Wikipedia:How many legs does a horse have?

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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it.

Shortcuts: WP:LEGS WP:HORSE

See also: Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass and WP:POINT#Refusal_to_'get_the_point'

It still has four legs.

My uncle once said, "Boy, do you see that horse?"

Yessir.

"How many legs does that horse have?"

Four.

"Now what if I say that a horse's tail is a leg, too?"

Uh...

"If I call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs does that horse have?"

Five?

"Boy, will you never learn? It doesn't matter what you call something. That horse still has four legs."

Sometimes when confronted with a difficult challenge we reply, That's not true! We say, That's not a (vanity page)/(rant)/(personal attack)/(tail); that's a (noteworthy article)/(discussion)/(polite comment)/(leg). But this changes nothing.

It's never enough to reply to a comment by saying You're wrong! That's not true! If it really is a leg, then show us how.

1 Examples
2 Beating a dead horse
3 On the other hand...
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Examples

[edit] Proof that a horse has, in fact, an infinite number of legs

A horse has four legs
It has forelegs at the front
It has two legs at the rear
Four plus two is six, thus it has six legs
Six is an odd number of legs for a horse
Four is an even number
The only number which is both even and odd is infinity
Therefore: a horse has an infinite number of legs

This is just as false as calling the tail a leg...

[edit] Very well, you say it does not have five legs: I say it has nine!

No horse has five legs.
Any horse has four legs more than no horse does.
Therefore, a horse has nine legs.

[edit] The longer you count, the more legs a horse has

A horse has four legs
It has two forelegs at the front and two hind legs in the back. This makes it 4.
It has two legs on the left side and two legs on the right side. This totals 8.
It also has four perfectly visible legs from the below. Now we have 12 of them.
And we haven't even started counting legs on each corner!

When arguing, make sure you add really new legs to your stand.

[edit] Beating a dead horse

Some editors are so convinced that the horse has five legs that they will continue to return to the issue long after everybody else has accepted the consensus view that horses have four legs. Many of the most dedicated proponents of the five-leg school will assert that fivelegism is as valid a view as fourlegism, and that fourlegism is only a point of view. Often they will continue this to the point where they are, in truth, beating the bloody smear where the dead horse once lay.

[edit] On the other hand...

If someone is writing about a horse that has five legs then, as tedious and boring as it may be, it is well to check the references and reasons they have written about it. It may just be there was a genetic manipulation or surgical graft. Just because the only horses you have encountered have had four legs, doesn't mean that a five legged horse might not exist. An encyclopaedia exists for you to learn: don't assume omniscience on your part.