Talk:Upper Midwest

message: The map did not meet any of the FIVE definitions given on the text of the web page.  For example, NONE of the definitions included Ohio or Wyoming.
Obviously, there are differences of opinion on the definition of the region, but the map needs to reflect at least one (or better, all five) of the definitions offered on the web page. 
We just cannot have a map that is contradicted by all five definitions. 
Kitplane01 (talk) 09:36, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map 

message: I threw together a quick map of the Upper Midwest as defined by the AIRUM, you can find it here. I think a map would be a good addition to this article, maybe someone can find a more professional one. If not, maybe we should add this one.  BSveen 19:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
:IMO, it's probably "professional" enough, but not appropriate to the article in its present form, due to the info content.  The thrust of the article is that there's no one boundary, and including one map would confuse and mislead. How about a similar map with two saturations of the same hue?  The intense area would be the core states as discussed, the dimmer area would be the additional states that are sometimes included. --Jerzy(t) 00:16, 2004 Nov 20 (UTC)
::Some of the definitions that some of those organizations provide are a little strange and might be more "rigidly mechanical" than true representations of what is considered the upper midwest. For example, I don't know anyone who actually considers missouri a part of the upper midwest. Personally I think that the AIRUM's definition is the best of the bunch.
::But anyway I see where you're coming from, so if I were to re-make the map, my question would be this: What states should be dark ("core states") and which should be light? One idea could be: Dark states-- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, UP Michigan; Light states--Rest of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, the Dakotas. Let me know what you think and I'll put a new map together.  BSveen 00:37, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
:I TOTALLY think Michigan (all) is core), and for that matter, IMHO,  Il. & In. & Oh., and the Dakotas is "light". jengod 01:35, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
::I really don't see how Ohio can be deemed a part of the Upper Midwest. The LOC link in this article discusses Ohio as part of the Old Northwest 2 centuries ago, not the modern Upper Midwest...I also have a hard time seeing Indiana as part of the Upper Midwest. There's no question it's part of the Midwest, but 'Upper Midwest', I don't know. After all, 'Upper' implies that it is above something, and Kentucky (the state below Indiana) is not part of the Midwest..  BSveen 02:03, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
:::Okay, I'm shutting up after this, but to my mind/eye, the Upper Midwest is: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa. There is no Lower Midwest. The above states are those that are more "northern-oriented" (culturally as much as anything) than the remainder of ye olde midwest. jengod 02:09, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
To my mind, the AIRUM boundary is perfect. (Note that "it's not for nothing" that the most aggressively Minnesotan film of the current generation bears as title the name of a Dakotan city.) But (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on PoV) this article is not about any one mind.  The current map and the caption writ for it are both so busy expressing a PoV abt how little Ohio & MO matter as to fail in a graphic's proper job of giving a quick visual overview of the article text. The verbose caption (which i have replaced), striving to correct for the mismatch between graphic and text, further interfered with that function.  My replacement caption
: Candidates for inclusion in the Upper Midwest, with more consistently included ones shaded darker
lets the map speak for itself (instead of being explained to death) & implicitly directs the reader to the text for the details.
Two saturations can only do the job if OH & MO are treated equally with 5 others, but three saturations would permit those 2 states to be distinguished (IMO legitimately) from the 5.  I would hope we can look forward to either a three-shade map, or if that's infeasible, a different 2-shade one. Either would still fit the newest caption.
As to the rest of MI and various details, the article may not yet be adequate, and if not, our various opinions are not solutions, but just hints that the article deserves more research that may (or not) show, e.g., that the difference in consistency of inclusion between the UP and LP of MI is insignificant once we have found a dozen different versions, and weighted them sensibly for frequency of citation. But i think we should bear in mind that it is inevitable, and proper, that 'pedias, while giving less space to less significant topics (and less significant candidate states, in this case) still must give less significant things a bit more space and attention than strict proportionality to significance would dictate; if we did strict proportionality we'd fail to even document the fact of their low significance.  (It's a lot like the ear working logarithmically, so that tiny sounds can still be audible). 
Another topic for research: do we need to more explicitly account for the shifting locus of the Midwest with the advance of settlement, and perhaps separate old UMW defs from new UMW defs? This might solve some of the current discomfort.
There is a lower Midwest, tho the term seems much less used.  I'm not sure it deserves an article, and i would hope it deserves a line about being less used, and at most a shorter article.  I doubt we need to deal with that to get this article right.
--Jerzy(t) 15:20, 2004 Nov 20 (UTC)
:My idea would be to re-write this article in the straightforward style of the American South Central States article; mentioning the agreed-upon states as the core definition and and then mentioning in passing the states generally not associated with the Upper Midwest but those that are included in some rare cases. (In other words, the AIRUM definition that we all agree upon should be the gold standard here).
:I would also say that Ohio and Missouri should be dropped from the article completely; MO is only included in the seemingly 'rigidly mechanical' definition that the NWS provides (by the way, there isn't an external link in the article to an NWS page that provides their definition for the U.M.), and Ohio is included in the LOC article, which discusses America circa 1800, not America today (as you alluded to).  BSveen 21:44, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
