User talk:Justlettersandnumbers/old2

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Horse stuff

HI Just, a quick FYI that if you change names and then delete a redirect on a horse article, make sure you don't create a red link at List of horse breeds and if you do, please fix it. Also, we usually keep the word "horse" or "pony" lower case per WP capitalization conventions unless the word is such an integral part of the name that it is always included..for example, Arabian horse, Morgan horse, but American Quarter Horse. Feel free to ask me or anyone at WP:EQUINE for help if you have any questions, feel free to join us too! Also be super careful about changing horse to pony articles, size alone doesn't always distinguish the difference, and I like to verify that the registry and other official organizations actually express a desire for an animal to be designated a "pony" -- anything less careful can start some really annoying edit wars. (god forbid anyone call the miniature horse a "Pony", for example... =:-O ) Montanabw^(talk) 04:39, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

hi! sorry about the red link, thought I was to search for and fix double redirects and let a bot deal with the single ones; as you may have gathered, I am a novice here. I think you may be right that it should be 'horse'; the AIA lists it as cavallino, which technically means 'small horse', while it uses 'pony' for e.g., the 'Pony di Esperia'. However, this is an English-language wiki, and we do not have a word for 'cavallino'; in Italy, 'pony' is commonly reserved for the Shetland (a word unknown to ordinary Italians), and almost all other ponies, however small, are called cavallo or cavallino (the Bardigiano, Monterufolino, etc.). The Cavallino della Giara is pony-sized, has pony-like structure, and definitely pony temperament! (it is, btw, nothing remotely like a Sardinian AA). It fits exactly this statement from the Pony page: 'The pony originated from original wild horse prototypes that developed small stature due to living on the margins of livable horse habitat. These smaller animals were domesticated and bred for various purposes all over the Northern hemisphere'. In general, many breeds called 'pony' in English are called 'horse' in their native area, the Fjord and Northlands for example. I suspect that there may also be transatlantic differences in the use of 'pony'; in British usage, any horse under 14 1/2 hands is normally considered a pony, at variance with the Pony article, where the height distinction is restricted to competition rules. The word 'cavallino' is part of the name of the breed, so suggest that 'horse' should be capitalized for the Cavallino della Giara (when referring to the animal, its name is given in full, whereas no-one would talk about, say, a 'Cavallo Maremmano' unless there was some risk of confusing it with a cow or dog or person from the Maremma). I'm going to try moving Salerno (horse) to Salernitano, which is the name of the breed; pse let me know if I mess up! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:32, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• Hi again Just. I appreciate your energy and willingness to dive into this stuff. I'll try to explain a few of the less formal policies that have developed at WPEQ over the years. First off, the pony thing. We adopted the standard at WPEQ a number of years ago (after edit wars across many article pages, much of it before I ever even started editing), that if a breed registry called a breed a horse, we'd do so as well, as the 14.2 standard is not an absolute rule anyway. It is true that for BOTH the US and the UK, the 14.2 hand distinction between horses and ponies is common, but it is NOT universal, even in the UK, for some of the following reasons: 1) Ponies actually have a distinct phenotype, different from horses. So in theory a horse over 14.2 could be of pony ancestry. 2) The FEI actually has a slightly different cutoff, in centimeters, that with shoes is close to 14.3 3) Other English-speaking countries, notably Australia, use a different cutoff (14 h there, I think) 4) -- and most important, IMHO, many breeds have individuals that are both over and under 14.2 and so a breed registry can't really divide itself. Fjords and Icelandics are classic examples of horses where their breed association is quite adamant that they are horses, not ponies, and consider the term "pony" to be an insult to their animals. Breeds such as the Arabian have some individuals under 14.2 but all are clearly of a horse phenotype. 5) We have had edit wars over "horse" versus "pony" status for various breeds, and when in doubt, I lean (though not always) toward the term that will not be considered offensive by aficionados. Those are just a couple of examples. We need to move the little Giara back to "horse" for now, I think it needs to settle there; the source material clearly states that it is a "true horse" -- but we can discuss that particular case in more detail on the talk page. Montanabw^(talk) 04:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
• Second, the Italian breed thing. This is English Wikipedia, so we need to Anglify (if that's a word) these names. In other words, "Cavallo " this and "Cavallino" that just don't make any sense in an English article beyond saying "horse" or "pony" (And Google language claims Cavallino translates as "pony" by the way, not that it really matters and I won't go to the mat for Google translations, though they can be handy!). So just as we say Sardinia and not Sardegna, and Munich, not Munchen, likewise, we have to work on the others. I'm concerned about Salerno to Salernitano, we can most certainly list all names in the "alt" area of the infobox and have redirects from all possible names, but let's remember that this IS English wiki!  :-) Montanabw^(talk) 04:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
• Third, there is, of course, more than just the broad wikipedia policies. We have a few things we do to the horse articles to improve navigability and organization. You might find the hints and guidelines at the horse breeds task force helpful: Wikipedia:WikiProject Equine/Horse breeds. Good luck! Montanabw^(talk) 04:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Breed articles

If you want to work on Maremmano, I don't think anyone is all that active with it other than Altes, who seems to have a similar view as you, and would probably be supportive of having improved articles. If you want a template to go by, Dana boomer just got Italian Heavy Draft to GA status, so that's a good example of a small article that is done up to proper wikipedia standards with good layout, reliable sources and all that. We'll keep an eye on how you're doing and comment if you seem to be going off in the wrong direction, but I'm supportive of anyone who actually wants to do some of the work that needs to be done on the 350-400 breed articles we have on wikipedia. Montanabw^(talk) 22:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Nice!

Saw the stubs you created, thanks for doing that, and creating a category. Nice job! I added the new category as a subcat of horse breeds, and all the new articles to List of horse breeds. You may want to be sure that I got them all (either horse or pony section). Feel free to add them yourself in the future, and it's also OK to tag your own articles on their talk page as part of WPEQ (WikiProject Equine). When in doubt, importance is "low", and class usually varies with length and number of citations. (stub is easy, start usually = no footnotes, not comprehensive C=longer and getting pretty thorough with a few footnotes, but not many, B=quite a few footnotes, but not ready for GA class yet) I left the Neapolitan in the extinct breeds section for now, because I think we're still sorting out what to do about the "new" breed, though we may ultimately wind up placing it in both sections, with proper disclaimers. I also moved some from capitalized "Horse" to lower case "horse" as all the names appear to designate geographic regions and when referencing the horse breed can stand alone, even if in other contexts it would be confused with people or other animals. The corresponding examples are Arabian horse, Morgan horse, etc... the only time we keep "horse" capitalized is if the name is so inherent to the breed that the other words actually mean something completely unrelated without the word "horse" added (as in, whoever heard of an "American Quarter --" except as a coin?). We also do this because Wikipedia syntax refuses to acknowledge if a lower case letter is used when a title contains a capital, though it has no trouble finding the lower case version if you type in a capital. Go figure....  :-P Montanabw^(talk) 18:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Just a start, an attempt at a framework to get a few things (like my thoughts) in order. The category was intended mainly for my own use initially, to be honest; I wasn't going to add it to Horse breeds until it was a bit further ahead, but if it's OK with you then it's OK with me too. On capitalisation, I suggest that until and unless a proper expert comes forward, you are just going to have to trust me to know when the word "Cavallo" is an integral part of the breed name, and when it is not. Horse needs to be capitalised for the Cavallino della Giara, as you can't talk about a Giara (well, you can, but it is a geological formation, not a horse); similarly for the Cavallo del Catria, Cavallo del Ventasso and Cavallo Pentro, where dropping the word Cavallo would leave you discussing two mountains and a member of ancient tribe. It does not need to be capitalised, or even included, for the Napoletano, Avelignese, Bardigiano, Tolfetano and many others. I have understood your take on this matter, and followed it rigorously. Please remember, I speak Italian and am moderately familiar with usage in this specific area (millions of Italians have never heard of most of these horses). If you have sources that show different usage, please point me to them, I'd be interested to see them. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

We already have a category for Russian breeds, so once it showed up in the articles, I figured we might as well take it prime time. Once a category has been created, it doesn't go away without a specific request.

But, if I am not mistaken, "Cavallo" just means "horse" correct? And it comes first in Italian grammar, so it would have to be capitalized there. But while I trust that you know Italian, the real issue is translation into English. I think the use of "horse" sounds pretty similar to English language breed names, often called this or that "Horse" or "Pony" (capitalized, title case) as well. Breeds like Thoroughbred don't usually append "horse" because there is only one thing (properly) called a Thoroughbred, but many others do, even when people just call them by their ambiguous title (like the horse breeds called Friesian, Brabant, Arabian, Karabakh, etc...) I personally would not normally have an issue with using title case and capitalizing both words in the real world, but what we have is a wikipedia quirk colliding with the real world. Wikipedia MOS doesn't like title case and it screws up searches because of how the programming doesn't treat capitals and lower case as equivalent. So having title case other than were absolutely critical creates a huge pain in the ass because we'd have to create a redirect to -- every. single. article. Were it not for that...sigh But after we at WPEQ obtained consensus to call breed articles logical things like Morgan horse instead of the silly-but-normal-for-wikipedia-disambiguation "Morgan (horse)", to fight for title case on top of it and then argue over whether half the articles should or should not include the word "horse" as part of the proper name, well, oh god, we have 350+ breed articles! It just is NOT worth it. Montanabw^(talk) 23:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

As I think I said before, I understand this point; I'd like to be sure that you do too. You can talk about a Trakehner or an Arab or, well, a Friesian or the other ones you said without adding the word horse, even if with the Friesian you'd sometimes need it to distinguish it from the cow, and with an Arab you'd sometimes need it to distinguish it from an Arab pony. You can't talk about an American Quarter (as a horse, that is, rather than something in numismatics), so American Quarter gets a capitalised Horse after it and Trakehner doesn't. In exactly the same way, you can talk about a Salernitano or a Napoletano or a Tolfetano or a Bardigiano or an Avelignese or a lot of other Italian breeds without saying 'cavallo' before their names, and indeed in most cases to put it there would be quite unusual; those breeds get a lower-case horse after their names here, or preferably no horse at all. But you can't talk about a Catria or a Ventasso or a Pentro or a Giara or an Esperia; the words 'cavallo' or 'cavallino' or 'pony' are an integral inseparable part of the name of the breed, so just like the American Quarter, they get a capitalised Horse or Pony after them, right? If in doubt as to which group a particular breed falls into, please ask; if I don't know, I'll say so. But please be aware that I have been keeping this in mind all along. And if I have to create a few redirects, I will. Removing things from the category I created to keep track of this stuff does not help. Now that the Avelignese has been removed from the horse breeds of Italy, where has it been relocated? Mine was still there when I fed him this evening, I was relieved to see Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:31, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

More in new section below. But here's another idea: Create a "list" article titled something like "Italian horse breeds", such as we have for Iberian horse or Gaited horse and just summarize everything, even the questionably Italian ones, provide both English and Italian names, etc. Maybe it could even be a handy chart such as is used in articles like Equestrian at the Summer Olympics. Much handier than categories, which often have fights over what's in or out and often it's hard to track what is new or what has been removed because the lists generated have no edit history. A list style article would also give you an opportunity to explain the organizations that make these decrees, how the government decides these things, and so on. Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

As for the categories, the search term Avelignese redirects to Haflinger. We generally don't categorize redirects, though I wonder if this is a case where an exception to the rules makes sense. I actually think there may be a special way to do this (It makes the article title appear in italics in the category, indicating it isn't the "real" article title), I'll check some of the other categories and see if I can figure it out. There is an argument to be made that we could have multiple breed nationality categories in one article, I just don't know when it will end. Seriously, as much as European national boundaries shifted around, I'm convinced that at least five different nations could "claim" the Lipizzan, for example. But as for names, just as a halter is a headcollar in the UK, we are not going to create two articles on the same thing, we are just going to note the different names in a single article, and the more popular term is generally used as a title, at least when a dispute arises. (Oh, and there technically is no such thing as an "Arab pony." All purebred Arabians are classified as horses, regardless of height. If it isn't a purebred Arabian, than it isn't an Arabian at all, it's some sort of crossbred with Arab ancestors, such as the Anglo-Arab, Shagya Arabian, etc...) Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I did remove the national categories on a couple of breeds with multiple origins that aren't clearly, 100% "Italian," particularly the Haflinger and Lipizzaner. The Lipizzan is, in fact, the breed article where we have had some rather nasty edit wars with the over-enthusiastic Slovenian (but then, Slovenia actually sued Austria in the EU over the use of the term "Lipizzan"), we also have someone who actually works at the Spanish Riding School IRL and pops in from time to time, and so I just do not want to open up an unnecessary can of worms. Just so you know what's happening. And thanks again for your work on this! By the way, would you like to create similar categories for the Japanese pony and horse breeds like the Noma pony or the Indonesian breeds like the Java pony?) Montanabw^(talk) 18:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

???!? On whose say-so? On the basis of what evidence or publication? Please note:

I think you're missing the point. Breed origin is a complex issue, with many breeds coming from multiple sources, developing over time. Just because a breed exists in a nation, doesn't make it a "national" breed. (Heck, for example, the [{American Quarter Horse exists in Italy, and the Italians even sent reining horses to the WEG and did a pretty good job. Does that make the QH an Italian breed?) Most of the stuff we are debating has footnotes to reliable sources, you need to review them, I'm not going to argue them here. If you want to find better, more reliable ones, you are welcome to do the research. You can also place "citation needed" or "dubious" tags on items you have concerns about. However without sources, a person is just arguing one's own opinions or biases. If you say it's wrong, the burden of proof rests on the person who wants to change the existing content, the people who already did the work to write the material only need to defend what may be questioned. And saying, "you're wrong and I have a source to prove it" means nothing without providing the source. (Google language can at least allow people to take a whack at interpreting a foreign language source). Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

The Haflinger is the most common registered breed in Italy; to remove it from the list of Italian breeds would be simply to display more of the bias which I have already noted in the article. If you can cite a reliable (and, at this point, very authoritative) source that states that the Haflinger is not a horse breed of Italy, please point me to it and I'll remove it. But until then, it should stay.

