Talk:California gold rush

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on California Gold Rush. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20060617165429/http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us:80/ghayes/goldrush.htm to http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/ghayes/goldrush.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers. —^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 10:01, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 November 2015

The link to the Swedish novel the settlers should point to: The_Settlers_(novel)

Jockepocke88 (talk) 11:41, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Lead is no longer FA material

On Sept 16th, an edit of the lead by prinsgezinde greatly affected the quality of the lead, and I don't see much discussion on it. The quality of the article as a whole suffers when the lead goes too far into individual topics. This isn't an article about genocide or discrimination resulting from the gold rush; it is an article about the gold rush. I believe both topics are important and can even be mentioned, but they should not comprise 50% of the total text of the lead. The way it reads now we learn a little bit about the basic history in P1, we learn more history and socioeconomic facts in P2, with an introduction on racism sufficient to have readers look for this in the text of the article, but P3 is superfluous and changes the tone of the article. There is an entire section on this topic below, and there should be. In fact, there should probably be an article on this topic. But a single sentence in the lead is needed to introduce it, not an entire paragraph. Mrathel (talk) 16:01, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it is too much, but I had to work with a very POV lead prior to that. I realize that today's Americans (and of course others) mostly want to hear about the craziness and interesting times of the gold rush, but there is quite evidently a lot of darker material that seemed to have been left out of the old intro. There was practically nothing about what the article mentions on the devastating effects it had on the native population, and what's more, it instead contained information that was never mentioned again in the article. To me it seemed more like a nice anecdotal prologue than a quality introduction, to be honest. It was for that reason that I decided to be bold. Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 21:13, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the lead needs to paint it in any light at all. The lead can mention that bad things happened, and it should, but it isn't a requirement that every article about the past spend 50% of its lead talking about the atrocities and oppression associated with the subject in order to avoid POV issues.

After all, the lead on the article about the Beatles doesn't have a paragraph about sexual assault at their concerts; the article on dogs doesn't even mention the horrors of dog fighting in the lead! The article on Education in the United States has no mention what-so-ever of the Columbine massacre in the opening.

I just came to this article looking for a brief description of the California gold rush, and before I got out of the lead I had to check to be sure I had not clicked on an article titled "Discrimination and Prejudice in American West." 206.113.15.122 (talk) 21:41, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Your comparisons are completely off, almost to the degree of being offensive. The genocide is inherent to the topic of the gold and is a significant part of adequately describing the topic. That is not the case in either of your examples. The lead needs to describe the genocide of california natives that was a part of the consequences of the gold rush. Whether it should be 50% or 25% depends on how much of the article is dedicated to covering the genocide, which in turn depends on how much the topic of the genocide makes up in the literature on the california gold rush.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:04, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

• Reading the Lead as it is now, I think it does clearly give too much space to the genocide. It should probably be no more than one of four paragraphs. There are other aspects covered substantially in the article body that gets no coverage at all.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:07, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I would have thought my examples were enough of a hyperbole to avert a factcheck.org-style analysis, but I am glad you went back and examined the lead anyhow:) I think we could combine the last two paragraphs, giving weight to the obvious socio-cultural effects of the mass migration while still keeping the lead predominantly about the attempt to remove minerals from the earth.Mrathel (talk) 23:04, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree about combining the third and fourth paragraphs into one. And also on having an article about the Genocide of Native Americans in California and Oregon.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:09, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

It's not just the lead; much of the article is suffused with unsourced editorialising. DrKay (talk) 17:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, some sections of the "Impact on Latinos" section are particularly problematic. As well as being unsourced, they are very essay-like and there is a definite POV coming across. The whole section is relatively new and is not anywhere near up to current FA standard (it probably was not even up to 2006 FA standard when the article was promoted). I tagged some of it a week ago hoping that that would provoke a response, and DrKay has just tagged it more extensively. The whole section is a relatively recent addition. I suggest that it is either removed in its entirety or stubbed down to a sentence or two (assuming that much can be sourced). SpinningSpark 01:32, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I would suggest spinning it out to a daughter article instead living a paragraph in situ. The use of the term "latino" seems anachronistic in itself, and probably should be replaced with something more historically accurate.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:40, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Creating a new article with unsourced POV material is actually worse than leaving it in place here. It is a really bad idea to do that just to save the FA star of this article. Wherever the material is, it is going to need dealing with. I am not even willing to copyedit it while there are no sources - that could just end up making false information look more convincing. SpinningSpark 09:37, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 May 2016

James Marshall first notified Elizabeth Jane "Jennie" Wimmer who had experience in prospecting about the gold and then told John Sutter 108.66.5.56 (talk) 00:17, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Not done: as you have not cited reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 07:04, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

bla bla bla bla bla bla get your facts right bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bl abla cmon get to the point already bla bla — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.110.207.226 (talk) 16:41, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced material from main text

The following unsourced statement is moved here pending Wikipedia-quality source(s): "California, apart from legalizing slavery for Native Americans also directly paid out $25,000 in bounties for Indian scalps with varying prices for adult male, adult female and child sizes."NorCalHistory (talk) 06:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Non-related material removed to talk page

The following non-related material is moved here, in the hopes that a better place can be found for it. Perhaps in the main California History article?

Previous to the discovery of gold, California was the Mexican territory of [[Alta California]]. This region had been under the control of Spanish speaking people since Europeans arrived in California, first under control of the [[Spanish Empire]] before being passed down to Mexican control after a successful campaign for independence. Most large outposts of civilization at this time were located along the coast from [[San Diego]] up to [[San Francisco]] where they were concentrated away from the areas that gold would eventually be found.<ref>Rosen, Fred. Gold!: the Story of the 1848 Gold Rush And How it Shaped a Nation. New York: Thunder's Mouth, 2005.</ref> The majority of non-natives living in Alta California at this time were Spanish speaking [[mestizo]]s from either a Spanish possession or Spain itself. American and European settlers did began moving to Alta California in the years preceding the gold rush, but they tended to settle in these established regions and were a minority of the population.<ref>Richards, L. L. (2007). The California Gold Rush and the coming of the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.</ref> Due to the expansive size of the territory and its distance from the central Mexican government located in Mexico, the people living in Alta California had a shaky relationship with the central government powers. This rocky relationship peaked in 1836 when [[Juan Bautista Alvarado]] led a rebellion and took the office of governor, this would happen again in 1845, these acts of rebellion allowed Alta California to have more freedom in their own government in the final years of Mexican rule.<ref>Osio, A. María., Beebe, R. Marie. (1996). The history of Alta California: a memoir of Mexican California. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press.</ref> The revolt and [[Texas annexation|annexation of Texas]] gave Alta California the opportunity to begin its own fight for freedom. With the help of the United States armed forces during the [[Mexican–American War]] American Settlers were able to defeat the Mexican Army and a [[Californio]] militia leading up to the signing of the [[Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo]] on February 2, 1848, less than two weeks after the discovery of gold.NorCalHistory (talk) 06:36, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

unrelated and redundant material from main text

The following unrelated or redundant material is placed here: "According to [[Washington, D.C.]]'s [[National Museum of the American Indian]], the California Gold Rush was a cause of a major, but little known, [[genocide]] on the [[Native Americans]]. The Native Americans resided in The Great Basin, east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the Rocky Mountains, which supported Native American people for more than 14,000 years.<ref name="si.edu"/> They were resourceful with the barren environment; having to travel long distances by foot to find food, Great Basin Indians developed technologies to sustain their lifestyle throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries.<ref name="si.edu"/> "During the Gold Rush, miners, loggers, and settlers formed vigilante groups and local militias to hunt Indians living outside the mission communities—a genocide largely ignored by American history. The Native population, estimated at 150,000 in 1845, was by 1870 less than 30,000." <ref name="si.edu"/> This means that less than 20% of the population remained. NorCalHistory (talk) 06:36, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Unrelated material

The following material relates only to the Native American experience outside of California, and the reference does not connect to the California or the California Gold Rush experience. "Native Americans also succumbed in large numbers to newly introduced diseases such as [[smallpox]], [[influenza]] and [[measles]]. Some estimates indicate the death rates to be between 80 and 90 percent in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics.<ref>"''[https://books.google.com/books?id=qubTdDk1H3IC&pg=PA205&dq&hl=en#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Cambridge encyclopedia of human paleopathology]''". Arthur C. Aufderheide, Conrado Rodríguez-Martín, Odin Langsjoen (1998). [[Cambridge University Press]]. p.205. ISBN 0-521-55203-6</ref>NorCalHistory (talk) 06:45, 20 June 2016 (UTC)