Talk:Finnhorse/GA1

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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]
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