I'll let Dana explain the article, she did most of the research, and if you want to discuss that particular breed category at the article talk page, I'll defer if the consensus goes in favor of adding it. But just because it's common today doesn't make it an "Italian" breed. It is also, I think, the most common registered breed in Germany. A person has to be careful to not let your own nationalistic bias color your judgement. If we wanted to list it as both a German and an Italian breed, that's possible, but frankly, I hate to start classifying all breeds by nation, for some we have breeds where the next thing you know, we'd have a half-dozen categories all claiming the breed and it would become ridiculous. In fact, I suppose the Austrians could make a good claim for origin too! The article sources speaks for itself of the origins of the breed. Unless something is as geographically obvious as the breeds that exclusively developed within the boundaries of modern Italy, I think it's a can of worms to start the laundry list of nations that can claim a breed. Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The Lipizzaner article needs a major rewrite in the Second World War section. I'm no historian, but there is no doubt that the Lipizzaner stock was divided into three parts by the American forces, of which one stayed in Austria, one went to what was then Yugoslavia, and a third arrived, together with some of the stud books, in Rome in the Spring of 1945. It is a horse breed of Italy; if you've removed it from that category, would you kindly put it back? By the way, I mentioned some of this to the staff at the museum of the Spanish Riding School when I was last there; they hotly denied every word of it, so you can expect them to do so again. But their denial does not make the facts any less true. Those horses arrived in Rome, and are still bred there (well, near there), and a proper genealogical stud book maintained for them (not just a breed register as for most indigenous breeds). Can you indicate a reliable source that states that they do not exist?

Well, you are misconstruing my point. It isn't that the breed doesn't exist today in Italy (while you're at it, shall the Italians also claim the Shetland pony?), it's that it has multiple sources of origin, including Lipica, which was once called Lipizza, and was considered Italian, though it isn't today, and this sort of thing is the problem. A minimum of three modern nations can lay claim to the Lipizzan, and if you count all the stud farms that contributed foundation bloodstock, we probably could add Hungary plus a few others. There are also Lipizzans who were taken to the United States after Patton's Army captured Hostau also, but we don't claim they are an American breed, even though we too have an American registry for them! Your logic isn't working for me here. You didn't appear to read the breed history that shows that there were multiple foundation horses from multiple nations that came together at multiple studs within the Austria-Hungarian empire and were showcased in Vienna. If you can find source material for the formation of the Italian stud book, please provide it, this would enhance the article, actually. (For example see also South African Lipizzaners) And yes, between the Spanish Riding School and the Slovenians, if you want to claim the Lipizzan is Italian, I'm going to guarantee you that it could erupt in an edit war that you will probably lose. Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I have – so far at least – omitted from category the Cavallo del Delta, which is just a population of Camargue horses in the Po valley (scandalous, in my view, that they should be registered as a native Italian breed), and the Cavallo Appenninico, which I know nothing about, but believe to be some Swiss horses brought in about 50 years ago.

Which probably would only upset the French or the Swiss. However, if you created the article stubs, can you add them to the List of horse breeds so they are easier to find? Or maybe add stuff like the Delta horse to the Camargue article? It DOES sound like the Italian association wants to claim everything is Italian in origin! Is this at all connected to that Northern Italy separatist party or anything? Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I didn't even create the stubs for those two, though I will try to look into the Appenninico a bit; there's also one called the Cicolano which hasn't finished getting recognised yet. Note: I don't do politics, dislike those who do, especially dislike those who do on the right, profoundly dislike nationalism; I don't greatly care for personal remarks or innuendo, either, but I've met them before and survived. The horses I'm looking at, including the Lipizzaner and Haflinger, are regarded as Italian by the Italian State, their authenticity confirmed by ministerial decree. That is why the Shetland and Quarter Horse are not (yet!) claimed as Italian. I did add a couple of pre-existing pages about other Italian breeds to the category also; they mostly need serious work. And yes, I will eventually add something about the Camargue and Merens populations in Italy to the pages for those. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:31, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

My apologies on the nationalism remark. I get twitchy, I've run into rabid nationalists on some of these horse articles in the past and they can be a little weird. But, if "the Lipizzaner and Haflinger, are regarded as Italian by the Italian State, their authenticity confirmed by ministerial decree" that's just groovy for the Italian government, but if they really think the breeds are exclusively of Italian origin, then they are full of themselves and exhibiting that very nationalistic fervor that is so distasteful, as both breeds clearly developed in a far broader geographical area than just Italy, though there were areas of Northern Italy that provided some influence. Note this article for example, looks like Monterotondo is Italian, but none of the rest. (Really, I should just introduce you to that Slovenian guy who accuses us of an anti-Slovenian bias on the Lipizzan article and let the two of you just slug it out! LOL!) As for your own Avelignese, do a Google search, the breed is called the Haflinger pretty much everywhere else but Italy. And they are cool little horses -- by either name, they do smell as sweet... (abusing a bit of Shakespeare here for whatever humorous effect I can muster). Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

And no, sorry, any tiny amount I might know about Far Eastern breeds is just the result of reading a few books Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

All I wondered is if you would be inclined to just create a category for those groups of breeds like you did for the Italian ones. The articles are already written. But if you don't want to, that's fine. I was just glad to see someone interested in doing category work. Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and please discuss the capitalization stuff before you go and move them all back, as there is an existing editor consensus on this issue. Montanabw^(talk) 18:16, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Policy noted and adhered to; would you be kind enough to put back any that have been incorrectly moved? If in doubt, holler! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll review and if you dispute, we can take them to individual talk pages or if there is a need to change general policy, we can discuss at WPEQ. Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

New section on translation question

OK, I get that you believe that some things in Italian must say "Horse" as surely as in "American Quarter". The best comparison I can think of is Nez Perce Horse, as if you dropped "horse" we'd have Nez Perce, which refers exclusively to a Native American nation and the people there would take great offense if there were considered the same as their horses (though culturally they were in fact noted horse breeders, they created the Appaloosa in its American form). However, I guess keeping titles consistent with WP capitalization standards is kind of the default. I did note that http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15496286 says "Giara" only, not horse or pony, but also lists it with both Lipizzans AND Thoroughbreds as "horses bred in Italy". So go figure. Now, I'm really not trying to be tendentious or a smartass here, but I do wonder about naming conventions when an Italian word is used for a breed name. I note that the Italian wikipedia article on the Arabian is titled Cavallo arabo, however, which would fly in the face of English use, as it literally translates "Horse arabian" and we would never put the name of a nation in lower case under any circumstances--so again, does it.wiki have the same capitalization quirks?? I also notice the Italian Thoroughbred article is titled "Purosangue inglese" (literally translated "Thoroughbred English", yes?) but then in the Arabian article they caption two photos of known-purebred horses as "Purosangue arabo" when obviously they are NOT Anglo-Arabians, thus, being a non-Italian speaker, I can only conclude that Italian must use the same word for "thoroughbred" and "purebred." Similarly, a lot of European languages (notably German) seem to have a word we translate as "breed" that literally translates as "race." So my point: English is not Italian. We respect geographic names and such, but the inclusion of "Horse" or "horse" is really more of a translation question than a rule. Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, just quickly:

• I saw that link earlier, thought I might get around to reading the article one day. Seems to me 'Giara' is used adjectivally there, the word 'breed' being understood, thus 'all the breeds but [the] Giara [breed]...'. Their English is anyway not exactly A1, is it? I guess that in the same way if a group of you were standing round a horse talking about it, one might say "she looks like a Nez Percé to me" without risk of confusion.

Scientists are generally not grammarians, and if they are also do not speak English as a first language, it's even more of a problem. I wonder if "scientificese" should be yet another language! --MTBW

• Capitalisation rules and practice in Italian are quite different from English; specifically, (1) Title Case as we understand it is unknown, so book titles etc. have only the first word capitalised, so, say, The Jungle Book becomes Il libro della giungla; (2) names of languages and geographic adjectives are not capitalised, so 'the people of Arabia speak Arabic and ride Arab horses' becomes 'Il popolo dell'Arabia parla arabo e monta cavalli arabi'

• 'Purosangue', pureblood, is used with the meaning of purebred and thoroughbred, though I can't offhand remember seeing it used of anything but Arabs and Thoroughbreds

• an Anglo-Arab is not a purebred horse, being a cross between an Arab and a Thoroughbred, so could never be referred to as 'purosangue'

My point is that if you say "Thoroughbred Arabian" in English, you are speaking of an Anglo-Arab, but Italian seems to use "purosangue" to mean both "Thoroughbred" the breed and "purebred." I was trying to show you how you can't always directly translate something in the exact form... Giara, for example. --MTBW

• it would be very convenient to be able to distinguish breeds from races, but our usage doesn't seem to allow it, they're all breeds whether they have been bred or not. Whereas Italian has no word for breed, so they are all races

Human beings would be offended to be called "breeds," animals may be a landrace, but that isn't really quite the same thing. --MTBW

• thank you for the list idea, probably should have done that instead of a category

Someone did a Russian breeds category too, it's no harm done, but a list can more fully educate people. --MTBW

• at the risk of repeating myself: I know what I am doing, am reasonably familiar with the subject, understand how different languages work (I speak six, read three of them effortlessly), am familiar with the conventions of academic publication etc etc. I'm obviously not familiar with how this wiki works, just picking it up. Would you perhaps refrain from changing things I have done for a while unless they are structurally incorrect, and then take a look in, say, a couple of weeks? At the moment I'm spending more time justifying every word I write than getting the stuff written. And, in general, would you please have the courtesy to (a) think and (b) discuss before reversing edits I have made, just as I do when editing your material? You've stuck two red links back in the Pony article, one of them to a garbage-word, and the Polo pony article was a total mess last time I looked, with repeated text which someone had taken out and someone else, inexplicably, had then stuck back in. I wrote in the recent survey on academic participation here that it seems that some editors are more interested in defending the existing text than improving it, becoming territorial if not proprietorial over it, and that I see that tendency as a barrier to growth of the project. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I hear you about capitalization, but I was making the point that it's not always suitable to apply the customs of one language to another. For example, German seems to have the opposite situation -- capitalize every single noun! I'll grant your language fluency, but we do need to think through how to handle translations in a way that works for both the English language and the quirks of wikipedia's software, which strongly discourages title case. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

But as for the rest, the rule on wikipedia is edit, revert, discuss WP:BRD, not the other way around ... the burden is on people who are adding the NEW material to justify it. If you make a good argument and provide third party sources to prove it, you will often prevail and your version will become the accepted one. Over time, your work gains the respect of other editors. If you need some time to play with changes, then there are two approaches. One is to "sandbox" changes to small sections on the talk page, and let others comment as you go. However, I'd recommend that if you want to do an extensive rewrite without people jumping in right away, then create a "sandbox" and just import the text there and play with it all you want. Once it's ready for prime time, invite a few people over to see if they have any comments or suggestions, then take it live. For example, I have several sandboxes going at once, here's one of them where I'm working on a navbox template: User:Montanabw/Tack sandbox. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The bottom line is that wikipedia is becoming more fussy about having verifiable sources and footnotes for articles. The older articles without good sources, like polo pony, need actual research for verification and proper footnoting. Until there is someone willing to do that level of work, it makes no sense to do much significant rewriting, and thus these articles tend to have necessary maintenance done, poor wording fixed or agreed-to misinformation tossed, but not a lot more. Here there was a glitch of some text repeated twice in the lead (probably left over from a cut and paste that wasn't fully cleaned up), stuff like that occasionally gets left in by accident and needs to be fixed, but that's a different issue. You are running into problems because you just charge in, decree that an article is crap but then don't really add much other than replacing others' unsourced material with your own, equally unfootnoted and unsourced. Arrogance doesn't go over real well here. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

