Talk:Lake Michigan

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Lake Michigan is part of WikiProject Lakes, a WikiProject which aims to systematically improve lake-related articles using the tools on the Project page. You are welcome and encouraged to edit the article attached to this page and to join the project.

Lake Michigan flows into the Chicago River. The natural flow of the river was reversed in 1900 to prevent sewage from flowing into Lake Michigan.

What river(s) do Lake Michigan drain into? It would be nice to have that information in the article, and possibly the major rivers that feed into it.

Contents 1 Chicagoland 2 Beaches 2.1 "Cold" 3 Lake Chicago 4 Traverse City 5 Chicago River image 6 Polar Bears

[edit] Chicagoland

I've removed the rather large footer with links to topics about greater Chicago, because it doesn't seem relevant to this article. That's a bit like having a navigation guide for Rio de Janeiro on an article about the Atlantic Ocean just because the Atlantic beach is a popular feature of the city. Lake Michigan may seem to be just a part of Chicagoland to Chicagoans, but it's a bit bigger than that. Tverbeek 01:07, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Beaches

I really think that material about "singing sands", "exceptional" beauty, opinions about the steel mills and their supposed contribution to the sunsets, etc. belongs in a Dept or Tourism brochure, not Wikipedia. Tverbeek 19:29, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Except that there are, in fact, steel mills dotting the Indiana shoreline that can be seen in both directions from the Indiana dunes (most popular public beach on the lake) and the sand is, in fact, called "singing sands". It's not just being lyrical. The pollutants released by the steel mills, due to their higher indices of refraction than normal air, due cause more colorful sunsets. If you think there is too much POV in there, please adjust it, but try not to stomp on factual information in the process. siafu 19:33, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm trying to, but someone just stomped on my use of objective prose. I know that the steel mills are visible, but calling them "perhaps the only drawback" is not a fact, but an opinion. (Some people find the tourists to be a drawback. Or even the dune grass.) The statement that the mills (and not other factors) are solely responsible for the "spectacular" sunsets is questionable. I don't find the sand to be particularly "soft" and it's pretty far from white (I've seen far whiter). Tverbeek 20:08, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Then feel free to remove the quoted pieces. Your "use of objective prose" had previously removed far more than that. siafu 20:10, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Then feel free to add the material back next time. Simply reverting a good-faith effort at abiding by Wikipedia's policies about NPOV and verifiaiblity is both rude and unproductive. Tverbeek 20:22, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I did add it back, after you rv'ed a good faith contribution from an anon.

Pardon the interruption, but I did no such thing. Look at the edit history for that edit [1] or spanning the whole anon-editor's session [2], and you'll see that I took some stuff out and put other stuff in. That's not a revert. A revert is when there's no trace of the previous edit... such as what you did to my contribution [3]. Tverbeek 02:17, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

To quote Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes:

Deleting useful content. A piece of content may be written poorly, yet still have a purpose. Consider what a sentence or paragraph tries to say. Clarify it instead of throwing it away.

Sorry if you're offended, but it wasn't very helpful to chop everything out on account of a few POV words and phrases. siafu 20:49, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I had reasons for removing everything I removed (as I've already explained). They weren't poorly written; they were written beautifully.... but "what they were trying to say" was to express opinions, not facts. You disagree with me on some of that, and I'm compromising. So stop trying to make me out as a Bad Guy here. Tverbeek 02:17, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Cold"

I don't think "cold" is the appropriate term for 55-70F lake water. Certainly compared to Lake Superior, southern Lake Michigan beach water is quite mild. Tverbeek 20:29, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

My POV says 70 degrees is cold. Compared to ice, Lake Michigan is warm, but that doesn't make it really warm. Just asking:Have you actually swum in 70 degree water? What objective measure could we use here?MPS 20:34, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Since the subject is summertime lake water, how about we use that as a frame of reference? (I think most readers will grasp that we're not comparing it to the inside of a furnace or the surface of Pluto.) Yes, I've been swimming in water that temperature. I've been in Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, the Atlantic Ocean off Florida, the Pacific off Jalisco (Mexico), and countless small lakes. Superior (40-50F isn't unusual) I'd call "cold". Inland lakes that are shallow enough to heat up to 80F all the way down, I'd call "warm". A typical August Lake Michigan beach falls somewhere in between, and I think "cool" reflects that better than "cold" does. If you think 70F is "cold"... you just don't know what cold water feels like. :) Tverbeek 02:17, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Swimming in Lake Michigan tells me it's cold. Cool maybe, in August, but cold the other 11 months which to me justify the term "cold."

[edit] Lake Chicago

This article really should talk about the "precursur" to Lake Michigan, which geologists call Lake Chicago (some geologists even give it different names at different time periods -- talk about confusing).

check out:

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/702.html http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/student/damery1/gl_form.html

[edit] Traverse City

I removed the Traverse City entry in the Michigan cities section because this city does not exceed, or even approach, 30,000 in population. I would support rewording the section to include metro areas or other designations of significance, since Michigan certainly has more than two noteworthy towns on the big lake(i.e., Traverse City, Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, etc.), but they do not fit as the group currently exists.

[edit] Chicago River image

I removed the Chicago River image [4] because (a) article was crowded with images, and (b) didn't really offer a view of the lake or any important content to the article. --mtz206 (talk) 14:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polar Bears

I think a section of "fun facts" or something like that could be added, where there could be a mention of the Polar Bear Club in Jacksonport, WI