Talk:South Bend, Indiana

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[edit] Perspectives on South Bend

South Bend is a nice place to raise a family. The pace is slower than larger towns...but within a 3-4 hours drive in any direction you have a choice of many large cities (Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids.) It's nice to have those cities available within a few hours drive and yet be able to leave all those people and ALL that traffic.


Public bus fares are .75 including a transfer. Sadly, Scottsdale Mall was torn down, but a nice new shopping complex has replaced it. The [Morris Preforming Arts Center http://morriscenter.org] is located downtown. Recently the city rebuilt the police station and jail. The four public high schools are Riley, Clay, Adams, and Washington. The two hospitals are St. Joseph and Memorial. Theaters are Showplace 16. Newspapers are [South Bend Tribune http://www.sbtinfo.com] and a pennysaver type free newspaper called [Michiana Shopper Newspaper http://www.michianashopper.com]. Radio stations are too numerous to mention but there are 5 TV stations, [WNDU CH16 http://www.wndu.com], [WSBT CH22 http://www.wsbt.com], [WSJV CH28 http://www.fox28.com], [WNIT CH34 http://www.wnit.org] and two smaller low powered TV stations WBND and WUPN.

Restaurant row is located on the northeast side of the city, with may fine restaurents located downtown as well as the west side of the city.

[unsigned]

Thanks for erasing my comment. Here's a list of the fine restaurants on Ireland Road:
  • Applebee's, 1150 E Ireland Rd
  • Burger King, 2027 E Ireland Rd
  • China Garden, 910 E. Ireland Rd
  • TGI Friday's, 2042 E. Ireland Rd.
  • Long John Silver's, 920 E Ireland Rd.
  • Pizza Hut, 209 E Ireland Rd.
  • Steak N Shake, 1315 E Ireland Rd.
  • Taco Bell, 231 E. Ireland Rd.
Feel free to cut and paste my list when you email the Michelin Star reviewers. Jkonrath 16:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


You may or may not know this, but Wikipedia is NOT an advertising site. We don't list addresses for individual venues unless they are one of a kind (and maybe not even then). Though I would like more people to come live in my city, this is written like an advertisement, which is not a part of any encyclopedia.
And WSJV and WNIT are in Elkhart, not SB. CatMan 21:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
So, we have definitely established that there are restaurants in South Bend. I was beginning to wonder... And for the love of god, don't forget the new Chick-fil-A at 4555 S. Michigan Street (just off Ireland road). I hear a Texas Roadhouse is going up as well. And as far as I know, this is a talk page, and the person listing the restaurant addresses was attempting to make a point regarding many restaurants on Ireland Road. cntrlaltdel33t 15:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I would think, if we do choose to put in anything about SB restaraunts, it should only touch on them lightly, not list all of them, put in some from streets other than East Ireland Road, and not give the exact addresses. That's just my opinion though, so it's not like it matters or anything. CatMan 22:31, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Music legacy

Someone requested earlier that South Bend's contributions to music be discussed. The comment was unduly erased. I am reinserting the request. — Lumbercutter 02:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] GARY EAST?

As a life long resident of South Bend, I am offended that someone would edit this page to replace our city's name with the term "Gary East".

Great. Talk pages are for discussing what to do in the article, not your opinions on them. CatMan 21:19, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

The article is rapidly acquiring information, and could make a decent encyclopedia article at some point, but it does not meet the Good Article criteria yet, and will not be listed at this time. The biggest issues with the article are with criterion 1 (prose), criterion 2 (verifiability and citations), and criterion 3 (completeness). I don't see any significant issues with criterions 4 (neutrality), 5 (stability), or 6 (images). Some more specific issues follow:

  • The lead section is far too short. It should be a good summary of the article's content. It might help editors to review WP:LEAD for tips in this area.
  • The geography section seems kind of fragmented and disordered. It focuses more on driving distance to Chicago and its relation to other states, instead of the actual geography of its own region. There's also lots of little spelling/grammar errors: "The cities coordinates" should be "The city's coordinates", and "moderating the temperature in summer." doesn't seem to make much sense.
  • The history section starts off somewhat interesting, but isn't anywhere near complete. It kind of leaves us off in the mid 1950s and ignores the latter half of the 20th century, and the 21st century. The companies that have "developed in the area" really don't explain how this is significant to the city itself.
  • Most of the history section is pretty much unsourced. One specific issue is the lack of citation regarding the, "first service of electrified streetcars anywhere in the world", which seems to be in disagreement with Frank Sprague's electric streetcars in Richmond, Virginia in 1888 (see the Richmond article for the source on this one).
  • Demographics should be moved into its own main section (separate from culture), following guidelines for US city articles. You might also want to check that guideline as well for tips on how to order sections in the article, and what sections are missing from the article. Most notably, there's no government information in the article. This should be added. I would also recommend putting 'sports' into its own main section, instead of a subsection under 'culture'.
  • The culture section also seems to be listing several 'other points of interest', breaking away from prose. Lists are generally a B-class attribute. The list also contains several external links; only internal wikilinks should appear in article text, and all external links belong in the 'external links' section at the end of the article. Try to keep weasel words and flowery language to a minimum.
  • Some of the things in the culture section seem to be written more for a tourist guide than an encyclopedia article;
  • Education: again, what's with the list? Some of these, like Notre Dame, Indiana aren't colleges, but towns or 'unincorporated cities'. Better to talk about the relationships of the colleges and how the relate to the city of South Bend, rather than just listing them.
  • The list of famous residents is getting a bit long. It might be advisable to move this to a separate page. These lists also tend to attract vandals and other miscreants, like Skip Wright (Whiffle ball hall of famer? Gimme a break!).
  • Move 'external links' to the end of the article, per WP:MOS.