In conclusion, editing wikipedia can be frustrating when you just "know" something to be true (I've ripped my hair out several times on horse articles.) In some places, your comments are well-taken and you will note that many of your edits to various articles were not reverted, but other things we "know" to be true are actually just strongly held opinions, and in some cases, an incorrect "opinion" or one where you are not 100% correct and the topic (such as the concept that any horse under 14.2 is 'always' a pony) is open to discussion. For example, on Pony, you pointed out some weaknesses that were addressed, though your own edits were not all kept in their original form (but some of them were), and the material restored has a purpose: a few red links sometimes have their place, to allow necessary articles to be created at a later date. And in the case you mention there does need to be articles created on both hot walkers and Equitourism--which is a real concept, by the way, and not a "garbage word" (and that sort of tone is precisely the arrogance that is not winning you any friends). On wikipedia there is always room for improvement, but On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Thus if you show up here all full of ego and imply that everyone else is stupid, it just doesn't work. You have to prove yourself by doing quality work, not just criticizing that of other people. Add verifiable material of substance and you won't come across like a biased newbie with an axe to grind. Your new articles on the Italian breeds were a good example of how to win friends. Do more of that. And do more of your substantive improvements as you did on some of the existing Italian breed articles. But your behavior and comments at the Haflinger and Thoroughbred articles were not a good example, you just irritated people. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Making your "pony" happy

Your Avelignese will be pleased to know that I somehow formatted the category so the redirect goes properly to Haflinger and not to the redirect page. So it can go back into the Italian list in the Italian form of the name. We still can't do this for Lipizzans, as we have a bigger problem there, but at least your pony (calling him/her a "pony" in the affectionate sense) should personally be happier. Montanabw^(talk) 05:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

<-- and more talkback at my page--with photos! Montanabw^(talk) 22:53, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Gypsies, Cobs, and...

Don't let my argumentative nature stop you, whatever it winds up being named, the Gypsy Vanner article is DESPERATELY in need of all the help it can get, so as long as you can replace the crap that's in there with solid sources, I'm for anything you can do. I dropped a note at WPEQ inviting additional comment, especially from our other UK editors. We Americans must over-romanticize and then over-price all sorts of things, and these critters are definitely in that camp... most of the previous edits and comments, as you may have noted, were of the "overenthusiastic 10-year-old girl" variety. I think the rest of us have avoided dealing with that article because those who care really care more than seems normal.(!) I will note one thing though: If you are not familiar with wikipedia politics, there are some fierce edit wars that get started over things Irish in general and things in the Traveller/Gypsy/Roma area too. I have never delved into those (being none of them myself), but the assorted blowback gets around. The last thing we need is something that drags that crowd to a horse article, it's the pits when it happens. A final thought; one article where we have had to deal with horse politics, national politics and an ongoing EU lawsuit is Andalusian horse, which has made it clear to FA quality in spite of the politics. Took a ton of work, but was worth it! May be a good sample to steal ideas from. Montanabw^(talk) 23:45, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Probably best to move this here

JLAN, I just reached my limit with your attitude and said so across about three talk pages, but realized that the conversation probably needs to be consolidated here. If you wish to discuss how to be a little more cooperative and collaborative wikipedian instead of the tendentious pain in the rear you've been the last couple days, I can do that. Or not. By the time I log on tomorrow, I will have probably cooled down a bit, but your edits over the last 24 hours or so were not helpful, though your new articles have been. Can't decide whether to strangle you or pat you on the back and say "good job!" Probably both, depending on the article. Montanabw^(talk) 07:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Received your message, though apparently you didn't read one of mine (where I explained that I did not in fact delete your talk page stuff, at least not deliberately). I believe your suggestions do have some grounds to be be mutually adhered to. However, please understand that I consider your behavior toward me to be as bad as you seem to feel my attitude is to you. So, it appears we are at an impasse in that department. If you'd like, I'll propose a WP:TRUCE and BOTH agree to just let the past go and agree from here forward that we can be a bit nicer to each other. Will that settle matters for now? Montanabw^(talk) 23:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts

Hi, some thoughts before you go to lots of work. A couple years ago, those on WP who care about such things jumped all over me and others at WPEQ for having the Equine navbox uncollapsed by default, particularly on the stubs. While I personally think it is visually attractive, I lost that round, and so I guess it's your call there, but don't be surprised. But on that note, we really shouldn't engage in navbox overkill as it DOES add to a cluttered look if there are too many. By default, we put the equine one on all the breed articles because it helps people find other topics, including the list of horse breeds itself. I personally have no problem at present with your addition of the national breeds one, though I think a more elegant solution is to create a list/article and link the list inside the equine template, but that's only my opinion. I think that your new ES navbox should usually stand alone without adding equine too. It could just have a cross-link at the bottom to the equine one and no need for both, particularly as some of the sport ones (saw this at mounted orienteering) could already have others. Anyway, that's my thinking. If you have questions, always feel free to ask me. (in a friendly way!) Montanabw^(talk) 05:55, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I can't get the collapsing to work right. How it's supposed to be is that they are uncollapsed when only one, but all collapse when there's more than one, but it doesn't seem to be working, I'll try it again. Agree on overkill. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that you have to put it collapsed on the individual pages, I don't get template syntax well enough to figure it out, but you can always go find ones that do what you want and steal the markup (that works better for me than trying to parse the help pages!) Montanabw^(talk) 21:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Helpful tags

Thought I'd introduce you to the {{dubious}} tag, which I think would be good for you to use instead of just blanking things. There is also a tag for {{unreliable source}} Both are vastly preferable to just removing or blanking sources. For example, an unreliable source might be correct (even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while, as they say), which is why it probably should stay until someone has time to improve the sourcing. Something that is dubious, no matter how well sourced, should be discussed at the talk page before removal, as maybe the "dubious" designation is just one person's opinion. Anyway, these tags might keep you out of trouble. WP:CITE is good for format of sources, WP:V is good for what kinds of sources can be used. Given that "a" source is better than "no" source, tagging is usually acceptable wikiquette, whereas blanking existing material can raise hackles. Also, sites like Equinekingdom were good enough for wikipedia 4-5 years ago, especially before Google Books really got rolling, so even though it's inadquate now, fixing the refs is just one of those ongoing cleanup projects (and one reason why so many of us at WPEQ have breed encyclopedias handy, to upgrade the sources on existing material. Montanabw^(talk) 22:13, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

More tips for wiki-world

Hi JLAN, I'm really not trying to be a butthead, I'm just a veteran of a lot of wiki-wars and know that sooner or later, certain issues just keep coming around. Some of what I am arguing today I fiercely opposed at the time I first encountered a given policy, but came around later (or just gave up and chose my battles). These guidelines may help you out: One is WP:ENGLISH and WP:NOENG which explains use of non-English sources. It is a slightly open question what to do with English language sources with some inaccuracies, but in real-wiki-work, the solution tends to be to use BOTH English and non-English sources together-- the English source is easily accessible to most readers who care enough to get the gist of the thing, but if they wonder how it differs from what we say in the article, we can point to the foreign language site for clarification. The mainstream press and breed encyclopedias often do screw things up, but the point is that they ARE good enough as far as they go for what they have correct, and we add more complex sources to correct the material they got wrong. Wiki has had some fierce editing spats in the past with people using exclusively foreign language sources to basically argue something that is pure baloney, hence the guidelines linked above. I keep pointing you to look at the excellent footnoting work Pitke did with use of Finnish sources, as virtually on one except for Finns will be able to translate that material.

The other comment I will make is that there is a guideline on wiki that, absent a really good reason, an article started in US or UK English will keep that format throughout. Obviously, if a US English user started London, it is logical to redo it in UK English, (and vice-versa for, say New York) but other than those sorts of things, we just all get good at trying to respect both forms. Ditto for grammatical differences of opinion like hyphens, serial commas, use of single or double apostrophe for quotes, etc. There were extensive debates over all of this somewhere in time, the WP MOS usually reflects this week's consensus (which occasionally changes) and I lack sufficient time or aggravation tolerance to bother fighting those. So when I go through and do things like a hyphen search and destroy, it is because sooner or later a bot will go through and do it anyway... Montanabw^(talk) 20:19, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Snarking less

Please, I invite you to view Appaloosa. We will be taking it to FA in the next few days. It is an example of what true collaboration can accomplish, when the total becomes greater than the sum of the parts. As of today, there are 2,945 articles tagged by WPEQ. Clearly, we cannot tackle all of them at once, but when the team begins to focus and collaborate, good things happen. If you have truly constructive comments to make, by the way, we'd be interested in the views of a non-American reader. Montanabw^(talk) 23:13, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

FYI

I've requested that Neapolitan horse be protected from editing (both of us) until we figure out how to get you to READ what I am doing before you just go on the attack and until we can reach a consensus. I am trying desperately to keep the truce here, and I am also trying to trust that you are honestly reflecting your own understanding. However, with multiple sources saying the breed is extinct, just the fact that the same name is on a modern breed isn't drawing enough of a link to me. I am honestly looking for more evidence...the Equine Kingdom site, which normally is a very weak source, is actually the only source I have found so far that actually draws a link between the old and the new. And also note that too slavish an adherence to sources could wind up being a copyright violation, so finding a balance in how to say things does not constitute OR. Montanabw^(talk) 21:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Be nice to Dana ;-)

Hey, this is a friendly suggestion: be nice to Dana boomer. She's a WAYYYYY nicer person than I! Also about the only person I know who got her admin credentials without running the torture gauntlet challenging route that most people go through to become admins because she is a very diplomatic and good-hearted person. She is probably the best faith person I know, and quite knowledgeable about wikipedia's policies, guidelines, and unwritten rules. It's sometimes a frustrating world around here, and I know I am an easy target for people's wrath (sometimes deservedly), but Dana is a sweetie and while you can debate with her all you want, assume good faith and don't be mean! (You can pick on me all you want, within reason. I have good faith too, but I'm mildly burned-out and horribly anal-retentive, which I know can be an annoying combo!) Montanabw^(talk) 16:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Appy chart

I like that your edit to the chart in Appaloosa made the columns a bit more balanced, the left column was a bit too narrow, but I wonder if the left column is now just a little too wide and sparse-looking? (Probably varies from one computer screen to the next) Most of the chart looks good, but the first two rows, probably due to the slightly longer photos used, look a bit empty. Lower ones look more filled. Not sure if there IS a solution, but if you want to play a wee bit more, just a thought. Montanabw^(talk) 06:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Maremma Sheepdog

Your posts on this topic's discussion page come very close to violating the Wiki policies on civility. Your characterization of the article unnecessarily demeans previous editors. Your use of "citation needed" is excessive. Your questioning the "neutrality" of a piece about a breed of dog borders on the absurd. Moreover, your use of the term "says who" instead of "citation needed" is demonstrative of the civility problem. Wikipedia requires collaborative effort. If you think this or any other piece can be improved, make your best effort to rewrite it. Do not trash other contributors, otherwise Wikipedia will sink to the lowest common denominator. Looking forward to your reworking of the article and the improvements you can make. SilviaManno (talk) 00:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Cool!

Good work on the Donkey stuff. One comment, though. English language names, such as "Asinara donkey" are better than the Italian ones like "Asino Pantesco" (which in English would be "Pantesco donkey," correct? Kind of like all the horse breed names beginning with "Cavallo"?). Anyway, I'm not going to make a big deal out of this because I'm just glad work is being done with the poor, neglected donkey articles, but it's been an issue before so thought I'd mention it. Montanabw^(talk) 17:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I used an English name for the Asino dell'Asinara because I managed to find one or two sources that used one. Most scientific literature uses the local name, as you know, from the FAO on down. The rarer Italian donkeys are unlikely to have established English names, though, and to make them up would be, once again, OR. Question: does the feral American "burro" have breed status? If so, suggest splitting the short section on it out of the Donkey article, where you have to wonder why it is the only donkey treated in such detail. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:05, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I honestly don't know. The deal is that it is protected under the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, so it has a unique legal status. On the horse side, we count the Mustang as a breed, as well as the other various feral horses like the Brumby of Australia, but in the horse article we also discuss them separately from the ordinary human-selected breeds due to their historic and longstanding feral status, so it's a gray area. For the donkey article, it may be worth looking into other places where there also are unique populations of feral donkeys and give the section a worldwide focus, if there is one. As for the English names, I wonder if there is an opinion on wiki anywhere as to if translation is inherently OR or merely a helpful thing to do. All of which is just my thoughts, I am mostly just glad you are working on this because it sure is needed. Montanabw^(talk) 18:13, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

On that basis I will split out Burro when I get a chance, look at expanding the feral donkey section a tiny bit (Asino dell'Asinara is supposedly the only feral European breed). But it may not be done immediately. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:37, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Saw a comment seemed to pop into the burro spinoff, though its old (2005). I put in a reply just in case needed. FWIW and FYI, if it matters, burro and donkey aren't really synonyms in the USA, though often used interchangeably because many western US donkeys are burros (burros can be feral or fully domesticated, only the feral ones that can be traced to feral herds that have been around for years get the federal protection), but we have many regular-sized donkeys too. Various spotted asses and what we call mammoth jacks (probably not the Poitou donkey, though) are used for mule breeding, plenty of mules around here. Most non-equine-knowledgeable people in the US think of the 1849-er California gold miner with his "burro" when they envision a real live donkey, hence the confusion, I suspect. Anyway, probably TMI, but just file away in the back of your head if needed. Montanabw^(talk) 18:45, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio stuff

User:Moonriddengirl is the guru of copyright violation issues. If you have questions, check with her. Montanabw^(talk) 20:00, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

And on a totally unrelated note, good work on the hands article. I toned down the POV a little bit and rearranged a few things, but didn't actually change much. Don't worry about the stuff between me and Peter I, it dates back to 2007 or so, just complete oil and vinegar. Montanabw^(talk) 03:45, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Of interest to you

Given your interest in international/ethnic mounted sports, a courtesy FYI that I noticed these articles wanted to alert you: Yabusame and Jinba ittai. Montanabw^(talk) 03:22, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

And some humor to cool things down a bit. Check this out: http://www.packburroracing.com/, particularly the rules page: http://www.packburroracing.com/pbraRules.html "No Riding: The runner may push, pull, drag or carry the burro. The contestant shall at no time progress except under his own power." LOL!

