Talk:Finnhorse

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Good articleFinnhorse has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 25, 2011Peer reviewReviewed
April 22, 2011Good article nomineeListed
Current status: Good article

New stuff and assorted thoughts[edit]

I like the Murto shot. There is a need for good standstill conformation shots, there are already a lot of nice trotting photos, though if one of the three you proposed is added, either new or to replace something else, I suggest File:Helmi.jpg as the best quality image, though the File:Eri-Aaroni.JPG may be of use to replace a different historical image, the horse is gorgeous. I made some other tweaks, or will be making some other tweaks. Montanabw(talk) 19:10, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts[edit]

First off, the article is huge! Per WP:Page size, readers may tire of reading a page longer than 6,000 to 10,000 words - this one (using Dr.pda's prose size tool) is over 11,000. Montana's suggestion about trimming some of the ancillary information into sub articles is a good one - try this first and see how far down it gets you. I would also suggest checking out some other articles on some fairly major breeds - for example, Thoroughbred at 72KB and Andalusian horse at 46.5KB, both featured articles - to see the approximate length of each section and the amount of detail needed. Now, even though I've told you the article is too long, the lead needs to be expanded. Per WP:LEAD, articles greater than 30KB should have a lead of 3-4 paragraphs. Since this article is so far over 30KB, it should probably be four. The lead should summarize the entire article, while not including new information. Copyediting and actual prose suggestions are a little pointless if you're going to be cutting stuff out, so I'll wait until you think you're done chopping before I actually start looking deeply at the prose and MOS compliance. Overall, I think you have done a wonderful job on this article. However, you may have fallen prey to the urge to add everything that is known about a breed, whether it is of use/interest to the lay reader or not. Dana boomer (talk) 12:59, 3 October 2010 (UTC) (expanded Dana boomer (talk) 16:02, 3 October 2010 (UTC))[reply]

Dana, I've been scratching my head for months about how to suggest Pitke chop it and summarize. The history section is probably the obvious one, but my advice to Pitke (maybe bad advice?) has been to go ahead and get the thing finished and THEN figure what needs to be spun off into a new article. Anyway, just so you know...I figured that once the stuff is in, then it will be easier to figure what has to then go OUT -- possibly into instant articles! (Like History of the Finnhorse???). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Montanabw (talkcontribs)
This is precisely why I declined Pike's kind invitation to do a peer review. To know what to cut and/or split off needs some equine knowledge, and although I grew up on farms and can ride, I actually know nothing about horses. However, now that there seems to be a consensus towards reducing the article a bit, I would be happy to give the contributors and Dana a hand in reviewing the proposed changes from a structural and editorial angle. Don't hesitate to let me know if you would like me to look anything over. I'm not looking for any kudos in being part of a GA;--Kudpung (talk) 04:58, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My thinking is that a content review from the structural and editorial side is precisely what we need in order to decide what to spin off. And I have been helping Pitke wordsmith this article for so long I don't have any objectivity above the paragraph level, so though the research is all Pitke's (and impressive, to boot! Talk about a labor of love!) I've rephrased a lot of content to the point that I too am blurry-eyed. For one thing, I know we have redundant material in the Uses section that duplicates some of what is in the four breed sections, yet it's kind of hard to figure out how to consolidate it given that the breed is a "using" kind of horse. I also can no longer tell if the history section is coherently organized and could be tightened up without losing content. I've also been double-checking my history of Finland to learn about some of the things Pitke discusses (talk about a complex national history!) and so now even I have no idea if what's here is understandable to the casual reader without reading five other articles first. Montanabw(talk) 05:44, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO, sub-articles on the breed itself (like History of the Finnhorse) wouldn't be the way to go. There is quite a bit of information, such as the crown stallion system and cold-blood harness racing, that is somewhat ancillary to the breed or is over-detailed in this particular article and could be split out into other articles. Also, in my brief looks over the article, I have noticed that there is redundant information in several spots. My thought would be to go for the big chops first and then work on the redundancy, but if everyone wants to do it the other way round, I can start listing them here... Dana boomer (talk) 11:20, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think redundancy then chops is the way we may have to go (amazing how much stuff CAN be chopped just by tackling redundancy!). PITKE: Two good ideas form Dana here: 1) Separate new article on coldblood harness racing -- easily linked both here, and on the Norwegian breeds and in harness racing. Massively cool idea because I know I was really clueless about this at the beginning. Maybe once it's created, some material here can be selectively moved. 2) Some of the history of Finland's horse breeding stuff does go beyond just the Finnhorse's history so just might be able to be teased out into a general article, (though what to name it??). Ditto... Montanabw(talk) 18:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Redundancies[edit]

OK, here goes. I'll keep adding to this list as I find new spots:

  • The Crossbreeding section is a somewhat confusing mix of crossbreeding to improve/change the Finnhorse breed and crossing the Finns with other breeds in order to improve those breeds. Also, there is a great deal of redundancy between this section and the Influence on other horse breeds section, especially in the information on the Tori horse. My suggestion would be to move all information relating to the improvement of other breeds to the latter section and eliminate all redundancy.
The Tori horse section in the Crossbreeding section has been discussed previously for the exact same reason. My excuse for it still existing is that the description of the late 19th century Finnish horse is most valuable as a part of the breed history section and would feel off-place in any other place. The parts left in the Crossbreeding section were previously somewhat pruned to stay more in topic, and most of the Tori project details were left for the Influence... section. I boiled it down some more, is it better/ok now? Pitke (talk) 08:10, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is a great deal of redundancy between the General breed characteristics section and the individual breed sections. My suggestion would be to have "General breed characteristics" as a level two (==xyz==) header and the Draught type, etc sections as level three headers (===abc===) under General..., eliminating the Breed sections level two header and moving the introduction to this section up into either the General... or the Studbook... section. After doing this, eliminate all redundancy between the level two and level three headers. You do not need to give information more than once, especially when it's rather specialized statistics such as height, which very few readers care about (they tend to be more interested in the history, uses, etc). Also, as a minor note, use "percent", not "%", per MOS.
  • There is information in the Military use section that doesn't really pertain to the breed. For example, the Alanen quote, while interesting information about the Finnish cavalry, really doesn't provide the reader any useful information on the Finnhorse. Is there an article on the Finnish cavalry or any of the individual units? If so, some of this information could easily be moved there; if not, it might be another article to think about creating. Also, as a minor note, the quote needs a source.

That's it for now, probably more later. As the major redundancies get trimmed out, it will be easier to see the minor ones. One point that I must stress is that sometimes you must leave the very specialized information to the books - letting the reader go to them if they want really detailed information. For example, when writing Haflinger (horse), one of the books I found contained detailed information on the pedigrees and bloodlines of every studbook line. This information is far to detailed for the average reader, however, and so should be left in the book for the true scholar to read there. Dana boomer (talk) 14:17, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Stay tuned and keep an eye on developments...the Finnish cavalry bit is of interest because they started out on Finnhorses...that does need to be made more clear. Pitke, I may let you tackle some of the rest of this...or if I do, double-check to see that I didn't screw up anything. Montanabw(talk) 23:05, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Removed parts of the Military use section. Been looking for the quote source for a long time, and just realised why I haven't been able to find it - it's from the separate History of the Finnhorse article in fi.wikipedia, and source-wise that article is a complete disaster. The source list is impressive, but close to none ref tags have been employed, and some sources listed have been a discussion via phone, "family knowledge", and a local exhibition in 1989 *SIGH* The moment I get this article translated into Finnish, I'll delete that abomination! *foam* Pitke (talk) 08:10, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
IF relevant, move the stuff you've written to a related article (like Tori (horse)) if you can, there was so much good work here. Montanabw(talk) 23:16, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The stuff I removed was an already boiled-down version of what's currently in the Influence in... section. If needed and relevant, the original one-piece paragraphs can be found from this article's history as they were, in any case. Pitke (talk) 08:27, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures of different types[edit]

I added pictures of different types of finnhorse stallions. I also made a collage of them: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finnhorse_types.jpg

