Wikipedia:Peer review/Territorial era of Minnesota/archive1

Territorial era of Minnesota

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I am hoping for some feedback on this article because it covers such a broad and complex set of issues. I am still doing some polishing but before I went too far polishing I was hoping for a little feedback on the structure and content. Specifically,

• Organization and structure - I have gone for a largely non-chronological organization in order to allow each of the various themes to be discussed more coherently. Thoughts?
• Length - The article is pretty long at this point (some copyediting might cut it down some but not dramatically). Thoughts on that? Is it too long? Are there suggestions on content that is unnecessary?
• Data tables - There are tables regarding populations of different groups. I think these are valuable as they show demographic shifts over time and help illustrate the dynamics. I have debated about using the Show/Hide features so that these don't take up so much room. Also have debated about using graphs for one or more. Any thoughts?
• Other - As mentioned the article still needs scrubbing but any feedback on the writing is still welcome.

Thanks, Mcorazao (talk) 15:16, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Any experts out there with observations on key content that has been left out or understated? --Mcorazao (talk) 15:16, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I only looked at the references. The reference dates should be in Months, Day, Year though. DragonZero (talk · contribs) 08:43, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to look into this. Can you clarify? Which references are you referring to? For books there is typically only a year of publication. No month or day is typically provided by the publisher. Even if such is given the standard is to still only provide the year in the reference. Thanks. --Mcorazao (talk) 15:17, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

References like 115. The retrieved date should be in the months day year format. Everything looks great though. DragonZero (talk · contribs) 22:08, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Ohhhh, I see what you're asking. My understanding has always been that date formatting simply need to be consistent in the references. WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) does say to use U.S.-style dates in U.S. articles though I understood this to refer only to the prose, not the references. In any event, I'll change it. Thanks. --Mcorazao (talk) 14:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation checker was used for this article. There's a number of them that should be fixed. Dincher (talk) 23:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Link checker shows that ref 30 is a dead link. suggest finding updated or alternate link. Dincher (talk) 23:25, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Those are fixed. --Mcorazao (talk) 01:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

You probably want to mention about John Catlin, the Secretary of Wisconsin Territory. After Henry Dodge became US Senator from Wisconsin Catlin became acting governor of Wisconsin Territory the part that was not included in the new state of Wisconsin. Catlin went to Stillwater, Minnesota and called a special election for the vacant seat of the Congressional Delegate from Wisconsin Territory. Sibley was elected and seated as a result and he pushed the Minnesota Territory bill through Congress.Thanks-RFD (talk) 17:14, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

PLEASE NOTE: This article has not yet had a general review, only some quick glances from helpful editors.

Finetooth comments: Just a couple of things to get started.

• The images all need alt text, meant for readers who can't see the images. Alt text is required for FA, and it's not the same as captions. WP:ALT has details, and you can look at lots of examples of alt text in the articles at WP:FAC.
• You asked about Show/Hide features. WP:MOS#Scrolling lists says, "Scrolling lists and boxes that toggle text display between hide and show are acceptable in infoboxes and navigation boxes, but should never be used in the article prose or references, because of issues with readability, accessibility, and printing." Finetooth (talk) 03:27, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

• You are OK using either m-d-y or yyyy-mm-dd format for the full (triple) dates in the citations. However, you can't use a mixture of the two. The formatting in the main text does not have to be the same as the formatting in the citations, but it, too, must be internally consistent, and in US-centric articles, it has to be m-d-y. Here's the guideline to back this up: WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Full date formatting. If you choose to make the formatting m-d-y throughout, that's fine too. Finetooth (talk) 04:11, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Further Finetooth comments: This seems comprehensive, well-illustrated, generally verifiable, stable, and neutral. In places the prose could be tighter, and I think the article includes at least a bit of unnecessary detail in the "Settlements" section and lower sections. I've tried below to indicate ways in which the article might be slightly trimmed, and I've made some suggestions about image licenses, minor style issues, and layout. You asked about structure. I think it's fine to subdivide by topic, as you have done, rather than attempting a pure chronological order.

• I notice an odd absence of commas here and there in parts of the early sections. An example from the lead is "As the Americans established outposts in the area and the fur trade declined the dynamics changed dramatically." Without a comma after "declined", the sentences scans as "the fur trade declined the dynamics", which causes the reader to back up and start over.
• Here is another one from the first section: "In the 1600s a lucrative trade in furs developed with Native American tribes in Minnesota and other areas around the Great Lakes trapping animals and delivering furs to traders who shipped them to Europe." This scans as "Great Lakes trapping animals", which slows the reading. A comma after "developed" would improve things, but even better would be to recast along lines like this: ""In the 1600s a lucrative trade developed between Native Americans who trapped animals near the Great Lakes and whites who shipped the animal furs to Europe."
• You'll probably catch and fix other sentences like these first two on a future read-through. I'd suggest not only looking for missing commas but for ways of tightening the prose. Concision would help the length of the article and make the reading a bit snappier.
• "Instead the French and the British utilized the natives in the area as a source for trade establishing mostly trading posts." - The modifying phrase "establishing mostly trading posts" in this sentence is disconnected from the phrase "French and British" it modifies and seems at first to modify "trade". The cure for this problem is usually to recast so that the modifier and modified bump against one another. This might work: "Instead the French and the British established trading posts that could be used by the natives." It might be useful to ask someone at WP:PRV to copyedit with concision as the goal.

