Talk:List of rivers in Michigan

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This article is part of WikiProject Michigan, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Michigan.

[edit] Old talk

This list was developed based on the USGS GNIS database with (so far) two changes - Black River of Allegan county is called the Black River Drain in the database and the St. Joseph of the Maumee does not appear to be in the database. Rmhermen 17:54, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

I'm wondering just how complete this list of rivers needs to be. This list seems to include any "stream-like" body of water than has the word river in it, without regard to how large it actually is or how significant it is. I suspect that for many or perhaps even most of these, there will really be very little to say about them in an article (it starts here, flows though x and y, and ends there). -- I can feel my thoughts starting to go in two rather separate strands now--so I'll try to get to them both as concisely as I can.

1) If we're not basing the list on size or significance, then why not include every item labeled as a "stream" in the GNIS? I mean, if we're after completeness, then why limit it to an arbitrary thing like whether it has the word river in it's name. Seems that we would have to do that unless we adopted some sort of threshold for listing--like flow rate or other historical significance. Of course the title would then have to be something like Waterways in Michigan.

2) It seems that many of the smaller entities can be consolidated on single pages--in perhaps either of two ways. a) For example, all the Pine Rivers could be described on a page titled something like "Pine River, Michigan". Each would have a separate section. This would probably work best if all the Pine Rivers were relatively insignificant so all the sections would be about equal, or if at most one of them had a longer section and the others only had short descriptions. Or b) the minor rivers would be described on the pages of the rivers to which they are tributories. This might pose some difficulties for referencing them, as say a link to Gun River would have to point to the article on the Kalamazoo River into which it flows. But since these are minor rivers, there would presumably not be many such links.

One other thought and then I'll stop. Perhaps rather than have separate articles for every river, perhaps there should simply be some very basic information listed here for all of the rivers, like location of headwaters, and mouth and any counties traversed. Then those rivers for which there is something more to say can have links to articles about them. Otherwise the minor rivers would remain unlinked.

Bkonrad 03:05, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you wish please go ahead and make a list of Michigan waterways - I'll warn you, GNIS lists over 4,000 of them. This page is part of Wikipedia: WikiProject Rivers where there is currently a debate about how to name articles on rivers. (To determine how difficult it would be was part of my reason for creating this page.) I favor a single pages for all Michigan Pine Rivers but the debate is ongoing. Rmhermen 19:05, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

4000+ entries? heh, heh. I'll pass. I didn't really think that was a good idea--I was just wondering about coverage (minor streams called a "river" and most significant "streams" that may not be called a river). I think discussing all the rivers with the same name in one article is probably the best way to go. Bkonrad 19:14, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tributary of vs. watershed

Either is correct so it isn't dreadfully important. Looking at a nuber of other state lists, about a third only had an alphabetical list, about a third used tributary and the last third used watershed. Minnesota used the phrase "watershed and tributary" or somthing similar and added government watershed codes, however without an article explaining them. I am not sure how they were found or if they would be useful. Rmhermen 15:32, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I changed it to watershed based on the description at tributary. As described there, using the term to describe a tributary of a lake doesn't seem accurate, especially for such large bodies as the Great Lakes. It's really not such a big deal though, I just thought the use of the term should match the description in the linked article. older≠wiser 16:47, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia's definition is perhaps shallow. Certainly it is not the only definition in use. Most basically a tributary is a body of water which contributes water to another body of water. Google "definition tributary" for a wider range of defintions than Wikipedia shows. Rmhermen 16:51, 24 November 2005 (UTC)