I don't know are these useful for the article but at least they represent differences between the types. I chose stallions which have been evaluated to have "good type" for their section. Johanna Rautio (talk) 08:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It would be more useful to have them as individual images...or are they already on commons as individual images? Also, is the copyright status OK so that we can freely use them? Montanabw(talk) 18:23, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are also individual pictures. And one other picture. Copyright is of course OK since I've photographed these pictures myself and added to Commons. You have to choose lisensing and in this case it is GNU Free Documentation License. I have photographed thousands of finnhorses in all kinds of situations so if there is need for some kind of picture I could try to find. For example dressage..? (I've changed my last name this year by getting married, thats why the name is different.) I think it is addvertisement for the breed to have good pictures in wiki. And I love this breed. :) Johanna Rautio (talk) 07:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll thank you again: these are very pictures and of great value to the Finnhorse collection in Commons to clearly illustrate the four types of the breed that exist today. I suppose that the perfect collection of any given breed will first and foremost feature good quality images of the typical animal of the breed seen both in a side view to illustrate the type and build of the breed, and being used for the main uses of the breed. The Finnhorse collection surely isn't a small one these days, so please pardon the list format. Pitke (talk) 22:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The typical animal - I would say this is covered. We have good quality shots of a stallion and a mare, in a show posture and in racing action. Type illustrations of all sections now exist. If something were to be added, similar images featuring mares or geldngs would be welcome, but this is of low priority IMO. It would also be nice, if not necessary, to have a picture of an animal licenced for breeding in two or even three sections. Pitke (talk) 22:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The main uses of the breed - the harness racing part is rather covered methinks, with only low-priority would-be-nice additions to be made. These would include, for instance, images taken from top level races (suurkilpailut), or featuring top animals such as Viesker, Ponseri, I.P. Sukkula or any other recent "star". More urgent would be IMO a nice picture showing a Finnhorse in everyday riding school use, seeing that we already have a few good images with recreational riding. Top level Finnhorse riding should be included of course, but riding schools are a major use for the breed and our only shot covering this topic is rather bad. Any more specalised uses such as equine-assisted therapy or whatnot will be appreciated of course, but they are't as central. Pitke (talk) 22:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Working - underillustrated. A modern-day image from a working event or an actual agricultural/forestry setting would be most valuable an addition. Similarly combined or recreational driving would be great. In the very ideal case, we could have Heidi Sinda and her victorious pair (Vahto and V.P.Jehu?) in action. Pitke (talk) 22:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The colours - chestnuts are nicely illustrated, as far as I know we're only missing a very light wheat bun coloured chestnut, and maybe a better image of one with grey mane (hamppuharjainen rautias). Can't remember if I've uploaded any of my sorrels either. We have some nice bays, a brown mimic bay (true browns might be very rare in the breed), and at least one black - we also have two very different shades of silver dapple bay. Of the major colours I think we only lack grey and a flashy sabino. My "wouldn't it be lovely" list of course includes every factor and combination yet seen, that is, silver dapple black, strawberry and red roans, palomino, buckskin and smoky black, and whichever double Cream dilute the new arrival turns out to be. Pitke (talk) 22:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The "it" - I would personally love a good quality image showing a similar friendly, honest face like Kelmi does in the image that sadly enough has suffered quite a lot. It's a major part of the breed's image and brand, if I may say so. We're also yet to see a fuzzy hair monster type... The quite recent side views of a turned-out gelding in golden evening light scratch the unpolished, man's-best-friend side of the breed, but aren't quite... There. Again, personal opinions. Pitke (talk) 22:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My humble opinion is that the basic photos are good conformation shots and one way to use them (other than the one which is the lead image) would be to have one stand-up and one "action" shot in each of the four sections on the sections... the historic body photos can be kept but moved around a bit. Cute head shots are fun, but not really necessary. And remember, commons is the place for the galleries! LOL! Montanabw(talk) 01:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Before I forget - modern-day books of the breed seem to love action in the shared colt pastures (orilaidun). Such a thing wouldn't be a bad addition to the artice - the current three snoozing geldings on pasture could be replaced maybe, but currently it's the only actual group shot we have save the dragoon re-enactment one. Old (20+) individuals still kicking it would also be nice. Of course, the more categories a horse photo can be added in at Commons, the better and the more "cost-effective". As a random note to you, Johanna (if you're still with us despite the wall of text lol), while naming other than famous individuals is really not necessary, it'd be helpful to have the name of even the everyday Polle and Humma hidden in the category with the <!--hidden---> tag. The name can provide extra information which in some cases may add value to the image. For example, most of the files in the Old horses category were found by looking up the horse's name. Pitke (talk) 07:28, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If I may, the names of the horses can be kept in Commons, other than those of significant historical importance (as already exists here). I happen to vehemently oppose a "laundry list" of every famous animal the breed (any breed) has ever known, particularly as such lists can become quite contentious, particularly if living animals are involved. Remember, this is an article for the general public -- you may need to consider expansions into wikibooks! (Actually, I'm serious about wikibooks, there's clearly enough material here for one, the article is getting pretty close to the maximum workable length as it is...)

Peer review 01/2011[edit]

Comment - I don't feel that my comments above have been satisfactorily addressed, so I see no real need to make further comments at this point. There is still an extreme amount of redundancy and tangential information in the article that could be removed to shorten the length (which NEEDS to be done, the article is still over 11,000 words). At this point there is no need to spin the history section into another article - we don't have seperate history articles for any other breed, and this includes breeds like the Thoroughbred, Arabian and Andalusian, which have had impacts that far outweight that of the Finnhorse. Better new articles would be one on coldblood harness racing and perhaps one on the Finnish crown stallion system, with any information that is tangential to this article but still interesting moved there. This, plus removing the redundancy which I began to outline in my comments above, would do a significant amount towards chopping the article to its proper length. Dana boomer (talk) 15:14, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your time. The requests to remove tangential information have been mostly ignored by me up until now, since I have felt a need to add something. The need is now gone, and I understand what you mean -- or at least think I do -- much of the article deals more with the history of horses in Finland than the Finnhorse itself. Would you support cutting away this kind of detail and introducing a new article on the "Horses in Finland" subject? Of my ideas for improving (or effectively unbloating) this article it is the most prominent, and frankly, my only proper one. These kinds of major cuts make me always nervous, and I would like to have one or two user's backup for it before getting the scissors. Pitke (talk) 17:14, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As a side note, I'll be happy to try and carry out this kind of manoeuvre and summarise the history section down to about one third of its current length. But I need some emotional support I suppose. Pitke (talk) 17:19, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that a "Horses in Finland" or "History of Horses in Finland" would be much different than a seperate "History of the Finnhorse" because, as you say in the lead of the article "the breed and its progenitors were the only horses in Finland for centuries, the history of horses in Finland is almost identical to the history of the Finnhorse.". I really don't think that a wholesale chop of any one section is needed. What is needed (IMO) is relatively small, targeted reductions in several areas of the article which together will bring the size down to a reasonale level.
For instance, there is currently three good-size paragraphs in the section "Crown stallion system", and most likely other mentions of this system throughout. This includes information on caretaking, burdens, pros and cons, etc, which are integral to an understanding the crown stallion system but not integral to an understanding of the Finnhorse breed. So, start a new article: Crown Stallion System or something of the sort, and move all but a brief (one paragraph, 4-5 sentence) discussion of the system to the new article. Leave a brief summary plus any information that is integral to the understanding of the breed (instead of the system) in the main Finnhorse article. Then, do the same for coldblood harness racing. Just shortening the Crown stallion system to one paragraph (with no other checks for redundancies or anything else), would reduce the article by around 400 words. If you do the same with coldblood racing and then check for redundancies on these subjects in other areas of the article, you could probably reduce the article by almost 1,000 words!
The other articles don't have to be amazing, they just have to be a place where the information can be placed for now and another editor (or you, if you want) can come by and improve them some other time. Then, look at redundancy - especially that between "general breed characteristics" and the individual breed sections (details on my suggestions for this in my "redundancies" section above). I don't think it would take more than an hour or so's work to do the new articles, and even by just doing those two things (crown stallion system and coldblood harness racing) would put the article in a much better position for GAN/FAC. Dana boomer (talk) 17:38, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, now I think I get what you mean. My only "but" is that I have very little access to info on coldblood harness racing in Sweden and Norway, and a new article on the topic would be horribly lopsided. Besides Finland is the only country to use Finnhorses, the other two use more of the same horses. I'll start on the Crown Stallion Thing. Pitke (talk) 18:17, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And I think a Harness racing in Finland might be relevant. Pitke (talk) 18:18, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Harness racing in Finland is a definite possibility as a place to move stuff to. There's even precedent with Harness racing in Australia and Harness racing in New Zealand. Good thinking! Dana boomer (talk) 18:23, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll plan about some cuts then. Pitke (talk) 19:13, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is User:Pitke/Crown stallion system comprehensible enough for someone who hasn't read the Finnhorse article ten times already? I added a little something there too. I'll replace the current section in Finnhorse with a condensed paragraph, making it a part of the Decline section. Pitke (talk) 19:13, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It looks quite good. I made a few tweaks for clarity, feel free to revert if I changed the meaning on anything. My only suggestion would be to make it clear if this system is still in use today. The article is entirely in the past tense, which makes it sound like it has been discontinued, but I see nowhere in the article where it explictely says that. And, after reading your edit summary, it was far more than 100 words off - went from around 11,200 to just over 10,850. Very nice work. Dana boomer (talk) 19:42, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It was a brainfart, it was 500 words. I noticed the same thing, but couldn't find a Net source to say when it ended. I think I remember reading it ended when the studbook was founded in 1907, as horses were now selected for breeding in a new way, but I cannot promise this is true. Pitke (talk) 20:59, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For Dana's delight, the Harness Racing section is now down 345 words from 825 to 480. I think I like this lighter form better. The "most successful" parts were actually ancient remnants from the Finnish version I began my work on. We should be now at 10,500 words. Wotnow has been copyediting stuff, I'm happy for that. Pitke (talk) 22:08, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) Very nice work - definitely making progress! I think now would be the time to start working on cutting redundancy. There is still the redundancy between the general and individual type breed descriptions. I also noticed as I was looking over the article again that there is significant duplication between the description of the trotter type in the breed characteristics section and the harness racing section, especially the information on records/times, which is repeated almost verbatim in the two sections. For GAN somewhat, and especially if you go to FAC, you want your prose extremely tight. There are a few copyeditors that we can probably get to come in and do a final polish just before FAC (if you decide you want it to go there, I saw you mention it someplace), but before then we should have it as prepared as possible. Again, very nice work. I know that it looks like I just keep complaining, but you are really doing a great job with this article. Dana boomer (talk) 22:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I nuked the Trotter section part. Are there any more duplicates you can spot? The riding section perhaps? I think I mentioned a wish to aim for FA in the PR request. Pitke (talk) 23:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, checking between the Riding/pony sections and the Riding horse subsection of "Uses" would probably be beneficial. Another thing that I spotted: The history section is not always arranged chronologically, and some of the jumps it makes back and forth are rather confusing. For example, by the end of the Military use section its discussion the use of the breed in the 1960s, then jump back in time in the next section. The same with the end of the crossbreeding section - you're talking about the late 1800s, then jump back to the 1700s at the beginning of the next section. Most of the subsections within themselves are quite nicely arranged, but when you begin to read through them as a whole it gets a bit...confusing...having to concentrate on whether what the breed is doing in the particular sentence you're reading came before or after what it was doing in the sentence you read 10 seconds ago. Does this make sense, or am I rambling? :) I'll try to do a really thorough read through the article in the next couple of days, making copyedits as I go, and post here with a list of other possible changes/trimmings. Dana boomer (talk) 01:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all, I'm sort of stepping back on this one for a bit because I have done so much editing on individual sections that I don't have enough of an independent view of things to be of much help until the new version stabilizes. I've been aware of the redundancy issue, but haven't had the gumption to resolve it. Part of the problem is that with the Finnhorse we have an overlap between our traditional "characteristics" and "uses" sections that are standard on most of the horse breed articles. Here, that division doesn't make sense because the breed sections are all about the uses of the breed. So I think some sort of section merge probably has to happen -- sort of a mini "characteristics" and "uses" section for each of the four types, I guess. I agree that the Crown Stallion System and Harness Racing in Finland sections are great spinoffs, by the way. I'll also sit tight and then maybe do another of my copyedits after more stuff has been moved, chopped or otherwise tweaked. Montanabw(talk) 04:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And to further confuse us, they won't bother using their X lined horses just for X, no. My friend's horse is exclusively trotter lines and a failed trotter attempt, and is now an endurance horse, finishing 3rd at last year's national championship 80 km. Then there are those pesky triple-qualified PJT horses that do everything from racing to forestry, and after retiring from tracks move on to vaulting and combined driving. I did a minor cut at the Riding section, however I'm wondering whether the Ypäjä part should remain with the breeding section or the riding use section. I'm leaning towards the former. Pitke (talk) 08:15, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Organization of top half of article[edit]