Dressage cats

Hi, for once I'm not disagreeing with you about something! I actually think you are on a good track to improve the dressage categories, but I think rather than a piecemeal discussion across bunch of pages, it may be worth consolidating the work in one place (like here -- or a sandbox, or whatever). Basically, I like that the main Dressage cat seems to be becoming a consolidated HQ with most actual articles within subbcats. SO... some thoughts. We may want to separate "terminology" into the training concepts (collection, impulsion, etc...) and the competitive stuff (Musical KUR, for example). I'm also wondering where to put stuff like Shadbelly and such... Montanabw^(talk) 23:15, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

BTW, good work on the dressage masters articles. I'm lurking but no worries, this is one where your language abilities and access to European sources are just right for the job. I have some of the 20th century works (Podhajsky, Seuing, Mũsler, Belasik, Wynmalen, etc.) that have analysis of the earlier works, but not the originals (other than Xenophon's book in translation from the Greek). Just an FYI that I'm not always disagreeing with you when you ARE correct! (LOL). Montanabw^(talk) 02:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Stone bruise

We have a bigger problem than stone bruise: I think much of this article linked below needs to be spun off into the lameness article, but the editor is, I think a newbie that I don't really want to bite because they are keeping to themselves and not causing any trouble, plus I'm too tired of all the other drama to want to start on a new round, but... Racehorse injuries. Montanabw^(talk) 18:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I cleaned out the article but in the future, don't forget to notify the editor in question with the template tag provided in {{copyvio}}.--NortyNort (Holla) 08:27, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

All yours

Number of edits by Altes to the Italian horse breed articles, mostly youtube videos and unsourced commentary. See Special:Contributions/Altes2009. Your call what to do with all that, you're pretty much the lead editor on most of those. Montanabw^(talk) 17:48, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Your insults

"Restoring previous formatting, removed by editor Montanabw, who has been asked on at least three previous occasions not to edit the talk-page contributions of others" This is bull. Only this one particular time have I EVER deliberately changed something you wrote, and here it was only formatting, not content. You have had some other talk page comments get scrambled up due to anything from edit conflicts to computer gremlins to vandals, but I personally have NEVER deliberately changed anything you have written (I've never changed what ANYONE has written!!!) and am very insulted that you think I have. I tried to explain myself previously to you about this, as well. I have really had it with your sheer meanness and constant insults. Maybe you have no idea how obnoxious and flat out cruel you sound online, but let me just say that I have had it with your attitude. Contribute on the issue, stick to the issue, argue the issue as much as you want, but can the insults. Oh, and how about writing some more actual content instead of criticizing everyone else's? It would be nice for you to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem of wikipedia's incivility. Montanabw^(talk) 16:36, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to the Music Theory Project!

Hello there! Just greeting you - saw that you recently updated our page and added your name in our project. As project coordinator, I would like to welcome you and if you have any questions, let me know! --Devin.chaloux (talk) 16:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

French

Wanted to thank you for your work on the new French breeds article. Not sure if we need yet another navbox, but oh well, we already have them, so I guess what's yet another one for another nation. But three things, two minor, the third could be another round in our ongoing differences of opinion, but I'm drawing our attention to it now because it's a good faith action on my part, reflecting my sincere views. Montanabw^(talk) 00:12, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Needed somewhere to create some redlinks and get a picture of the size of the problem. We're not allowed (sez who?) to put them in the list of breeds, so this was a quick solution. There should probably be another list of breeds that allows them to be listed whether they have an article here or not. Or move the current one to List of horse breeds with an article in Wikipedia and allow the other to become complete. The complete list should probably have at the very least 1400 entries, as that is about how many are listed by the FAO

The problem is that the "list" used to have everybody and their dog (in a couple cases) on it, stuff even the FAO won't consider. I think a Livestock breeds recognized by the FAO list would be fine, but as they say, who wants to bell the cat? You want to do a horse breeds recognized by the FAO and do all 1400 entries, with piped links to the wikipedia articles we have already, I won't stop you. But the list of horse breeds is primarily a navigational list with some general information, and per WP:LISTPURP, most redlink lists should remain in user space. And FAO list, even if mostly redlinks, could still have a purpose by that criterion. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

...

1. Can you add your new articles to the List of horse breeds (we have a separate section for extinct breeds)?

Yes, in due course ...

Thanks. By the way, no need to add the List to every article because we have it on the Equine template already. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

1. You will save others time if you add WPEQ tags yourself or finish the assessments on the WPEQ tag. Basically, it's fine to assess your own stuff, but when in doubt, it's polite to aim low. You can figure out stub, start, C, B, class easily enough from the guidelines, and we do pretty much ALL new articles as "low" importance unless there is an extraordinary reason to have them higher (all the mid and better topics should have already been created)

Yes, in due course ... and yes, I know all that, obviously ...

I just do it as soon as the article is up so I don't forget, but that's just me. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

1. I moved a couple of your articles from their French name to an English name. I know we've had this spat before, on the Italian breeds, but I really DO think that WP:USEENGLISH trumps unless there is a very good reason (like the Selle Français, which is called that by English speakers as well). As a preemptive move, I invited Tsaag Valren to comment on the Template talk:Horse breeds of France page. He's French, so if the folks there care, that is worth knowing. Montanabw^(talk) 00:12, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

You should probably review your understanding of WP:USEENGLISH again. It does not mean "make up some name that sounds like an English name and use that", but "use the name that is most often used in English-language sources"; bear in mind "Portuguese for Brazilian towns". What sources use the names you have chosen for those two articles? Which by the way I have no particular gripe with. Anyway, to avoid any possible future disagreement, please regard any move you plan of any article I have created, in this project or elsewhere, as potentially contentious and just tag it and list it at WP:Requested moves like anyone else, OK? And I'll do the same. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:29, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Be nice. You've been doing pretty good so far at toning down the snark until the above. We can get through this. But I shall submit substantive changes you don't agree with to the drama boards and let everyone on wiki have their shot at it for a month and a half. (big, dramatic sigh) I wish we could just agree on this somehow. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

You're right, but Cob normand and Carossier normand are very similar in their history and their use, Carrossier normand is just the Cob normand before crossbreedings with Norfolk trotter and Thoroughbred, so do you think it needs separate articles ? Laetitia Bataille say that "L'origine du cob normand se confond avec celle du carrossier normand" --Tsaag Valren (talk) 12:16, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I really don't know, I'm just asking! As you know, I have less-than-zero knowledge of this topic. I just noticed that the two were treated as separate in a couple of places; and I think Laetitia is treating them as separate too, even if they have common origins. Hmm, I see she does not include thoroughbred among the crosses in the 19th century. Anyway, whatever you think is good with me. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll go with Tsaag also. By the way, we should somehow cross-link Anglo-Norman horse with Norman cob. Maybe move Anglo-Norman to the extinct section of the list if it really is extinct. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:Equestrian Sports

I am going to revert some of the changes you made to the template, but before doing so, wanted to give you my rationale behind my changes.

You changed the uppercase "TREC" to the lowercase (but capitalized) "Trec". I think that TREC is correct, since it is an acronym for Techniques de Randonnée Équestre de Compétition. Even in English, the capitalized acronym seems to always be used (see the web site for the British governing body, TREC-UK at http://www/trec-uk.com/ But I may be mistaken, of course. Do you know of any official organizations that spell it "Trec"?

You removed Horseball and Tent Pegging from the list of FEI-recognized, non-Olympic disciplines. Although these two disciplines are hard to find on the FEI web site, they remain the FEI's two bona fide regional disciplines: see http://admin.fei.org/Development/Regional_Disciplines/Pages/Horseball.aspx and http://admin.fei.org/Development/Regional_Disciplines/Pages/Tent_Pegging.aspx I am looking for the link to an article I read a while ago, that said the FEI is thinking of changing their name from "Regional Disciplines" to "Associate Disciplines" or something else, but have not made up their minds yet, which is why they do not currently appear prominently on their web site.

I live in France where TREC and Horseball are a lot more common than in other countries!

WarlanderHorse (talk) 22:09, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Dogeared

Just an FYI that I'm not a pro-ear-cropping person at all, just was trying to keep the tone neutral with my edits. You will note that I added even more stuff from that law review article (one can make the point in NPOV language...) You made some good edits and thanks for the help. Montanabw^(talk) 22:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Pace (unit)

Pace is an obvious anthropic unit. I am at a loss to understand why you think clarification is needed on this. SpinningSpark 17:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, can you give me a reliable academic reference that says so? Obviously I have no trouble agreeing that the pace is a human-based unit; but I'm having the greatest difficulty in finding any reference whatsoever that uses the phrase "anthropic units" in this sense; the phrase is used, but usually with quite another meaning. That is what needs to be clarified, I believe. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:39, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

You seem to agree that the pace is within the definition given in anthropic unit but disagree with the terminology and title of that article. I suggest you reach consensus at that article first before addressing the links to it. Or else propose it for deletion. As for papers that use the term, several (not all) of the papers in this search seem to use it that sense although the list is worryingly short. SpinningSpark 19:40, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

JLAN, your wholesale removal of content and links from an article is a little over the top. I'm all for research, but there is a better approach than blanking things and using redirects, which is to improve content. I put a few thoughts on the main article talk page and restored what you removed. 21:44, 27 September 2011 (UTC) Montanabw^(talk) 16:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Advice

JLAN, your behavior is becoming increasingly personal in its targeting of articles that I specifically have worked on and I am concerned about this. It is clear that I am willing to work with you when you are reasonable and refrain from inflammatory comments or an abusive tone, as happened on the ear-cropping article, which I started and is stronger for your contributions. You would do far better to do more of this sort of work where you have been a positive contributor who finds sources first and makes positive contributions rather than criticizing the work of others (often others who are no longer active and cannot defend themselves). Just some friendly advice. Montanabw^(talk) 17:32, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Foot / Fuß / voet / pied

Hi Justlettersandnumber,

I have seen your response to my revocation of your changes. Are you happy to leave the foreign Wikipedia references in place for a week or two so that they are markers of work to be done. We can chip away at this together.

Regards Martinvl (talk) 20:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course, why not? Only thing is, as I mentioned, I will be away for the next few days. But happy to lend a hand on my return. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

A wise man

Will not put threatening vandalism templates on another user's talk page when the real issue is a simple editing dispute. A simple "citation needed" tag would do. And if you can find Summerhays, he might be the source of the problem, if Hendricks is to be believed. (and while Hendricks is a weak source, she doesn't appear to make it up out of whole cloth) Montanabw^(talk) 23:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Informal warning

JLAN, I'm not going to template you for what you are doing on Andalusian, but you have got to stop this tendentious obsession with height and nitpicking every last detail. You had ample opportunity to examine this article for months, you knew it was there, and to attack it on the eve of it going on the main page in the manner you are taking is just plain rude. I am quite tired of your attitude and behavior and you need to stop it now. You are doing very little to help wikipedia, you are only running down other, respected editors who ahve put in hours of work on these articles and if you cannot be part of the solution, I urge you to at lease cease being part of the problem. Montanabw^(talk) 00:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I am also going to recommend that you read User:Gamaliel/Tips. Seems appropriate, even though you are no longer a new user. Montanabw^(talk) 16:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Stop your harassment of Dana and your obsession with the height and measurement templates. You are bullying another user and it is inappropriate. I really don't want to take your behavior to the drama boards, but you really need to quit being such a jackass. Montanabw^(talk) 01:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

She asked you to stay off her talk page. You really should do so. PumpkinSky talk 22:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are mistaken. No-one has asked me anything of the sort. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I did. On my talk page. After your last comment. But I'll say it here too. But as I just did some cleanup there and tossed it all, I'll say it here: Please stay off my talk page. Montanabw^(talk) 18:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Relatively uninvolved pair of eyes

Hi JLAN, first, I' d like to thank you for your very kind email which you sent me during that very unpleasant little spat. It was truly appreciated, and very unexpected, and it did make me feel a bit better.(>**)> Hugz for that!

