User talk:Razucchini12

Welcome!

Hello, FasigTiptonCo, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Fasig-Tipton, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Montanabw^(talk) 07:53, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

February 2016

Hello, I'm Montanabw. I wanted to let you know that I undid one or more of your recent contributions to Fasig-Tipton because they appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Montanabw^(talk) 04:40, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

And a personalized update. What I did after the initial post above is to go through your new material and add the parts that were not overly promotional back in, keeping some of the older material but removing all the "laundry lists" of famous horses sold, other than a few record-breakers. If the old material in there is actually inaccurate, it's of course OK to update it, but be careful about mass removal of multiple paragraph without replacing them with material sourced to neutral, third-party sources. Also, it is VERY important to not copy and paste anything from another web site. At present, it's not too bad but could be better. Be particularly careful not to copy too directly from this page, we have a policy, WP:COPYVIO, that explains what you can and cannot do. I'd be glad to assist you further in editing and answer any questions you may have. Montanabw^(talk) 05:25, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, there. I understand some of the changes you made. However, please note that the previous entry was written by an intern at Fasig-Tipton without oversight. We would greatly prefer the composition I posted most recently, even if you have to remove the "laundry list" of graded graduates (that is how all these thoroughbred sales companies are really defined, so it seemed relevant). I understand how you can view the calendar as promotional, but we'd greatly prefer the more consistent, mature composition to the pieces that you recently replaced with older versions. Please advise. Thank you. Razucchini12 (talk) 13:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your gracious reply. I'll try to help: The problem is basically that not much of the new OR the old material was cited, so other editors on wikipedia cannot easily verify what's in there one way or the other. But I took a whack at it: look at the current version; Once I had the time to review the content and threw out the lists of "graduates", I actually was OK with a lot of what you did add, just not all of it; I went ahead and restored a fair bit of the material, but kept some of the older material that appeared to be relevant, and then ran it all through the copyvio checker, where it hit 32%, which is pretty good, particularly when the only red flag was the F-T history page itself and there are really only a few ways one can say things like "high-class road and carriage horses" (LOL).

As far as the "laundry lists" of which horse went through which sale, the problem is both Wikipedia's dislike of "trivia" and indiscriminate collections of miscellaneous knowledge, but also this is not a specialist publication; it's for the general interest reader. Similarly, an advertising agency article (like this one or this one) only lists a few top clients in the context of a general narrative, not just an indiscriminate list of dozens. For example, mentioning that F-T sold The Green Monkey or Havre de Grace is very relevant because those are linked to record-setting prices. The bit on how F-T sold the only two Triple Crown winners that were ever offered at public auction is relevant because of its historic significance. There's a "maybe" argument to be made for things like a chart listing the top 10 or 20 highest-selling horses overall or discussing the record prices paid at each sale location. Montanabw^(talk)|GO THUNDER! 05:30, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

So, my thoughts:

1. Go ahead and go back in and just toss what's flat-out wrong; now that I "know" you aren't the unsupervised intern, I won't panic! Use an edit summary that says something like, "removed inaccurate material."
2. Update what is outdated. Add references to things you update ... all you have to do is put the url inside two ref tags, and I can run a program that fills in the rest. (like this: <ref>http:www.thesitewithinfo.com</ref>)
3. Try to find outside, third-party sources (i.e. Blood-Horse, DRF, or better yet, the New York Times or Lexington Herald-Leader) to verify as much as possible. The F-T web site is fine for history (i.e. "Sale X began in 19xx at Saratoga") but for reputation, sales records, etc., go with outside sources.
4. If there's something that doesn't quite fit into "wrong" or "outdated", do what I did and tag it with {{dubious}} or {{citation needed}} (renders as and ) and that alerts everyone else (like me) that something isn't quite right. Then we cite what we can and discuss the "dubious" stuff to figure out what to do with it.
5. After that, post here or at Talk:Fasig-Tipton and discuss other changes you want to make.

• The main thing is that WP:COI is quite clear that you really shouldn't be editing articles about your own business, (which I know has to be hair-pulling-out frustrating at times) but I am willing to work with you to get this article to a point where we are both in line with Wikipedia's No advertising and Neutral point of view rules but have an article you consider accurate. (And, FWIW, I've helped others with this, if you look at the edit histories of California Chrome (here) and Mucho Macho Man, I suspect you'll notice something about other editors I interacted with at certain points in time... ;-) ) Montanabw^(talk)|GO THUNDER! 05:30, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed reply and your efforts to work with me. I appreciate it! I just want to make sure that the information is correct and presented professionally when it can be and is appropriate. I know wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an advertising platform, but it's hard to look at the language and word choices sometimes when you know you can make it better! Thanks again for your help, and I'll keep all of this conversation in mind the next time something significant happens and I need to update. Thanks again! Razucchini12 (talk) 14:27, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

We most certainly agree that the article should be up to date and accurate, and it often help to have a person with "on the ground" knowledge to provide input. I personally find it a challenge at times to avoid "close paraphrasing" of material from certain sites, as indeed, sometimes the ad copy is actually very well done, but we can't use it other than for limited direct quotations. (For example, a mission statement or a slogan) By the way, we would LOVE to have more photos of famous Thoroughbreds and if F-T cared to release more under a free license as was done with Havre de Grace. Montanabw^(talk)|GO THUNDER! 19:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)