Talk:Alois Podhajsky

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[edit] Question about article quality

OK, Podhajsky is an excellent rider & horseman, and well-worth writing an article on. However, this is an encyclopedia. Can someone please make this into a true article? I dont have many resources on his life. Eventer 23:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Article sure needs work, but I don't have time to fix it now, most stuff on Podhajsky is in books, not the net. Unless you want the fictionalized version in the Disney movie...No argument, just no time. Montanabw 00:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
The main shortcoming of this language is the emotional tone of extreme admiration. I have read some of his books and if my memory serves me there seem to be no major mistakes on matters of fact. But the article could soberly report the man's accomplishments without insisting that the reader accept the author's valuation of the man and his works.
Actually, one of the things I like about Podhajsky the most is that he does not depict himself as the perfect rider with the perfect horses. Amazing, I think, even his horses sometimes get skittish when a log crouches menacingly at the side of the road. Sometimes his subordinates get thrown by a fractious mount, something that should logically be expected only to happen to a turkey like me. P0M 10:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Had I the time to wordsmith, I'd clean it up, but hey! Anyone can remove excess adjectives, which does solve many POV problems, so GO FOR IT!!! I'd say we have consensus! Montanabw 19:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I just got his book, The Complete Training of Horse and Rider. So, when I have some time, I'm going to try to add to this article and clean it up a bit. Eventer 19:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I also enjoy the Podhajsky books very much and recommend them to others. As I understand it, Patton was never actually personally part of the rescue of the Piber Stud, as the myth goes. Lil 16:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Read the Lipizzan article, the whole thing is explained there (and sourced). Podhajsky wasn't at Piber, that's where the mares were. He (and Patton) were elsewhere. Someone may have to tweak this article, I don't have the time at the moment. Montanabw 04:46, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a wonderful book, enjoy reading as well as sourcing the article! Montanabw 23:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help desk reference

The Alois Podhajsky article came up in a question on the Help desk:

ArielGold is correcting the problems mentioned. --Teratornis 15:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

The way the article was written was not in line with the Wikipedia manual of style, or with citation and footnote guidelines. The primary source was never once given, so to cite: "Podhajsky page 283" is of no help to the reader. There is no primary source with that. The references have been removed, and instead, I have added a bibliography, and some genuine references. In addition, the tone of the article is not appropriate for Wikipedia, with regards to neutrality, and as someone mentioned above, being a bit extreme in the "emotional admiration" area. Additionally, the article relied too much on personal quotations. While helpful sparingly, these are not what make up an article, or it becomes more about what the person said, and less about the person themselves.

