Talk:Detroit

Pronounciation

I have NEVER heard anyone who lives around Detroit pronounce the name of the city as DEE-troit other than people making fun of people from the rest of the country who don't understand that the name comes from the French words "de troit" (of the river), were the "de" is specifically de-emphasized. NO native person from Detroit ever uses that pronounciation, in the same way that all lifelong Michigan residents will only pronounce Mackinac ("MACK-in-aw") as "Mack-in-ak" only as a way of making fun of the same level of ignorance as those who prounounce Illinois as rhyming with "noise", or pronouncing either or both occurences of the letter "s" in Des Moines, Iowa. Look up my IP address in http://iplocation.net/ 96.70.70.49 (talk) 22:41, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I came here to say the same thing as a native of the city. I'm especially confused by the "locally also" part of the pronunciation - it is specifically NON-locals who (mis)pronounce the city that way, other than sometimes in the form of the "DETROIT BASKETBALL" and "DETROIT BASEBALL" chants at Pistons and Tigers games (which is more about having both words have the same rhythmic patterns). I know the source says that, but perhaps we could get a dispute on that alongside it - certainly a Detroit native has written something complaining about the DEE-troyt mispronunciation. Beggarsbanquet (talk) 05:47, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

RFC: Reduce History Section

I'm wondering if anyone had thoughts on whittling the history section on this page down substantially. I ask this because the History section has become quite large and perhaps unwieldy. Should we:

1. Do nothing.
2. Edit to include a reduced size History Section in WP:Detroit with a link to the other page.
3. Separate the page entirely and include a link to the "History of Detroit " page with no text within the section.
4. Other. Please specify.

I'd love thoughts from folks. Happy editing!

(This is my first RFC. I hope I did this right. I had to edit it because I didn't initially even see that we had a separate History of Detroit page!) Bill Heller (talk) 05:34, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

• (A) Keep size as was on 19:22, 28 December 2025 here -- (I'm deliberately avoiding taking a position supporting or opposing the changes by the RfC poster just prior to this RfC.) The individual sections within the history section look about the right length to me. It's good to see a substantial history of the city, which is lacking for far too many locations on Wikipedia. If the entire length of the article is getting close to the maximum allowed, I would reconsider. How close is it? --David Tornheim (talk) 12:01, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

  It's very far below the maximum size. Max size is usually about 2 million bytes. This article is 240,879. After I added some recent history and cleaned up some out of date stuff ("will be developed into" to "was developed into"), I figured I'd ask what the community thought about the length. Bill Heller (talk) 18:36, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

• (B) Edit to include a reduced size History Section in WP:Detroit with a link to the other page..

I do think there is an unnecessary level of detail. The legacy section also seems oddly positioned. It might be worth referring the length of other US city / state history sections and somewhat following along their organization.

There's a lot of historical explanations to stuff that isn't directly related to Detroit, for example:

When Great Britain evicted France from its colonial possessions in New France (Canada) in the peace terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, it also removed one barrier to American colonists migrating west across the mountains. British negotiations with the Iroquois would both prove critical and lead to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which limited settlements South of and below the Great Lakes and west of the Alleghenies / Appalachians. Many colonists and pioneers in the Thirteen Colonies along the East Coast, resented and then simply defied this restraint, later becoming supporters of the rebellious American Revolution.

As well as a passage that mentions they switched to LED lights, and the history of the Michigan Central Station seems extraneous.

All this being said, I don't live in Detroit, so take my words with a few grains of salt. :) MSWS (talk) 08:43, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

• Somewhere between (A) and (B).

By which I mean: The history section could be trimmed to be something like 2/3 to 3/4 of the current length, but I would not support a more substantial removal. ("Reduced size" in option B covers a whole lot of ground.)

There is some unnecessary detail (as User:MSWS has pointed out), and like a lot of articles there tends to be a recency bias. However, I like having the in-depth historical perspective in the article, particularly for a city like Detroit where the historical changes are a big part of defining what the city is today. Andrew Jameson (talk) 17:49, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

B. This is, to my knowledge, standard procedure for when it becomes unweildly. uᴉɐʇsǝɥʇuƎ uoʇsᴉoʅɓoʅɥԀ (Hit Me Up) 19:01, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

This section is way way way too long and should be cut back to two paragraphs, maybe three. There is already a separate article on the history of Detroit, we don't need much of anything here. GA-RT-22 (talk) 14:05, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Augustus Woodward

It seems like there's an effort to remove mention of Woodward and the Woodward Plan from both this article and the History of Detroit article. Woodward is a major figure in the history of our city, state, and oldest university. The Woodward Plan is the basis for the reconstruction of the city after 1805. I'm wondering why all of this isn't recognized as it seems pretty fundamental to Detroit. Ztmcfaul (talk) 17:30, 25 June 2026 (UTC)