Talk:Mississippi River

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Mississippi River was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: October 11, 2006
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[edit] Tributaries of the Mississippi

We all need a project. I want to write an article on Paint Creek, (Iowa), a direct tributary to the Mississippi, but come on, it's just a creek in NE Iowa. See my article Butte Creek (California).

I put this up in the Missouri name section of the discussion but figure it should go here too.

The Mississippi river itself is misnamed and should by rights end at St. Louis and the Missouri should flow on to the Gulf. However due to history and such the river is named as it is. This is why there is confusion about the Missouri River not being a tributary to the Mississippi and this is simply an oddity of the naming of the river. The Mississippi is actually the tributary to the Missouri. A citation needed should be put there until I or someone can get one directly but I don't know how to put that remark in the edit. It is one of the Mississippi oddities and you can look it up that way and see that it is true. 12.214.61.17 02:39, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I think you have it backwards. The segment of the Mississippi from STL to the Gulf should stay the Mississippi; it had that name from the Eurpoeans since well before they ever came upon the Missouri. At STL, the Missouri River should be renamed the Mississippi, and the current segment of the Missippi which heads north should be renamed. Foofighter20x (talk) 00:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Another issue: in the infobox on the right side of the article, the tributaries listed left and right appear backwards. Or, am I missing something? Foofighter20x (talk) 00:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Tributaries are described as left and right from the perspective of looking downriver (see Tributary), so the listing in the infobox is correct. VerruckteDan (talk) 02:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of New Orleans

The battle did not secure the river for the United States since, unknown to the combatants, that question had already been agreed in the Treaty of Ghent. Jim.henderson 22:02, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the battle did retain military control over the river for the Americans. Undoubtedly, the sentence/paragraph could be more clear, if it remains. The central issue is whether the battle is closely enough related to the river to warrant inclusion in the history section of this article. My sense is that it is, though I wouldn't necessarily object to leaving it out, as long as some rationale is given. Tim Shuba 01:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I have pared it down to little more than two links. The linked articles explain the matter adequately. Perhaps someone can make the mention smaller without losing coherence; I would not recommend making it bigger.
Jim.henderson 02:54, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] longest *named* river

Ok, I understand what they mean when they say "second longest named river", really I do. But it is still confusing. For a second, I was like, no, Mississippi has a longer name than Missouri, having 11 letters rather than 8.

Is there a better way to word that? --24.5.74.101 19:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Myths

we should make a place for myths and what not becasue i saw no mention of the "phizzel gobblin" in this articleChessmaster3 12:17, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] water falls

shouldn't the article state "remaining" waterfall? at the keokuk, ia lock and dam #19 were "the falls of the mississippi". i don't know of any others.

"in Clearwater County, Minnesota, the river falls to 725 feet (220 m) just below Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the only waterfall along the river's course."

M3t00 16:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The above has apparently become obsolete due to rephrasing in the article. (SEWilco 18:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC))

[edit] I35W

STOP editing in nonsense about the I35W bridge, it is firstly NOT a notable bridge, it was built in the 60s along with almost every other modern day bridge on the river. This one was built frankly on the industrial cheap and carries no real significance for the river other than to put a highway across it. And considering not one pier went into the Mississippi itself, the bridge's relation to the river is minor compared to the other bridges which replaced historic structures (Cappelen Franklin Ave Bridge for example still has the old 19th century piers where the original bridge went). And considering the replacement bridge is ALSO being built on the fast cheap sidetracking even a visual historic review, there is nothing incredibly notable about it either. A disaster does not make a bridge notable and neither does it make its predecessor. One mention in the article is ENOUGH and even to that extent its highly irrelevant. 64.122.208.184 15:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

It was the bussiest bridge in Minnesota, and one of the most-travelled on the upper Mississippi. Its collapse stops the flow of traffic on the river--nothing can go upstream of that location. How is that not "notable" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.196.77.26 (talk)
Just for accuracy's sake - it was the third busiest in the state after I-694 and I-94 over the Mississippi.--Appraiser 22:31, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
And if you look at the section of the locks in Saint Anthony Falls it is mentioned that there is little barge traffic up there. Having the river blocked is irritating, but is it encyclopedic? In five years is it encyclopedic? (SEWilco 23:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC))
Actually, I think it is, because ultimately the NTSB will determine that the collapse was a combination of two errors: 1) raising the weight limit and increasing the traffic volume (by converting shoulders to traffic lanes) caused stress fractures in the steel to occur faster than the designers anticipated (it was designed to last 50 years), and 2) The on-going re-surfacing tempted the construction company to pile large quantities of sand and store water (in trucks) on the bridge, causing a concentration of weight that was unanticipated by designers. The findings will cause a major re-evaluation of every older bridge in the country, how much traffic it carries, the maximum allowed weight of trucks, and what repair techniques are allowed. The general population may not notice much difference, but I think this may be a major juncture in bridge standards. (All of this is my personal opinion and probably has no basis in fact.)--Appraiser 00:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
We're discussing its relevance to an article on the River. You're welcome to learn how high are the rated capacities of bridges and try to publish a scholarly study before the NTSB, but that is hardly relevant to the River. (SEWilco 18:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC))
That was me above in a fit of anger. Anyway. I agree the bridge will become notable but in a very particular sense that will only be encyclopedically pertinent to certain topics. On its own the bridge will have faulted our transportation systems and revealed some ugly truths but its widespread effect across bridges over the Mississippi? I'm not so sure, bridge inspection and upkeep is a supposed daily part of every DOT and as many officials have downplayed bridges across the nation there may actually not be the crisis that is nationwide but locally to mismanaged DOTs. We haven't heard anything regarding contamination of the river, bridges disruption to waterflow, habitat, etc. I think a bridge anywhere could have fallen and we'd have the same situation, not necessarily a river bridge. I would rule in this instance the bridge is merely at the location of being over the Mississippi--A+B does not = C per WP Policy. Unfortunately I'm sure if we stringently applied this rule to the current list of "notable" bridges we'd be deleting some. Thoughts? .:DavuMaya:. 07:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] running through states

