Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs/Dog breeds task force

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First, an important note for everyone to remember:

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize articles about various dog breed descriptions. These are things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to start out by following them—mainly, we just want you to write articles! But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. If you add or change something that's inconsistent with the rest of the dog breed articles, that's OK--someone will most likely notice it and edit it for you.


Contents

[edit] Title

Dog breeds task force of WikiProject Dogs

[edit] Purpose

This task force aims primarily to provide a full description of the various Dog breeds. A consistent outline format is provided, including a list of various breed characteristics.

[edit] Participants

[edit] Currently active in this project

  • ltshears - I help occasionally by adding pictures or info that i have on some of the breeds.
  • sannse
  • Elf - I've been studying dog breeds as an amateur for many years and have a collection of relevant reference books. I participate in dog agility, maintain our club's web site[1], and spent a lot of time with dogs, "dog people", and dog trainers; attend occasional workshops on training techniques. Also an amateur photographer.
  • Quill - I'd like to help as well. I know a little about lots of breeds, and a lot about a few breeds! I wrote my first dog essay (if one could call it that!) when I was eight...guess you could say it's been a lifelong passion, as I am now...older than that....
  • Wcrowe - AKA The Dogfather. Dogs are a favorite subject of mine. I am around hundreds of dogs on a weekly basis through obedience training and trips to the dog park. I hope to be able to contribute photographs of various breeds, photos and videos of dog-related activities, as well as articles.
  • Lachatdelarue - I'd like to help this project. I have already put some stubs up for breeds that didn't have anything. Dogs are my passion, and any excuse to do more research is great :)
  • Mel 'MelSkunk' Smith - My current Dog Project project is to make sure there are pages for each American Kennel Club member breed. After that, I'll move on to the Canadian Kennel Club...
  • Bremen 02:10, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) I've been trying to make each breed page conform to a standard. Hope everyone is in agreement.
  • Tekana - I have been working on the dog pages for a while now, and hope to help contributing for a long time to come. I plan on becoming a canine behaviourist, and have spent my entire life around dogs. I have even worked at the RSPCA before now; so I am hoping to be a useful member of the project!
  • Trysha I'm a crazy dog lady. I/We have 4 dogs, and I am very involved in both training (including guide dog training) and dog rescue. Here, I clean out vandalism, fact check, copyvio screen, do general cleanup of the many edits that happen here every day, so I hope that I'm a useful part of the project..
  • Patricknoddy - I'd like to study about dog breeds, this is the place to do it.
  • Counsel- Dog owner, amateur trainer, and bird hunter. I am active with two gun dog clubs and help organize field trials.
  • Vortex - I am a self-proclaimed expert on all things canine. Canids are my passion in life, and I am studying to be a cynologist. I hope to contribute my knowledge to this project as much as possible.
  • Pharaoh Hound - Dog breed know-it-all. I don't own a dog but really want one. I like expanding breed stubs, requesting better photos, adding Canadian breed clubs to the external links, and fixing/adding infoboxes.
  • Keesiewonder 12:07, 23 December 2006 (UTC) - Already active for about a month now.
  • Blufawn I have been adding information on rare and extinct hound breeds, I hope to contribute more as often as I can. I have shown dogs since 1988 and have a passion for hounds of all shapes and sizes.
  • HamatoKameko 20:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC) - My family raises Anatolian Shepherds, and I hope to add to the related article. Whether or not I'll work on other dog articles I can't say for sure, but I'll try to at least do some overall editing.
  • ACBest/Main Look At My Profile, Go To The Bottom!
  • Watershipkennel -I will be rebuilding the Field Spaniel article as I have been involved with the breed since 1979.
  • Arithmia - I compete in Agility, so I am very familiar with the different breeds, I also have attended nationals events. I have owned numerous dogs in the past. I will m,ainly be working on the Miniature Schnauzer page, since they are the breed that currently owns me.
  • Calineed Have created Beagle-Harrier and Blue Picardy Spaniel so far.
  • iiartisanii - I show dogs, mainly Bearded Collies in conformation. I'm currently working on the Bearded Collie page, as well as doing some dog-wide edits in the areas of dog shows and herding breeds and adding photos I have taken at dog shows.
  • hmwithtalk - I've recently created English Water Spaniel, Norfolk Spaniel, and Tweed Water Spaniel, as well as templates: Spaniels and Toy dogs.
  • Noles1984 - I've had dogs my entire life (so far) and I'm the owner of a 2 year old Catahoula Leopard Dog. I lost my Norwegian Elkhound after he outlived his breed's avg. lifespan by 3 years. I'm now involved with The Best Dry Dog Foods and improving articles for Wikipedia. I created a "Quick Facts" box for breeds but it will take a while to add to all breeds.
  • VanTucky (talk) I have been quite active on dog breed articles, mainly working on improving the images according to WP:IMAGES and WP:IUP.
  • Exhaustfumes I am interested in Border Collies and the Tamaskan dog
  • Coaster1983 - I work with articles related to Spitz breeds
  • Alisyntalk Spitz and guard dogs.
  • Woodigo - I am a dog breed fanatic, and have been working on amateur study of herding breeds for over five years now. I own and work with an Australian Shepherd and Rough Collie. I am working on Herding breeds (dogs that are mainly considered herding dogs in the present and not dogs that were bred for a purpose to which they are not often used today, such as German Shepherds), particularly Collies and Shepherds.

