Talk:Devil's Lake (North Dakota)

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[edit] Disambig page or something badly needed

This page is in serious need of a disambig page or something like that. The article name here is being used for a lake in North dakota when there are lots of other uses for the name. Google "Devil's Lake" and you'll find that the majority of links are to a lake and state park of the same name in Wisconsin, but that there are also other places with the same name too. (Oregon, possible Michigan (golf club names that, presumably after a real lake.) I would think that this article should be at Devil's Lake (North Dakota) but then that's similar to the town article name. Before I start moving things around I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on a naming structure to use. DreamGuy 06:30, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

The disambiguation page was a proper course of action. But don't go around saying one lake is more significant than the other, you're liable to insult people. The Devils Lake in North Dakota is by far the most sizeable and politically notable of all of these lakes and was not improperly occuping the "Devils Lake" article. And this place in Wisconsin you talk about, I've never heard of. Hits on Google are hardly indicative of geographical significance, and they seem to be split 50/50 with North Dakota besides. --Alexwcovington (talk) 14:20, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, upon further reasearch, this place in Wisconsin is a pond outside of Baraboo. It has a state park centred around it, sure, but Devils Lake (the one in North Dakota) has a few of those, a Native American reservation, and a city or three. Plus all the political controversy over flooding and drainage. I've moved the disambiguation page and redirected "Devils Lake" back here. --Alexwcovington (talk) 14:32, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You were talking about not saying things to insult people and you call Devils Lake in Wisconsin a POND? You've got to be kidding me. It's a hugely popular state park in the largest tourist area of the state with a full lake. Don't be insulting. I'm moving things back to make things more fair, which is disambig as default. I personally think the Wisconsin one deserves the main page based upon notability, but making the main page a disambig is a compromise. DreamGuy 15:10, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong name

It is the wrong name in any case; it should be Devil's Lake.

The missing apostrophe in the name of the associated city is the result of a U.S. Post Office push early in the 20th century to eliminate apostrophes from all post office names. The same consideration does not apply to the name of the lake.

I don't have time to fix it now, but will later if nobody beats me to it. Gene Nygaard 15:58, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please note that this is incorrect. The apostrophe has been deprecated by the United States Geological Survey (the office with responsibility for geographic place names) since 1890. (If it were the post office, we couldn't use street names with apostrophes, either.) The apostrophe deprecation applies to both the municipality and the lake, as easily verified on this USGS topographical map [1]. --Dhartung | Talk 17:25, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, DreamGuy, now you're being totally irrational. I was willing to sidestep the controversy by moving the North Dakota lake article to Devil's Lake, but you've come right back and forced us to deal with it again. What's more, you have now messed things up so completely we will need an admin to move the pages back. I hope you are proud of yourself and that 1x.5 mile "lake" of yours. --Alexwcovington (talk) 17:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There's absolutely nothing irrational with my changes. Your attitude is completely out of line here. "Devil's Lake" is the actual name of the lake and state park in Wisconsin. With the apostrophe in it, it is clearly far and ahead the leader in notability, as you can see with a Google search. No contest. Spelled incorrectly without the apostrophe, it still beats the city in Google notability by a fair amount. Your attempts to put the North Dakota one in the primary article space is simply inexcusible, and if you had any sense of trying to work together for consensus you would have accepted the disambig page as the main article space. The fact that you didn't and insisted upon continuously trying to make it the main article, with and without the apostrophe, shows that you have no intention at all of trying to work together. And I don't get this sneering at a lake and putting it in apostrophes like it doesn't count somehow. That's just plain irrational. That lake is a prime tourist spot and far more well known than your lake or city. So you have a larger body of water, so what? Washington DC is nowhere near the size of Washington state, but when people talk about "Washington" they are almost always referring to the more notable/important/famous one and not the one that happens to fill up more space. The same is true here. DreamGuy 20:11, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

This isn't a lake so remote it doesn't affect anyone. Just because North Dakota doesn't provide as many links to pages on the body of water does not diminish its importance. There are THREE cities (not one, and that's just along the lake). It hosts three state parks, not just one like the Wisconsin lake. There's a a federal game preserve, a Native American reservation. It has its own USGS/EPA defined drainage basin. Steamboat traffic dating back almost 200 years. Thousands of people depend on this lake for irrigation and drinking water, are threatened by its droughts and floods, fighting over outlets and potential downstream contamination. This lake is in the middle of struggles between the North Dakota, Minnesota, Manitoba, US and Canadian governments. And it's NOT trivial. True, the article stands with much to be improved, but there is a lot of information to improve it with.

I would not hold out so much hope for the lake in Wisconsin. The Devil's Lake in Wisconsin is miniscule in comparison. Just one mile by half a mile according to the Wisconsin DNR map on the park site. It is completely encompassed by the single state park. And it's outside of Baraboo, more notable for the Circus World Museum.

And fishing? People rave about the fishing on Devil's Lake in North Dakota as well. I've seen TV shows on location at the lake in winter and summer. Maybe the Wisconsin lake is a loosely kept secret on the Internet, but there have been volumes made on the North Dakota lake.

So, in the face of all this evidence suggesting that the North Dakota indeed has more significance than its Google hits reveal, why are you promoting a direct disambig page over the established article? A link to the disambig page, or if the number is small, direct links to other similar items, at the top of a main article is SOP in situations like this. Insisting that the Wisconsin lake article merits making a disambig page the main page for the subject is like saying because Jacksonville, North Carolina exists there should be a disambig at Jacksonville. Or worse, you suggest that the North Carolina city is more significant because of its proximity to Camp Lejeune, when the Florida city hosts a naval base and an air station, in addition to being larger and more populous.

