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Saint Paul, Minnesota

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I have listed this article for peer review because I and other members of WikiProject Minnesota would like to improve this article in preparation for the 2008 Republic National Convention which will draw a great deal of local, national and international press coverage. The will corresponded to people viewing this article more frequently than in the past.

Our overall goal would be to achieve GA or higher.

It is that spirit that improvements are needed—so that we may put the most accurate face on St. Paul (and the surrounding area).

Thanks, Calebrw (talk) 20:42, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Ruhrfisch comments: Very briefly, here are some suggestions for improvement. If you want more comments, please ask here.

  • This looks fairly close to GA to me and since you are interested in going higher, I will review from a FA point of view. Article needs more references, for example the State section has no refs. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
  • Ref 40 is just a link, other refs are missing data. Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V fixed.Calebrw (talk) 15:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comprehensiveness is a criterion for FA - I note that the History section ends in 1961, surely something has happened in the 47 years since. A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - Cleveland, Ohio and New York City are both FAs and may be good models.
  • There are a number of bullet point lists in the article that should probably be converted to prose or a table in most cases. There are also a few one or two sentence paragraphs that should be combined with others or perhaps expanded.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Looks a bit listy, convert the lists to prose per Ruhrfish above.
  • The whole article could use a copyedit by fresh eyes, especially if you're aiming for FAC.
  • You may want to go over the sources to make sure they are cited correctly and that they are reliable. At first glance, most of the references are OK, but there are a couple of issues that would be pointed out immediately at FAC. See WP:RS and WP:CITE for more info.
  • Some of the sections (such as Economy and Recreation) could be expanded further

I hope I was helpful. Good luck! Dabomb87 (talk) 14:12, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from epicAdam

Lead

  • Try to avoid citations in the lead. Anything mentioned in the lead should be able to stand on its own or be referenced below.
  • "and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city."
    • Adjoins Minneapolis how? A clearer map showing the exact locations of both Minneapolis and St. Paul would be helpful. The current map that shows the location of the counties isn't as helpful as a map of the city's boundaries. The map on the Minneapolis-Saint Paul article is better.
  • "Though now overshadowed in population and national attention"???
    • Really? St. Paul is only slightly smaller than Minneapolis, and St. Paul is the capital. I wouldn't say that it's "overshadowed", unless there is a source that says that.
  • Does this lead adequately summarize St. Paul? From reading the lead alone, it sounds like St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota, is close to Minneapolis, was called "Pig's Eye", and the city is most notable for its sports arena, an insurance company, and hockey. I'm not sure that adequately expresses the city... or maybe it does?

History

  • "which formed a natural barrier to the advancing Ojibwa"
    • How are the Ojibwa? Why aren't they mentioned before?
  • "The Dakota in Saint Paul eventually moved to the west bank in response to a 1837 treaty, which ceded the east bank to settlers."
    • The reference doesn't actually say this. The ref only barely mentions a 1837 treaty but it doesn't say where they were moved or for what reason. The source is actually a very poor one, is there nothing better that has information about the early history of Saint Paul?
According to [1], "1837 Treaty: Dakota & U. S. - Dakota ceded all land east of Mississippi to U. S." Perhaps this could be added as a source. It doesn't actually say that they moved to the west side of the river, but they did leave the east side and they didn't all leave the MN Territory.--Appraiser (talk) 16:04, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This area should be clarified now, I found the actual treaty document source. .:davumaya:. 17:40, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Lambert's Landing" is important. Someone more familiar with the topic may want to create its own wikipedia article.
Sure we can eventually but its not a prerequisite for GA status :)
  • "African American civil rights activist and journalist Roy Wilkins grew up in the Rondo neighborhood in Saint Paul and would later be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson for his efforts as the NAACP's executive director.[1] Roy Wilkins Auditorium, an entertainment venue located adjacent to River Centre is named for him. "
    • Notable people from are not usually included in the history section. I pulled this information out so it can be relocated.
  • "During urban renewal, Saint Paul began razing older downtown buildings for skyscrapers in competition with Minneapolis but also contended with creation of the interstate freeway system in a fully built landscape."
    • Needs a citation and when?
  • Rondo Neighborhood: African American residents in St. Paul aren't mentioned any time before this. It seems odd that they're thrown in here just at the end. What type of "debate" was touched off? What were the final remedies to the situation with the highway?

