Talk:Davenport, Iowa/Archive 1

Weissmuller

Nothing I can find about Johnny Weissmuller mentions Iowa, much less Davenport. If that claim, added to this article anonymously, cannot be verified, it should be removed. -- Kbh3rd 23:38, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Did Scott County secede from union?

I read somewhere that all of Scott County once seceded from the union. Does anyone have any information on this?

I'm pretty sure Scott County never seceded from the Union. I know this is really late, but it's an unanswered question and it bothers me when people say wrong stuff like that.Ellethwen 15:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Encyclopedic material

Reference the comment – "Note from author: Petty crime is just not encyclopedia material. Sorry." I take it to mean this is referring to several bank robberies that occurred during the presidential campaign visits of John Kerry and George W. Bush.

First off, this statement is inappropriate for an encyclopedia article, and thus has been removed. Second, I do NOT see how bank robbery can be termed "petty." Lives have been permanently affected by the actions of these criminals. Not to mention these are felonies, and that in at least one of the cases, the suspect(s) is/are still at large.

Whether the bank robbery reference should remain a part of this article following the statement about the presidential campaign visits is a different matter entirely. Should it be retained or not? [[206.72.11.46 30 June 2005 13:04 (UTC)]]

It should not remain. Here's the problem with including the bank robberies reference – 50 years from now, no one is going to remember this. In fact, can you even name one of the robbers or victims? Me either. What people will want to know 50 years from now is what John Kerry and George W. Bush said and did at their respective events. No one is going to care if some banks were robbed because it is not historically significant. Are you going to research when other bank robberies happened in Davenport and include them? Banks are robbed somewhere almost every day in this country. Are you going to research the bank robberies that happened in other cities and include them in their entries? The appropriate place to mention these bank robberies that happened on 8/4/04 is in Jay Leno's monologue, not in an encyclopedia.

If you want to talk about Davenport "gaining notoriety", these bank robberies pale in comparison to some of the other things that have happened in Davenport's past. For example, prostitution was once legal in Davenport. Across the river in Rock Island there is much history related to John Looney, Al Capone and gangsters of the prohibition era. Or how about Jim Klindt? He was the chiropractor that chopped his wife into little pieces and threw them into the Mississippi River. How's that for notoriety? Feel free to create entries for these things if you want to do the research. These are the things people will want to know about.

Now that's better, User 12.226.83.122. This is the place to put a comment such as "the bank robbery reference is not appropriate for an encyclopedia article" – not in the main body of the article itself. I agree with your logic, except for the original statement that bank robbery is a petty crime (that was once contained in the article).

That said, do you think there should be a short section detailing the most infamous crimes in Davenport's history? IMO, it actually might not be too bad of an idea for any article about a metropolitan area/large city were well-publicized crimes occurred, although that's a discussion for another article entirely. 206.72.11.46 3 July 2005 20:04 (UTC)

I'm not against including information on well-publisized crimes, such as the Jim Klindt example.

Two things. First, please sign your name. Second, I think the bank robberies fact should be included because there was an unusual number of them for one day and the story made the local papers. That's reason enough to add it. It's not like space is an issue.--Atlastawake 02:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

And oh yeah, it also made national news. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/04/iowa.robberies/index.html --Atlastawake 02:54, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Why not a "famous crimes" section? For all its benefits, Davenport is a crime ridden hole, and occasionally gains national attention for being such. The bank robberies were part of a summer-long ordeal which illustrated many of the area's social problems and the inability of teh QC's fractured police force to cope. The Klint murders stand out. Trying to whitewash teh area by calling its more unfortunate events underserving of attention is unfair.

Kathryn Kirshbaum

Someone identified the former mayor as "Kathy". I fixed it.

Was Kathryn Kirshbaum the mayor intended? If so it would be inaccurate, as Iowa City elected its first female mayor in 1922, the first female mayor in a city with a population above 10,000 in the United States. I have removed the reference to Kathryn Kirshbaum entirely until this is resolved. Original claim: "The first female mayor in the state of Iowa, Kathryn Kirschbaum, was elected in Davenport in 1972."