The article states that the river only runs through two states, followed by mentioning that it formed the borders of several others, though the course has changed. Specifically, it runs through a small portion of Illinois, at Kaskaskia. So, really, it should say that it runs through at least three states. Right? Murderbike 06:01, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, yeah, and more than three. I recall numerous locations in Mississippi and perhaps Arkansas where the river has moved while the state boundary has not, creating "islands" of one state on the other state's side of the active channel. Maybe there should be wording to the effect that the river runs through two states proper, with numerous isolated cutoffs in other states... but I don't recall offhand where and how many.--Muffuletta 18:06, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image re-arrangement

Hello guys, what a great article this is! I have done an overhaul on the images in the article. All preset image sizes have been removed and all images in the article are aligned on the right side now according to the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Images.

You might find that extreme but here is my reasoning:

The article looked very cluttered with all the big images on the left and right on a smaller screen and Wikipedia should be compatible with that, too. It is not unusual for articles that attract so many readers and contributors, lots of editors contribute material and images and everyone has their own idea of what looks nice. If there is such a mix of (individually nice) ideas of formats and alignment it is hard to find the common denominator. That's why I chose the drastic measure to reset them all to zero: All the same size and all aligned to the right.

I don't want to say that this is the ultimate solution for the design of the article, if you don't like some of the re-arrangements, feel free to change them. If you don't like any, you can even undo it. I did the changes in one edit, so they are very easily reversible.

There is no loss of information also, all the thumbnail images can be clicked for the large view, anyway. And I have not removed a single image nor a piece of information. I have added an image in the history secion.

I also added some subheaders in the history section for better readability and structure of the artcile. A nice side effect of the newly added subheaders is that the article gets streched a little to provide room for the abundant images.doxTxob \ talk 02:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

In a second step I have re-arranged some of the content and applied subheaders to diverse paragraphs throughout the article. This should improve readability and make it easy for readers to find the information. I have tried to condense the information under the respective subheaders. doxTxob \ talk 04:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New article for history section

Hello! The history section is quite long, it contains general history as well as navigational history. That is a lot of interesting material and certainly enough to deserve an article of its own.

What I am planning is to move the history section to a new article History of the Mississippi River and reduce the section in this article. In this article, I would refer to the new history article with the main article tag

Main article: History of the Mississippi River

and touch the topics in summary style. So the core information would still be present, just shorter. In the new article I would add an introduction.

Any idea, suggestion or contribution is welcome. doxTxob \ talk 23:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Archives for this talk page

I have archived a whole lot of talk topics from this talk page. The archived topics can be found in one of the archives in the archive box at the top, the archives are dated, the dates refer to the date the topic was posted. I have tried to sort them in the arhcives by that date. I have also tried to leave topics with recent comments on the page. Should I have overlooked a topic that had recent comments, please take my apologies and move it back or revive the topic on the talk page. doxTxob \ talk 01:25, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Crossings"

What are the "crossings" referred to in Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi"? Mike Dallwitz (talk) 01:58, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] What this article needs to be a Good Article

doxTxob asked me to provide a brief summary of some of the major things that this article needs done before nominating for WP:GAN. First, it wouldn't hurt to review the Good article criteria, which is a listing of six criteria that all GAs must meet in order to pass. The first three of these are the major ones: an article must be well written, with good prose, and mostly following the wikipedia manual of style; it must be reasonably complete, with most major topics covered; it must be verifiable, and information must be cited using inline citations. The last three are more minor, and usually easier to fix: adhere to WP:NPOV, be stable (no major edit wars, although random vandalism which can't be controlled is allowed), and the images must have appropriate image copyright tags (images should preferably be free use, as opposed to fair use -- licensed via GFDL, creative commons, or public domain; though fair use is still allowed, as long as they're tagged, and a fair use rationale is present).