I'm still a little uncomfortable with the way the top half of the article is laid out. It seems to jump around quite a lot, which may have to do with the order of its sections. Here's the current layout:

1 General breed characteristics
2 Studbook evaluation
3 Breed sections
3.1 Draught type
3.1.1 Working tests
3.2 Trotter type
3.3 Riding horse type
3.4 Pony-sized Finnhorse
4 Colour selection

Here's my proposal:

1. General breed characteristics
1.1 Colour
2. Breed sections
2.1 Draught type
2.2 Trotter type
2.3 Riding horse type
2.4 Pony-sized Finnhorse
3 Studbook evaluation
3.1 Working tests

As is is currently, the studbook evaluation and working tests section feel odd coming in the middle of the breed types - I think they would be better placed together after the information on characteristics. The color information also feels odd coming after all of the information on the history of the types and the studbook evaluation - very separated from the other breed characteristic information. There are a few sentences of duplication here and there in these sections, but that can be dealt with after we get the layout how we want it. Thoughts? Dana boomer (talk) 17:07, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that however it all sorts out, the idea of having the characteristics common to all sections (color, etc.) first is a good one. This may include studbook selection if relevant to discuss all the general criteria. The mess with studbook selection now is that the working tests are, I think, only applicable for the draft horse section (am I correct on that, Pitke?). It would be good to know any unique criteria for the others. That way, perhaps there could be a general overview of studbook selection, then a sentence or two in each section about the unique tests for each...if they exist? Montanabw(talk) 17:19, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Each of the current breed section parts have short descriptions about what is expected from a horse to be registered in the respective studbook section. These could be cut and merged into a list under the proposed Studbook evaluation subsection. However, the Trotter section would become VERY short. Montanabw is correct that the working test only applies to the working section; however, trotters go through the drivability test, and ponies go through either a ridability or a drivability test. I have now an idea, and will be editing shortly. Pitke (talk) 18:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I look forward to seeing your idea. My main issue with how its presented now is how much it jumps around. There's general breed characteristics, then we jump to the studbook evaluation, then over to breed types for the draft type, then back to the studbook evaluation, then back to breed type/history for the other three types, then back to general breed characteristics in the form of color. It just gets to feeling a little chaotic. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you do with it. Dana boomer (talk) 20:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Initial action carried out. Please have a look, do we have too much or is something lacking? And do the images still look any good? My screen is TINY now. Earlier it was HUGE. I cannot imagine how the layout looks with a normal screen.Pitke (talk) 20:14, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll make some little picky tweaks, I too am not the best person to get the overall layout at this point and shall defer to others on that point. Montanabw(talk) 21:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That looks quite good! I'm going to start going through now (probably just a little at a time) and making tweaks and trims. I'll try to do them in little bits so that it will be easy to revert anything that you don't like! Please feel free to revert anything that you feel changes the meaning or removes too much detail. I'll leave queries here on the talk page for anything I feel is questionable. Dana boomer (talk) 00:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Queries[edit]

General
  • All percent signs (%) should be written out (percent), per WP:MOS.
  • Use either citation or cite xyz (cite web, cite book, etc), not both. They output different formats, which drives people at FAC crazy. There have also been rumors that these two occasionally don't play well on the coding end.
  • I know, someone shoehorning the "citation" form in! *paranoid* Pitke (talk) 06:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should probably go through and clean up the hidden comments - this would reduce the raw kilobyte size if nothing else. Remove anything that was queries that have been dealt with, information that you haven't been able to find a source for and you don't think you'll be able to, etc.
  • Check for overlinking. In general, a term should be linked no more than one in the lead and once per section - sometimes only once in the entire body, depending on how far apart the links are (one at the very beginning of the body and one at the end is fine; one at the end of a section and another one at the beginning of the next section, not so much).
Specific
  • Breed characteristics, Why does "Pony-sized Finnhorses (under 14.2 hands (58 inches, 147 cm)) exist as well, and are licensed for breeding in a separate section of the official stud book." need three references? If this entire fact is repeated in multiple sources, and is not controversial, just pick the best source and go with that.
  • Most of the time with these instances it's because I've been rewriting and rearranging stuff without the original sources at hand, and because I've done some compound sentences from multiple sources. There really should be at least five places where the info just was that scattered and that had to be done to make it even a bit smoothly readable. Pitke (talk) 06:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Colours, last paragraph needs a reference
  • Colours, "At one point, chestnuts made up more than 96 percent of the breed." When?
  • Source won't say. I've said this before, it was probably in the 1980s or early 1990s. Pitke (talk) 06:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are several spots in the Colours section with three references. If all of the references are needed to back up the point (i.e., each one covers a seperate part of the sentence), then it's fine to leave them. If they're not all needed, though, all they serve to do is bulk up the article and distract the reader with more little numbers.
  • This is the section where I have most needed to combine sources to get good senetences. Cannot remember everything of course, but I dare claim most of these are legit. Pitke (talk) 06:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Trotter type, I would suggest bringing up some information from the Harness racing section to bulk this up a little bit, since it has been cut so much. I would suggest the information on their conformation - the third and sixth paragraphs - would be prime material for this.
  • Trotter type, The first sentence of the current paragraph on records ("The current official...") is redundant to information already in the harness racing section. I would suggest that all material on records could easily stay in the harness racing section, to keep it all together.
  • Riding horse type, "Despite the Finnhorse's later solid image as a working farm horse, the breed had been used as a cavalry mount from the 17th century until the end of WWII." Five references?
  • Consisted of compunds, simmered down, no way of knowing which ones held the crucial info. Pitke (talk) 06:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Riding horse type, As you noted above, the information on Ypaja is still repeated between here and the uses section. My thought would be that it could stay in the riding horse type section, as it is more about the type's history than its uses, but it is up to you.
  • Pony-sized Finnhorse, "The pony-sized Finnhorse breeding section (P)..." You haven't given the letter designations for any of the other types in their subsections; either do it for all or none.
  • Pony-sized Finnhorse, "The Finnhorse had been bred for size for centuries," Might want to make this more clear that they were bred for larger sizes.
  • Pony-sized Finnhorse, "against full-size horses in work horse competitions." Full-sized Finnhorses or horses of other breeds?
  • Pony-sized Finnhorse, "more or less equal competitors " More or less is very wishy-washy wording. Either they are, or they are not.

Allright, done for now, have gotten through the end of the Breed sections section (this is more of a note for myself than anything else). Will continue work on this tomorrow. As I said before, feel free to revert any changes I made tonight that you don't like/don't agree with. Dana boomer (talk) 01:18, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Structural thoughts[edit]

I'm wondering if we can kill the "uses" section altogether and merge that material with the four breed sections. It's not standard for WP Horse Breeds, but in this case, due to the four studbook sections, it kind of makes sense. Montanabw(talk) 19:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Before I tell you Finns would kill me and send me piece by piece to you by sea mail if we did this, please elaborate what order and structure you would suggest. Pitke (talk) 19:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking that the draft horse uses info in the uses section could be kept in its entirety but moved up to the characteristics section on the draft type; and the same for the others. Not deleting any of it, just putting it all together in the same place so the reader has "one stop shopping" for everything they ever wanted to know about a given section. In other words something akin to:
  • Characteristics section
    • All the general stuff
    • Draft section
      • Characteristics unique to Draft type
      • Uses of draft type
    • Trotter section
      • Unique characteristics
      • Uses of Trotter type

and so on... Does this make sense now? Montanabw(talk) 02:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I get what you mean, it's what I thought too. I, knowing how this breed is used, must say that I don't think is a good idea. The breed is multi-purpose. It's highly multi-purpose even on the level of individuals. T section studbook horses are likely to be used as work horses, but also to serve as a family steed, and some individuals are given a chance at racing too. T-lined horses have only that much chance of getting a home where they will be used for work, so they end up being trotters or steeds. As for J section, a great many riding horses were originally either unpromising, family-wise undesired, or unperforming young trotters. The most famous example of an ex-trotter steed (or a J-lined one) is a hobby level pet pony, but there are also trotting champions with riding success after their racing career[1]. Riding section actually haves a pretty clean-cut scope, but only when there is no harness within a 3 mile radius ;) Pony-sized -- is there anything they can't do?! Is there anything they aren't used for?! What would be their "section intended use"? Pitke (talk) 15:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ah! I see! The PERFECT horse! (smile) OK, you win! Just be careful that the "uses" section isn't redundant to the breed characteristics section. May be worth expanding on the above versatility of individual horses in there somewhere (seeing as you already found the source). The structure of the uses section kind of bugs me, I think if it can get another round of careful review for redundancy once the assorted cleanup is done, I'll go away happy enough. Montanabw(talk) 18:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's just one double registered stallion... Hardly a source for what I claimed above. But if I were to find some nice sources for this type of addition, where should I put it? General characteristics? Pitke (talk) 20:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another possible new article[edit]

First, I think that the Crown stallion system and harness racing articles are probably ready to be moved to the mainspace, and should be moved so that those links go blue and it doesn't look like the information was just deleted. Second, as I was poking around in the history section, I thought of another idea for a new article that would remove some of the tangential information without needing a seperate history of the finnhorse article.

Here's my thought: There is a lot of information in the history section on how the Finnish people used horses in the military. While interesting, much of this information is not exactly necessary to an complete understanding of the Finnhorse breed. I think that, as with the two other new articles, much of the tangential information could be moved to a new article, titled something like Military use of horses in Finland, with a summary left behind.