Confused

Okay, why is *Kewanee rated as a "High Importance article", but *Davenport is rated as "Low importance". I'm not complaining, it just seems odd to me. Oh well, I still think everyone that can should work to improve this article, more pictures! Everything I see is down by the river. Alright, thanks.Iamanadam 18:40, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement

• External links only belong in the External links section.  Done Ctjf83 ^talk 20:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
• Web references need the author, publisher, publishing date and access date.  DoneCtjf83 ^talk 21:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
• Short sections and paragraphs are discouraged.  Done Ctjf83^talk 06:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• "Further info" links belong at the top of sections.  Done Ctjf83 ^talk 19:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
• Notable natives and Points of interest should be made into prose. Done Ctjf83 ^talk 22:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
• Geography should include info of neighbourhoods and suburbs.  Done Ctjf83^talk 20:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
• More 20th century history is needed.  DoneCtjf83 ^talk 21:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Epbr123 (talk) 19:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

The article does not currently meet the Good article criteria, and cannot be listed at present. Mostly, completeness issues. I would recommend looking at the WP:CITIES guideline for US cities, for information on what sections and topics that should be discussed. The lead section should also provide an adequate summary of the article -- see WP:LEAD for tips on this.

• The history section is very short, and could be expanded. It only provides a very brief description of the city's history, and there's a lot of gaps. Maybe a few photos could be inserted into this section as well.  Done Ctjf83^talk 21:04, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

• The geography section needs a climate subsection. Include a text description of the seasonal variations in climate, the Koppen climate classification, and replace the average temp/precip table with {{Average and record temperatures}}. DoneCtjf83^talk

• The neighborhoods subsection is just too short. Very short sections such as this are discouraged, and indicate that there are completeness issues when assessing the article for WP:GA and WP:FA. DoneCtjf83^talk 21:42, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

• The law and government section contains a good description of how the government works. But there's nothing there about current politics! Who's the mayor (don't make me click on the link)? Who's on the city council? What about the city courts? Is there a police & fire department? How is the city represented in the state & national legislatures? Is any particular political party dominant in local politics? DoneCtjf83^talk 23:04, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

• The demographics section contains only the information that was added automatically by the censusbot back in 2000 or so. It's minimally-acceptable, but is there more we can say about ethnic groups in the city? Who settled the town? Where did they come from? Etc. Who is moving there today? Done Ctjf83^talk 07:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• There is no economy section in this article. Certainly there are businesses and industry based there that we can talk about. Done Ctjf83^talk 07:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Move 'sports' and 'media' to their own main sections. They are only vaguely connected to culture, and should be separated in city articles. They are very short sections, only briefly listing some of the sports and media operations in the city, and not providing much else. Done Ctjf83^talk 05:12, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Livability Award. Doesn't need it's own main section. Possibly mention it in a single sentence in the lead, with a citation, of course. Don't dwell on this sort of stuff too much; it's more fluff and is minimally notable. Done Ctjf83^talk 05:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Article needs a section on infrastructure -- electricity, water supply, healthcare and hospitals. I would put this section near the end of the article, possibly the last main section. Done Ctjf83^talk 07:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Look at the order of articles. The first main sections in the article should be: History, Geography, Demographics, and Economy. Culture might follow after that, followed by Sports, Parks, Media, and then Government, Education, Transportation, & Infrastructure. Done Ctjf83^talk 05:12, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The article is developing, but has quite a way to go. I'd probably rate it currently at the early B-class stage, just after 'Start-class'. There are still lots of very short sections, and lots of room for expansion. I would recommend looking at some of the articles that are current Good Articles, including some of the smaller cities like Richmond, Virginia and Flagstaff, Arizona.

Good luck! Dr. Cash (talk) 05:04, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

GA 2

The article is better, but there's still lots of very short sections that can be expanded. Perhaps 'sports' should be rephrased to 'sports and recreation', and expanded to include some talk about some of the other aspects, like local parks and other recreational activities. Done CTJF83Talk 22:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

'Economy' is very short as well; there's got to be more to the economy of Davenport than a John Deere factory? I usually don't see housing discussed in this section; economy usually focuses on the businesses and industry present in the town, and the employment situation. Perhaps the housing prices should be moved to the section on 'neighborhoods' under 'geography'? Also, the statement, "Housing is one of the most affordable in the nation." seems like a very generalized statement that should probably be avoided; I wouldn't dispute the fact that housing in Davenport is cheaper than places like California or Florida, but what citation(s) do you have to back this up?

The media section is still kind of short. Are there any weekly alternative magazines that could be added here? Have any television shows been based in the city, or motion pictures been filmed here?

More photos could help the article as well. Dr. Cash (talk) 20:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Article looks very good. One minor issue with the photos near the last couple of sections -- they seem to overlap the sections a bit, which could cause confusion for their context. I think it would be a good idea to reduce their sizes. Instead of a width of 350px, try 150px or 200px. I think the overall trend on wikipedia seems to be to put smaller images embedded in articles, and have users click on them to view the full-sized version.

