Talk:Dartmoor pony

Ponies free-roaming on Dartmoor

Just a couple of points: all the ponies free-roaming on Dartmoor belong to the Dartmoor Commoners (people who have common rights to graze livestock on the moors). A Commoner may graze a mare or gelding of any breeding on the moors; therefore not all ponies on the moors are actually Dartmoor Ponies.

Dartmoor Hill ponies are ponies born and bred on the moors, but not true Dartmoor Ponies. This is often confusing for people!(ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 18:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC))

Mega-confusing. Especially for us Yanks. Probably needs to be added to the article, ideally, find a few sources (even a newpaper article saying "Dartmoor Hill Pony roundup was good time for all" can "prove" they exist). Maybe explain what the difference and why it matters. Just take a stab at it, I'll come behind with a broom and do cleanup. Montanabw^(talk) 22:07, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you clean up after me please? I think I need a citation in the text to both the Dartmoor Commoners' Council (where it mentions Dartmoor Commoners) and to the Dartmoor Hill Pony Association (where the Dartmoor Hill Ponies are mentioned), but I don;t yet have the knack of doing this! (ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 04:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC))

I managed it, after all (ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 16:03, 18 February 2011 (UTC))

Spam links

Just because a website mentions Dartmoor ponies it doesn't mean that it should be listed on the website. Any link that is added must fulfil the criteria set out at WP:ELNO. The two most recent links - darmoorhillpony.com and dartmoorcommonerscouncil.org.uk - both fail that test. The first one is an obvious fail - it's a fan site and nothing more. The second link also fails. If it belongs anywhere it is on the Dartmoor article - but I'd most likely bounce it off there as well - but it certainly doesn't belong here because it isn't primarily about the ponies, but the commoners themselves who maintain all sorts of animals in the area. --Simple Bob ^{a.k.a. The Spaminator} (Talk) 08:22, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, there is another use for external links, and that is (informally and one of those IAR situtions) to be a repository of source material for the article. Here, we have recently become aware that there is a distinction between the Dartmoor Pony and the Dartmoor Hill Pony. I can't say I know squat about either, but I am willing to let the person with the knowledge (and it's a newbie who needs to not get bitten too hard, she's very new but already on her way to becoming a solid editor) have a chance to take a whack at it. For now, I suggest we split the difference, keep the hill ponies and put the commoner council link here so whoever may need it for a source can find it easily. Montanabw^(talk) 00:53, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

http://www.dartmoorcommonerscouncil.org.uk

I think the link needs to go in as a citation (as mentioned above) for the evidence that Dartmoor Commoners are allowed to graze ponies of any breed on the moors; same with the Dartmoor Hill Pony site for the info on 'what is a Dartmoor Hill Pony'. Other than local organisations (like the Dartmoor Hill Pony Association) you'll find very little published on the Dartmoor Hill Pony, so pretty much impossible to cite anything else. I suppose it's possible that a local newspaper may have mentioned them, even if it's just a reference to an upcoming auction, but it could take forever to try and hunt up a newspaper reference, and the DHPA is probably the best interim measure, just so people can check out the difference and not assume that all ponies on the moors are actually Dartmoor Ponies. All of the 'allegedly feral / wild' ponies in the UK are actually privately owned, and run as semi-feral herds under 'rights of common' in areas such as Dartmoor and the New Forest. I think 'commoning' is a pretty foreign idea to people in the USA and several other parts of the world, but it's a practice which has been going on here in the UK for millennia. Literally! I do appreciate the necessity for keeping genuine spam links off Wikipedia, but I also feel that it's important not to remove links which might be the only source of reference material readily available to back up information in the article, and therefore feel that an external link to what might appear, at first glance, to be a 'fan site', may be important as possibly the only easily-accesible verification for material contained in the article which is relevant to people's understanding of the subject of the article. (ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 04:35, 18 February 2011 (UTC))

Now correctly in place as citations (ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 16:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC))

Personally, I put a lot of stuff in External links as a repository to quickly access good source material when I (later) get around to footnoting. But when there is a dispute, putting the collection on the talk page usually works too. Montanabw^(talk) 00:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Is It OK Now?