With regard to the history of spats and squabbles, I've taken several hours to look through a lot of them, and through a lot of your contributions, too.

You've made some excellent contributions during your time here, and made some significant improvements as well. However, you do have a tendency to get into spats and squabbles with other editors when you're in disagreement with them, and these spats and squabbles do escalate. I can see irritability and rattiness on all sides, not just from you, and I've really tried very hard to get into the roots and find out what's been going wrong, where. Once any of us has a history of disagreements with others, it's very hard to dissociate the "current spat" emotionally from the history of previous spats, so everyone is bringing months'-worth of old emotional baggage to each spat. This is just human nature, and it's incredibly hard to stop ourselves from doing this kind of stuff. It's part of being human. I have a lot of sympathy for everybody involved in these disagreements; it's all emotionally-wearing stuff, and unpleasant for all concerned.

Having said that, it does seem that you're very often outvoted, outnumbered, and consensus clearly against you, in these spats and disagreements. I think part of the history of problems is that you appear to find it difficult to accept when this is the case, and continue to argue your point long past the time when it should have been dropped. It appears that this is where all the irritability stems from, both your own irritability and that of other editors. There has been fault with rattiness and bits of snark and name-calling on both / all sides, but I have yet to find a case where the degeneration-into-spat has occurred from any other cause than you failing to accept that you have been outnumbered, consensus is against you, and you should quietly drop the argument and back away.

My advice to you would be to take a couple of days' break from editing when you find yourself outnumbered, just to give yourself time to simmer down again and recover from the fact that consensus was against you. Some people find this much harder to do than others; it's all part of the variety to be found within humans. Also, try your best not to drag old disagreements into new places; when you've found that consensus is against you on a subject in one place, do try really hard not to go back into the same, or same type, of arguments in another place just to see if it will work on a different page. This is indeed very irritating for other editors. And for you, too! It just brings all that old baggage and all its associated emotions and angst up to the surface again.

It's possible that some of what you're doing isn't as apparent to you as it is to others, but on the surface it does have the appearance of you perpetuating your own private war of attrition.

I most strongly advise you to avoid the subjects of horse height measurements, and of which-breed-society-is-right, or which-breed-society-is-the-original (and the associated "the original one is the only one worth listening to"). These seem to be your major bones of contention, and if you cannot avoid them of your own volition, you may find yourself under an official topic ban on them, which would be a shame, as it might prevent you from making those really helpful contributions which you do make. A topic ban on "anything to do with horses, broadly construed" would severely restrict your editing here, and force you to find other areas to focus on. It would be better for everyone if you could self-impose the heights and breed societies thing, before it is forced upon you.

I really do hope that avoiding these areas will wind down all the old history of spats and squabbles, and allow everyone to take a breather and recover. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

January 2012

Your recent editing history shows that you are in danger of breaking the three-revert rule, or that you may have already broken it. An editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Breaking the three-revert rule often leads to a block.

If you wish to avoid being blocked, instead of reverting, please use the article's talk page to discuss the changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. You may still be blocked for edit warring even if you do not exceed the technical limit of the three-revert rule if your behavior indicates that you intend to continue to revert repeatedly. —slakr^\ talk / 00:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Would you mind giving me some hint as to where you think this might have taken place? Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:01, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Moved Stone (imperial mass) to Stone (unit)

Hello JLAN. See the result of the move discussion at Talk:Stone (imperial mass)#Move? Let me know if I missed anything. The article at Picul might need further revision by editors to integrate the merged material better. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 14:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I saw. Thank you very much for handling that. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:19, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Chicken coloru list

Thanks for the notification. I will attempt to help expand it, however the major problem with compiling such a list is that the name used for a colour varies between countries and breeds. For example, one colour, partridge, is called dark in the Brahma breed, but it is called partridge in Wyandotte’s. Such occurences would have to be noted. Anjwalker ^Talk 01:10, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Haflinger

Hey Justlettersandnumbers, the article uses at least a dozen times South Tyrol, why would you start to use Alto Adige in the last paragraph? That's simply confusing for readers. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style strongly recommends consistency within articles. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 20:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism

Can you please explain the vandalism you believe you're seeing here? I don't see anything that would qualify as vandalism, but I may be missing something. Be aware that false accusations of vandalism is uncivil and can be construed as a form of personal attacks. You can respond here to keep the thread together, I've added your page to my watchlist so I'll see it. Dreadstar ☥ 21:25, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, there! Well, I think my edit summary read something like "test edit? vandalism?", and was intended more as an expression of total mystification than as an accusation. What I saw was the sudden removal of a large proportion of the article, including ten or so edits by the poor soul who is so generously trying to review it, and a good deal of relevant material I'd added myself, and some format errors that I was trying to fix. Later I saw a sort of justification by User:Montanabw on the talk page. Whether or not such behaviour on her part is normal in this wiki, or could in itself be construed as uncivil, I wouldn't know; I've seen it before, but only from that same editor. But in general, yes, I consider the motiveless mass removal of relevant and carefully referenced information to be vandalism. Anyway, she's now filed an ANI, so doubtless all the knots will come to the comb. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:10, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the edit summary she wrote was very clear on why that content was removed. It appeared that your edit was attempt to revert war the material you added without consensus - the "normal in this wiki" is supposed to be Wikipedia:Consensus In the future, I'd refrain from showing your "mystification" by adding edit summaries like this one, and if someone reverts you, then hash it out on the talk page. Much safer that way... :) Good luck with the AN/I... Dreadstar ☥ 00:15, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I find it very concerning that you immediately disrupted an article that Dana Boomer put up for GA; from a quick look at the editing history, it does indeed appear that you are wikihounding her, regardless of your true intentions. Also I must agree with Ealdgyth's comment here that your statements about Dana on AN/I are inappropriate and should be struck, I think they are not only uncivil but are very close, if not crossing the line to being personal attacks. This coupled with the above false vandalism accusations, make it look like you have a grudge against both those editors and are intentionally hounding them and causing disruption. If this continues, you risk being blocked and possibly banned from certain articles and restricted from interacting with those editors. I'd strongly suggest you strike the comments you made about Dana Boomer and restrict yourself from even the apperance of following either of those editor's editing. Dreadstar ☥ 00:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

And no, it is difficult to believe that you were unaware of Dana's intention to nominate the article for GA before you started editing it, as you state here, she clearly stated that here and here before your first edit there. Mainly, though, your disruptive edits were made after the nomination. Even if this was not intentional, you can surely see how it looks. Dreadstar ☥ 00:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

ANI filed

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Montanabw^(talk) 21:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Justlettersandnumbers. I've just posted on the ANI. I was wondering if you and Montanabw could try and keep out of each others way, I've just posted a note on her talk page and I'm wondering if you can try to do the same too. Also, since Dana boomer is feeling harassed by your recent work, it would be a good idea to leave her nominations and work alone for a bit too. Do you think that's something you could do? Worm^TT · (talk) 11:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

In principle, yes, of course, no problem. Actually, that's more or less what I've been doing since the last round of aggression from montanabw - see pesky's advice to me higher up. I wrote some articles on Italian chickens, Italian mediaeval scientists, etc. I returned to wikiproject equine when I saw that another editor, Parkwells, had managed to make some edits that were not instantly reverted, but (I think?) I still stayed away from horse breed articles, which are my main interest here. The pig thing was an extremely unfortunate coincidence. In practice? That's a little harder. If you're asking me to stay away from the horse project completely, I'll do it; but somewhat unwillingly, as to my mind that would serve to reinforce the ownership claim of montanabw and her tag team. That said, I am open to any sort of compromise or solution, provided it gets this monkey off my back. I plan to post my own suggestions for the future of the horse project at AN/I during today. Thanks for your interest, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:30, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd suggest keeping away from horses for a bit in any case - at least to let things die down. I don't however see that a formal ban is needed anywhere at the moment, I think we're quite early in the process of escalation. Pesky's advise above is good, it might be a good idea to focus on de-escalation, and keep in mind that you should comment on the content, not the editor, and I think you'll be fine. If you ever need anything, you know where I am. Worm^TT · (talk) 11:38, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm happy to agree to something of the sort, provided of course that the other two editors do the same. I believe it would clearer if a specific period were agreed for all three. I'll abide by whatever you agree with them. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:54, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

JLAN, is there any way I can help, at all? Just with maybe things like "how the other person sees it" kind of stuff? I'm sure you mean well, and you do some seriously good stuff. But I think that part of the problem is that when you see yourself, and the way you put t hings, as being assertive, and firm, and so on, you may not realise that for the person on the receiving end (and for people reading it) what it actually comes across as is bullying. I'm pretty sure you don't actually mean to bully people, and you might be quite horrified to realise that that is how you come over. I'd really like to try helping you steer into a slightly "softer" approach with people. I "know" Worm, he's a good egg, and we get on OK with each other (we've worked together in non-article space for quite a while). I think part of the reason Montana finally got really fed up is that Dana is a very gentle person, and just can't take the "strength" of what you've been doing, and Montana felt (and I tend to agree with her here) that Dana needed someone else to step in and protect her. I'm sorry if it really shocks you that people might think that others need to be protected from you; I'm sure that's not what you mean to be. I used to have a lot of trouble with "being too intense" until I learned (from someone else!) how I was coming across; I'm a high-functioning autistic, so I've literally had to "learn" it; it's not hardwired-in instinctive. That's actually partly why I think it may be possible that I could help. (>**)>Hugz (hugz to Worm, too).

Ummmm, final note; things like referring to "the ownership claim of montanabw and her tag team" really doesn;t help. We're not a tag team, Montanabw doesn't "own" WPEQ, she's actually a tremendously good collaborative and helpful editor; she mentored me through my early days in WPEQ despite me obsessing about things, and she and Dana and Kim and a few others inspired me to produce History of the horse in Britain. I think you're probably just misconstruing the WPEQ team's collegiality (if that's a word). Pesky (talk) 09:51, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey JLAN. I've put some thoughts and suggestions up at ANI. Please do have a look and let me know if there's anything you disagree with. Worm^TT · (talk) 15:00, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I saw. Many thanks indeed. I accept your suggestions with pleasure. I've not yet said so there because I feel that there's quite a lot of stuff I still need to sort out with montanabw, and I'm not sure whether to try to do that there or in user talk. My preference would be for there, under the eyes of the community, but perhaps the community has had enough of our antics? What do you advise?

Is it reasonable for me to ask the horse project to discuss adoption of a local civility policy, such as we have at Wikiproject Music Theory? If so, what would be the right way to initiate such a discussion? To be honest, I don't think it would make the slightest difference to any of the other editors, but might over time help to restore a more pleasant atmosphere there. I'm very aware that users such as Ealdgyth have distanced themselves from the project because of the constant argument, and would like to see that tendency reversed.

I'd like to thank you for the considerable time and effort you've dedicated to this, and the balance you've brought. Frankly, I wish I had met more editors like you when I came here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:04, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear it. I notice Montanabw had an additional request that when Dana boomer nominates an article for GA or FA, you take concerns to the talk page rather than edit the article. I don't see any problem with that, and wondered if you'd mind agreeing to that too. As for stuff to sort out with Montanabw, I'd certainly suggest it not happening at ANI - ANI is meant to be for incidents, which need urgent administrator intervention. I'm not 100% certain what you'd need to sort out with Montanabw, if I'm honest.

As for the civility policy or any other large scale changes to the equine wikiproject, I'd would put them in the "bad idea" pile. The fact is that there is no consensus that there is a general civility problem in that project or that the problem there extends beyond you and Montanabw (the "constant argument" seems to revolve around the pair of you, individually or together). As I suggested, perhaps it'd be a good idea to try working in another area of wikipedia. Worm^TT · (talk) 13:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if you watched my page or not...

But I replied. With some well meant advice. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:23, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

A Sam Cooke song for you!

