.
  • The article on Camp Savage was unclear about the fact that they were teaching Japanese to Japanese-Americans (Nisei). I've fixed that article.
  • The settlers must have been fertile, or else the population wouldn't have grown. (Just kidding. It was a statement about the soil, and I fixed that.)
  • I've standardized the name of Saint Anthony Falls, Saint Paul, and Ojibwa throughout. I don't know for sure if Father Hennepin used the words "Saint Anthony Falls" or "Falls of Saint Anthony", but I'll check.
  • As far as the importance of Fort Snelling is concerned, I think it deserves a section as big as it is. The fort wasn't just a fort to itself -- it spurred the development of Minneapolis, via its proximity to Saint Anthony Falls, and Saint Paul, because of the squatters who were forced to move downriver.
  • I couldn't find any references that said why Eliza Winston was freed while Dred Scott wasn't. Any speculation on my part would be original research. In any case, Eliza Winston wasn't a major figure in Minnesota history like Dred Scott was, so I removed the section on Eliza Winston.
  • I'll have to find references I can cite for Jesse Ventura. I think the few sentences there are a summation of news stories that we've read over the past several years, but to someone outside the state, it isn't obvious.
  • I rewrote those sentences using citeable references. It turned out to be more fact-based that way, instead of being just observations from four years of news stories.
Thanks for your comments. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 16:57, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Much better, I've struck the objection. I still think the Fort Snelling section is too big for what it has in it, it may be important, but the section doesn't say that. For example, the word Minneapolis isn't anywhere in it, (though it is in an image caption way up, it's not connected, and uncited) Mendota is mentioned without explaining that it is important due to being one of the oldest settlements still around, and Taliaferro and Dred Scott's wife are both mentioned but not connected. The mention of Saint Paul is stuck in the middle of a paragraph about some wandering squatters, so I barely found it. Rephrase so it leads the paragraph. Parrant is just a name-drop without mentioning he was the first white settler. And so forth and so on. Tighten all that, fix my remaining nitpicks that you didn't get to above, the few new ones below, and I'll support. By the way, I notice the Dred Scott business isn't even mentioned in the Fort Snelling article.
  • In 1846, he prevented Iowa from including... In 1847, he kept...- how did he prevent or keep? Why was he such a MN backer, being from IL?
  • tourists from southern climates sailed up the Mississippi - what does this have to do with the Civil War? If you're trying to say that tourism was a big industry in MN, move it to the economic development section - as is, it's the only non-war sentence in a section on 2 wars.
  • Say a few words about the Twin Cities being twin, and the most important cities in modern MN.

--AnonEMouse (squeak) 16:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    • Supporting, you got basically everything. I'm still not sure how or why Douglas stopped Iowa from taking Ft. Snelling, etc., but presumably from some kind of political maneuver, no big deal. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 13:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. It's not bad, but needs sifting through to correct problems in language and logic. Here are just a few examples from the top.

  • What is "a more prominent state government"?
  • "the state today is a center for banking, computers and health care." Health care is everywhere; what does this mean? Do people travel to Minnesota for treatment? Computers, likewise, are everywhere; what exactly does it mean?
  • "around the year 7500 BC" - remove "the year" as redundant.
  • "Subsequently, extensive trading networks began to develop in the region." I see a lot of this expression "began to ..." on WP. Get rid of it: "... networks developed in the region".
  • "native people transitioned from hunting big game toward smaller creatures" - what, the native people became smaller creatures?
  • portions of what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Canada"; match US states with Canadian provinces, please.
  • "At the time of European contact, the region was inhabited by" - Does this refer to the many centuries of Eur. contact, or the initial contact through invasion? Tony 22:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I made revisions to the sections you mentioned. I had to revise the big-game hunting reference a little more than that, because the source said that large animals (such as wooly mammoths) had become extinct, whereas this article just made it sound like they changed their preferences. As far as the references to portions of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Canada, this source just gives portions of southern Canada, without mentioning provinces specifically. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 03:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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