:: IMO "strange" or "rigidly mechanical" definitions do not deserve exclusion: it is valuable to report on both what casual users of the terms mean by them, and what technical experts mean.  Other WP articles linking to this article may often be as vague as casual speakers, but some articles and some users who type in "upper midwest" will do so in contexts that imply referring to a technical usage.  (One might think we were wandering into dict-def-ing here, but 2 of my 3 dictionaries list "Middle West" (with one definition matching our Census Bureau one and one not), and none defines "Upper Midwest".)
:: You make it sound as if we are all agreed on the Dakotas-thru-UP as a def, but 
::* as i read this talk page the Dakotas have been questioned, and 
::* i only endorsed that boundary as my personal impression, which i consider irrelevant. 
:: I'm afraid i looked at the DoD site hard only  bcz KY sounded to me so far off base, and i'm embarrassed to have had about as much trouble searching the NOAA site. 
:: I did find NWS Central Region, and i'm struck on one hand by our supposed NWS UM def neatly leaving out a compact group of 6 states constituting about the western half of the region, and on the other hand by the NWS UM's and the region's eastern boundaries differing as to OH & KY! I.e., NWS's suppoed UM is not the eastern chunk of NWS's Central Region.
:: While i'm disappointed that our supposed evidence is not as easily verified as hinted by the running text of the Sept. revision (intact after my first edit, where i summarized it), and while i'm not prepared to track down the evidence that probably exists on the Web (and may or not be representative of the full evidence the respective agencies have posted), i think it's worth emphasizing that pointing out a lack of verifiability of even all of AIRUM's competitors would not amount to verifying that boundary, and reducing the substance to "According to AIRUM, the Upper Midwest is ..." is almost surely a half- (or eighth-)truth.  I urge further research, whatever the next text of the article is,  including at least two lines of inquiry:
::* Consult with the reference librarian at a library that is a Federal Publications depository, and write to appropriate agencies if necessary.
::* Google for 
:::: "Upper Midwest", 
::: and for 
:::: "New England"
::: and restricting each time to a newspaper site in one of these states (or the upper or lower Peninsula of MI); the ratio should be near 1.0 unless that newspaper treats its city as part of the Upper Midwest, but tilted toward UM if it does. Additional reliability checks would compare control searches: restricting to a San Jose and a Chapel Hill newspaper's sites, and restricting to each of the sites previously mentioned, for the same strings and for 
:::: Hollywood OR tobacco OR Iraq OR wireless
::--Jerzy(t) 07:58, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)
* A comment from a person that lives in North Dakota: North Dakota is in the Midwest and is on the northern boarder of the country. Upper-midwest seems right from here.  Now I don't know much about who is trying to define what...but if you ever have been to North Dakota and ever mentioned that they are not thought of as part of the Upper midwest, you either would be laughed out of town or be eating your teeth (no this isn't a threat.  I've lived in ND most of my life..born in MN...and actually seen more than one out-of-state college student on a college campus or the nearby bar literally have teeth punched out if they suggest otherwise).  North Dakota isn't on the coasts, so that's out.  It is concidered a mid-western state, and is (like stated before) on the northern boarder.  I honestly fail to see anyone's logic stating that it isn't. --Brian (How am I doing?) 04:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed with N Dakota & S Dakota (at least eastern portions) being in the Upper Midwest.  Farm publications often talk about the Upper Midwest and distinguish it from other portions of the midwest.  One of the defining characteristics is that farms in the area tend to be considerably larger than in other portions of the U.S. and use different techniques and larger machinery.  1200 acres is not uncommon (that's 2 square miles). Usually restricted to areas where wheat is NOT a major crop (which gets you into the Great Plains). Ohio, Missouri
and even Indiana are out. --71.214.221.153 (talk) 19:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: So, this article starts by talking about states which are always included in the definition of Upper Midwest, then later gives definitions of Upper Midwest which don't include them (like Iowa.)  Anyone opposed to me fixing this contradiction? kmccoy (talk) 23:12, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Contradiction

message: I have made a proposal to change the colour of the map box, please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. regions --Qirex 05:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Colours and appearance

message: In my opinion (southern Minnesotan) Chicago is not a part of the upper midwest. It seems to me that Chicago is too industrial, and too poor, and frankly too black to be considered part of the upper midwest. Chicago seems to be part of an entirely different area called the rust belt. This article should focus mainly on The states of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and upper peninsula of Michigan. If this is made, the part about France would be removed.
What do industry, poverty, and race have to do with a regional definition like "Upper Midwest"?  Even if poverty is a factor, Chicago the LAST place to be removed, wouldn't it?  It's the financial center for the whole region.  Very far from "poor".71.115.8.97 (talk)  —Preceding comment was added at 05:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chicago? 

message: The Upper and Lower Midwest can also be defined in terms of the people who settled and lived there.  The areas more or less north of Interstate 80 were mostly settled by people from New England and, later, Germany and Scandinavia.  The southern areas were more heavily settled by people from Virginia, Kentucky, etc.  The cultural differences are still pretty profound. Cranston Lamont 18:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't it be closer to Interstate 70? --JWB 23:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Nope, too far south, mostly. --71.214.221.153 (talk) 19:37, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Demographic/Cultural Angle