	A Sam Cooke song for you!
	Dianna has given you a Sam Cooke song! Sam Cooke songs promote wiki-love and help editors cope when they are discouraged. Here is your Sam Cooke song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbO2_077ixs Dianna (talk) 17:41, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

... and a Monkees one, too

... and I remember when this first came out, though I didn't realise what it meant at the time. I think I understand it better now. Best wishes, Pesky (talk) 13:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Serraglio

Hallo Justlettersandnumbers,
I did not remove any references, just reordered them. Moreover, I reinserted he info that the word is an Italian one. The reordering was necessary since serraculum, in its original meaning, derives from serrare, which comes from sera, and this was not clear from the text. See for example the Georges-Calonghi dictionary about that. Alex2006 (talk) 04:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

No, you didn't remove references, you removed referenced material - the statement from Chambers that the derivation from saray results from confusion. If you have a reference for the derivation of serraculum it would be good to insert it (I don't have that dictionary). As it stands, what you have written is WP:SYNTH. You might also read up on BRD (see below). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Ghetto

Hallo
It's me again. I want to point out again that delli is not a misspelling, but plain ancient Italian. So you cannot "correct" it, exactly as you should not correct Dante`s Commedia, or I should avoid correcting Shakespeare's english. I put as reference an 18th century Rome guide, but I could use my copy of De Rossi of 1697, or a map of Rome of 17th - 18th century. And now a general remark: if you think that something on wikipedia is wrong, and change it, and someone other does not agree and reverts your change, you should start a discussion based on the original version, not revert it again. This process is called BRD. Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 05:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

You should probably take a look at WP:Manual of Style/Spelling#Archaic spelling, which reads in part "Older sources use many archaic variants (such as shew for show), which are not to be used outside quotations except in special circumstances (for example, quire may be used instead of choir in architectural contexts)" and may help to explain why our article on Shakespeare is not written in Shakespearean English and why it is not appropriate to use "plain ancient Italian" (which by the way that is not, degli and deglj being common 16th-century spellings) in this article. But this should now be moved to the talk page of the article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Please look in to this again

Dear Justlettersandnumbers, I saw your edit in the article Jayen Varma created by me. I agree that RecordSetter is an approved organisation by WP while Record Holders Republic is not a recognized organisation according to WP. But many other articles in WP have included Record Holders Republic's links. I have included the record only as an additional information. Many news papers have published such information too. So please be kind enough to replace the line which you had removed as an additional information. Thanks a lot. --Musicindia1 (talk) 01:21, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi! I see that you found the discussion of this. My personal opinion: adding material from poor sources reflects badly on Wikipedia and badly on the topic of the article. He's perfectly notable and interesting without a bogus certificate from some beer-swilling Brit (a category to which I too happen to belong). Do you agree? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I agree to your opinion about the notability of the person and about adding materials from poor sources unnecessarily. I saw your opinion on the discussion page too. What do you suggest? Do you want me to remove the information about RecordSetter also now? Or should we wait for the consensus in the discussion? If I remove the said information about RecordSetter from the article, can I add the links of RHR and RecordSetter just as external links? Thanks--Musicindia1 (talk) 06:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that would be covered by WP:BLPEL: "Questionable or self-published sources should not be included in the "Further reading" or "External links" sections of BLPs". But it'd probably be better to continue this on the Reliable sources noticeboard where other people are more likely to see it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I will wait for a favorable consensus. Thanks--Musicindia1 (talk) 13:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Gathorne Robert Girdlestone

Greetings to you, Justlettersandnumbers. Thank you so much for starting and assisting with Professor Girdlestone's article.

A man who effectively revolutionized orthopedics and moved human and animal surgery forward a very long way, and saved the lives of numerous animals which would otherwise have had to be euthanized through loss of mobility, deserved to be included.

As and when my time permits, I will get onto adding much more. Right now though, Ramadan is taking its toll on me, and I am having difficulty even thinking straight!

Regards to you, Bashir-ibn-john (talk) 22:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Manners

Your snarky attitude is not helpful to the projects and articles you are working on, so please tone it down. You are capable of solid contributions, but your attitude, particularly in edit summaries, gets in the way of winning friends and allies. Phrases like "nonsense" are unnecessary and, quite frankly, inappropriate. I know you are an adult and not a troll or an adolescent, so please avoid sounding like a troll or an arrogant youngster. Montanabw^(talk) 16:50, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I am not prepared to take advice on manners from you; nor indeed to pay the slightest attention to this or any other personal remark you may choose to make about me. Nor do I require any comment from you on the quality or otherwise of my contributions to the project. If you write ungrammatical nonsense such as "The horse ... is designed to help the horse as a prey animal", you should expect it to be described as such. That such nonsense should creep into an article by mistake is regrettable but understandable. That you should revert the efforts to remedy it of a well-intentioned editor on the pretence that the gibberish was the result of an intentional "nuance" is just pathetic. You might like to ask yourself whether it might also appear to others to be more than a little dishonest. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:26, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Justlettersandnumbers. You have new messages at Montanabw's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

No need to post both places, I'll see it. Montanabw^(talk) 18:52, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Un piccolo gesto di solidarietà

Ciao, JLAN! I see that this user has created a lot of sections on your talk page, many of which seem intended to reprimand you for not doing things the way she thinks they should be done. I'm sorry you've had to interact with her so much, and for so long. I've recently been insulted by her too, and was (strangely) relived to see that I'm not the only one. She seems to think that she has some kind of authority over other users, and when that authority is challenged, she reacts like a tyrannical child. When her intimidation is resisted with sound arguments, she hides behind Wikipedia policy. (And then, the hypocrisy of her giving you advice on manners! Che ridere! ) Anyway, I only meant this message as a small gesture of solidarity. I wish you buona fortuna in your continued work on Wikiproject equine! 75.27.42.188 (talk) 23:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

And I watchlist the talk pages of my favorite editors too! Montanabw^(talk) 23:04, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Grazie, apprezzo molto il gesto. Hai indovinato proprio bene, fa ridere davvero. Ma chi se ne frega? Come ha detto non-mi-ricordo-chi: 'Coraggio, il meglio è passato'. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 02:06, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Category:Archaeological terminology

What "apparent consensus" at CFD? Most of the entries added so far should not be. Assemblage (archaeology) and Archaeological association may fairly be called "terminology", but others may not - there is no special archaological meaning. Agora and amphora are just words for types of thing archaeologists are interested in. You might as well include spade. And so on. Johnbod (talk) 23:47, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Ermm, did you read the discussion? That (actually quite clear) consensus. I think Agora is a term used in archaeology; but if you are sure it isn't, do please go ahead and remove it from the category. Others too, if you like; I just added a few of those suggested by another editor. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:06, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

No, of course I hadn't, which is why I asked. I've commented there, but 3 supports, 1 oppose, 1 delete is not exactly clear consensus, & you should have waited for the close. Of course Agora is a term used in archaeology (just like spade or ring), but that does not mean it should be in the category. Johnbod (talk) 02:46, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. And yes, maybe I should have waited. Please act as you wish. I have to admit to a profound accidie in relation to the topic. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, apologies if I sounded snappy. One other good reason for limiting the scope is that it would reduce the potential size of the category from a 4 digit to a 3 digit number. Johnbod (talk) 12:50, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

No problem, really. And yes, a fair point, though in general I think an over-populated category is preferable to no category at all. I'm just faintly curious to see how the deletion discussion ends. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:58, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for your clarification which helped me understand Wikipedia better. SarahPML (talk) 21:51, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, thank you! Have fun here! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:50, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For your excellent work clearing up the confusion with Saint Martin's School of Art Central School of Art and Design and Central Saint Martins. Theroadislong (talk) 20:02, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you indeed! I'm truly honoured. The job is by no means done yet, but I think the end is in sight at last. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:21, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Template: COI Editnotice

Hi Justletters. I noticed you've been using the template I've been slowly pushing through the Wikipedia bureaucracy for about a year now. Based on consensus in the Village Pump back in March, the template is starting to be deployed on a trial basis.

I was wondering if you had an interest if you could take a look at this page. This is what pre-loads when a COI editor clicks on the "Click Here" button in the template to request a correction or suggest content. A lot of PRs that use it are making really crappy submissions and I don't know if that's the template's fault necessarily or if there is a better way to set it up.

Eventually I would like to replace it with an AfC-like Wizard. Anyways, if you have time to look at the pre-loaded Request Edit, I'd be interested in your thoughts. CorporateM (Talk) 13:16, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey, if you have any interest, I am also working on a Q&A on paid editing for the Signpost here and would be interested in any thoughts. CorporateM (Talk) 15:16, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank-you

Thanks for the work you've being doing on some of those articles with 'Dr' and 'PhD' in them. I quailed somewhat at the sheer number, but it was great to see someone making a start. Some of them did look suitable for nominating for deletion (or using PROD or CSD), and I see you've been doing that as well. How far down the search list did you get? Carcharoth (talk) 23:58, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I saw your post and thought, why not? I fear I didn't get very far at all. I was doing 20 at a time, because a longer list was too daunting. I think I might have gone through 5 or 6 pages of 20, of which not quite all were positives. As you have noticed, some had other problems too, and those took more time. I might do some more tomorrow, but right now I'm off to sleep. 'Night, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:16, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Guy Huygens

Good work there. I've blocked the whole lot of sockpuppets and have also semi-protected the article for a month. De728631 (talk) 18:29, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for sorting it. Any credit should go User:Anne Delong, who noticed the thing with the Franks. Is it worth giving fr.wp a heads-up on this also? These and I think other Franks have been active there too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:41, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. I've contacted Pyb at his Commons account. He's an admin at the French WP. De728631 (talk) 19:37, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Sort of related

And snark aside, my JSTOR account won't let me at this source other than the abstract. Any chance you can dig up the whole thing? I'm also putting in word with my friendly local librarian to see what magic can occur there... Montanabw^(talk) 00:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

MAINTAINING A LANGUAGE OF CULTURE: OUTCOMES OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN SHIFT AS A PREDICTOR FOR SPANISH IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST YASMINE BEALE-RIVAYA American Speech , Vol. 86, No. 4 (WINTER 2011), pp. 415-440 Published by: Duke University Press Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41485393

No, sorry, I only get the abstract and the bibliography. Suggest trying it at Resource requests. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:10, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

OK sounds like we are in the same boat here. If my librarian can't dig it up, I'll try that. The Arabic roots of some aspects of Spanish horsemanship is quite interesting to me, and tracing the link from the Islamic world to Ancient Persia is particularly fascinating. Should you run across more and better sources than Bennett (who seems to be the only person who has researched this much), I'd be interested in knowing about them. Montanabw^(talk) 17:55, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I have to hand it to you, it takes a certain kind of bright bloody brass neck! You spatter me with noxious bile each time we meet, and yet here you are asking for help? That said, if you need any assistance in looking up Arabic words in reputable dictionaries, I am happy to oblige; I have Wehr and Al-Fara'id, and can access Lane online. I don't have any great difficulty in reading them. You may find the DRAE useful; it gives, for example, the slightly perplexing derivation of Spanish: jáquima, "halter", from Arabic šakīmah, "bit", which is currently unreferenced in some of our articles. My Spanish is not good, but I am happy to answer questions (when I can) on the meaning of entries there. I can't see any of it online, but I have wondered if A dictionary of New Mexico and southern Colorado Spanish by Rubén Cobos might be helpful in this area if it gives etymologies. This review of Smead's book lists the sources he worked from, some of which might perhaps be of use. I personally would use the Online Etymology Dictionary with great circumspection and only for hints on what to look for in more reliable sources elsewhere, and would discount Bennett completely; her witterings on the topic of horse domestication would have been quickly and rightly reverted as OR here, and I see no reason to trust her more on other topics. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:10, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so sometimes I figure that if something passes your muster, then it's pretty unassailable. And, from my perspective, you splatter the bile first, I only respond due to the insults. And Bennett does not "twitter," (see, that's the stuff you do that pisses people off) though some of her conclusions I disagree with - or they have simply been written in the 1990s and subsequent studies have improved our knowledge. But nonetheless, thank you. Montanabw^(talk) 00:45, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

If you are interested, I did get the full text of the above article, my librarian gave me the following advice: "Several databases showed up as offering access to this journal, but with varying coverage dates. I chose the e-Duke Journals Scholarly Collection database as their coverage was from 2000 to present. Once I clicked on this link and was directed to the database, I searched the article's title and retrieved it immediately." If you want a copy, email me, I'd be glad to send it to you. (Haven't read it yet, looking forward to doing so). We DO spat, but I believe you are dedicated to finding solid source material and there is little enough content editing here as it is. So where there is a place to collaborate, I'll collaborate, regardless of personality issues. Montanabw^(talk) 20:46, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that stuff is usually easy if you have access to a university or good public library, which unfortunately I no longer do, and damned near impossible if you don't. Thanks for the offer, but don't send it right away, thanks - I already have more to read than I know what to do with. Please do however feel free to ask if at any time you need advice on the Arabic side of things, or need a correct transliteration or anything. Witter, by the way, is a real word, of ancient origin but modern usage. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:39, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The online world is a wondrous thing; I've pulled up a lot of stuff via contacting various libraries directly. My connection to the local college gets me access to even more things. Montanabw^(talk) 00:37, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