With regards to the specifics of this article:

  • The lead/intro is too short. There's a lot of short, choppy sentences and paragraphs, and it doesn't really summarize the content of the article. The lead should be a summary here, and almost be like a short version of the article itself. See WP:LEAD for tips on improving this section.
  • The infobox looks good; the image looks a little under-exposed; perhaps a brighter one could be used? Take the photo on a sunny day? Although the image is sufficient for GA, this is just a suggestion for improvement.
  • The first thing I notice is evident from the table of contents. Due to the long length of the TOC, it seems to be caused by a large number of sections, subheaderss, and subsubheaders. And reading the article text, I see a lot of subsection headers with very little content, which could probably be combined better into main sections. If you look at some of the best FAs and GAs, they don't use a whole lot of subsection headers, sticking mainly to good-sized, well written main sections (the headers with the lines beneath them). Subsection headers should be used very conservatively.
  • Try to avoid listing content using bulleted lists, like the one with all the tributaries. Is this really the best way to present this information? Some alternatives to bulleted lists might be:
Write it out as prose. Some very long lists started because editors found it easy to just add bullet points while effectively brainstorming a topic. But once the topic gets going, these ideas should be converted to good, well written prose, with citations where needed. Try to find something to talk about each item in the list and how they are related to each other.
A figure or an image. In the case of the tributaries, listing them with the state that they are in doesn't exactly illustrate it best. What about an image of the central US, with all the tributaries drawn on it and labelled. The image to the right is a good start, but incomplete as it doesn't have all the rivers. Furthermore, the bulleted list is inaccurate -- the Ohio River isn't 'in Kentucky' -- it forms the northern border of Kentucky, and sits 'between' KY, IL, IN, OH, WV, & starts in PA.
Use a category instead. The section with the list of 'cities along the river' might be best done linking to the Cities on the Mississippi River in the 'see also' section, instead of listing them in bullet form here. Trivial information like this might be to put in 'see also' anyway.
  • Be careful with things like 'popular culture' and 'nicknames'. Sections like this tend to be heavily edited, because it doesn't take too many brain cells to hear some nickname of something (as minor as it might be), or see something mentioned on TV, and have the desire to go to wikipedia and make sure the world knows about it. Mentioning two or three of the more common nicknames in the lead is appropriate, and probably all that we need to include. Pop culture information should almost never be a bulleted list (because that's basically like putting a sign up saying "add to this list"), and should be written out as prose, with citations. For a good example of a well written pop culture section, see the 'media & popular culture' section of the Flagstaff, Arizona article.
  • Again, make sure that information that you add is sourced using inline citations. The citation should also not just contain an external link -- include full citation information, such as author, title, publisher, date of publication, date URL was retrieved -- so that if the URL ever becomes a 404 not found, the citation is not rendered useless and it could still be used to locate the source (like if you had to go to a library), should someone want to do that. See WP:CITE for tips on formatting citations.
  • Also, citations don't just have to be online sources; it's always good to include some material from offline, such as books, magazines, or journals, to provide a good, well-rounded article. Although a lot of legitimate and reliable sources are being found online these days, so this is less of an issue. But you should avoid citing personal websites and blogs, as these do not have the same editorial control as the professional sources.
  • As far as the major sections are concerned, geography and history are good. Merge navigation history into history; it all seems related, and it seems kind of silly to separate the specific navigation stuff into a whole separate section. Nuke 'cities along the river' -- move it to a category (see above). Bridge crossings seems interesting; needs citations. Arts and culture also needs citations. I would also add a section dealing with wildlife (flora and fauna) of the Mississippi -- certainly there's a more natural component to the river than just the human parts,...

Ok, those are the big things to fix. Hope that helps to get you started. I think if you fix those major things, the article will be in much better shape, and then a little minor tweaking and it will be back to GA! Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 21:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

In terms of coverage, there's hardly any material here about the economic or industrial magnitude of shipping or trade, either historically or present day. What is the typical transit time from St Louis to the gulf, if anything is still moved by this route? Is it cost competitive with rail transport, or has it fallen into a secondary niche? From my perch on the Pacific, I honestly couldn't guess the answer to these questions. MaxEnt (talk) 19:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Orphan paragraph

Under paragraph 2.4.1 Steamboat Commerce the first sentence says "Twain's book also extensively covered the steamboat commerce which took place from 1830 to 1870 on the river before more modern boating methods replaced the steamer." and yet there is no previous mention of Mark Twain in the article. It looks as if something has been removed earlier leaving this paragraph making no sense. Richerman (talk) 17:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, I have re-formulated the paragraph. It looks like that part of the story stems from the arts sub-section. The article is in need of an overhaul and any input and contribution is welcome. doxTxob \ talk 22:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Jefferson River??

Shouldn't this be the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi system? Theriddles (talk) 04:02, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

No, the Jefferson is a special case. It's actually part of the Missouri River, and basically indistinguishable from it except for a quirk of history. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_River . -- Otto 20:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC)