Talk:List of U.S. states and territories by coastline

message: Could a caption be added to the map explaining what the colors represent? It isn't very clear. If they are classes (ie, pink being a class with long coastlines, green one with somewhat less long coastlines etc), then perhaps a different color scheme would be more obvious? For example, shades of blue from dark to light. As it is, the colors seem random. Just an observation! Pfly 04:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a caption and explained the measurement problem better. I'm not sure I'm in love with "The different colors have no significance", but they don't. It's just a four-color map thing. --Milkbreath 12:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah ha, thanks. After I wrote the above I realized the colors couldn't be classes, since Alaska and New Hampshire are both pink! Maybe if I find time and energy (hard to come by!), I'll see if I can make a classed map, and if it would be useful. Pfly 16:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: Hi! I was wondering is the mileage on the state of Maine correct? At least on the map is sure does not show that Maine has that long coastline. Godzionu (talk) 06:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Maine

message: According to the NOAA, the Great Lakes states have coastlines as well. From http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/mystate/mi.html : 
"With coastline on four Great Lakes, Michigan has the world's largest freshwater coastline."  Phizzy (talk) 23:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Great Lakes aren't the only freshwater shorelines.  To keep things interesting, what about other lakes and throw in rivers and you will get a much different result.  Here is an interesting link: http://www.chrisfinke.com/2013/12/30/does-minnesota-really-have-more-shoreline-than-california/ Eroyce (talk) 13:58, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Where are the Great Lakes states (aside from New York)?

message: The table is taken from a CRS report (as cited in the article), whereas the "Michigan Coastline" number is taken from the NOAA dataset (see the talk above).  They are not comparable.  For example, according to the CRS report (an reported in the table) Delaware has a coastline of 28 miles.  On the other hand, the NOAA website lists Delaware having 381 miles of coastline.
According to the NOAA coastline data, Michigan is ninth, not second.
Perhaps adding a second column to the table or a second table would be useful.  However, I'm afraid that it would just be confusing.
For completeness sake, I've included the two-column table below in order to show the difference.  Note that I have also included the states with "no coastline".
State         	Coastline from CRS	Coastline from NOAA
Alaska        	6640              	33904
Florida       	1350              	8436
Louisiana     	397               	7721
Maine         	228               	3478
California    	840               	3427
North Carolina	301               	3375
Texas         	367               	3359
Virginia      	112               	3315
Michigan      	0                 	3224
Maryland      	31                	3190
Washington    	157               	3026
South Carolina	187               	2876
New York      	127               	2625
Georgia       	100               	2344
New Jersey    	130               	1792
Massachusetts 	192               	1519
Oregon        	296               	1410
Hawaii        	750               	1052
Wisconsin     	0                 	820
Connecticut   	96                	618
Alabama       	53                	607
Rhode Island  	40                	384
Delaware      	28                	381
Mississippi   	44                	359
Ohio          	0                 	312
Minnesota     	0                 	189
Pennsylvania  	0                 	140
New Hampshire 	13                	131
Illinois      	0                 	63
Indiana       	0                 	45
Arizona       	0                 	0
Arkansas      	0                 	0
Colorado      	0                 	0
Idaho         	0                 	0
Iowa          	0                 	0
Kansas        	0                 	0
Kentucky      	0                 	0
Missouri      	0                 	0
Montana       	0                 	0
Nebraska      	0                 	0
Nevada        	0                 	0
New Mexico    	0                 	0
North Dakota  	0                 	0
Oklahoma      	0                 	0
South Dakota  	0                 	0
Tennessee     	0                 	0
Utah          	0                 	0
Vermont       	0                 	0
West Virginia 	0                 	0
Wyoming       	0                 	0
Datandrews (talk) 18:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Two different data sources

message: I think the title should be changed to be more specific:
                                             "List of U.S. states by ocean coastline"
My reason is that I performed a websearch for "list of states by coastline" specifically to find out Michigan's rank in overall coastline. According to this article, Michigan doesn't rank, yet this article appeared at the top of the list of search results, even though this article refers only to ocean coastline.
The categories are:
*Overall (both fresh and salt water, including rivers and lakes)
*Saltwater or ocean
*Freshwater (including rivers and lakes)
Each article's title should accurately reflect the content. 68.42.172.14 (talk) 21:15, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Michigan and other states with Great Lake coastline are included in method 2 though not in method 1.  Michigan is ranked 9th in this list.  I have modified the inaccurate lead sentence which said it was only ocean coastline, and modified some of the other wording in the lead section to make this difference more clear.  YBG (talk) 04:58, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Title

message: Couldn't find this state  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.235.216.242 (talk) 08:23, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Texas shows in the background here, but not in the article itself. Chrisgreencar67 (talk) 03:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It should be added - I tried, but the markup in that table is so convoluted that I kept screwing it up. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where's Texas? (№4) 

message: When I order Method I by rank, it puts Nos 3 , 4, 5, 6 ahead of Nos. 1 and 2 - something is broken. (Ordering them by coastline length, the order is fine except that it puts states with no coastline on top, above Alaska, which is counter-intuitive) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:30, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  ordering function is broken? 

message: I see no point in maintaining the other article separately, as it's little more than a list itself, with a definition and some stats at the top. The name "coastal states" is definitely not a good one, as Mexico, Venezuela, Australia, Germany, India, and probably others have coastal states too. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 15:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Merge them. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:42, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Since nobody seems to care, I will do the merge. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:52, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed it from Template:Regions of North America –Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:14, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Coastal states]] 

message: Under Method 1 the coastline for Michigan shows 77,958 miles.  I don't think that is correct, but is probably just a data entry error.  Plus, under Method 1 the Great Lakes states like Michigan shouldn't be included anyway.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Beth P (talk • contribs) 19:32, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Michigan's coastline seems incorrect 

message: Sources I have seen for Rhode Island, including the main Sea Grant Page and the RI state government site, say that Rhode Island has 400 miles of coastline.  Considering the peninsulas and islands, that seems about right.  It's called "the Ocean State" for a reason, and probably should be about where Lousiana is in your chart.  40 makes no sense.  Even if the coastline ran completely straight N-S and there were no islands or peninsulas, it would be close to 50 miles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8805:a180:990a:9352:eb30:a889 (talk) 05:56, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This is explained in the article: There are (at least) two different methods for calculating the length of the coastline, and we've cited the results of two. Check the sources if you thing there's a mistake copying the data. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:21, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: It does seem short, but if you check the source, a report to Congress, you'll see the figure. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:57, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Rhode Island off by a factor of 10? 

message: This data table shows Rhode Island having an area of 1545 sq. mi, but the source of the census lists 1033.81 sq. mi and the State of Rhode Island's website lists 1045 sq. mi. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/RI/PST045221 and https://web.archive.org/web/20160101112942/http://sos.ri.gov/library/history/facts/ Bugscrap (talk) 17:23, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: The larger number includes water area as well as land. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:24, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Is Rhode Island's land area a data entry error?

message: It's well known that coastlines have [no well-defined lengths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox). So ordering US states by length of coastline is absurd. You can't actually do it. And of course a number of the comments here are about the lengths being wrong, because the estimates are super unreliable.
I suggest deleting this article. This is disinformation, essentially.
LarsMarius (talk) 21:27, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: You don't need to have absolute measurements to compare things, just consistent ones. For example, if you measure a person's height wearing shoes or not, including their hair or not, with them slouching or not... you'll get different answers. But that doesn't mean you can't put Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, and Kenny Baker in order by height. You establish how you're going to measure them, then you use that method to measure them all. That's what both of the sources used by this article did. You can't compare the figures using one method with the figures using the other, but you definitely can compare figures that all use the same method. Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:00, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Further, the article gives readers a good idea of the complexities of measuring coastlines as well as acknowledgement of the coastline paradox. It's informative in that way, above and beyond the list. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:29, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Why does this article exist?

message: This article focuses on either oceanic coastline or some crazy admixture of waterway shoreline. Where does Georgia come in with thousands of miles of coastline (clealrly false), but Michigan, with 3,288 miles of coastline doesn't even appear in column 1 and is far down on column 2. Someone needs to rethink the terminology and methodology. Illinois only has 60 miles? That's the length of its Lake Michigan shoreline. Check out the length of its Mississippi River shoreline. Jaenc (talk) 22:26, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you read the article? It explains the reason for the measurements. If you can find an equivalent that includes lengths of rivers, add it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flawed logic and poorly-defined terminology