To this end, I will be doing some major re-writing and cleaning up of this article, which will result in its being visibly much shorter, but more encyclopedic, as well as adding valid, reliable, third-party sources to cite to the facts stated. For one thing, the article is about this person, not about dressage, or the history of dressage, or World War II, or the history of the war. These two items alone took up the majority of the article. This is unnecessary, and what wiki links are for. Therefore, I've completely removed the entire section on the history of dressage, and re-written the section about the war to give a much fuller explanation of what happened, and why it was important. There are no more quotes from other people (which, as mentioned, were never cited properly, giving the reader no idea who was being referred to, for example, some of the references just said "Internet, page 3". This was not helpful, nor proper. I've found multiple references, and added them, as well as adding the major books written by Podhajsky. While I realize that the initial comparison will be this article has been shortened too much, the facts are that the article was less about the person, and more about items that are found elsewhere on Wikipedia. Thus, the article now is in line with the rest of the biographies, as well as being neutral, and properly sourced. If anyone is able to find out more about his early life, education, history, that would be great, but there just is not much out there on the internet with this information. Cheers! Ariel♥Gold 15:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not disagree that the article has needed work for a long time. And thanks for the time you put in to fix it. However, Podhajsky is an extremely important figure in the history of Dressage and in that of the Lipizzan horse breed, thus there is a need to restore some material to explain the thing that he is famous for. (The fact that he rode in the Olympics was a minor sidelight, it was his relationship with Patton that saved the Lipizzan breed for which he is best remembered.) It would also be appreciated if you made use of request for citations before you go in and just wholesale dump other people's cites. That said, I have to agree that the Dressage section was covered elsewhere and the quotes were overdone. I made a few tweaks, tried to cite to sources as needed. FYI, everyone seems to think Patton and Podhajsky knew each other, but Patton participated in the 1912 Olympics, Poshajsky later, so it would be interesting to figure out how or even if they actually had met in the past. Montanabw(talk) 21:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I realize he's quite important. In fact, I've spent a significant amount of time around Lipizans, and know full well his history, but the way it was written, there was no primary source given, as explained, and citing something without saying what is being cited is not keeping with any guideline or policy. To cite "Internet, page 3," as was done in the article, is of no help. The guidelines and policies covering this are WP:RS, WP:CITE and WP:FOOT. Additionally, this was brought to the attention of other editors for that specific reason: A reader could not understand what the citations went to, what source they were supposed to refer to, and thus, they needed to be removed and valid sources found. Despite my knowledge, your knowledge, etc., reliable sources are what matter, and what are used on Wikipedia. However, I do like what you've done with the article, in expanding it. All articles I read did seem to indicate that somehow, Patton and Poshajsky were familiar with one another in some way, but I think ultimately that's not quite relevant, and the way you've written the section explains it sufficiently. I'd like to note that I removed the IMDB link, IMDB is not a reliable, third-party source (it is editable by anyone, with no fact-checking or sourcing of statements, and contains significant errors) so I moved that into the external links section using the Wikipedia IMDB template. Also, technically speaking, equiworld.net is also not a reliable source, but I have left it in as it does cite to the relevant passage. If this article were ever up for good article nomination, I have a feeling that would need to be moved to external links and another valid reference found to cite the passage. Additionally, I've put the references into the templates for standardization and ease of reading. Compared to the earlier version, yes this one is shorter, but it is much more in line with Wikipedia's manual of style, and it gives a reader a much more thorough explanation of who the person was, why they are important, and what they did, without using quotations that lack context, as well as having valid, reliable references for readers to refer to. Thanks for the time you've spent on the article, it is appreciated! Ariel♥Gold 10:20, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, it was about time this article came to someone's attention, it was a disaster as previously written. Your edits are also appreciated and I don't disagree that the citation format was done improperly. I do wish we could have tagged the two books that were mentioned as "Podhajsky" and"Bowie" in hopes of getting whoever put them in to come up with titles and other info. The quotes were extensive and to some extent interesting even if too long for the article. I don't cite to movies very often, but I guess if no one feels the need for a citation on the movie, no harm done-- (though as a wikipedian, I think we are living in a glass house when we criticize iMDB for being able to be edited by anyone! (grin)) However, one question: I really do not get the citation templates...they seem very cumbersome, hard to edit, hard to proofread...the other format is technically correct on wiki, and you can spot errors a little easier...I tried using them initially and found them unwieldy and a real PITA. Other than that they do the layout for you, what use are they? Montanabw(talk) 15:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The book that was used to quote from is added to the bibliography. But a self-written book by the subject is not considered a reliable source, except to cite to quotes, which is done in this article now. And I did a very long search, trying to locate the other refs (only one name was given, with a page number) with trying to tie together Bowie and Podhajsky, as well as Loch and Podhajsky, and I came up completely empty, so I have no idea what book they refer to, or I'd have added it to a "Further reading" section. Also, yes, it is ironic that IMDB is not a reliable source, but neither is Wikipedia, lol. One cannot cite an entry from Wikipedia or any of its sister projects as a reliable source, for the very same reason that IMDB, NNDB, blogs, personal sites, etc, can't be, but this is actually a good thing, because it is one of the main ways to identify notability and verifiability. As for templates, they are used to standardize references, and are quite easy to use once you get the hang of them. They are a preferred way to cite references, because they allow a variety of information to be added, all in the exact same order, which results in ease of reading for someone viewing the article. I invite you to compare the huge difference it provides, using two articles that I revamped with templates: Lightning (before: [1], after: [2]), and and University of California, Santa Barbara (before: [3], After: [4]) as you can see, this is a vast improvement. Yes, there are multiple different styles allowed by the Manual of Style, but templates are there for standardization, and you'll see many of the good and featured articles make use of them. Also, a good amount of editors do not know how to format the references per the manual of style, and simply put a URL in a ref tag, occasionally with a title. This doesn't provide information that is helpful to most readers, such as who wrote it, who published it, when it was written, etc. I personally use a quick little application that formats URLs into the template format quickly and painlessly, and while they may make editing more difficult for new users, to the reader of the article, the improvement is much better than a naked URL placed in article space. Hope that helps clear that issue up! Ariel♥Gold 09:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I've worked on a couple articles that have DOZENS of footnotes (over 80 in one case), I would kill for an application. Typing in the raw template text is a major PITA. If you could be so kind as to share the info, leave a message over on my talk page! Editing is tough, though, as often the problem isn't the formatting but a typo or something, becomes real hard to spot...sigh. Montanabw(talk) 16:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)