[edit] Interested but not particularly (or not) active in dog project at this time

  • Dante Alighieri - I've decided to give it a go... if I have free time, I'll start in on this.
  • matt - I've started as well, and hope to take pictures to associate with various articles, as I have for Vizsla.
  • Ditkoofseppala - It's obviously a big job, so count me in. Eventually it would be nice if specialists in the various breeds could review these articles, but first there must be something to review!
  • PyTigger - I am a student of Veterinary Medicine, I'll be glad to share what I learn(t).
  • The Wizard of Magicland - Hey! I've been a "dog nerd" for quite a while now, and would love to help out. I have a lot of free time but little motivation, I have to admit, so if there's anything you need doing just ask and I'll do what I can. In anything dog related I do (I'm currently working on a book about VNBs, I use Bruce Fogle's layout as he does in his encyclopedia of the dog. I find this is good standardisation.
  • DorothyBaez
  • Andrzej - Languages: pl:+++, ru:++, en:++, fr:+, de; I'm breeder of newfoundland dogs and landseers ECT; I'm handler in dog-shows (St. Bernard, hovawart and m.m.)...
    I think Elf is taking a holiday, so I'll trot out the welcome wagon: Welcome to the Dog Project.Quill 01:11, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Dan Koehl - Languages sv:++ en:++ de:. I grew up as a shepheard, and has since then kept dogs close to my hart. I value especially the true knowledge how races actually were developed -trough crossings - which sometimes contrast more romantic "facts" about dogsraces, like with the collie. I started the project on the swedish wikiedia as a step to keep standards.
    Welcome to you, too, Dan! We have fun here. Quill 01:11, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    Welcome and thanks for coming here Dan! Gangleri 02:31, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)
  • Jdege - I'm a new JRT owner trying find his way around the Wikiverse.
    Good luck with that...welcome to the Dog Project! Quill 23:43, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    Ditto! Always glad to have enthused additions to the team. If you have any questions, ask on the talk page here (most of us have it on our watchlist) or on the talk page for whatever page you're working on OR on any one of our user talk pages; at the moment, I'd say that I, sannse, Wcrowe, Quill, and Lachatdelarue (in no particular order) are probably the most active & conversant in what we've been trying to accomplish. I mean, of course, besides have a good time. Gangleri has been more focused on trying to bring the various other language Wikis' dog projects up to speed. Elf | Talk 02:15, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    Thanks. I've already added a suggestion to the discussion page. --jdege 02:25, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

[edit] Working on similar dog project(s) in other languages

This group, particularly Ganglieri, is working on creating better ways of managing interlanguage links and organization, creating tools and shortcuts to help, and building the spare dog breed article sets in other languages.

  • "Gangleri T" → לערי ריינהארט T (aka Reinhardt) - Languages: de:+++, ro:++, en:++, eo:+++, is:+, ru: Thanks for telling me about this project! What I can do here is looking at the links between different Wikipedias and Wiktionaries, see Wiktionary:FAQ#Referencing_Wiktionaries_from_Other_Wikipedias. I am a native German born in Romania. Beside these languages and English I fluently can read, write and talk Esperanto. Have some basic knowlege about French, Icelandic and minor of Russian. Would be happy if the other participants would mention about known languages. My main interests are Icelandic Sheepdogs and Iceland.
    Elf | Talk adds: There's an old joke: What do you call someone who speaks multiple languages? A polyglot. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? An American.  :-) I'm the latter--had several years of French in school but I'm pretty much lost when I look at the French pages. Anyway, welcome, and very glad you're here.
    Wcrowe | Talk adds: I speak some Spanish, German, French, Italian, and can order beer in Swahili.
    Quill Now that's funny. Welcome to Mel and Reindhardt. I read and write French, muddle about in a couple of others, but I can do the most important things in several languages: say "hello", "I'm hungry"--and ask where the toilet is.
Additional credits for the support to: bg: Webkid, de: de:Bierdimpfl, es: Sanbec, fi: Hapsiainen, fr: eo:ArnoLagrange, he: he:Avihu, hu: eo:Razilklingo, jp: ja:Electric goat, jp: ja:Inukawa, pt: Brian Boru, ru: Maximaximax, zh: Vina and to all contributors to dog breed issues.


Special credits for the "technical help" to: DanKeshet, IMSoP, Patrick.

