Talk:Austrian Warmblood

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What do you feel needs to be fixed? Countercanter (talk) 01:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, before I begin, let me say that first off, this is a really good article for having a lot of excellent content, and it's way better than most of the crummy stubs that make up at least half the breed articles here! Second, all critiques below are my humble opinion and you can do with it as you will. (I say this because I have a bad habit of upsetting people when I offer a critique and I really don't intend to be mean, I just am a little prone to "edit mercilessly" -- but I'm all bark, OK?) :-) I did an edit of the first main paragraph after the introduction to sort of illustrate what I am describing below. Montanabw^(talk) 09:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that the basic problem is just organization and phrasing. The article is a bit of a "data dump," lots of info, not necessarily in an accessible form.

For starters, it needs a LOT more wikilinking of geographic regions, coat colors, mare, stallion, etc.,.. It takes some time to become aware of all the wikipedia articles out there and even more time to remember exactly how they are titled, (which is why even when I remember to use preview, I still do about five edits on an article when I meant to do one) but necessary: remember that we write for an audience that is wide-ranging, from kids to amateur adults to pros, many of whom may not possess sophisticated vocabulary or knowledge about the subject, or about all aspects of the subject. I don't call this "dumbing down" an article, but rather just remembering to write clearly, define jargon, and wikilink anything that is helpful-- some horse people may be clueless about geography (especially historic geographical place names or names of local regions; some geographers or historians looking at articles about Austria may be clueless about horses. Many breeds or sub-breeds also already have stubs or articles, such as Kisber Felver, Anglo-Arabian, etc. It is helpful to cross-reference as much as possible.

I personally wikilink certain terms more than once in some cases, perhaps once per section (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) for guidelines), particularly words that kind of get lost in the text and are terms not readily understood by laypeople. I wikilinked one paragraph to give you a sense of what seems to fit here.

Be sure to also define all acronyms, not sure what WBFSH is, for example, couldn't find it spelled out anywhere, and what does "M-class" mean, there appears to be no explanation (or if there is, it was buried)

Next, I would create more headings and subheadings to make it visually easier to locate certain material. I would internally break things up into shorter paragraphs as well, it gets a bit dense in places. I would do some organization in general, some of the material is sort of placed in without a lot of sequence. For example, in the paragraph I edited, I moved things around so they flowed chronologically.

In general, the tone needs to be more "encyclopedic" for wikipedia, and removing the peacock words or other excess adjectives is probably the way to start. For example "The rich history of Austrian horse breeding provided a unique genetic foundation" would be more NPOV and encyclopedic if it read, "The history of Austrian horse breeding, which dates back to XXXX, provided a genetic foundation of (specifics as opposed to "unique") that..." Or instead of the "elegant" or "plain" such and such horse, just say "light saddle horse," or "Anglo-Arab."

I would also rephrase some things just for ease of reading. For example, "A Hauptstutbuch mare may win the predicate "Staatsprämienstute" (States Premium Mare) " "Predicate??" That is a very vague term. In this context, do you mean "To be based upon?" "To precede?" "A requirement?" It would work better to say something in plainer English, such as "highest honor" or whatever an accurate description would be.

it reads a bit like it was taken word for word from some other source, which is a potential copyright violation. Maybe it isn't, there are some footnotes, but it just doesn't read like original writing. If the phrasing is from a source and not put inside quotation marks as a direct quote, the wikigods will be miffed. (I learned this the hard way one time when I pasted in some verbatim material in a big chunk, with one footnote at the end, intending to rewrite it later, only to find the whole article had been locked down on me overnight by a zealous admin. Took a couple days to get it all straightened out, but the end result turned out fine.)

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Oh, and FYI, there may be confusion with Furioso, a 20th century horse that has an article here. Also, if you want a small project, is a question if "Gidran" the horse founded a breed, (presumably one that is extinct today other than by influence on more modern breeds), there are references elsewhere to the "Gidran" as a breed and an article I think was requested at the breeds project page

Montanabw^(talk) 09:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Countercanter (talk) 16:20, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Aw c'mon, (LOL) just because the stud farm article isn't very good doesn't mean it shouldn't be wikilinked! That's what wikilinks are for, to help readers understand an unfamiliar term (it's also how I ran up 700 articles on my watchlist, finding all the ones that need help! Join the fun!)

You may get some ideas for tone and structure of your warmblood articles (which, by the way, I really DO appreciate the work you are doing on these!) by comparing them to the basic outlines and formatting on some of the other breed articles, such as Morgan horse or American Quarter Horse, neither of which are perfect by a long shot, but the basic formatting stuff isn't too bad and the content is reasonably well-sourced, plus they are only a little bit longer than yours. (I picked those two because while I have contributed to them, so have a lot of other people, so they are kind of a collective effort). To the best of my knowledge, the only horse breed article that has Good Article status is Arabian horse, which is incredibly long, too (my fault, that) but with all the historical stuff you have to include in your articles, you may want to look at Horses in the Middle Ages, which is shorter but also has GA status. (Also, User:Gwinva, who created it and did about 95% of the work on it happens to be a pretty good source on medieval European material in general) The suggested sections at WikiProject Horse breeds aren't set in stone, but the more consistent the breed articles can be, at least in covering the same basics up front before delving into the minutae, well, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds people are way ahead of us in many cases... Worth looking at some of their better stuff, too. Montanabw^(talk) 03:23, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The word stud farm actually comes from the word for mare, not stallion. The German word for mare is "stute" and it wasn't until after the term "stud farm" came into usage that it started to have anything to do with stallions! See OED entry, noun 2.

Thank you for your continued recommendations and help. Please don't be afraid of making me feel frustrated. I'll keep at it, for sure. Countercanter (talk) 15:24, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Further to this article...Shagya was, by every account I ever saw, a purebred Arabian. And this is a terminology quibble but I typically write Shagya Arab and Gidran Anglo-Arab, as it is more suggestive of the use of Arab-bred stock. If I were talking about an F1 cross of TB and Arabian, I'd write Anglo-Arabian. I've never seen the word "Shagya Arabian" only "Shagya Arab". I'll let it lie if it's terribly important to you, though.Countercanter (talk) 15:49, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

...Except, of course, on the official North American Shagya Arabian Society website. Withdrawn, haha!Countercanter (talk) 15:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

LOL! Actually, Arabian breeders are adamant that Shagya was not a purebred. His bloodlines are not allowed in any purebred registry. Apparently not only could his pedigree not be verified, but he carried the cream gene dilution, which does not exist in purebreds. If you want to try some editing practice and wikifying on an article that really needs some help but where you probably have no real attachment, check out Haflinger (horse). Just cleaning up the peacock words on that one would be a service to society! (I did something similar with Friesian horse about a year or so ago, amazing how much you pick up while working on something that you don't have a lot of attachment to!)Montanabw^(talk) 17:11, 2 January 2008 (UTC)