More comments to follow. -epicAdam (talk) 20:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Rondo section will be expanded. I inserted that last minute because I remembered that was an important event to the neighborhoods of the city and spurred a lot of the current District Council stuff. Rondo was the heart of the Saint Paul black community, I will summarize this better. Roy Wilkins is there because Minneapolis mentions Martha Ripley. It's not necessary now that I think of it, he is not exactly tied to Saint Paul's history. I'll also fix the tribe continuity. .:davumaya:. 21:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are still some issues with the tribe names. The term "Dakota", as presently linked, goes to a dab page, which is not good. And as far as I can remember, the Mdewakanton are a subdivision of the Dakota, and in turn the Dakota are a subdivision of the Sioux. I'm not sure that people will understand that there were really only two main tribes, the "Mdewakanton Dakota-Sioux" and the "Ojibwa" (I believe it's spelled with an "A"). The way it's written now makes it seem like there are in fact four tribes, the Ojibwa, the "Mdewakanton Dakota", the "Mendota Mdewakanton", and the Sioux. -epicAdam (talk) 16:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tweaked. .:davumaya:. 18:28, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Demographics

  • This area could use some work with sources. Some sources (like the American Fact Finder) don't provide anywhere near the level of detail that they're supposed to be citing, and as far as I can tell the American Religious Identification Survey only presents information for the country as a whole, not specific cities. The last paragraph is almost entirely unsourced.
Religion data: I found this info from the Association of Religion Data Archives, which is a sourced recommended by the Census Bureau since they stopped tracking religious identification. The only problem with the source is that it breaks down data into states, metropolitan areas, or counties, but not city-proper. You might be able to get away with using the information for Ramsey County, since the city has 3/5 of the county's population. Unfortunately, all the other data I've been able to find is combined for Minneapolis-St. Paul... Best, epicAdam (talk) 22:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Economy

  • Besides just a listing of companies, it would be helpful to know what percentage of the population is employed by those companies or a general economic outlook of the city (is it mostly blue collar or service sector jobs? etc.)

Recreation

Media

  • Unsourced: "Also operating as part of American Public Media, MPR's programming reaches 5 million listeners, most notably through A Prairie Home Companion hosted by Garrison Keillor, who also lives in the city. The Fitzgerald Theater, renamed in 1994 for Irish native and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald is home to the show."
  • Fixed .:davumaya:. 19:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sports

  • Same issue here as in demographics. A single source is used for an entire paragraph, even though that reference only applies to a single sentence.

Government and Politics

  • "scoring 92% progressive by a progressive group[80] and 4% conservative by a conservative group[81] on a range of issues."
    • This sort of information is irrelevant here. saying she's a liberal/progressive Democrat is enough, but the article should say what percentage of the vote she earned.
      • I don't like liberal/progressive labels, they don't mean much. And a rating is the most objective way to quantify and describe a politician. For example one might self-profess to be some label but actually vote the opposite. Thus we could source either way. .:davumaya:. 19:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Transportation

  • Again, check sources so that they actually reflect the information cited. For example, the reference provided for "Biking is also gaining riders due to paved bike lanes which connect to other routes in the metropolitan area." says nothing about bike lanes connecting to other areas of the city nor does it say that the number of bikers is increasing.

Overall good job, but will still need some copy editing to get up to GA. Best, epicAdam (talk) 18:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ "Your Source for African American History". African American Registry. 2006-08-30. Retrieved 2008-07-28.
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