This tangential information is scattered all through the history section, although obviously it is concentrated in those subsections directly relating to military use. For example, take this paragraph from the Military use section:

Before World War II, the Finnhorse was the breed that made up almost all of the horses that were part of the Finnish army and mounted police forces. While officers mostly rode warmbloods, for the cavalry, the so-called "light type" of Finnhorse was used. The horses were bought directly from farmers, and given basic training for about six months before transferring to regiments for further training. This second part of the training took another six months, directed by non-commissioned officers. At this point the horses were considered trained for normal cavalry purposes. The most talented horses were usually assigned to younger officers or the best riders among non-commissioned ranks, and many horses had competitive success during their service.[66] After the war, the Finnish cavalry was converted to infantry, and the use of the Finnhorse for riding purposes nearly ended. However, the breed made a comeback as a riding horse, even returning to competitive ranks, beginning in the late 1960s.[35]

Now, the bolded part, while interesting, is not really necessary for a full understanding of the Finnhorse breed. It is, however, very on-point for an understanding of how horses were used by the military in Finland. There is quite a bit of other information like this, especially where the text goes into describing horse transactions between Finland, Russia and other Scandanavian countries during and immediately after wars. Thoughts? Dana boomer (talk) 21:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My thinking is that military use is quite tied up with use in general and hard to separate out. I DO see that a Horses in the Finnish military article could dovetail well with some of our other specialty articles such as Horses in the Napoleonic Wars, so it wouldn't be content forking to create a new article, but I am not sure we have to tease out the threads. With all the cleanup that's happened to date, perhaps the length is now under control?? Montanabw(talk) 02:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Even with all of the removals that have happened to date, the length is still at just over 10,400 words. WP:SIZE considers 6,000 to be getting long, with a maximum recommended length of 10,000 words. When you consider that Thoroughbred is at 5,300, Andalusian horse is at 4,500, Arabian horse is at 8,600 and even Horse itself is only at 7,500, this would be probably the longest breed articles we have, and it's not about a major global breed. The breed characteristics, individual sections, and uses sections are better for the trim that they've had in the past week or so, and will look even nicer after the remaining small trims that I've mentioned above. The history section is still very bulky though - and I still don't think that a "History of the Finnhorse" article is the right way to go. There is no precedent for this in any breed (horse, dog, cat, anything) that I know of, and I don't think that setting the precedent with a relatively minor breed is the way to go - especially when there is information that can be trimmed out into articles for which there is precedent. Information like how the breed was trained for cavalry work is really just ancillary details - there is nothing special about how this breed was trained for cavalry work over any other breed, and so it's not really something that (IMO) needs to be detailed in this article. Most of the Military use in World War II section is this way as well - it has details on horse to troop ratios, Russian indemnities, and military reserve practices that are interesting and perfectly suited to a military article, but are really just TMI for a general breed article. Dana boomer (talk) 03:17, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good idea, will do this. Pitke (talk) 09:21, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I guess I'm coming around to that as well. But for a spinoff, let's keep title conventions consistent with the "Horses in ____________ war/military/army" format. I definitely agree that a "history of breed" separate article is not a good idea as it could create a precedent for a bunch of stubs in other breed articles. What is unique about the Finnhorse is how it is sort of THE horse of the nation, which is unusual. Yeah, I say take the other sandboxes live and then spin off the military stuff. Montanabw(talk) 18:15, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cut stuff to Pitke/Horses in Finnish military, we're about 3.5Kb and 600 words down again. Pitke (talk) 22:28, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, saw that and it looks good. Title of the article should probably end up being "Horses in the Finnish military", but other than that it looks good. I'm going to wait for Finetooth to finish going through (he's an awesome copyeditor, and will most likely be leaving comments at the peer review), and then plan to go through and see what other things I can find to complain about :) Size is looking good - any other cutting we find to do will just be icing on the cake. Dana boomer (talk) 22:31, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Random notes to keep discussion in the talk page[edit]

  • ossifying of the hoof cartilage -- the source literally says this -- the cartilage of the hoof turns to bone or gains bone-like structure/qualities. No idea what the term of art would be in English. Pitke (talk) 20:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure there is a proper medical term for it, but what it is escapes me at the moment. I guess just link ossification if there's an article that describes the condition generally. Montanabw(talk) 06:07, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This study says "ossification of the hoof cartilage". Pitke (talk) 10:39, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That helps. I wish they'd do better than things like "collateral cartilage ossification of the distal phalanx"  :-P Incidentally, you may want to look at this article (Even I can barely read the abstract, such is the scientific-ese in which it is written, but nonetheless...) Equine Vet J. 2004 Mar;36(2):143-8. "Clinical significance of ossification of the cartilages of the front feet based on nuclear bone scintigraphy, radiography and lameness examinations in 21 Finnhorses." Ruohoniemi M, Mäkelä O, Eskonen T. Montanabw(talk) 03:19, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so throw a scientific journal at me and wave a possible hereditary condition in my face and it's all it takes! (my bad) expanded upon and clarified the ossification thing with peer-reviewed journal sources. It's my thing (the horse illustrating cerebellar abiotrophy is one of mine). Tried to keep it short and use sources saying that it appears to be heritable, but also found a source that one could read to hint that a low-heel/long toe structure (a shoeing style desired in harness racing?) might also be linked. Montanabw(talk) 04:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Intro said split in 1924 and 1971, but 1955 not mentioned?? earlier edit also mentioned 1965. Typo?" -- 1955 indeed is a typo. Goes like this[2]:

  • 1907-1923 no sections
  • 1924-1954 main section (draught) and universal section (any non-draughts, namely trotters + some riding horses)
  • 1965-1970 main section (draught) and trotter section (universal renamed)
  • 1971- four sections for trotter, draught, riding and pony. Pitke (talk) 14:21, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"To qualify for the Finnhorse stud book<!-- clarify that this means their offspring can also be registered?-->, " -- Does this mean "registered as a Finnhorse" or "registered in the studbook"? Pitke (talk) 14:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So what happened between 1954-1965??? Or is either 1954 or 1965 a typo?? Montanabw(talk) 23:21, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Many Finnhorses have multiple uses, such as starting their career in harness racing and later moving on to riding.<!-- here's where you can put that talk page source--> -- 1) the "source" was a single individual example of a double registered Finnhorse, not a real source. 2) asking me to find a source for this goes to the same pile as "Finnhorses are fast". The claim above is as natural for a Finn as air being breathable. Argh! Pitke (talk) 15:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK. All I know is that I have run into some real pain in the butt reviewers. There are people out there who will in fact request a source for air being breathable, actually! ;-P Montanabw(talk) 23:21, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Blast from MontanaBW[edit]

OK, been away long enough to have less-foggy eyes. I did a run-through of the whole thing with my usual gentle search-and-destroy approach.  ;-) I did a bit of wordsmithing, word-chopping, and wreaked general mayhem, but in particular, I spotted some stuff that was redundant or confusing. I moved around a little bit of it (notably moving the short summaries of the studbook evaluation for each section into breed characteristics, thus making them clearer plus killing some redundancies), fixed some inconsistencies, clarified some concepts, but some areas I just flagged with hidden text that you can toss when read. I'd move any hidden text discussion over here if discussion is needed. I also got a better sense of what can easily be chopped wholesale for a military article versus what's going to have to be more surgically excised, and noted the easy stuff. Overall, I think that chopping some of the general military stuff and maybe a bit of polish on the history section once that's done (making it possibly a bit more chronological and less topical, it skips around a bit, which results in some redundancy) and you'll be just about there. You have a few "notes to self" on citation that may need to be cleaned out, and there are two "citation needed" tags in the same paragraph, over a year old now, best to sort that out. Overall, getting there, definitely getting there! Montanabw(talk) 06:53, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This article grows obsolete as we copyedit it![edit]

Found this just a minute ago: [3]. Quoth pages 46-47, "Leena Jaakkola from Oulu brought two bronze medals [team and personal] home from the Scandinavian disabled [dressage] championships (...). As she did it, she also created history: this was the first time a Finnhorse achieved a medal or even placed in an international event. It's no wonder that the spectators and other competitors wouldn't recognise the breed that's barely ever seen competing outside [Finland's] borders. Most people guessed that the light-built, 12-year-old Valssandra was a Haflinger." The rider has MS and due to her back pain she cannot ride warmbloods. Thus the use of her "B" horse. "Every now and then I feel like driving a moped to a motorbike event. Judges criticise the unflashy, low movements (...) but that's precisely the reason I am able to ride her. I just need to gather the points for other virtues (...)" Pitke (talk) 15:34, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice! Definitely good to add something to the riding horse section that they have been successful at the international level. Note, though, that Google web caches are very unstable and the link will not be acceptable for FAC (and will also probably go dead before you can even get a review at GAN). Dana boomer (talk) 15:41, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed the link. Pitke (talk) 15:43, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Another catch, though probably not article material unless someone gets clever [4] page 35: "A few years ago [Ypäjä equestrian academy] had a visiting teacher for riding, eventing world championship medalist Anne-Marie Taylor from England. She frankly said that 90 % of English hobby level riders would be better off with a Finnhorse than a Thoroughbred. (...) her argument was that most riders of that level are not skilled enough to ride a TB. When they still attempt it, the situation hurts both the rider and the image of the sport." Pitke (talk) 16:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I also like the first bit about the paraequestrian competition, and I think you can sneak it into uses somewhere, but think discretion is advised on the second. Implied criticism of other breeds best avoided. If she's just said Finnhorses were the sweetest little horses in the world, you could have used it! LOL! Montanabw(talk) 23:24, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The breed name can be filed off, but aren't TBs generally cnnsidered horses for the advanced rider? Being the reason why she feels these riders pump their ego with them? "(...) better off with Finnhorses, which she feels would be a safer opton for the riders than insisting to use fashionable hotblood breeds." ? Pitke (talk) 06:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh! Don't EVER say that to breeders of the hotblood breeds! LOL! The very concept that such horses are too "hot" for beginners is anathema! -- and bad for business (full disclosure: I teach riding lessons on Arabians.) That said, hotbloods don't tolerate ineptitude or abuse, which is a point. (Hotblood horses sort of are like Border Collie dogs -- very smart, don't do well around people who don't take the time to understand them) So Taylor is right that most hobbyists who don't really bother to learn proper technique would be better off on a horse that is more laid back -- I do pity ANY horse who has to put up with an ignorant idiot! Clearly the cooler-dispositioned animals will put up with more nonsense from the unsupervised rider. However, hotbloods can be used to instruct beginners if properly trained, so can't really make a blanket statement. Montanabw(talk) 21:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The other thing that personally drives me crazy is the obsession with big horses. This is one reason I've so enjoyed working on the Finnhorse article (and I also worked some on the Halfinger article). I truly enjoy smaller horses! I have seen too many people get the trendy big warmblood that's 17 hands and not only is the little middle-aged beginner rider unable to mount without assistance, those huge gaits are tough to ride and even if they have a good disposition, the horses are just plain intimidating. TBs have the same problem-- people think they need to buy some huge thing that scares them. Why on god's green earth anyone thinks they "need" a riding horse over about 15.2 is beyond me. I guess we just have to blame Henry VIII. Montanabw(talk) 21:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder -- registered versus registered in stud book[edit]

Just a reminder to contributors: Finnish horse system works differently. I'll cover it with more detail here, because I can, and as a reminder for myself as well. For starters, we have Hippos (the breed registry), then we have Hippos (the stud book registry), and yeah, a bunch of breed associations (which basically just promote their breeds).

The registry is a national all-animals horse registry with practically no requitements, maintained by Suomen Hippos, the national, official central association of all things horsey in Finland. Every single equine creature, whether imported or bred here, must be registered. This is enforced by the EU.

Requirements:

  • Certain things are not allowed in a horse's name. Basic stuff.
  • If the horse is to compete, its sire must have been accepted for breeding (= be in a studbook), and the horse must be registered before the April of its yearling year.
  • "Home breeding exception": exceptions for the sire rule are foals by and out of individuals that have been in the legal possession of a single legal person from the date of the service to the date of the foaling.

Being registered as being of a certain breed simply means there is proof the horse is that breed -- normally the parents being of the breed is qualification enough, and exceptions include mainly warmblood breeds, which can be tricky to sort out. The parents do not need to be registered in the breed's studbook however, just being registered is enough.

The studbook is where things get specific. Studbook registration is a permit to be used in breeding, controlled by Suomen Hippos or the breed association in cooperation with Suomen Hippos. Generally, to be accepted, a stallion must have both parents in the studbook, but for a mare just the sire is enough.

-- Pitke (talk) 17:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thus: "registered" = "not a secret hidden bush pony the EU knows nothing about". Pitke (talk) 17:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You definitely need to explain this, because in the USA a breed registry and the stud book are all the same thing and usually are also the breed promotion association. And in the USA we have tons and tons of unregistered animals because god forbid the guvmint tell us rednecks what to do with our inbred backyard canners! We're a free country, ya know, and only dem terrorists types would move a sick animal somewhere that would make other animals sick!  ;-) . (Read the NAIS article for enlightenment on American thinking...). However, I'll let you do the explaining bit. But it's gotta happen. Montanabw(talk) 18:29, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
[[Suomen Hippos#Horse registry and stud books|registered]] :P Pitke (talk) 19:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Only in Finnish at the moment! Montanabw(talk) 21:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Requests from Finetooth[edit]

User Finetooth has been of great help and made a list of MOS breaches within this article. I've Ctrl+H-ed most of them into oblivion, though with some points I need your help, fellow editors.

  • Issue 1: layout. The Uses section has the tiny Combined driving section. Combine into "Other" [uses] section together with the passage about therapeutic riding? Also, I'm editing on a mini lappy or even better, a cell phone, so I need the help of fellow editors with more normal screens to adjust the images so that they don't make the layout ugly. As per the recent changes in the article's overall structure, some images might need to go or be moved. Pitke (talk) 19:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Issue 2: bulleted list in Breeding sections. Finetooth suggests it would work as prose, whereas I feel it's best to keep it as is. More opinions please? Pitke (talk) 19:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll play with the uses section. I'm actually OK with the bulleted section for the four breed sections too. It isn't a huge deal and I think makes it all more understandable. Dana, can you fiddle with the images and check formatting? You've run the GA gauntlet more than I have for that stuff... ? Pretty please?? Montanabw(talk) 19:50, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've played with images a bit. I think the number is still fine - they're not crowding each other. The main thing to remember is that the image coding is supposed to go within the section that the images are located in when you're viewing the actual article. So, the coding should be just after the header, not just before it. And, images are supposed to look into the text whenever possible. I think I caught all of the instances of these two things, but it's just something to keep in mind. I think that once the three new articles are actually in the mainspace (so that it doesn't look like the information was just tossed and so that reviewers have something to click on if they want to), this could probably go up for GA. I still want to go through the history section, but can do that while it's on the list, since getting a review usually takes a while. And if you get a review before I get through my nitpicking, it won't be a big deal - Finetooth is right that it's ready for GA, and most of my stuff is just FAC-type picking. Dana boomer (talk) 00:36, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So what's keeping from being a FAC, other than the fact that it's been recently through some not-that-small changes? I wanna know o.o Pitke (talk) 14:57, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Because FAC is quite a bit more difficult than GAN - multiple people looking at every nook and cranny of the article, deliberately trying to find mistakes - image copyright, reference formatting, commas in the right places, comprehensiveness versus the "broadness" criteria for GAN. I wouldn't recommend a straight jump to FAC for a beginner (actually, I wouldn't even recommend it for myself, and I've taken more than half a dozen articles through FAC) :) GAN is a good place to get another "outside" (non-horsey) review, and it will give us a bit more time to comb through the article to find the mistakes ourselves. Before you go to FAC, we should also have a copyright expert look over all of the images and a copyeditor dig into the article for work on prose. Believe me - GAN is MUCH easier, and is good for getting any remaining kinks out of the article before going to FAC. Dana boomer (talk) 16:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. My line of thought is that if it's a review, then it should be nitpickiest one so that I don't have to fix it twice, once for GAN and once for FAC. As a Finn, I'm not worried about such jumps, but I'll take your word for this. Pitke (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Dana. Let's get the GA tag. Sometimes that's tough enough. Should you doubt the challenges of getting a long, complex article to FA, just check out Appaloosa and the related discussion on Dana's talk page! It's already a GA for a couple years, and now we have been tweaking on for over a month and still have one more problem (mine to fix!) before we want to even submit it to FA. Even then, with the careful guidance of both Dana and Ealdgyth, who are the GA and FA pros of WPEQ, I'm dreading the gauntlet. If Finnhorse goes through GA with relatively few problems, trust me that on an article of this length and complexity, that's a real feather in your cap! Montanabw(talk) 23:40, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ref formatting[edit]

Apparently Montanabw thinks I'm making a mess of the refs ("Please STOP changing these refs, take the issue to talk. This is screwing things up!."). Looking at this diff, it seems to me that consistency is improved. I don't understand why these edits should be reverted.  —Chris Capoccia TC 01:33, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For the most part I think the latest changes you made to the references are good. However, I think what Montana might be seeing is that in some of your changes you moved information (notes) from within ref tags to outside of ref tags. Although these should probably be in a separate notes section, rather than mixed in with the references, they also are ancillary information that doesn't need to be in the body of the article. Also, you changed a few refs to the harvnb format - something that you did more of earlier, and I reverted. This format is one that not all editors like (I know I personally don't use it), and so is a change that needs to be discussed first. The consistent formatting to using all templated citations is something that needed to be done, so it might be that if you re-do your changes without moving any information outside of ref tags, Montana would be happier with it! Also, I'm not understanding the fact tags - AFAIK the information is covered by the next ref in the paragraph, and it doesn't really seem to be any controversial information, although this just might be my opinion as a "horsey" editor. Dana boomer (talk) 02:16, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The other issue is that there is some VERY complex referencing going on here due to the fact that nearly all sources for this article are in Finnish and there are NO English equivalents. Thus, there are translations of certain segments and the original Finnish text included to explain. It's kind of a unique situation. Further, the lead editor on this article, Pitke, should be the person to fix the refs, because that's who put them in originally. Pitke sort of works here in intense bursts followed by long absences, but will be back eventually (or maybe a note can be left at commons, Pitke hangs out there more than here). So my suggestion is that instead of just going in and making wholesale changes, I think it makes a LOT more sense to just explain WHAT you think should be done and WHY. Then we can figure out if we can make the simpler changes without Pitke's input (like templating citations so they all are the same format, maybe, if we're careful) and save the heavy lifting for when the person with the most expertise on the content and the reasons for the sourcing style returns. Montanabw(talk) 03:34, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like Wikipedia:Ownership of articles to me. It sounds like Montanabw isn't pointing to anything concretely wrong with my edits; only that they didn't get reviewed by Pitke.  —Chris Capoccia TC 14:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