Is this article good enough now to be taken out of some of the categories that 'need more work', or is there still more to do? If more to do, what needs to be done still? (ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 06:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC))

I sussed out how to do a request for assessment! (ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 08:09, 21 February 2011 (UTC))

Yeah, it's a good cleanup -- from disaster to Okey Dokey! Montanabw^(talk) 19:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I shall try (some time soon) to dredge up some more good content. And I may be able some time this year (probably at some local show!) to get a really decent pic of a Dartmoor for it :o) ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 10:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

It's amazing what the habit of taking a digital camera everywhere, even if not planned can do for wiki, even in areas you don't edit! Wikipedia and Wikimedia commons need more good free images, and even if we aren't pros, it's amazing what I have been able to contribute just by doing things like going through my tack room! Montanabw^(talk) 20:36, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Update: I found some more info and changed the refs to Harvard-style, now upgrading this to B class. Hope that's OK! And am now yipping with glee, as what I managed (finally!) to dig up was verifiable source for horse bones having been found in archaeological investigations of the circa 3500 BC period chamber-tombs! Yaaaaaaayyyyyyyy! ThatPeskyCommoner (talk) 08:02, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

A landrace, not a breed?

I have a very strong feeling that this is not a formal, selectively bred breed, recognized by any fancier/breeder organization, but is in fact simply a landrace. All the facts in the article seem to support this. If so, this article has to be rewritten and recategorized to stop making the unverifiable and blatant original-research claim that it is a breed. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 08:09, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

You are raising this across multiple pages. Just because animals live in a semi-feral state does not mean they are not selectively bred. But, if you disagree, it is you who have the burden of proving this. Find a source that passes WP:V and WP:RS. Then we can discuss the matter further. Montanabw^(talk) 21:40, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. Jafeluv (talk) 15:05, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

---

• Dartmoor (pony) → Dartmoor pony
• Exmoor (pony) → Exmoor pony
• Fell (pony) → Fell pony
• Lundy (pony) → Lundy pony
• British Spotted → British Spotted pony
• Shire (horse) → Shire horse

– These six (out of about 350 or 400 horse and pony breed articles at Category:Horse breeds) were moved without consensus by a single user claiming that they were not in line with MOSDAB. However, there is a longstanding policy at WikiProject Equine (WPEQ) that breed articles append "horse" or "pony" (particularly pony) to the breed name whenever there is EITHER a disambiguation issue or where (as in the case of all the above pony breeds in particular) the word "Horse" or "Pony" is routinely used in the name of the breed. WPEQ and its sibling project, WikiProject horse racing, also have well over 1000 individually named horse articles which are disambiguated as Famous Named (horse). There is a consensus to avoid confusion between individual animals and breeds. Per WP:NCDAB, "If there is a choice between using natural and parenthetical disambiguation, such as Mathematical analysis and Analysis (mathematics), there is no hard rule about which is preferred. Both may be created, with one redirecting to the other. The choice between them is made by consensus, taking into account general naming criteria (e.g., consistency with the pattern used for similar articles)." Montanabw^(talk) 21:56, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support, as nominator Further support for natural disambiguation is available at WP:NATURAL, and is, overall, preferred to parenthetical disambiguation. Here, unless we reach a consensus to rename several hundred horse breed articles and then possibly re-disambiguate several named horse articles (we have a few breeds and named horses that are the same), having six differently-named articles out of several hundred creates a mess, and one which WPEQ had just (finally) cleaned up early in 2012. Montanabw^(talk) 21:59, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support; there's no earthly reason to use "XXX (pony)" when "XXX pony" works just as well. Powers ^T 01:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support; as discussed at length elsewhere, parenthetical disambiguation is a really bad idea when there's an obvious option for natural disambiguation. bobrayner (talk) 02:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. At least some of these were moved en masse, and RM should have been used then, rather than now. It's unfortunate that the normal BRD cycle couldn't have been followed.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:46, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support, and all the others. I doubt anyone would ever say "a Dartmoor.." etc. without "..pony" anyway. Seems like a sensible project consensus. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:26, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - the current naming convention is awkward. OwainDavies ^(about)_(talk) edited at 11:33, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Almost never referred to except with the "pony" appended. Not so sure about Shire, however - the version without "horse" is very commonly seen. -- Necrothesp (talk) 20:44, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: In the case of the Shire, it's a question of natural disambiguation versus parenthetical disambiguation, so the word "horse" has to appear, lest we think it's the home of Hobbits! Montanabw^(talk) 22:53, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.