The economy section is still quite short, though this is a fairly small town. I think it meets GA, but I have doubts over whether it would meet the FA criteria, so this might be a section that should be expanded if editors want to eventually take this to FA. But overall, this is a good article on a small town in America. I think it can be promoted once the image size thingie is addressed. Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 15:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The article looks good. Promoted. Good work! I still think the economy section could use a little more details, moving forward. Maybe try and talk more about how the economy of Davenport integrates with the economy of the overall Quad Cities region? Dr. Cash (talk) 20:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Flood control?

As I understand it, Davenport is the largest city on the Mississippi river without permanent flood protection in the form of levees and dikes, having instead chosen to place less vulnerable properties, such as parking lots and parkland, in the flood plain. But when I came to this article, hoping to learn more, I found nothing. I would think this information would be useful both as it relates to Davenport itself, and as it relates to disaster management. Does anyone have any info on this? -Badger151 (talk) 03:02, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

As the GA "getter", previously I would have searched for info on that, but now, I'm not really caring about Wiki, so if you want to find info, that would be great! CTJF83Talk 06:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Roger Craig

When Roger Craig is clicked in the Notable people section or whatever it links to the wrong guy. It should link to the NFL running back instead of another person. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.208.175.81 (talk) 20:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out, it is now fixed! CTJF83Talk 20:19, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Sourcing comments

Thanks for your patience as I tried to catch up with my wiki-work. Here are my comments on the sourcing:

• I think the article is going to need a really good copyedit before it is nominated. There are a lot of sentences that don't flow well together within a paragraph.
• Need a citation for Fewer than three percent of hospitals receive this honor.
• Is it possible to get the hospital information from an independent source (not affiliated with the hospital)?
• Is it possible to get the Citibus history information from an independent source (not their website)?
• Is it possible to get information about the city government makeup from an independent source (not the city website)? - I know that this might be reaching
• I don't think Quad City Memory is a reliable source. I think this probably needs to be removed.
  • QC Memory is from the Davenport Library CTJF83Talk 00:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
• Probably need a citation for where the movie Sugar was filmed.
• rose garden and conservatory are especially popular as wedding sites. - this is an opinion, and so should not be cited to the organization itself (or the city) - It needs a citation in an independent source.
• There are no citations for the paragraph on the river cruises. I wonder if the details should be included anyway - it seems like it could be construed as advertising for those companies, but I might be reading it wrong.
  • There is only 2 sentences, saying that cruises are available in Davenport CTJF83Talk 00:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
    • I added citations for river cruises. By the way, Ctjf83, would you mind taking some photos of Celebration Belle Riverboat? It will be a great help for sure. Also, please note a photo for Channel Cat Water Taxi is already on Commons, as commons:File:Channel Cat Water Taxi.jpg. Yassie (talk) 10:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
      • Thanks for the Channel Cat pic, which do you think I should add. I don't think there is room for both the channel cat and the celebration belle. CTJF83Talk 18:29, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
        • You can add both if you use Template:Double image. Yassie (talk) 00:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
          • Oh, ok, I didn't know about that, thanks. CTJF83Talk 01:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
• For books, you need to include a page number of where the specific information in that citation came from.
• There are no citations right now for the Great Mississippi valley Fair and the Sturgis on the River gathering.
• Need a citation for the claim that the library is one of the oldest west of the Mississippi
• The sentence Davenport has a few cultural and educational institutions including the Figge Art Museum, the Putnam Museum which was founded in 1867 and The Quad City Symphony Orchestra, headquartered in downtown Davenport, was founded in 1915 is cited only to the Symphony, which doesn't cover the Putnam Museum founding.
• I'm not sure whether worldchiropracticalliance.org is a reliable source.
• Need a citation for with a majority of the jobs coming from the John Deere factory on the north edge of the city.
• can't site the fact that Van Maur is "upscale" to its own website
• I don't think that the details on Van Maur are particularly appropriate here; if you choose to keep them, try to source the history stuff to an independent website

*is GlobalSecurity.org a reliable site?

• I don't understand the purpose of reference 24, which is to a wikipedia page. Wikipedia pages are not reliable sources, and I'm not sure that you are actually intending to source the information to that page.
• I don't know whether Quad Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau is a reliable source
• need a citation for An example of a building that is elevated or flood proofed in Davenport is the Figge Art Museum.