However, it is common practice to not change the ref formatting without consulting the main editors of the article (and I'm pretty sure that's written into one of the sourcing guidelines, but don't feel like looking for it right now). You changed the ref formatting with your addition of the harvnb refs. You also removed several urls or parts of urls and added some confusing fact tags. However, Chris, I agree with you that if some of the refs are going to use templates, they all should, and anyone can do this, not just Pitke, and so if you want to, you should go ahead and do it. Just please, don't move information out of refs and into the body of the article (or if anything, move them into separate notes templates), don't use harvnb formatting without first getting consensus on the talk page, and don't remove information altogether. Dana boomer (talk) 14:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if I'm snappish about this, but it's not ownership to ask that you don't make other editors do hours of painstaking work comparing diffs to see what you've messed up and what you haven't. I'm really quite tired of people who make half-done edits screaming WP:OWN whenever they get called on a poor quality edit, against consensus, on an article where they've never done any work before. So bless you Chris, what IS your point? Do you want this article to be all harvb refs? Then you need consensus, which I doubt you are going to get where we have 119 refs. Do you want us to use citation templates for all refs? Well, getting there, the trick is finding the right template to allow the notes and Finnish translations to appear properly. We have some unusual needs for this article due to the dearth of research material in English and at present, only one editor fluent in Finnish to make sure nothing got messed up. When and if this article goes to GA, we will need this cleanup to be done, but in the meantime, is there a crisis of some sort that we need to be aware of? Montanabw(talk) 23:28, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you mean about "painstaking work comparing diffs". I linked the diff in question at the beginning of this section. You'll notice there aren't any harvnb changes. Dana boomer reverted those changes, and I didn't try adding them back. First thing changed is ref "national horse". The unneeded parts of the URL like session id are stripped, the publisher is added and I slightly adjusted the quote formatting. Next is ref "Ertola&Houttu2003". I switched from cite journal to cite book, adjusted author formatting, added editor names, removed a broken link, added page numbers and added ISBN. It doesn't seem so hard to review, and I'm having a hard time seeing how this is so damaging to your precious article. Unreferenced comments (synthesis?) like "This claim is also unverified by modern studies, though the modern Konik horse has such an appearance." appear as footnotes that would lead the casual reader perusing the article body to think it was actually a footnote supporting the statements about Rislakki instead of some contradicting comment. I don't see how moving that one sentence to the main part of the text and adding a fact tag is damaging to the article. It seems to be an improvement. There were a few refs I combined by reusing the ref name and a few upper case citation template parameters made lower case. Is this really a "half-done edit"? It's not so hard in the history to select my first and last edits and get a diff for all of them.  —Chris Capoccia TC 02:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I'm concerned, Chris' changes are valid. I'll check the diffs later (again working on my celly Werther, trying to get a pre-paid wireless for my lappy today/tomorrow) but switching ref templates is no biggie as long as no content is lost. I'm also completely fine with moving the Tarpan thing to the body of the article. The information in question is relevant and without a source to coverit would probably been picked at during GAN or at least FAC process. The most recent major changes in this article's history HAS been a huge pruning effort to make its size somehow bearable. We're much aware it's still a whale, but IMO the Tarpan change is actually very good and wholly worth its weight. Unless we create a refgroup for non-citation notes, the note after "Rislakki said it descended from Tarpans" would look like " here's where he said so" instead of "actually this claim was hoo hah". No reader can be expected which of the 100+ footnotes are clarifications and which support statements if we don't use properly named refgroups for comments. As a friendly suggestion to you Chris: using the edit summary to explain your actions even if it felt redundant at times will probably help to appease us paranoid ole sillies. I imagine we're still a bit shell-shocked from all those months when I was pouring in huge amounts of stuff and Monty had to check everything I did for my English (and stop to say Now Really?!? at all them weirdo specialties in Finnish horsey culture), and I had to check everything they did to make sure the facts weren't damaged. Pitke (talk) 05:10, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ugh, forgot. Cutting dead links and redundant link coding is standard procedure, although I'd like to revive them as far as possible. All links were viable just a few months ago when I ran the GAN automated link checker. Pitke (talk) 05:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pitke, it's not a crisis to have a few iffy links, they can be tagged for cleanup and stay for a bit until they are. I don't see a huge crisis that muct be resolved in the next 24 hours or anything. Chris, my basic point is simple; the first time through, you really screwed up a bunch of things, and as a "drive by" editor who had not previously contributed here, that made you no friends. That made your second round very suspect and when I noted a few things were messed up, (and there was at least one harvb in that edit, too) I reverted it all because there was no way I was about to spend an hour of my time to go through this point by point to check what had to be fixed and what didn't, but I feared leaving it would potentially leave Pitke a big mess to fix. If you two want to collaborate for cleanup, that's groovy, but this has to be done as a team. It's not "ownership" to suggest that common courtesy is to work with the lead editor, who has clearly evidenced a willingness to collaborate. Pitke puts up with me all the time, after all! But Pitke has also earned my respect for doing outstanding research, and I want to be sure than any changes don't mess up what's here already. Montanabw(talk) 19:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

not real sure if we're talking about the same thing. There were already some citations with |ref=harv. Adding a few more isn't ruining anything and it isn't the same as replacing a citation with harvnb. Besides, I don't even see how that can be considered screwing things up. There are a bunch of refs basically formatted like harvnb except for without the automatic link to the reference. I don't see how a link is so bad. but harvnb is a discussion for another section because there were no harvnb insertions in the diff we're all talking about. And this is very much within WP:OWN. Did you read the examples? Not having time to review is specifically listed as an invalid reason for reverting.  —Chris Capoccia TC 02:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ref comments[edit]

I've been going through and tweaking refs to hopefully make everybody happy. I've come across a few issues that I think Pitke might be the only one who can fix:

  • Ertola book (ref name Ertola&Houttu2003). The page= field is giving the number of pages in the book. Instead, this should give the page from which the information was drawn.
  • I'm pretty sure this is one of the refs that wasn't added by me. It's in English and I don't remember reading it. Pitke (talk) 19:51, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can't say it rings a bell with me, but I'll check as I am the most likely culprit. However, if I added it, it would be in Google Books because I don't own it... Montanabw(talk) 20:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lindstrom ref (ref name Lindström2009). What is this? It's formatted as cite web, but appears to be a journal article and doesn't include a url.
  • Should go through and in general make sure that websites are formatted as cite web, journals are cited as cite journal and books are cited as cite book.
  • Should go through and in general make sure that quoted material is formatted in the same way. Some have the Finnish portion in in a hidden comment within the ref, while others have it showing.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dana boomer (talkcontribs) 13:13, March 30, 2011

Ertola&Houttu2003 should be (from my earlier changes Montanabw so kindly reverted)

{{cite book |last1=Ertola |first1=Kristiina |first2=Jukka |last2=Houttu |chapter=The Finnish Horse and Other Scandinavian Cold-Blooded Trotters |editor1-first=Mike W. |editor1-last=Ross |editor2-first=Sue J. |editor2-last=Dyson |title=Diagnosis and Management of Lameness in the Horse |pages=946–50 |year=2003 |doi=10.1016/B978-0-7216-8342-3.50121-2 |isbn=978-0-7216-8342-3}}

Lindström2009 needs some work. Tunne Hevonen is a Finnish horse magazine. This citation appears to be missing an author name, article title and volume number.  —Chris Capoccia TC 20:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC, the article itself was missing author information. The magazine started in 2009, so it'd be the 1st volume right? Pitke (talk) 20:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
could be vol 1 or it could be a magazine that uses years instead of volume numbers or some other system.  —Chris Capoccia TC 18:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Many periodicals do not have volume numbers, many popular magazines just index by month and year. If all it says is (for example) "January 2011" or something, don't make it up. And Chris, it isn't WP:OWN to revert repeated attempts by a "drive-by" editor who screwed up bad the first time and failed to discuss the next time. You screwed up once, you were reverted and when you showed up again, made what looked like similar changes, having shown no respect for WP:BRD, your reputation with me personally was toast, though not irrevocably so. You will redeem yourself in my eyes by what you are doing now, which is to work collaboratively with the lead editor of the article Montanabw(talk) 22:03, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Checked. The magazine only gives month and year. No volume numbers there. Pitke (talk) 16:49, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What does this mean?[edit]

"The official Finnish coldblood record as of 2010 is 1:19,9aly, "

I can't c/e this bit without understanding what it meant! 85.210.52.109 (talk) 09:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Pitke/Suokkilyhenteet should give you some idea in case the part you don't get is the time. The rest of the sentence refers to the official (=recognised by the national (Hippos) bylaws), Finnish, trotter, speed record, for coldblood horses, as of 2010. Pitke (talk) 14:56, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've kind of been gently bothered by this too. Pitke has explained it to me and I still didn't get it. The sandboxed article helps, may want to take it live and add a wiklink to it. We may have to say "1:19.9" over x distance by an auto start..." But I'm in no rush to fuss with it. Montanabw(talk) 16:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's the "aly" bit I just don't understand - what does "aly" stand for? Could there be a brief explanation next to the first use of it? Pesky (talk) 08:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Car start?? Pitke?? help! Montanabw(talk) 17:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As per my userpage non-article, a = car start (=with mobile starting gate); ly = lyhyt, i.e. "short", i.e. short distance heat. Pitke (talk) 19:34, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe just put a short explanation into the article, and get your "non-article" live! ;-) The Finnish abbreviations are clearly creating a mental block for us hardcore English speakers Montanabw(talk) 20:39, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not before it has a proper name. Abbreivations one might happen upon while reading Wikipedia article on Finnhorse isn't too catchy. Pitke (talk) 21:30, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Or a proper scope, for that matter. It's a laundry list or trivia as is. Pitke (talk) 21:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we definitely need at least a short explanation in this article for all of us n00bs, and maybe you could pop a summary into the Harness racing in Finland article? Montanabw(talk) 23:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Finnhorse/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Dcoetzee 00:06, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly think this article is closer to Featured Article quality than Good Article. It's extensive and detailed, well-written, well-illustrated. I can find little to criticise.