[edit] Hierarchy Definition

No classification of dog breeds has been clearly defined. See this example on dividing a topic into a hierarchy.

[edit] Categories

By convention, category notation goes at the end of the article before interlanguage links:

  • [[Category:Dog breeds]]: All dog breed articles about a specific breed should be labeled with this.
  • [[Category:Dog types]]: All articles that could refer to a group or type of breeds should be labeled with this. Examples: terrier, scent hound, sled dog, working dog.
  • On some occasions, it is appropriate for an article to be both in BREEDS and TYPES based on the way people might be searching for it among the category pages. Examples: Collie, Foxhound, Welsh Corgi. (People might not know that there is more than one type of collie, or foxhound, or corgi, so might often go to the BREEDS list first rather than the TYPES list.)

FYI, both are subcategories of Category:Dogs.

There have been occasional discussions about creating additional subcategories for each of the dog types, because there will likely be over 600 dogs in the BREEDS category when all is said and done. If this happens, breeds would be listed in BREEDS and in the subcategory. (noted Feb 20, 2005).

[edit] Project subpages and discussions

  • /Templates: List and description of templates related to dogs and dog articles.
  • /To do: Dog-related articles that have been started but aren't up to standards, are missing breed tables, need wikifying, etc.; photos whose origin needs to be chased down; stuff like that.
  • /Breed grouping: Current breed grouping strategies (talk page discusses possibilities)
  • /General: Random stuff that should be sorted into other catgs...
  • /Categories: Current dog-related category strategy, list of these categories, and organization of categories (covers all dog-related articles, not just dog breeds) (talk page covers related discussions); for an up-to-the-moment list, you really need to start at Category:Dogs and work your way down, but we'll try to keep this project subpage up-to-date also.
  • /Portals: Working copy of, and discussion about, dog-related portals.
  • /Breed source list: Initial research on breed names & kennel club reg's

[edit] Tips for ambitious participants

If you want to keep tabs on what anyone is doing with any breed page--for example, newcomers creating new breed pages, you can add every breed in List of dog breeds to your watchlist, including articles that don't yet exist. (Just click on the link, which gives you an edit page, and simply turn on Watch this Page.) Yup, it takes a while to add them all... Or focus on a subset of breeds, existing and not, in which you're particularly interested. Or just browse when the mood strikes you.
Recent changes for Category:Dog_breeds will show the changes of the articles in that category.

  • See Category:Dog stubs to browse through to find articles that are partial but not complete.

There is are also public watchlists at:

The related changes links will show all recent changes to articles and talk pages listed on these pages. This is freely editable, but please take care in removing articles from this list.

[edit] Recommended article structure

There currently exists an article entitled List of dog breeds, which enumerates the various recognized breeds. Breed articles that already exist and are labeled with Category:Dog breeds appear on that category page, as well.

Title: The article for each breed shall be titled based on the apparently most-common official breed name from the major registries. These names have been placed in the List of dog breeds page. (E.g., Welsh Corgi (Pembroke).) Where the major registries are evenly split on the name, or where the breed is not recognised by the major registries, the article title shall be chosen using the most commonly used name in English language sources.

Redirects: When creating a new page, redirects (or disambiguations under other possible names should be created to point to the page (e.g., Pembroke, Pembroke Welsh Corgi).

The article on each breed shall include the following information:

The following list is only a general suggestion, and should be re-ordered as necessary.

  • a table giving basic information on other names, country of origin etc. (see template below). The Weimaraner article shows this table in use.
  • Introduction: general information about the breed, brief history, brief description.
  • Appearance
    • Subcategories of the breed
    • Coat types and colors
    • Height and weight ranges
    • Build and proportions
    • Ears, tail, muzzle, etc.
  • Temperament and/or Characteristics
  • History
  • Health, including possibly--
    • Known medical issues
    • Life expectancy
    • How this breed differs from others in similar categories (e.g., "Unlike other giant breeds, the xxx does not generally suffer from hip dysplasia")
  • Other possible topics; keep the content specific to this breed:
    • Care
    • Training
    • Activity
  • Miscellaneous: Important or interesting stuff that's worth knowing about the breed but doesn't seem to fit elsewhere. Subsections might include:
    • Famous (breedname)... e.g., "Famous Foxhounds"
    • Celebrities who own (breedname)... For animals that aren't particularly famous in their own right, but try not to just list every random semi-notable Tom Dick or Harry who has a dog of this breed.
  • References: Include sources for the info that you put into the article, at least as much as you possibly can, both books & other web sites
  • External links: Links to web sites that expand on the encyclopedic info provided by wikipedia. Generally excluded are local breed clubs (too many hundreds to try to maintain the links), commercial sites (where the ads or intent to sell something are blatant), forums and blogs (not particularly encyclopedic).

[edit] Examples of good articles

[edit] Infobox Dogbreed template

Each dog breed article will have an infobox; see /Templates subpage.