And definition 2 of the verb form appears to indeed be the inspiration for Twitter! Montanabw^(talk) 00:37, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Catch-22

JLAN....an interesting catch 22. Maybe you can help me to understand. The International Society for Emergy Research, after reading the terrible entry regarding emergy, asked that I as it's historian write an article for the Wikipedia. I did as they requested. As a scientist who has spent the last 30 years researching in the field of emergy it was felt that I had the perspective necessary to write such an article. I am now told that I cannot write such an entry because I am too close to the subject. It seems that writing for an encyclopedia subject should come from experts in that field. How do we get around this catch 22? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mtbrown8 (talk • contribs) 23:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page lurker weighing in) Mtbrown8, you have my sympathy, to some extent, but let me explain. Basically wikipedia has this policy for two reasons. The first is the no advertising policy on wikipedia. Paid editing flies in the face of this policy. The second is that all information on wikipedia should be sourced to reliable, verifiable, neutral third-party sources -- the No original research policy of wikipedia happens to be one that JLAN and others take very seriously. Things likepeer-reviewed scientific journals are ideal. (And if you have written and we can cite to these sources, that is helpful to us, by the way) Finally, there is what I call the On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog problem. We have many people who edit wikipedia and claim they are someone who is an expert, but they actually are the guy who is 42 and still lives in his mom's basement. (Not saying you are, but we run into a lot of self-proclaimed "experts" around here...) The way out for you? Place your concerns on the talk page of the emergy article, and if you have a suggested draft or ideas for fixing glaring errors, perhaps an interested editor (like JLAN) can look at it and implement your suggestions. Think of it as mentoring us as we improve the article so that it is accurate. Does that make sense? Montanabw^(talk) 16:49, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

In case anyone cares, I've started a discussion of this at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Emergy. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:55, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

September 2013

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• experiences in Korea, with his own illustrations, in the [[Hachette]] periodical ''Le Tour du Monde]].<ref name=tour/>

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Tino Caspanello

Because he was born in Italy. People born in Sicily are Italian. Italians are an ethnic group. See Italians. "Sicilian" indicates a place. It indicates neither a nationality nor an ethnicity. I don't have problems. I respect the NPOV policy of Wikipedia. I classified them as a vandalism because the same IP user was responsible of similar changes and for the reasons I told you above. Greetings --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 00:15, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

You are quite wrong. People born in Sicily consider themselves Sicilian. They have Italian nationality, but are ethnically and linguistically quite distinct. This is recognised by the Italian state, which allows Sicily the status of an autonomous region. Regardless of whether you are wrong are right, you need to establish consensus for your edits, avoid describing the perfectly correct edits of other editors as vandalism, and probably look for a quite different area into which to direct your energies, preferably one in which you have some knowledge or experience. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

You are quite wrong too. Also people born in Texas or in Paris may consider themselves as texan or parisian. I'm from Sicily, and it is not so common that a Sicilian consider himself Sicilian before Italian. You are wrong on the ethnicity, because it's known that the Italians are an ethnic group. Sicily is an autonomous region for cultural (like the language) and political reasons. The edit you are talking about was made before my undo. Maybe the IP user needed consensus. I study sociology. This is my area. I follow the NPOV policy of Wikipedia as I told you. I support the truth. The term at the beginning of the biographies points out the ethnicity or the nationality and not the birth place. --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 00:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Walter J. Roterlmeyer is correct here. WP:OPENPARAGRAPH says that we should mention nationality, but not ethnicity or former ethnicities unless the ethnicity plays a substantial role in why the person is notable. This is a pretty important rule, because it stops people from endlessly fighting about how to describe people, as it sets a pretty easy to follow standard. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I perfectly agree. In fact it says: "Ethnicity or sexuality should not generally be emphasized in the opening unless it is relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, previous nationalities or the country of birth should not be mentioned in the opening sentence unless they are relevant to the subject's notability." This is what I consider in my edits. For Instance: Petrarch is one of the most important fathers of the Italian Culture (so the term "Italian" is relevant to the subject's notability); Tino Caspanello is Italian because Italy is the country of which he is a citizen, national or permanent resident. This is what the WP:OPENPARAGRAPH says: In most modern-day cases this (location, nationality, or ethnicity) will mean the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident. In all my edits I consider the Opening paragraph rules. --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 04:09, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Qwyrxian. I respect and value your opinion, and agree that I was wrong here, though not for the reasons Rotelmayer gives ("Italian" is a nationality, not an ethnicity; "Sicilian" is an ethnicity, but not a nationality). I also agree that WP:OPENPARAGRAPH says just what you say it says. However – in a spirit of enquiry rather than argument - it seems that nobody takes the blindest bit of notice of it, particularly in articles regarding people from the United Kingdom. This search throws up just under 37,000 articles that contain the phrase "was an English" (I also get over 8000 hits for "was a Scottish", and about 1200 for "was an African American"). Of course not all of those are biographies, and some of them are biographies of people who were born in England when England was a nation. But what about the others? Just to take a single example, why is this British writer described as "Scottish"? That certainly is neither his nationality nor what he is known for. I'm afraid I can see no intrinsic difference between that and regarding Caspanello as Sicilian. I note with interest that the guideline on stating nationality is carefully sidestepped in articles such as Edmund Blampied and James Saumarez, 1st Baron de Saumarez.

Equally, if nationality is to be defined as the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, why in your opinion does Rotelmayer think he can remove "Aretine" from the article on Petrarch, when that gentleman was born in and lived all his life in the nation of Arezzo, which did not fall to the Florentines until ten years after his death? Would you agree with Rotelmayer that Marco Polo was not Venetian?

Rotelmayer describes many the edits of those who revert him as "vandalism"; it looks to me as if he is himself, at the very least, being intentionally disruptive. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I have been told that the UK is a special case, and that technically speaking one can be a national of Scotland, Wales, etc. I don't know enough about it, and don't care to, so I just trust others on the matter. On Petrarch, surprisingly, I just told Rotelmayer that he's not Italian for exactly the reasons you said. I said I wasn't going to get involved, but maybe I'll take a close look. For the numerous number of hyphenated-Americans...quite often that's a problem that needs to be fixed, rather than a good example. But 1) there are legitimate times for ethnicity, as obviously Martin Luther King Jr. should, for example, be called "African-American", and 2) a lot of people are willing to spend a lot of time fighting to preserve ethnicity, and if you do start going down that road, it's going to involve a looooot of arguing (and edit warring by IPs, and sock puppetry, and noticeboards, etc.); this is especially true since there certainly is a fair amount of editorial discretion involved in the matter. It depends on how willing you are to deal with the long term headaches. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:21, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: when Walter asked me on my talk page about Petrarch, I had assumed that the "Italian" was something that had been in the article for a long time, and thus I wasn't interested in "fighting" with a group of established editors/scholars on the matter. But when I checked, I saw that WJR had just made the change to Italian in the last few days; as such, I did decide to come back and correctly revert him. I'm willing to believe that WJR was simply not understanding how MOS:BIO worked, and so hopefully this won't be an ongoing matter. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:28, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thank you for your balanced reply. I've no strong feeling one way or the other here, I'm happy to follow the guidelines that the community has established. But I see a major problem with those guidelines, which appear to me to be (a) gravely unclear and (b) systematically ignored. Whoever told you that the UK is a special case was being somewhat economical with the truth. I happen to come from one those countries. My passport is issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and my nationality is clearly marked on it as "British citizen". I renewed it recently; there is no space on the passport form where one might insert a preference for being regarded as a citizen of one of the countries of the Union. The citizens of the UK are unambiguously British nationals. Anyway, I don't want to beat your ear, but I would like to know what others think. In your opinion, would this discussion best be continued at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies, or at, say, Talk:Petrarch? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:00, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

You cannot compare the Italian and British cases. The United Kingdom is composed by four countries (so-called Four Constituent Nations): England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Whilst Italy is a country with 20 regions as administrative divisions (Lombardy, Sicily, Veneto, Lazio, Tuscany, Campania …). This makes a huge difference.

It seems you read only what you want to read. First of all, Petrarch is considered one the fathers of the Italian culture and one of the three most prominent figures of the Italian language (along with Dante Alighieri and Boccaccio): the term “Italian” is relevant to the subject's notability. Second of all, Arezzo was a city-state, a “Commune”, and not a country and in similar way the term “nationality” didn’t exist at the time. It was used only since the birth of the so-called “Nation-states” such as France, Italy, Germany …

Vandalism issue. I’ll try to explain you again the reason why I considered “vandalism” the edits of August 27th https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/184.147.35.186 Vandalism. As you can see the IP user did them in less than one hour, without consensus and obviously with a great mistake: the IP user didn’t respect the WP:OPENPARAGRAPH that says: “In most modern-day cases this (location, nationality, or ethnicity) will mean the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, or if notable mainly for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable”. For instance: one of the edits was about Luigi Pirandello a Nobel Prize for the Italian Literature, born and dead in Italy; Another edit was about Giovanni Verga, the father of the Italian Verismo, born and dead in Italy.

Finally, I disagree with these changes. In Petrarch's article I added also a reference that states he was Italian: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/454103/Petrarch. I'm surprised you removed the term Italian from Petrarch. It does not make sense for a poet that is considered the father of the Italian language.--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 22:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Replying to your question JLN, I'd say the Petrarch issue is best continued at Talk:Petrarch, and the UK question...maybe MOS, though I bet that if you really wanted to set a standard, you'd need a wider venue. However, I suspect this has probably been discussed before, so you may want to search around the Wikispace archives. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Lilian Pocock

Thanks for comment. Note you have reversed my removal of the reference to a Lilian Pocock window in Welsh church. I took this action following advice from Martin Crampin, an expert on Welsh stained glass, who as an excellent website on the subject. He had visited the church named personally and advised that the window described was not in the church, nor in any churches in the vicinity. My source had been the catalogue of the exhibition covering women artists. Martin and I concluded that the catalogue must have been wrong. As the author of the listing I felt it wrong to leave information that was wrong and removed it. Hope you will revert your action which, clearly taken to protect the article, was much appreciatedWeglinde (talk) 10:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense, even if the personal communications of experts are not admissible as sources here, as of course they would be in the real world. I've reverted my edit until and unless other sources appear. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That is super. I am most obliged.Weglinde (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Breed lists

Hey, you said you felt the Italian breed infobox was experimental and were looking for feedback. Just wanted to drop by and say that though at first glance it seems somewhat overly specific, but it's really very encyclopedic. Some folks might give you guff for it, but keep in mind that other Wikipedias tend to create country-specific breed lists as well (example). And there are also articles like Shetland animal breeds that have become quite well-developed.

The other feedback I'd give is that, especially for old breeds, national origins are often very much not clear-cut. For instance, the Polish chicken is almost certainly not Polish, the Russian Orloff might have actually come from Iran, and so on. In light of that, we should try to make sure the lists and classifications (where potentially vague or disputed) are verified by more than just the DAD-IS, though that's a pretty neutral source on the matter.

Anyway, if you ever need any help, feel free to ping me or drop a note at the WikiProject Agriculture talk page. There's also a slightly inactive livestock subproject there. Keep up the good work, Steven Walling • talk 02:41, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Steven! The reason I described the Italian sheep template as experimental was the very large number of red links, which some might have seen (quite correctly) as being contrary to usual practice; I wanted people to feel free to kick it into touch if they didn't like it. I'm not a great sheep-expert, but will try to turn some of those links blue in the next few days. Point very well taken about the lack of certainty about national origins - you'll perhaps have noticed that I have pasted small-print disclaimers all over both the lists and the templates. Funny you should mention the Polish chicken - I started Padovana chicken a while ago.