• Captions that consist solely of sentence fragments don't take terminal periods.

• The Manual of Style suggests using blockquotes only for quotations of four lines or more. Shorter ones should simply be embedded in the main text in regular quotation marks. WP:MOSQUOTE has details.

• The article seems well-sourced in general, but a good rule of thumb is to provide at least one source for every paragraph. The paragraph starting "Following an 1845 treaty the Winnebago tribes of Iowa were relocated to the Long Prairie reservation... " lacks a source, for example.

• "It is important to understand that, despite American hunger for land, the leadership in the Minnesota Territory... ". - This begins with a judgment that would be hard to verify. Who says it is important? You could fix this by deleting the opening phrase and starting with "Despite American hunger for land... ", which would also be more concise.

• Lead image: The photo credit to the Minnesota Historical Society that appears on the licensing page should not be duplicated in the article itself. I'd suggest deleting the photo credit from the infobox. Also, it would make it easier for fact checkers if you could provide a link from the licensing page to the source page for the image.

• You might consider moving Zebulon Pike to the left so that he gazes into the page. You'd have to move him down a bit to avoid bumping into the subhead.

• The Chief Little Crow description page includes no source, date of creation, or author information. Fact checkers will have a hard time verifying the license without at least some of this data.

• The St. Paul steamboats description page says that the image comes from a Rhoda Gilman book. It should say what book and give other details such as the publisher, date and place of publication, and page number, if possible.

• Publisher and place and date of publication should be added to Eastman Johnson Painting America on the wigwam description page. Details like this are easy to find on the Internet, via Amazon.com for example.

Native Americans: "President Andrew Jackson's policies toward the tribes ultimately was to either pacify them sufficiently to along westward expansion of American settlers or else remove the tribes from the areas in which they interfered." - Word missing?

• Perhaps the "Settlements" section contains unnecessary detail and could be shortened. For example, this paragraph adds length but not much in the way of essential data: "When several hundred settlers abandoned the Red River Colony in the 1820s, they entered the United States by way of the Red River Valley, instead of moving to eastern Canada or returning to Europe.[84] The region had been occupied by Métis people, the children of voyageurs and Native Americans, since the middle 17th century." And this: "Henry Hastings Sibley, Justice of the Peace and future governor, built the first stone house in the Minnesota Territory in Mendota in 1838, along with other limestone buildings used by the American Fur Company, which bought animal pelts at that location from 1825 to 1853.[86]"

• It might also be possible to tighten the lower sections by eliminating repetition such as "By the late 1840s, however, all blacks had been completely disenfranchised. In addition they were prevented from running for office and their children were segregated in schools", which appears in the "Society" section but appears again in the "African Americans and slavery" section as "By the time Minnesota had achieved statehood, however, blacks had been disenfranchised and schools were segregated."

• Just to give one more example of how the prose might be tightened, I'll mention this from the "Government and Politics" section: "On August 26 of that year a meeting was held at the store of John McKusick in Stillwater with the goal of establishing a new territory. The meeting, which would come to be known as the "Stillwater Convention," elected Henry Sibley as a representative to Congress." I think the store location may be unnecessary detail. This could be compressed to "On August 26 a meeting held in Stillwater and known as the "Stillwater Convention" led to the election of Henry Sibley to represent the proposed territory in meetings with Congress." Or something like that.

• "In the 1830s a group of squatters, mostly Métis from the ill-fated Red River Colony in what is now the Canadian province of Manitoba, established a camp near the fort. A number of the people at the fort, including Taliaferro, did not appreciate the new presence. As the fort imposed new restrictions, the squatters were forced to head down the Mississippi River.[87] They settled at a site known as Fountain Cave." - Couldn't this and subsequent sentences be compressed to "In the 1830s a group squatters, mostly Métis, settled at a site known as Fountain Cave, later re-named Pig's Eye, then Lambert's Landing, and finally St. Paul"?

• Would it be possible to create a map showing the locations of the places mentioned in the "Settlements" section?

Society

• "By the late 1850s English had grown to be the most spoken language. New immigrants, though, brought additional languages to the territory. Newspapers were published in German (Die Minnesota Deutsche Zeitung), Swedish (Minnesota Posten), and Norwegian (Folkets Rost)." - Newspaper names should be in italics.

I hope these comments prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 20:01, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --Mcorazao (talk) 04:03, 24 December 2009 (UTC)