This is an incomplete list obviously, but should hopefully be useful in getting editors started towards improving this article towards GA status. It might help to take a look at some other towns and cities that are current Good Articles, such as Flagstaff, Arizona or Richmond, Virginia, for a good model of what a GA-class city article should look like. The templates and guidelines at WP:CITIES should also be helpful as well. Cheers! Dr. Cash 02:59, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Take 2

This article has improved a lot since the last time, and I think is very close to WP:GA at this point. I fixed a couple of minor grammatical and style issues, but there's still a couple of things to work on:

  • The history section still needs a little more work. It tells a pretty good story of the town, but still leaves the reader hanging at the end, stopping in the 60s, the jumping to 2000, and the only bit from the 80s & 90s is about the new baseball team. Certainly, there's got to be more going on in this town, or are all those rumors about watching the corn grow in Indiana true?
  • The geography section is good, although the climate is pretty short. I think more can be said about the climate than two sentences. What about more of a description of the seasonal changes in weather, instead of just throwing the numbers into a table on average temps & rainfall? I wonder if you can find the actual historical dates for the absolute high & low record temperates (I've seen this in some city articles)?
  • 'Cityscape' should be added as a subsection within geography. Include some description on the various neighborhoods and parts of the city. Talk about how they are connected and interrelated.
  • "Ancestries: Germans (17.4%), Polish (10.6%), Irish (10.5%), English (5.8%), United States (3.9%), Hungarian (3.3%) (from City-Data.com)." -- This isn't really a sentence; it's just tabular data presented in prose form, but not really prose. Can anything else be said about these ethnic groups? How did they come to settle in South Bend? Also, the city-data.com site doesn't exactly look like it meets WP:RS; it looks more like a spam linkfarm site. I would recommend trying to find a better source at the US census bureau website.
  • While it technically doesn't violate the WP:MOS, I think it would be better to eliminate the subsection headers in the education and media sections. The information contained in each subsection should be tied together within the main topic better with actual prose. The subsection headers make everything look more 'listy', and separate.
  • See if you can try and make the information in the article flow a bit better together. A lot of the content seems rather isolated, and somewhat bland and boring (just basic information, and nothing fancy). Try to make it sound a bit more interesting to capture the readers attention, without going overly flowery.

I think once these issues are fixed, the article will meet the Good article criteria. I'll put it on hold at WP:GAN until February 5, 2008, so these issues can be addressed. Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 04:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


Unfortunately I did not have the time to make all the improvements... Of course, I will continue to work on it. Perhaps the third time will be a charm? cntrlaltdel33t (talk) 23:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Also found some dead links. MahangaTalk 03:44, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Reviewing this again, I think the article meets the minimum criteria for GA; granted, it's still a long ways from FA status, but I think it's at least a GA. There's still a couple of short sections that could be expanded (history, geography). You might also want to combine the 'sports' section with 'parks and recreation' into a single 'sports and recreation' section, since there's not too much in either, and both are somewhat related. Overall, the article has a good standard of writing and is informative. Good work! Dr. Cash (talk) 18:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hello?

I was wondering if any else is watching this page, or interested in updating the history sections with well cited sources. Any takers? cntrlaltdel33t 21:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Someone added a whole lot of content to the history section, unfortunately it was blatantly copied from the Northern Indiana Center for History website http://www.centerforhistory.org. I have removed the content. cntrlaltdel33t (talk) 20:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ping...? Anyone watching this page besides me? cntrlaltdel33t (talk) 14:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Population

How can it's metropolitan area had a population of 316,663, if St. Joseph County 2005 population estimate is 266,160?--Rayc (talk) 23:55, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The metro area extends outside St. Joe county. Tool2Die4 (talk) 23:58, 6 May 2008 (UTC)