  1. Well-written: Well written overall. Minor problems:
    • The second paragraph disputing whether the Finnhorse is a true "draught horse" is unsourced, not discussed later in the article, and too detailed for the lede.
      • Will consider moving it to another section. Will dig userspace for previous research on how sources view the breed. Pitke (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I think that was sort of my obsession in an earlier version. I just tossed that bit. See if my changes are OK for all. --MTBW
    • "The ideal Finnhorse is easy-to-handle and versatile, and combines strength, agility, speed and endurance." These seem like traits that are desirable for pretty much all horses, so doesn't seem to add much. I don't see any clear description of what Finnhorses are not suited for. This information would help balanced the article.
      • Lol, did you read the article at all? The horse is suited for anything (except maybe for tapdance) if you ask Finns :D They actually pride this breed as an all-round-anything-goes animal. Information about where this horse fails to be The Ultimate Equine is found in:
        • Riding horse section: right in the second sentence.
          • Riding: goes into further detail. First paragraph tells us the breed is too slow to be a threat in racing and eventing, second paragraph that its stride is too short and scope inferior for it to compete in international level in show jumping, and the next paragraph that its movements lack the shine needed for high level dressage.
      • I will make a few nudges here and there for my fellow editors, we'll find out a way to balance this. Pitke (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • My thoughts on this: The fact that it is promoted as versatile IS kind of special, in the rest of the horse world, specialization is sort of the "in" thing these days. I think that the focus that all-around versatility means "jack of all trades, master of none," doesn't have to be beat to death, really -- I'm pretty comfortable that Pitke has actually avoided the "faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" problem that some other breed articles have had. (That said, someone PLEASE help me the next time a drive-by editor wants to claim that draft horses should barrel race or Tennessee Walkers should jump! And if one more 10-year-old girl adds "they have a long BEEYOOTIFUL flowing mane and tail" to ANY horse breed article, stop me from committing homicide -- Please!) Montanabw(talk) 21:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • A reference for the "1:19,9aly" harness racing time notation would be helpful.
    • History
      • "inferior even to the cargo horses used by the Swedish Royal Army" - inferior in what sense, height/strength? Consider rewording or attributing to a clear source.
    • The only source available for this claim does not elaborate. It's implied the Swedish cargo yaks looked larger and stronger, possibly more handsome than the scraggly Finnish ponies. Pitke (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • "criticised for giving a "Norwegian" impression" - what does it mean to give a Norwegian impression? To resemble Norwegian breeds of the time? Which breeds and what resemblance did they have? (I understand if this information isn't available.)
    • Again, source leaves us with this. I dare say it does mean resembling contemporary Norwegian breeds, and as an informed guess I'd say it means Döle Gudbrandsdal pro Norwegian fjord horse, but the source really doesn't say anything more, and apart from a "[breed]" or something, it would venture into the realm of WP:OR. Pitke (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • And I'll see if a minor rephrase can avoid going too far astray. Montanabw(talk) 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • "The crossbred offspring were praised for their looks, but turned out to have poor temperaments and no talent for speed" - this seems a bit like a statement of an opinion and would be nice to attribute to a clear source (or to restate more objectively). There's no citation right after this sentence, is this sourced to Saastamoinen?
    • Poor temperament and lack of speed talent actually are not that vulnerable to opinionitis. What constitutes poor temperament for a horse (poor enough to discontinue a breeding program) is not that differently seen, and lack of speed could be measured. In any case, the sources are not scientific text and do not state who thought or said this - we can safely assume a notable number of people did, because the program was dropped. Generally, any sentence without its own cite tags is covered by the following tags. This one is sourced to Saastamoinen, I'll c/p the tag for you. Pitke (talk) 21:21, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ah, it doesn't say the program was discontinued before they even produced generation 2! That explains things. Must fix. Pitke (talk) 21:23, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with Pitke. These are things that aren't opinion, though sometimes "poor temperament" can actually mean "wrong temperament for job X." But either way, if it's what the source said, I'm OK with it as is. Montanabw(talk) 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • "According to the stud farm inspector of the Russian Empire, general Mayendorff," - I'm not getting the "general Mayendorff" part, what does the word "general" here indicate? I assume Mayendorff is the guy's name. The four types he lists seem opaque and offer little insight into their characteristics or origin.
    • General as in a military general I suppose. His four types IMO are interesting if you know the breed's history: he recognises Karelian type, between lines the pure type; the Orlov type ( mixed with Orlov trotters]]; and the Haapaniemi and Fürstenberg types, known strains of mixed ancestry horses, important influence in the breed, and one of the first private efforts to systematically enhance the Finnish horse. That Mayendorff mentions them as breed subtypes serves to set some scope to how important these two last actually were. I'm concerned that if we leave this bit out, the crossbreeding Pitke (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • If Pitke wants to take a whack at clarification, I can wordsmith later? Montanabw(talk) 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • ""Fürstenbergian" horses" - this term could use explanation (horses from Fürstenberg?)
    • Nope, horses bred by a Fürstenberg. The term gets explained just above the general Mayendorff bit. It basically means horses descended from a single breeder's "backyard project" as we might call it today. Pitke (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • If Pitke's current editing doesn't clarify, I'll tweak further. Montanabw(talk) 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm confused that some parts of the article refer to Suomen Hippos as the breeding association ("Finland's first horse breeding association Hevoskasvatusyhdistys Hippos (now Suomen Hippos)") and others as the studbook itself ("Suomen Hippos, the Finnish studbook [...]"). Also for some reason the last use of their name is red-linked, rather than the first. Creating this article would be a great path for expansion in this area moving forward.
    • It's on the to do list pretty high. Certainly need to launch it before FAC can be discussed. I'll see to the confusing usage of the name of the association. Pitke (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • And to that end Dcoetzee, I think Pitke once tried to explain to me that they ARE one and the same. And I think the redlink problem was my error. Is it a problem for GA to have a redlink in the lead, though?? Montanabw(talk) 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Suomen Hippos is the Finnish national horse breeding and horse sport association. It maintains and controls the Finnhorse studbook. Cut the link in lead as too specific. Pitke (talk) 21:45, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • There are two sections on population decline, one in the 18th century and one later post World War II. The section headers should more clearly distinguish these.
      • The sections on "Military use" and "World War II" appear to have some overlap. The History section seems to oscillate between being topically and chronologically organised.
    • Any suggestions how we should handle this? Military use certainly cannot avoid mentioning the WWII use, and the WWII section is kind of notable for more than just the military use stuff... Pitke (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Ditto. This fried my brain too! I agree with Pitke that some of the oscilation is needed, yet I can see how it also might confuse some readers. Montanabw(talk) 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • "a change in forestry tax policy" - details on this policy change from official government sources would be helpful
    • Remaining sections: Mostly fine. Optionally, I was thinking it would be interesting to have a table/chart/list giving weight-relative pulling capacity of various breeds (typical and max). This could be used in several articles, and possibly be an article on its own.
    • That would be a great idea if we only had data for it! I'm afraid most other heavy breeds aren't tested like the Finnhorse is, and if there are studies featuring draft breeds they will feature Central European ones, not Scandinavian ones, and will have different premises and settings. Pitke (talk) 21:36, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • If we could find a source, that does sound like a cool idea. Problem is that I don't think anyone has done an official "battle of the breeds," Hmmm. Interesting idea... Montanabw(talk) 21:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Factually accurate and verifiable: Lots of sources. I don't have access to some of them, and many are in Finnish (which I can only machine translate), but I am in the process of checking out whether they seem like reliable sources and comparing to the article, to the extent I can.
    • You probably already know this, but automatic translation fails this hard with Finnish-English. I'll ask a fellow horsey Finnish editor to pop by if she's on Wikipedia and can bother. She might not be able to review all the facts from all the sources, but she should be able to review the reliability of at least some of the non-online ones and give some insight to the online ones. Pitke (talk) 05:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Broad in its coverage: Covers most important topic areas in considerable depth. Some topic areas covered in other breed articles and not in this one follow; they may or may not be relevant but should be evaluated.
    • AFAIK not applicable. The Liinaharja book, which is most broad in its coverage as for stuff like this, mostly talks about how much less leg and feet problems Finnhorses have compared to other Northern breeds :P There are no genetic diseases. Don't ask me to source this, please :D I know some 1930 breeders badmouthed the Murto line for having too small/weak hooves (there was a lot of bad blood going around about the purity of Murto's pedigree, and his son Eri-Aaroni was actually claimed to be a halfbreed warmblood from Sweden) but that's kind of irrelevant. Right? Monty? Pitke (talk) 21:43, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm curious too ... these issues are always a hot potato! We add them to the breed articles where sources can be found. However, some breeds actually ARE very healthy, and other breeds hush up these problems. For example, there are major rumors that a particular South American breed has a major genetic disorder, but it's so hushed up that I can find no published sources. What I can say is that the absence of such a section doesn't mean that it fails to meet the horse breeds task force guidelines, on the thoroughly researched articles, it probably just means either no problems or no sources. Montanabw(talk) 21:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    And yes, internal breed gossip and bad-mouthing is not at all the same thing as breed-specific health issues or genetic disorders. My "baby" is sort of the Arabian horse article, and I scrupulously avoid mentioning that AFAIK, the "straight Egyptian" stuff is largely inbred weedy things with crooked legs and bad dispositions. (Oh! I didn't just say that! Meow...!) Montanabw(talk) 21:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC) Follow up: One thing in the Quarter Horse, Appaloosa, & Arabian articles is that their genetic disorders can be tested via DNA samples. We also have genetic issues mentioned in other articles where they are not yet testable, but there needs to be pretty good documentation. Not all purebreds have known genetic disorders. Because the Finnhorse has only had a closed studbook for such a short time and had such a broad genetic foundation, I suspect that they are probably at least another 50 years or more from seeing deleterious mutations pop up, and even then will avoid it if they don't overdo the linebreeding, unless they run into something like HYPP which seems to have appeared as a spontaneous mutation in a single (very successful) horse. Quarter horses are an interesting study because though there are millions of them, a registry less than 100 years old and a broad genetic foundation, thanks to lax American attitudes toward horse breeding, they also linebred (aka inbreeding a lot of first cousins!) up the wazoo, thus leading to their HERDA problem (25% of all reining and cutting horses carry it!). Suomen Hippos and the studbook selection process for Finnhorses might, hopefully, minimize this sort of nonsense. Oops, didn't know I was into this stuff, did you? (grin) Montanabw(talk) 19:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I suppose we don't need a section to tell that any film and village play about pre-70s Finland will include Finnhorses if horses are to be seen... I think I could however think about mentioning some honours the breed has been given for its role as a war horse etc. There's a book that deals with horses in art, I should find it because it had a snazzy section about Finnhorses in art. In Finnish of course but you already know the deal. Pitke (talk) 05:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's fun to add a little, but not required. Actually, WPEQ is kind of neutral on those sections, breeds like to note when they've hit the non-horse world, (William Shatner being into Saddlebreds is entertaining for all concerned) but in articles like Lipizzan, it got totally out of hand and devolved into an unbelievably stupid trivia list. If there is something significant, no problem, but definitely not a required section. Montanabw(talk) 19:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Nope, sorry. I suppose there's nothing to be told apart from average knee and shin circumference. Arabian is quite a special case, being super old (with recorded breeding history!) and a major influence in a multitude of breeds, and most importantly, a subject to weird stuff like missing vertebrae. Pitke (talk) 05:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed, and I wrote or rewrote about 70% of the Arabian horse article; their skeletal stuff is unique -- and not even found in all Arabians! Montanabw(talk) 19:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Are there feral Finnhorses at all? If so where do they live, how do they differ from domestic ones, how do they affect their environment, etc?
    • Influential stallions/lines (possibly, if applicable)
    • Ding! Have to do. And here we thought we had this article slimmed down XD Pitke (talk) 05:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • If done, I'd keep it short; Appaloosa is maybe as long as it should be. Thoroughbred handles it well, but they also have the most meticulous documentation of any breed. It got really out of hand in some articles, where a list of a dozen sort-of famous horses would devolve into an edit fight. Montanabw(talk) 19:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Neutral: I saw no issues with bias or use of biased terms. Good tone.
  5. Stable: Stability is fine, low edit rate, no edit wars.
  6. Images: Images are plentiful, relevant to the sections they're used in, and well-captioned. Many images were missing a tag explaining why they were public domain in the United States. I added {{PD-1923}} or {{PD-1996}} to all of them. One incorrectly had {{PD-Finland}} instead of {{PD-Finland50}} which I also fixed. I was suspicious of one uploader, commons:User:Лена as a possible copyvio contributor, but further investigation shows this is unlikely. No non-free content.
Btw, added one new to crossbreeding section. It always looked like a place to have an image at, an I think I found a great on-topic one. Pitke (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cool, looks good. I fixed up copyright tags on that one. Dcoetzee 22:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take a peek at some of this also. I am not the lead editor here, Pitke is, but I've weighted in a lot on this article as it came together and will comment that it is top-notch for comprehensibility. And to heck with a pony, Daddy, I want a Finnhorse! (LOL) If you want to compare this to other GA or FA horse breed articles, click on the Horses portal at the talk page (or at the link here), and once you are in the portal, the featured breeds list section is made up entirely of articles that have previously achieved GA or FA status. (You can click on the "Archive/Nominations" link to bring up the whole list) At present, we have several FAs (Thoroughbred, Icelandic horse, Suffolk Punch and Haflinger jump out at me) but quite a few GAs. The Icelandic horse or Haflinger horse breeds are kind of similar to the Finnhorse (though NOTHING actually compares to a Finnhorse, of course!) in that they are stocky, cold-adapted European breeds of horse. A comparable article about a breed that is pretty exclusive to a single nation is probably Cleveland Bay, which is an FA. Oh, and Andalusian horse is one where the aficionados are strongly nationalistic. We are in the process of tuning up Appaloosa to go from GA to FA, if you want to look at an article on a breed with a funky and interesting history plus some uniquely weird traits (in that case, a spotted coat that leads to a genetics section we are desperately trying to make readable for ordinary mortals) Montanabw(talk) 15:55, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, sorry for the delay on this, it's a big article and I've been a little busy. Taking a look at the rest now. Dcoetzee 19:54, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've made a few small tweaks. Everything else is either stuff only Pitke can do, or my brain is too fried to see what I can do that won't make things worse instead of better! Montanabw(talk) 19:50, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You asked whether "cargo animal" refers to draught or pack horses. The source does not tell. It uses words that make it clear the horses were somehow used to move some cargo, but doesn't give anything more. You would expect them to be draughts however... But claiming this isn't ref supported :PPitke (talk) 20:24, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thus my decision to wikilink to "working animal" is as good as we can get, I guess. Montanabw(talk) 23:43, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, I went ahead and approved this - I feel like all the issues I looked at were adequately addressed above. I appreciate your patience. :-) Dcoetzee 05:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dcoetzee, you're a darling :o) My only input was a little dinky bit of c/e/ work, but you're a darling anyway, lol! Pesky (talk) 11:56, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks D!!! You're the best, and compared to a lot I've endured this was a thorough yet surprisingly non-traumatic review! Montanabw(talk) 18:41, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Refs[edit]

