Talk:Illinois

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I think we need to break down Illinois into some regions, which can in turn be broken up by county, then cities. It's a recipe that's worked pretty well for other states in the USA.

The Illinois tourism department has a nice breakdown on this handy map.

Comments or suggestions? --(WT-en) Evan 07:02, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)

Perfect. -- (WT-en) Mark 07:25, 18 Jan 2005 (EST)
what did Western Illinois do to upset ya :-) --(WT-en) Richard 2005 jan 18
Other than Quincy (Illinois) and the Quad Cities, not much. -- (WT-en) Mark
Speaking of the Quad Cities, what is to be done with them? If you look at the Iowa article, you'll notice that the Quad Cities are listed among the significant cities. No mention of Davenport or Bettendorf, just Quad Cities. If you look at the Illinois article, the Quad Cities aren't even listed. Nor are Moline or Rock Island. How do you deal with four cities that are somewhat associated with one another?
Let's cross-reference. In fact the four of them are for a traveler's needs pretty much a single mid-sized city, the distinction between the four of them are political boundaries. In some cases we've made a whole conurbation a single destination, as in Los Angeles or Sydney, but we also have examples where we've treated members of a conurbation as separate cities. Say like Kansas City, who's large similarly named suburb across the river is treated as a distinct destination. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:16, 19 Jan 2005 (EST)
5 colons. So in other words, you would remove the Quad Cities listing from Iowa and replace it with Davenport and Bettendorf? Or is that the opposite of what you mean?
I've been to Kansas City (Kansas) and it really is a distinct destination. -- (WT-en) Mikito 05:39, 19 Jan 2005 (EST)
I guess that's the rub, isn't it? Somebody who knows the place should make the decision, as they are the best to say if it feels like 1 or 4 destinations. Meanwhile, I figure we should just add a Quad Cities to Western Illinois and be done with it until somebody comes along to contribute an article. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:51, 19 Jan 2005 (EST)

Which cities deserve links?[edit]

Some of the cities listed here aren't really large enough to qualify as legitimate destinations in and of themselves. I live in DuPage county, and while towns like Lisle and Lombard might be nice places to live, and even have plenty of worthwhile and interesting activities (whirlyball, anyone?) I'm not sure this qualifies them for a main link off the Illinois page. Can somebody establish some kind of criteria?

Pick the 7 plus/minus 2 interesting places. Everything else should be swept into the appropriate region pages. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:19, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)
"Interesting" is a pretty relative term. What are we talking, historical interest? Cultural? Commercial?
Yes, any of those. Lombard and Lisle are definitely cities (albeit small ones) that said I think probably Lisle would only really deserve mention for side trips from say, Naperville. -- (WT-en) Mark 07:40, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)
I should probably retitle this section. My question is really not whether those are cities (Lisle and Lombard are technically villages anyway) but whether such small municipalities deserve a direct link from the Illinois page. Unless we intend to list every town, village, city, and census-designated place, we had better come up with some objective criteria for deciding what gets a link on this page and what doesn't.
OK, that's an easier question to answer: No, they don't belong on the Illinois page. We probably just want to link to the 7+-2 most interesting (and dispersed) from the article for the state. I would think that list should be something like "Chicago, Champaign-Urbana, Peoria, Springfield, East St. Louis (or another metro-east city), Carbondale, Quad-cities, DeKalb and Bloomington-Normal". What do you think? -- (WT-en) Mark 09:12, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)
The Project:region article template says, It's usually a good idea, if there are a few prominent cities in the region, to list them here, since that's often all that travelers are looking for. This is neither a judgement on the quality of a city, its size, its usefulness for travellers, etc. The whole point is if a reader gets to Illinois, we don't want them to say, "^%$)$*$$@! Where is the link to Chicago on this page?" I'd say that your list, Mark, is pretty much what people would be looking for in Illinois. --(WT-en) Evan 10:37, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)
I'd say Naperville and Rockford probably deserve to be on the list as well, they're the 2nd and 3rd largest cities in Illinois (if I'm not mistaken), and they both get a share of convention/buisiness travel, if nothing else.
3rd and 4th, or maybe 4th and 5th. Peoria is bigger, but we still don't have a Peoria article. Still we are sort of against this kind of ranking on Wikivoyage, since it tends to inspire non-productive behavior: "x is bigger." "No, y is bigger". etc. etc. ad-infinitum.
This sort of thing is the reason I didn't include Naperville on the list. I worry that if you list Naperville people are going to be weird about our not having listed Aurora or Schamburg or Evanston, then we'll wind up with a list of 25 and have to trim it again. -- (WT-en) Mark 04:25, 8 Dec 2005 (EST)
Well, not to be a Naperville zealot here (I actually kind of hate Naperville) but it does seem like it's becoming a pretty sizable destination for business travel (conferences and the like) so people might come here looking for info. The following is a list I found of the 10 largest cities in Illinois (I make no claims about its accuracy): Chicago, 2,869,121; Aurora, 162,184; Rockford, 151,725; Naperville, 137,894; Joliet, 123,570; Springfield, 113,586; Peoria, 112,907; Elgin, 97,117; Waukegan, 91,452; Cicero, 83,029. I'd suggest that maybe the top 5 should get links in this page, and then we can pick a few others to add for geographic balance (since most of the top 5 are in Norteastern Illinois). Thoughts?

IMHO geographical balance is way more important than population. I seriously would toss anything in Chicagoland that isn't Chicago right off the list for that reason alone. -- (WT-en) Mark 16:43, 2 Feb 2006 (EST)

Revisited[edit]

Two "complaints": Naperville is, I think, all Chicagoan snobbery aside, a much more interesting tourist destination than Joliet, which really only offers gambling and prison life. And, while I know much less about this one, is Rockford much of a travel destination, or did we just include it because it's big? I'd guess that the Quad Cities would be a better choice than Rockford for the list. Thoughts? --(WT-en) Peter Talk 14:06, 29 August 2008 (EDT)

Rockford is definitely not a destination and should be dropped. I'd keep Joliet, though - the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet is a pretty big deal for auto racing. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 02:24, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

Region changes[edit]

There's a region breakdown at the top of this page that seems to please everybody. I think someone might have mistakenly thought that our preferred way to write "Northern Illinois" is "Northern (Illinois)". It is not.

We try to use "traditional" regions and region names. So for the region of the US called the "Southwest", we use the name "Southwest". Sometimes we also have "the North", "the South", etc. If the name is ambiguous -- that is, if there are more than one place with that same name -- we use disambiguators in parentheses to separate them out. So the American Southwest becomes "Southwest (United States of America)". Note that it's not "Southwestern (United States of America)".

Unless the name of the area is "Northern" or "Eastern", we shouldn't have Northern (Illinois), but Northern Illinois. --(WT-en) Evan 11:42, 29 Dec 2005 (EST)

AAARRRGGHH!
I was following the example of New Mexico, where the parentheses are used in all regions (and were so defined before I got to them). If you want to get in and undo all this, feel free -- I need to go take an aspirin... -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 12:32, 29 Dec 2005 (EST)
Sigh... So the top-level page is reverted. I am not skillful enough with markup to avoid a circular redirect on the regions. Anybody? -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 12:43, 30 Dec 2005 (EST)

Outdated status[edit]

This travel guide is no longer an outline. --(WT-en) CurvyEthyl 17:40, 28 September 2010 (EDT)

Almost. I'd say Starved Rock State Park would need to be at least usable status for this region to have usable status. It's the most important natural attraction in the state. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 18:44, 28 September 2010 (EDT)

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