Talk:List of lakes in Minnesota

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[edit] Criteria for listing?

Should there be a limit on the size of the lake? Should there have to be an article? I am thinking that if the lake has an article or is greater than X acres it should be listed. What X is I do not know. The Minnesoata DNR lakefinder gives all sorts of fun facts... -Ravedave 03:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

  • When you say a "limit on the size of the lake" I assume you mean the minumum size allowable. I think that any lake with a wiki article is fair game and any lake without an article should be removed until it has one. Otherwise we could have a list of 12,543 lakes with only 100 blue links. Let's start removing red links by the end of the weekend if no one objects.--Hraefen 15:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
    • If the criteria is to only list lakes with wiki articles why even have this page? It would just duplicate Category:Lakes_of_Minnesota, thats why I was thinking maybe we should make it all lakes greater than X or wiki article. What do you think? -Ravedave 17:40, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • It's true that this list would be the same as Category:Lakes of Minnesota if all red links were removed, but I think maintaing a list as well has three advantages. 1. Many users don't really know about the category function, or at least they're not as likely to use them as they are a list 2. you con't link to a category within the body of a text, it always just appears at the bottom 3. If a vandal removed some lakes from a list (vandals do weird things sometimes) we would know of it right away...we may not necessariuly catch this if a lake was removed from a cateogry ... we would only see it if that particular lake was on our watchlist. I think we should avoid setting a lake size minimum if this list gets crazy long, and I don't think it is (yet) and removing red links will prolong this.--Hraefen 17:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • hrm, I'll think on it. I think items like 'long lake' should be removed for sure. Interesting article in regards to minnesota lakes - [1]. -Ravedave

What about multiple lakes sharing identical names? For example Rice Lake: now which Rice Lake are we speaking of? One in Wisconsin or the one in Minnesota, and (since we are speaking of List of Lakes in Minnesota) which one in Minnesota? By having a simple [[Rice Lake]] would not work, neither would [[Rice Lake (Minnesota)]] nor [[Rice Lake (Crow Wing County, Minnesota)]]. Using Minnesota DNR Lake ID won't quite work well either because, first, some large lakes are divided into smaller segments so some lakes may have several Lake IDs, and secondly, in everyday life, the general public don't call a lake by its lake ID number. Any suggestions? I would suggest something like [[Rice Lake (MN-18005300)|Rice Lake (by Hesitation WMA, Crow Wing County, MN)]], but this could be quite cumbersome for list makers and article writers. CJLippert 20:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I think adding the county behind recurring lake names (as a description here, not even necessarily in the wiki name) would suffice except in rare cases. If there does need to be more than one article for lakes that share the same name, then presumably we can worry about disambig methods on a case by case basis.--Our Bold Hero 21:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Another lake-name that occurs frequently is "Mud Lake" to which I see there is a disabmiguation page associated with it. I have added bunch of Rice Lakes in the "List of lakes in Minnesota" page -- commented them out, though -- and bunch of Mud Lakes in the disambiguation page -- also commented them out. Would having a disambiguation page for Rice Lake be the way to go as to not to over-clutter the List page? CJLippert 13:19, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

What is the # column for? I was originally assuming it was for the rank in size of the lake (so Lake Superior would be #1, for example). Now I'm wondering if the original intent of the column was to list how many MN lakes share that name. I was also assuming that when two counties showed up in the counties column, it was a lake that was half in one county and half in another (which is common) but now I'm guessing it's for listing multiple lakes in a single row if they share a name. If this is true, then what do we do where there are multiple lakes in the same country with the same name? For instance, there are (at least) 2 lakes called Diamond Lake in Hennepin County, and (at least) 2 lakes called Bass Lake in Hennepin County. If there are two lakes called foo (one in county X, and one split between counties Y and Z) would it be confusing to list "2" in the # column and then "X, Y, Z" in the counties column? Hack-Man 13:51, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and another reason I see to not list multiple lakes in a single row: what should go in the area column? The combined area of all the lakes with the same name? Or should each of the areas be listed, separated by commas? This would mean careful attention would have to be taken to keep the order of teh areas the same as the order of the counties. I think serious consideration should be taken to having a separate row for each lake. Hack-Man 13:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I would like to add a lake but I am having trouble figuring out just what the page name would be. I would like to make a page for Wood Lake in Yellow Medicine County, MN. But a problem is that there is a town named Wood Lake, also in Yellow Medicine County, near there. Of course there are also many other lakes with the same name. If someone could help sort this out I'd be happy to add content to the Wood Lake article.Andercee 09:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I figured it out.Andercee 09:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Just Saying

I did the math and figured this out, less than 2% of Minnesota's Lakes are accounted for in this list.Andercee 09:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wisconsin lakes

I undid the revision about Wisconsin having more lakes, as the Wisconsin DNR and Minnesota DNR figures are counting lakes of different sizes. According to the figures at General Facts about Wisconsin Lakes, Wisconsin has 15,057 documented lakes, 60 percent of which (9,034) are unnamed. The majority of those (at least 4,517) are less than 10 acres. So Minnesota has 11,842 10-acre lakes and Wisconsin has at most 10,540. I can't find a figure for total Minnesota lakes, however, and that should probably be added to this article to account for varying definitions.

[edit] Major overhaul

I just completed a major overhaul to the list, getting nearly all my information from www.lakehomes.com. One thing I tweaked was some of the name modifiers. For example, since Big Pine had what appeared to be a corresponding Little Pine, I grouped them together as Pine (Big) and Pine (Little). However, there was another Big Pine that was all by itself, so I left it alone. This happened a few other times with Big/Little, and Upper/Lower lakes. Feel free to change it if my tweaking made it more confusing. I also didn't link any counties or towns because this list focuses on the lakes and the first entity could change depending on how a user sorts the list. Oh, and I only wikilinked to exact lake articles, not dab pages or city/county pages. Hoof Hearted 16:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)