Category talk:Racehorses

Racehorse categories

User:Galopin has recently been creating two new Racehorse categories (bred and trained) for each country. One of these categories, Category:Racehorses bred in the United States, was the subject of a deletion discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_June_22

Category:Racehorses bred in the United States

I am sure there are many horse racing contributors who may be unaware of this discussion, and would have a view about what categories are relevant for racehorses. I would appreciate your comments. - Cuddy Wifter 05:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• I created two categories (bred and trained) on the basis of an argument in a Category talk:British racehorses. There was no rebuttal for one month about Mr.Zafonic's idea. Another reason was to have decided to create it to a similar category by Japanese Wikiproject horseracing at around the same time. --Galopin (Sorry, I use Engrish.) 15:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I propose to create Wikipedia:WikiProject Horse racing. --Galopin 16:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• The problem with the title "American racehorses" is that it attaches a nationality to racehorses without specifying whether it is by breeding or training. There are several European trained horses in the list which seem completely out of place (Lammtarra, Sadler's Wells, Peintre Celebre etc.) - to describe them as "American racehorses" on the basis of where they were bred is misleading, and the categories "Racehorses bred in the United States" and "Racehorses trained in the United States" solve this. - Zafonic 10:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Mr. Zafonic's idea. --Galopin 06:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, I wasn't aware of this discussion when I created addional categories (Italian racehorses, Canadian racehorses, French racehorses, United Kingdom racehorses). I think the "bred in U.S." etc is a good idea (we show where humans are born even if they become a citizen elsewhere) but then the Category:French racehorses and others I created seems to me to make "Trained in France" and the like redundant. -- Handicapper 15:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• An alternative solution to this would be to add a suffix to each racehorse's name to indicate the country in which they were foaled - for example "Sadler's Wells (USA)", "Dubai Millennium (GB)", "Montjeu (IRE)" - a common practice in the listing of racehorses. There would then only be the need for a category indicating the country in which the horses were trained. - Zafonic 18:02, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• Why not go with the commonly accepted worldwide practice when listing horses as suggested by Zafonic. (GB) (AUS) (US) (FR) (CAN) etc. I think both the breeding and training of a horse are quite important however the categorisation here can become redundant. If a US bred horse that is owned by Irish intrests and races its whole life in England British or US (or even Irish)?? Does it matter? By using Dubai Millennium (GB) the horse is then forever linked to the British breeding industry, you could have a category for that, however i would not think that this should come at the exception of this horse appearing in other categories. eg - where the category of Australian racehorses was deleted from Tulloch and categorised as Australian Trained Racehorses & New Zealand Bred racehorses. dark horse 02:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

• further to that, i think that there should be a portal for horseracing (specifically thoroughbred horse racing) from there it can be further defined with reference to breeding, racing by countries etc. Some articles are very american specific, others british and many australian. The whole horseracing theme could be much better categorised, linked and therefore navigated. I like Galopins idea

dark horse 05:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

• There should be two categories (place bred and place trained). I don't think this format will be redundant (although we should get rid of "Australian racehorses" and similar categories for being too vague). I think there will be users who will want to use both categories for searching, specifically if they are interested in the breeding industry of a particular country, and using the suffix alone does not provide them with a way to navigate by "place bred". Additionally, I wonder if there will be any users who will be confused by the meaning of the suffix without some explanation ( I know we can't dumb it down for everyone, just bringing up a point). Eventer

• If two categories are to be used (place bred and place trained) what ocurs if a horse has multiple trainers and they are in different countries? (dark horse 03:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC))

• On reflection I think that the "suffix" idea would confuse some readers and I'm returning to the original proposal for "trained" and "bred" categories. One slight change I would make is to the titles -

For "Racehorses trained in the United States", I'd prefer "American trained racehorses",

for "Racehorses bred in the United Kingdom", read "British bred racehorses" etc.

The advantages of this are:

a) the titles are shorter.

b) they don't all begin with "R"!

c) the similarity of the titles to "American racehorses" etc will lead to less controversy if those titles are deleted (which they should be for this to work).

It's interesting to note that the suffixes refer to "GB" rather than "UK", so I think we should use "British" and not "United Kingdom".

As for horses which have been trained in different countries (such as Jeune, for example), simply put them into more than one "trained" category (in Jeune's case "British trained racehorses" and "Australian trained racehorses").

Zafonic 19:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject

As a couple of people have indicated, I think it may be time to develop a WikiProject on Thoroughbred racing. Dark horse has written to me as follows:

I think that it would be a good idea to support a wikiproject on thoroughbred horse racing as suggested by Galopin. considering the size and limited contributors possibly separate projects for Europe, US and AUS. These could then be merged once more complete. There is Wikipedia:WikiProject Thoroughbred racing which has had next to nothing done to it and seems USA focused. You may have seen me working through the G1 winners in Australia (slowly) my idea is to complete the winners of all blacktype races and then complete profiles for all hall of fame horses (firstly) in the style of the Tulloch article. Added to this i want to develop a standard for summaries, race records etc. i quite like the idea of info boxes like they have for football (soccer) players. A summary including info on basic breeding, colour, year foaled, owner, trainer, race record, prizemoney, major wins, awards, sire stats and a photo would look good. Let me know what you think (dark horse 04:11, 4 July 2006 (UTC))

Rather than create a new horse racing project I see no reason why we can’t transform the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Thoroughbred racing into a global Wikiproject, much as other listed sports projects. If we are going to create article standards and info boxes, then the more people from differing horse racing backgrounds we can involve in that process, the better. Other global sports projects will be a great source for developing templates, guidelines, style guide, summaries, info boxes, etc. It may be that we can branch into country specific projects at a later date, although it does not appear to have happened in other global sports.

As a starting point for developing the project could I suggest submitting ideas on the following items:

• Separate country projects?
• Scope of project
• List of Categories
• Templates required
• Info boxes required
• Guidelines as to notability for articles
• Style guides for articles
• Publicising of project
• Recruitment of participants

I am transferring this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Thoroughbred racing where we can further develop ideas and hopefully, recruit more participants to the project. - Cuddy Wifter 04:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)