Talk:History of Minnesota

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History of Minnesota has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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Contents 1 Geological history 2 Topics that should be covered 3 NWA 4 Auto Peer Review 5 GA passed 6 Some Revert Needed

[edit] Geological history

Overkill. Why not start with the Big Bang? As far as I can tell, it's the convention with this type of article to go back only to the earliest human habitation (see History of California, History of Texas and Utah#History). Maybe the geological history - cleaned up, as a deal of it's a bit amateur ("thunder lizards" have a proper name, y'know) - could be put under a separate article called Minnesota regional geology or similar? Tearlach 02:51, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Geological history and early life

2.7 billion years ago, the first pieces of land that would later form the U.S. state of Minnesota began to rise up out of an ancient ocean as a chain of volcanic islands. Much of the underlying gneiss rock of today's state had already been formed nearly a billion years earlier, but still laid underneath the sea. Except for the region where the islands appeared in what is now the northern part of the state, most of the region remained underwater. About two billion years ago, much of the water had drained away. Heavy mineral deposits containing iron collected on the shores of a receding sea to form the Mesabi, Cuyuna, Vermilion, and Gunflint iron ranges from the center of the state up into what is now Canada. These regions also showed the first signs of life as algae grew in the shallow waters.

1.1 billion years ago, a rift valley began to pull the state apart. Lava emerged from cracks along the edges. The rift extended from the current Lake Superior area through the state and down into what is now Kansas. However, the separation stopped before the land could become two separate continents. About 100 million years later, the last volcano in the area went quiet.

550 million years ago, the area found itself repeatedly inundated with water of a shallow sea that grew and receded through several cycles. At this point, the land mass of what is now North America ran along the equator. At that time, Minnesota had a tropical climate. Small marine creatures such as trilobites, coral, and snails float through the sea. The shells of the tiny animals sink to the bottom of the sea, eventually forming limestone and sandstone. When dinosaurs roamed the planet, Minnesota didn't have a remarkable population of thunder lizards. The region remained coastline for a long period, with creatures resembling crocodiles and sharks sliding through the nearby seas.

Other land animals followed as the dinosaurs disappeared, but much of the historical record of this time was etched away as glaciers expanded and retreated across the region through several cycles starting about 2 million years ago. Ice ages come and go as humans develop in other parts of the world. The ice continued to retreat for the last time about 12,500 years before the present time. Melting glaciers filled the lakes and rivers of the state. Minnesota was on the southern edge of Lake Agassiz at this time, a massive lake with a volume rivaling that of the Great Lakes combined together. The River Warren was the southern outlet of the lake, and had an immense flow through the valleys now used by the Minnesota River and Mississippi River. Falls on the river were precursors to the Saint Anthony Falls.

At this time, a number of giant animals roamed the area. Beavers were the size of bears, and mammoths were 14 feet (4.3m) high at the shoulder and weighed 10 tons. Even buffalo were much larger than they are today. Glaciers continued to retreat and the climate became warmer in the next few millennia. The giant creatures eventually died out about 9,000 years ago.

[edit] Topics that should be covered

The Minnesota Historical Society list of history topics would be a good place to start expanding this article. (And it needs expanding -- the article doesn't even cover major historical figures like Hubert Humphrey or Walter Mondale.) If nothing else, the topic areas on the page could cover some of the topic division of this article. --Elkman 19:48, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NWA

Good idea, Elkman to write about historical significance of NWA.

[edit] Auto Peer Review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and may or may not be accurate for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at WP:LEAD. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[1]
• Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSDATE, months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.
• See if possible if there is a free use image that can go on the top right corner of this article.^[2]
• There may be an applicable infobox for this article. For example, see Template:Infobox Biography, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City.^[3] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
• Per WP:MOSNUM, there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 18mm, use 18 mm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 18 mm.^[4]
• There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view. For example,
  • apparently
  • is considered
  • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).^[5]
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • While additive terms like “also”, “in addition”, “additionally”, “moreover”, and “furthermore” may sometimes be useful, overusing them when they aren't necessary can instead detract from the brilliancy of the article. This article has 17 additive terms, a bit too much.
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
  • Temporal terms like “over the years”, “currently”, “now”, and “from time to time” often are too vague to be useful, but occasionally may be helpful. “I am now using a semi-bot to generate your peer review.”
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space inbetween. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a. ^[6]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 01:34, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA passed

1. Well written? Pass

2. Factually accurate? Pass

3. Broad in coverage? Pass

4. Neutral point of view? Pass

5. Article stability? Pass

6. Images? Pass

It thus passes all the GA criteria with success and is thoroughly well written. It is broad enough and as expected it is neutral. Some pictures really help the reader in situating the context and in picturing the areas. Lincher 02:17, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some Revert Needed

Tutmosis has begun copyediting the article. IMO, some of what he has done improves the clarity and mission of the article, however, in some cases he has changed meanings or facts, most likely inadvertently, such as changing 1600s and 1700s to 16th century and 17th century. In order to avoid massive simultaneous editing, I'll wait a few days to see if he is done before correcting mistakes he has introduced. If it gets too screwed up, we can revert to Jonathunder's 11 October version. Appraiser 02:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)