On a completely different topic: I believe you were among those responsible for negotiating the excellent JSTOR access for Wikipedians? Do you think it might be possible to arrange something similar with the DNB for editors outside Britain? They obviously aren't particularly jealous of their content if it is available in every library in the country, but they still lock out those of us that are not. I sometimes manage to get in through a back door, but it's frustrating when I can't. Just a thought ... Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Of note, see Ragusano, which I just created as a dab. Feel free to clean it up as you see fit, but so far there's a wine, a cheese and a donkey breed, so... a dab. Speaking of a back door to JSTOR, if you are desperate for an article, drop me an email, I can probably shoot you a pdf. Montanabw^(talk) 22:04, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, that's very helpful. I'd probably have got around to it in about 2022 unless I forgot. There may also be some from the other, more important, Ragusa (see Dubrovnik). That grape variety should probably be a redirect to Greco (grape), by the way. I'm OK for JSTOR for now, thanks - my SOAS alumnus access was supposed to expire in July, but doesn't yet seem to have done so. I have a trick for getting into the DNB, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't; but in any case a request at WP:RX for one of those seems to have a turn-around time of about 8 minutes. But thanks for the offer. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:35, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

No prob, I think I'll leave the grape for those who care more than I do. Looks like multiple names and dabs there. Ditto for the link to Ragusa, that's their problem (smile). The dab cleaners are a pretty active bunch, they'll probably fix it up even nicer by at least 2018! Montanabw^(talk) 19:52, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Art spam

FYI, the thread you linked to in your removals, such as here, has been archived, so that section link doesn't work any more. You'll need to link directly to the archived section if that comes up again. Cheers, postdlf (talk) 00:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

...though now that I take a closer look, we have a bigger problem: you're removing citations. Is it your claim that these are not reliable sources? If they are, then spam isn't an issue if they are actually providing sourcing for content in the articles rather than just sitting in an external links section. postdlf (talk) 00:48, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that references have been removed from the Julian Opie article (and many others) after a user changed artinfo.com to blouinartinfo.com. Don't know why that web site decided to change its name (publisher vanity? have they learned nothing from webcrawler.com?) but Artinfo was and is a reputable online resource for who is exhibiting art where. As these links have now been ripped out entirely (and NOT replaced by citation needed), it now leaves many articles on internationally known artists with statements along the lines of "Bright Youngthing has exhibited at the Tate Modern (London), the Los Angles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Guggenheim Bilbao" without any citation. Please review. If ArtInfo is spam, it may be the most thorough and convincing arts spam on the Internet. There are, for example, 530 articles on Canadian artist and exhibitions over the last 5 years or so and I've done a random sampling: they all appear to be genuine articles -- I've been to some of the exhibits. There are other online resources but most are behind paywalls. Ross Fraser (talk) 00:51, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Note that I've already commented on this same issue above; I say just revert the removals, which seem to be cutting the nose off to spite the face. If these are reliable sources being used as citations within an article, then it is absurd and wrong to just remove them as "spam". If you are really bothered by the over reliance on these sources, then find better ones and replace them. postdlf (talk) 00:55, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

To try to reply to both of you at once: first, of course these are reasonable objections. Can I ask if either of you has actually read the discussion (or rather, absence of discussion) which is now here, and also the section that follows it? One employee of that company added (if I remember right) about 900 links to its website, in many cases introducing trivial bits of information to justify the additions. Another WP:SPA has been going round changing them. I think we have some sort of policy on that sort of behaviour.

I've been as careful as I can in removing them, though I've probably made some mistakes along the way. I've added {{cn}} tags in some places, removed bits of trivia added by JPLei or one of the IPs in some cases (article blamer has been useful there), replaced them with other and better references in some cases, and in many cases judged that if the information was remotely important it would be covered in other sources. If there are specific cases where the links need to be restored or replaced, please let me know. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

You left a big fucking mess in a lot of articles, but I'm almost done reverting. The discussion you linked to was inconclusive, to put it generously, and does not in any way represent a consensus that anything hosted at that site should not be permitted, or any understanding or conclusion that it is not a reliable source. I've left a few of your removals where the links did seem superfluous to the articles, but your wholescale removal was really indiscriminate and left a lot of previously sourced content unsourced. If there is a problem with this site, this is not the way to handle it. postdlf (talk) 01:16, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, and for your charming manners also. The advice I received at the spam noticeboard was that if I wanted this done I had to do it myself. Antonyj0403 has an an obvious WP:COI here and the 300 or however many edits he has made are clearly against that policy as well as that concerning spam. In my opinion, the person making a mess is you. In any case, I'm going to get some sleep now. You might like to go over your recent reversions and undo those that have reversed other changes I've made to many of those articles in accordance with our policies and practices here, such as tagging articles with COI problems, reducing linkfarms and the like. Or perhaps you'd like to make a start on undoing the 900 or so spam edits made by JPLei? I'd certainly appreciate some help here, and I certainly haven't had any so far. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

We don't do one-person crusades here, so drop the idea that you are somehow compelled or entitled to wage war on this art.info site. And given that JPLei hasn't even been active since 2009, there's hardly any urgency there. Get a discussion going at Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts about the usefulness of the citations in the articles and whether to replace them. And you've already had one admin tell you you were overreacting about Antonyj0403. If you insist on pushing that, then start a discussion with other editors about that as well to gain a consensus view instead of, again, taking it upon yourself to judge the account a spammer and their edits worthless. postdlf (talk) 02:41, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted the Julian Opie article edits because the links point to a well-written article by Robert Ayers, an art reviewer also writing for Huffington Post and elsewhere. I can find no fault with artinfo.com (now blouinartinfo.com) as a credible source for these citations. And the original edit that changed artinfo.com to blouinartinfo.com is (at least for this one article) merely preservation of links and prevention of link rot. I won't comment on the broader issues of how best to update links when an online publication changes its web url. Ross Fraser (talk) 07:54, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, thanks for letting me know. If there are other articles where you think the same applies, please mention them. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:29, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Convert template

JLAN, on Budyonny horse, can you also add an inches conversion to the hands and metric ones you just did there today? Seems like you can do that, cannot recall which articles you had it in... but anyway, just a request for the three-measurement conversion. Thanks Montanabw^(talk) 05:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know the only way to add inches at the moment is to do it manually; I don't recall doing it at all in the past, since I don't see any reason for it, as you know. Neither {{convert}} nor {{convert/show2 }} appears to yield the right result at the moment. I've asked about it here, but I imagine they may be more concerned about the move to lua right now. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you recall the epic edit discussion over this in 2011 or whenever it was, there was a consensus to use the three way conversion. If you really want to start that all up again, I guess I can't stop you. The hands template does the best job of this, ( and where hands falls between a centimeter measurement, this form works: {{hands|15.1 + 1/2}} = 15.1 ¹⁄₂ hands (61.5 inches, 156 cm) ) but you have issues with putting hands first, so though I don't view a conversion template as OR, and if the nation of origin uses cm, I have no problem saying that in the article for those used to seeing hands, but whatever. Montanabw^(talk) 00:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not going to make a case against your use of convert templates that put cm first, as your "what does the official book say" argument is a legitimate argument, even if I view it differently from you. I can see some situations where it is even potentially useful. However, please return the courtesy and do not reopen the debate over the use of hands that we had in 2011 or attack the hands template, which took a lot of time and work to develop (and not by me). The template is a simple and elegant one that is used across hundreds of articles. Further, it's mostly all the same people at WPEQ, and it's just going to pick at the scab, it can go from zero to nasty quite fast and we all have other work to do around here. Montanabw^(talk) 22:24, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

October 2013

• Don't remove content from the encyclopedia as you did at Zahran, it may be considered vandalism. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

About College of Medicine & Sagore Dutta Hospital

I examined the metadata of that PDF(which was listed as a source) and found that it was created on Feb 21,2012—that means that it was a copyvio.So what do I do(about sources)?Guru-45 (talk) 18:46, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

That was clever of you. Obviously, if it had turned out that the pdf was copied from our page, then it would not have made any sense to cite it as a source. But since it wasn't, I can't see any reason why it and the website of the college, which was also copied from, cannot now be used as sources for expanding the article, with perhaps some extra care to make very sure there is nothing that looks remotely like copying or close paraphrasing of the original. Good luck! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:49, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I have rewritten the article to remove the offending portions.Since the college is new,and does not feature much in the news,it is likely that the article will be short for quite a long time.06:12, 5 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guru-45 (talk • contribs)

Studley, Inc.

Hi, you recently added a copyright issue template to the topic Mitchell S. Steir. I am contacting you in hopes that you may remove this template and allow me to edit the copy so that it falls within Wikipedia's guidelines. I know it's no excuse, but had I been more experienced with Wikipedia and knew it's nuances in the first place these issues simply would not exist. It is my goal for Studley Inc. and it's notable entities to have a netural, well-written and well cited articles that in turn advance Wikipedia's goal of being a trusted source of information. Please cut me some slack. RyLaughlin (talk) 20:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that is precisely the fundamental problem here. May I suggest that if you were definitively to abandon that goal and let other, uninvolved, editors contribute as and when they wish to those three articles it would be a lot easier for everyone, including you, and almost certainly better for the articles too in the long run. I've now cleaned up Steir, and will try to get around to Colacino soon, unless someone else does it first. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:32, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for cleaning up those articles, I truly appreciate it. I'd like to know if you believe any of the Template:COI, Template:Advert or Template:Notability are now eligible to be removed on either page now after your edits. Also, would it be acceptable to add secondary references to an "Additional Links" section at the bottom of page for future editors to hopefully reference? I'm afraid that on the talk page they won't be easily visible. Thanks again. RyLaughlin (talk) 17:13, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

WikiAfrica

I closed the discussion as delete, but it looks like there are some subpages that you may want to send to TfD as well. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 19:45, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, and for the heads-up. Those subpages seem to be a slightly different case in that they do not purport to represent a WikiProject that doesn't exist. But they seem to have other fundamental problems, so I've nominated them also. Thanks again, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:24, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I've undergone changes

I've moved back to other areas such as Theatres (Cineplex Entertainment) and things. I've also changed articles to buses, and other biographic people as well like in the past. Thank you. SPVII DrFresh26 (talk) 23:52, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Templates for deletion

Rather than continue at the TfD I thought I'd come here. If you haven't seen my talk page already then User_talk:Thincat#WikiAfrica may be of interest. There's a lot been going on behind the scenes and I'm suspicious about virtually all reference to WikiAfrica having been removed (including stuff in no way promotional). I do not think you have been involved in this at all and that you have just got here by chance, like I have. Although I am not an academic I have worked alongside academics all my working life so I know "consultant" can cover a multitude of sins. On the one hand it can mean working very hard for no pay or kudos and sometimes even having to pay for travel, etc. out of your own pocket. Just for the love of the subject. But it can also be a lucrative gravy train. I think unless we know more we should accept textual and image contributions assuming good faith and tone down promotionalism in the material and its attribution (but not remove the attribution). Best wishes (which I have also offered to Iopensa!). Thincat (talk) 00:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning that discussion; if I reply to the comments you've made here, it'll be there. Meanwhile, may I make a request: if you should happen to mention my name again, I'd be grateful if you'd either wikilink it (User:Justlettersandnumbers) or use one of the user templates such as {{U}}, so that I get a notification (or, of course, just let me know as you have done this time). Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:57, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I will and I'm sorry I didn't. I don't know exactly how the notifications system works but I thought Iopensa's link to your username would have notified you. Thincat (talk) 22:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 18 November

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

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Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 03:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Fashion Net template

The links to Fashion Net are not spam. Shousokutsuu (talk) 02:23, 21 November 2013 (UTC) Hello Justlettersandnumbers, I just read your comment on my talk page. All of the fashion.net pages linked to from Wikipedia do indeed "further research that is accurate and on-topic" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ELNO); they are profiles of the subjects (not search results), all exclusive content curated by Fashion Net and the subjects themselves. As such, the links are useful indeed to those who came to read about the subjects on Wikipedia. I request that you revert your edits and put the links back in place. Like you, I aim for all of my edits to be neutral and unbiased and to comply with any Wikipedia policies. Shousokutsuu (talk) 19:07, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Removing Notability Template from Pages - COI

I want to thank you for your help with the pages Mitchell S. Steir and Michael D. Colacino. Yes, it was rough having the pages blanked temporarily but I truly appreciate your help in re-writing them and working towards what is perhaps their long-term sustainability on Wikipedia. I've read the Wikipedia notability guidelines carefully and it appears to me that the subjects do in fact meet Wikipedia's Wikipedia:Notability_(people) criteria. I do not feel comfortable removing these templates myself so I'd like to ask you if you would please consider removing the Wikipedia:Notability_(people) templates from the aforementioned pages yourself. Thanks again for your time. RyLaughlin (talk) 22:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Justlettersandnumbers. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse racing.
Message added 01:27, 25 November 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I am informing you of this due to a TFD you took part in....William 01:30, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Voice actor filmographies

Okay, before you go nuts on wiping every single filmography in existence, may I recommend that you comment out the lists so that people have an opportunity to fill in the references? -AngusWOOF (talk) 00:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually, AngusWOOF, it would probably be a good idea to just leave filmography sections as is, and source roles that can be sourced (it's pretty difficult to find sources confirming a role without using a work's end credits, especially for English dubs where reliable coverage is almost non-existent) but without blanking the whole section. The problem would be, blanking or commenting-out a section is not a good practice because it would remove most of the information on the page. While sources are admittedly very difficult to find (anime dubbing is still a niche industry in the United States), this doesn't mean that such sections should be wiped off. If needed, maybe just citing an official website or the work itself would be enough. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 01:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

No prob. Suggest tagging with refimprove and unreferenced - any seriously wrong entries would be nuked anyway. -AngusWOOF (talk) 03:45, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Re: RfC: Is this subject noteworthy?

Hello, Justlettersandnumbers. You have new messages at Talk:Michael D. Colacino.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.