Finally, the point you seem to be missing in all this is that the article on the Wisconsin lake doesn't even exist. We are having this discussion on what used to be, and still is for all practical purposes, the main page for the subject "Devil's Lake". Either you are too busy arguing with me or it doesn't actually hold your interest enough to create. So basically, you are insisting that the Devil's Lake in North Dakota is on a par with nothing at all, and claiming you're acting in the interests of NPOV. Where is the rational thought process behind that? We can link to the Devil's Lake in Wisconsin right at the top of the main article. No muss, no fuss. --Alexwcovington (talk) 06:09, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Building consensus

I've taken some time to cool off from the controversy and would like to move towards resolution on the subject.

DreamGuy, I appreciate your efforts to cover the many lakes and places bearing the same name in the world. You have added several places to the listing, and they may turn out to be excellent articles once someone begins them.

At this point though, only the city and lake in North Dakota have articles, and one of them deserves to have Devil's Lake redirect there until another article surpasses them. As is the case with many articles, a link to the disambiguation page should be placed right at the top to ensure that people find exactly what they were looking for.

I look forward to your response. --Alexwcovington (talk) 07:31, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, so you claim that one of the articles deserves to be at Devil's Lake instead of there being a disambiguation page there. Why? You didn;t give any reason, you just seem to assume that's true. When there are multiple items with the same name, there should be a disambiguation page there unless the one that is there is the most well known one. That is not the case with what you are proposing. Regardless of whether the other Devil's Lakes have articles or not, *your* Devil's Lake does not deserve the main space. Why are you so insistent that it go there? Like someone finding the page and then clicking on the one they want is such a horrible chore? Honestly, based upon notability (Google hits on the Wisconsin one far, far outnumber the North Dakota one) I could make a strong case for the Wisconsin one belong at the main article, but a disambig page is the best solution. Why do you have such a problem with that concept? You labeled this section "building consensus", but what you actually appear to want is to do it your way, the way you wanted it from the start, ignore everyone else and all the other Devil('s) Lakes, and try to pretend that that's consensus. I'm sorry, but that's not the way things work. I can just as easily make the main space for the Wisconsin one and link to the disambig at the top. We have a compromise, please try to accept it. DreamGuy 20:39, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for responding, DreamGuy. I would now like the input of the other contributors to this article before moving on in the dispute resolution process. --Alexwcovington (talk) 05:35, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't recall what I edited about this article (probably categories, I do that a lot), and I haven't done any googling or other research. However, simply based off of the material in the existing articles and the names of the not-yet-existing ones, I'd say that putting the disambiguation page at Devil's Lake is probably best. Not much links to any of these articles (except Devils Lake, North Dakota which gets plenty of links due to a template), so none seems significantly more prominent than the others within Wikipedia. Bryan 06:18, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see no reason why one Devil's Lake should have priority over the others. None of these are well-known places. Keep Devil's Lake a disambiguation page. Nonenmac 14:36, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It looks like we now have consensus on this point. DreamGuy 15:04, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Please do not close debate before all the editors have had a chance to post their comment. I am being patient on this one. --Alexwcovington (talk) 17:59, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Please give up this quixotic quest. This is an obvious and ordinary situation like thousands of others that have been resolved by disambiguation pages. Rmhermen 22:32, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
There are also thousands of other situations which have a disambiguation page and still have unidentified links go to one of the articles, rather than the disambiguation page. Gene Nygaard 23:46, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

With 5 of the 8 contributors to the article now having chimed in (an acceptable quorum), I can see this round of the debate is over. Quixotic, though? We'll just have to see who is tilting at windmills.

I move to archive the discussion up to this point and free the talk page for discussion of the article itself. --Alexwcovington (talk) 06:00, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Apostrophe

After seeing it written as "Devils Lake" on state websites (and on most other sites), I added this spelling. Brendan OShea 08:30, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

This is normal for geographic names: The U.S. Board on Geographic Names has since its inception in 1890 discouraged the use of the possessive form, which includes the apostrophe and the s. The possessive form using an s is allowed, but the apostrophe is almost always removed. [2] Of course, locals and non-professionals often continue to use the possessive anyway. --Dhartung | Talk 16:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if it counts, but I've actually been in Devils Lake. I grew up in the town--3rd generation. The lake's name does not have an apostrophe in it. I'm surprised there's any controversy about this at all.

I am holding the Bicentennial History (of the town) in my lap, but my mother edited it, so I suppose that's suspect. I did go to http://geonames.usgs.gov/ , the USGS Geographic Names Information System, and queried on "Devils Lake and North Dakota" and got a listing of the lake and the town. A query for Devil's Lake produced no results.

This is my first Wikipedia note, so I'm not sure what, if anything to do next. Jgreenleaf 03:09, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is it really freshwater?

I listened to a program on NPR and they described Devil's Lake (Or Devils Lake, if you prefer) as being saline. In fact the pricipal opposition to draining the lake's water is based on the concern's that the lake's salt content would be harmful towards river water. Piercetp 17:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

And the 1:250k USGS Topo Map reads "Devils Lake" (then a line break) "Salt". 82.36.26.70 10:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Endorheic?

I noticed that this article is in a category of articles regarding endorheic lakes. Is it now not an endorheic considering it now has at least one outlet? Or are the rules not incredibly strict and the article is considered to be of interest to those who are looking up endorheic lakes?

Minshullj 04:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)