I'm not watching this page, so if you need any further clarification please ask me to come back here. Karanacs (talk) 13:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions

Here are a few things I noticed on a quick read-through. I'll come back later and post a few more suggestions, but most (or perhaps all) of these should be addressed before you return to FAC.

• Images now need alt text to get through FAC. Not identical to captions, they explain the images to a reader who can't see them. WP:ALT explains how to create alt text and where to put it. You can also see recent examples of alt text by observing the ongoing FACs.
• I think it's generally best, where possible, to avoid text sandwiches like the one between the two images near the top of the History section. You might be able to fix this one by moving the left-hand image down a bit. I see another one in the Sports and recreation section that could be fixed in the same way.
• Where possible, its a good idea to include the date of publication in citations. I notice their absence in many of your citations such as the ones to the Quad-City Times. Citation 84, for example, could include the publication date, October 5, 2005.
• Wouldn't it be more convenient for readers if you used the exact url for the Quad-City Times articles instead of the url to the search engine page? To find the data for Citation 84, I had to key the article title into the search engine, which took me to a list of articles requiring another hunt and click. But this url, if embedded in the citation, would have taken me straight to the target.
• I see Quad City (no hyphen) in some places and Quad-City (hyphenated) in others. You should determine which one is correct and use it throughout.
  • I guess the Quad-City Times has the hyphen in their name, it shouldn't appear anywhere else, I fixed one instance of it when referring to the Quad Cities as an area. CTJF83Talk 07:22, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
• Newspaper names should appear in italics. In the existing citations, some do, and some don't. Using the "work = " parameter for the newspaper name in the "cite web" template will solve this problem automatically.
• Citation 26 lacks a page number.
• Citation 34 and 35 are identical and might better be combined using "ref = name". In fact, it might make sense to roll all of the Historic Preservation in Iowa refs into one, Historic Preservation in Iowa, pp. 12–35, and use "ref = name". This would simplify the Reference section, and I doubt that anyone would complain that the page range was too non-specific.
• Citation 82 to Genesis Medical Center has a dead url.

Finetooth (talk) 18:25, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the text sandwiches. I should probably have mentioned earlier that it's also best to avoid scrunching the heads and subheads with images, and it's usually better to place images inside a single section rather than allowing them to overlap two or more sections. On my computer screen the Treaty House image now scrunches the "Geography" head and overlaps History and Geography. I think you could fix this by moving Treaty House up about five lines. There's room to do that without re-creating the text sandwich. The Mississippi River flood image overlaps Geography and Climate by about four lines. The Putnam Museum image bumps into the Events and Festivals head. These all look fixable to me by sliding images around a bit more. I see similar problems with some of the images in the lower sections. The goal is to make the most attractive layout possible under the circumstances; all the guidelines are just that, so where you have a good reason for a variance, go for it. Finetooth (talk) 18:40, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

More suggestions

• Is it necessary to include who represents Davenport in the General Assembly and in Congress in the infobox. It increases the length of the infobox and they aren't mentioned anywhere in the "Government" section. Details like which senate and house districts its located in would be helpful, as well.
• U.S. Highway isn't an official term, they should be U.S. Routes.

​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 01:29, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I had another thought: I wonder if there is a enough info to make a separate article for "Davenport CitiBus" and then merge that paragraph, in this article, into the preceding paragraph. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 03:53, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I dunno, do you think there is enough info for it to have its own page? I would be open to merging Citibus with Transportation, if you suggest that. CTJF83Talk 17:31, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I could get a short article out of it. You wouldn't happen to have a photo of one of the buses, would you? ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 17:59, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

No, I can try and take one though, in the next couple of days CTJF83Talk 20:10, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with uploading images from flickr (I guess they are free use) but here is a good bus one. CTJF83Talk 20:18, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Some are free use, but most are not. I looked and couldn't find any on Flickr that have free licenses. I went and created the Citibus article, mostly from the content here. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​^{Don't give up the ship} 20:41, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

For future reference, Ctjf83, if you look at a Flickr image like this one, you'll see a clickable link under the heading "Additional information" called "Some rights reserved". If you click on that, you'll see what kind of license the image has. This particular example, the old tree, is OK to use because it has a Creative Commons (CC) license without restrictions such as a non-commercial (NC) clause that would make it unusable on Wikipedia. Finetooth (talk) 20:50, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I'll get a pic as soon as I can. CTJF83Talk 21:08, 20 September 2009 (UTC)