To help with keeping the ref note thing manageable and consistent, I've moved the definitions of the ref notes into the Ref section. For future reference, all refs should be given a name and defined there at the correct alphabetical slot. All refs should use the relevant citation template. Pitke (talk) 20:39, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That works. Someone did that for me on the Sheila Varian article. I have found it a little complicated to edit later, as you have to go find the link in the bottom and then scroll around to find the right spot for the ref etc., but that's probably because I do most of my editing on a laptop with a little screen and I hate scrolling. But it does have an elegance to it of putting everything in one spot. Montanabw(talk) 21:28, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I do all of my editing these days on a tiny laptop. I forgot to advertise, but this way has the additional virtue of keeping long unwieldy ref texts away from the main code and makes keeping on track with the prose easier. One full-length cite journal/web with quote and translation takes about one fourth of the screen for me. Pitke (talk) 21:59, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely agree with that. The refs do clutter the editing page. Mixed blessing, I guess. If your laptop is tiny, you just proved that you are younger than moi! (LOL) Montanabw(talk) 16:38, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
...so you've been thinking it possible I could be older than you then?! Pitke (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not really, but I tend to respect wiki-anonymity. (grin) Why I have the Jimbo quote on my main page. Best admin I know on wiki I communicate with IRL and happens to be under the age of 25. Second-best (and arguably, best, just with a very different style), also IRL communicaiton, is over 50. Montanabw(talk) 19:01, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Translation follow-up[edit]

I finished translation to Finnish today, and as I'm typing this, fellow editors there are doing clean-up. I've added it to peer review now, and announced my intention to FAC it.

Swedish version has been updated with material from this article, although there have been some misunderstandings and mistranslations. The ref notes have been discarded. I plan on restoring the refs a little by little, and maybe, once the fi FAC is rolling nicely, try my hand at this version.

French version has been marked with a "please translate from en to fr" tag (by Tsaag?). I've actually managed to talk an acquaintance into translating some parts of the article. She's fluent in French, although needs some refreshing, and lacks horsey vocabulary. We'll be working together to keep the facts as straight as possible. Pitke (talk) 15:31, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finnish peer review remarked that the section on Early history contains too much info on discredited theories, that have little to do in an encyclopaedic article, and would be better suited in a scientific research report. In my opinion, the section is also unwieldy, and easily the longest and heaviest subsection of the entire article. This diff should give a general idea of what was done there; the "before" part is a faithful translation of the current English version. Any comments before I bring my knife here? Pitke (talk) 11:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely tap Tsaag for help with the French version, I believe Tsaag is sort of the guru of Fr.wiki horse articles. Montanabw(talk) 23:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Recent deletions by IP address[edit]

The pre-FAC peer review of the Finnish translated version has gathered some attention, and a few users have questioned the reliability of the Early History section. For most part, I agree with these users, thus the removal of some sourced content and considerable rewording/rewriting of a few passages. The sources used for these claims about prehistoric instances of horses in Finnish area are horsey books, not archeological ones.

It would be helpful if someone could point me towards a good, recent journal or article on early horses in Northern Europe. Pitke (talk) 12:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I wasn't sure if it was an IP that actually knew what they were doing or just vandalism. Nonetheless, they were changing sourced information without new sources, which is a no-no. I know that Pesky and Kim (User:KimVanderlind maybe? You can find her in the discussion of ancient horse history on the Horse talk page) have done quite a bit of research on the ancient history of the horse in Europe, although Pesky's focused mainly on Britain, I think. If you agree with the removal of some information, then please feel free to undo my reversion - however, the changing of sourced material without changing the sources is not good, and will get you hit at FAC if someone comes across the change in the history or has access to the source you cite and actually checks it to make sure it backs up the claims. Dana boomer (talk) 12:59, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. This change was rewording into a form the sources later actually do support (the article doesn't even mention Neolithic Europe anywhere else), and this was changing the summary of the History section to reflect the earlier changes that made things more in accordance to the source. That particluar source is online, even, so it can be checked. Pitke (talk) 13:28, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I had to toss a redlinked and overlinked bit, but if there is a real article out there in en.wiki, just redo the link. The main thing is reliable sources. If the horsey books are all there is, then rather than toss probably reliable material, better to just "teach the controversy" and explain it as a theory amongst Finnhorse fans. I agree that Kim will be the goddess of what can be scientifically verified and what is still speculation. See also domestication of the horse for sources to swipe. Montanabw(talk) 23:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Monty dear, please be careful when killing red links! This was a bad move, we're talking about the difference between Stone Age and Iron Age here. I specifically mentioned in here that Neolithic is not truthful. No source for the article whatsoever supports anything to do with Neolithic. All we have are the iron age bits etc, the Neolithic thing is an ancient left-over from the earliest version on fi Wikipedia I've based the growth of this article on. On other news, I'm positive User:193.111.93.44 is a user on fi-wiki that is taking part in the Peer Review, and is replying to my messages on fi-wiki. Their editing style is abrupt and their lack of edit summaries is most likely because of lack of confidence in use of English. I've contacted them, asking to elaborate on summaries, and offering help. Pitke (talk) 08:39, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's fair, but redlinks are wisest handled by at least creating a stub, otherwise they are meaningless when we are talking about historical time periods. I'll be more careful of the anon IP, but in general, a "drive-by" anon IP edit is inherently suspect, so I hope they understand why they were viewed with suspicion. Montanabw(talk) 18:54, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comparative linguistics[edit]

I mentioned this in the fi-wiki Peer Review, but I'll also raise the question separately here. I'd be eager to remove entirely the part about comparative linguistics in the Early history section. At its best it's just speculation, and "knowing" hardly is compareable to "using". Just to mention an example of the same sort, Finns knew the word "lion", thanks to Bible, about centuries before the common man got to learn anything more of the creature than that it has a terrible roar. The article contains information, sourced, on hard evidence of horses in Finnish areas. Pitke (talk) 08:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would not dismiss the rigorously researched linguistic evidence as "speculative", but it is true that the chronology of Finnic languages is presently unclear and contested. Archaeological evidence of horses (bits found in Iron Age burials) in Finland is surprisingly late, but it is almost certain that this is due to lack of research. Considering the history of horse in neighbouring areas, it is quite likely that the horse arrived in Finland durig the Late Neolithic or Bronze Age, no matter if the Finnic-speakers were in existence by the or not - but hard evidence will be lacking until an archaeo-osteologist has a bit of luck.--Kaikenlaisia (talk) 09:27, 20 September 2011 (UTC)(talk) 09:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My point is mostly about the vagueness of that particular sentence. The source offers no more information on the matter, so I'll remove it until the topic can be discussed properly. Pitke (talk) 14:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say that after reading The Horse, the Wheel, and Language that comparative linguistics have their place; just that we also need to put it into proper context of relative reliability. Montanabw(talk) 18:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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