Talk:Miniature horse/Archive 1

could someone add a section on what differentiates the two types of beasties? pauli 02:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

This *American Miniature Horses Could be a useful resource for writing the article, but I think most of this info is currently in the article. If not, please put the info in. Trying to cut down links to make the spam easier to spot. Skittle 19:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, Some of these articles are useful because they contain copyrighted images not available to Wiki users, plus they contain links to a wider variety of resources.

For anyone new to miniature horses, the offered links are of little help - all about registering and showing your horse.

These two I found much more helpful as introductions:

http://www.theminiaturehorse.com/index.html

http://www.shetlandminiature.com/index.asp

Edits

I just did (another) major re-do on this article. It suffers from "edit creep." I don't know who removed all the citations that were in here, but please don't do it again. Remember WP:Citing Sources.

The article also lost some worldwide refs, resulting in a very USA-centric version, I tried to restort a little bit of info on other nations, I encourage editors from outside the USA to add more info, perhaps here on the talk page, or CAREFULLY into the article itself. But please, no links to your farm, OK?  ;-)

It's very frustrating how many people put in commercial farm links, but that said, some commercial groups also have some good articles and useful information, that, while not entirely neutral and not always well-sourced, also does not appear to be available elsewhere on the web. So, when the information is accurate, please do not remove it just because the link is somewhat commercial unless you can point to a violation of wikipedia policy (such as, no link farms, no links to paid content, etc.) When you can replace a footnote with a more neutral source, that's fine.

I also get the feeling that there are more controversies out there. When you edit, please be fair to ALL groups, WP:NPOV is a pillar of wikipedia, after all.

Thanks. Montanabw 21:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I suspect User:Ssillett may have had something to do with this; it is enlightening to watch their edits to this article. While no doubt driven by a desire to improve the accuracy of the article, these edits seemed to involve removing sourced claims and swapping one site for another. I don't know enough about the world of miniature horses to know what controversies these edits reflect! Skittle 21:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I haven't done a lot of work with minis, but from the judging I have done, and the way people get totally insensed if you place a sausage with legs over a toothpick-boned critter with cow hocks -- or vice-versa, depending on which rule book is being used, apparently each organization is at war with the others and pretty much feels they are the only legitimate group. Silly, IMHO. Help keep an eye on things. Montanabw 02:54, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and in case you were wondering what was happening with the minihorseworld link you restored, I was undoing an edit by someone which replaced theminiaturehorse with minihorseworld and, given that minihorseworld is largely a site for people buying and selling things, and given that an anon had swapped the link to theminiaturehorse on the talk page with the mnihorseworld link, I suspected spam activity. So I wasn't taking out a legitimate link, I was trying to prevent people benefiting from spamming an article. Skittle 13:59, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, no problem. Spamming is bad, though some of the too-commercial sites also may have useful articles, I suppose the devil is in the detail of the URL, I should have checked the link instead of just keeping them both. Too many other articles on my watchlist...sigh... Montanabw 02:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Removed Sentence

"As a result of their small nature their cranium has been decreased in size causing the animal's brain to create pressure points within the skull. For this reason they are often kept as family pets, though they still retain natural horse behavior and must be treated like an equine, even if they primarily serve as a companion animal."

I removed the sentence in bold, which was recently added by an anon. It makes no sense where it was placed (they are often kept as family pets because the brain creates pressure points within the skull?) and it is not supported by a reference or source. If the person who added it would explain where they heard this, maybe we could work something out. Skittle 12:34, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Things like that that are simply bashing something without any support are called vandalism, and you need not even bother with more than an edit summary. You did well to remove such a claim. Also, if anyone spats about it, the section on dwarfism controversy in the article already addresses the issue. For stuff that's more likely to be a legitimate edit, adding the {{fact}} tag can be an intermediate way to question a dubious claim. Also, it never hurts to see if someone is just saying something already mentioned later in the article, and if so, remove the less well-written edit as "duplicative." Montanabw^(talk) 21:01, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

question

does a miniature horse's neigh carry any resemblance to full sized horses' sound? just wondering. Murakumo-Elite (talk) 14:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, they sound similar, though most "mini whinnies" I have heard are a touch higher-pitched than a full sized horse whinny, probably related to their smaller size. Not significantly different, though. I have had a few full-sized horses with a whinny almost as high-pitched as a mini. If you just heard the whinny without seeing the animal, you'd probably have trouble telling the difference between a mini and the average horse-sized weanling foal or yearling (horse). Mini foals do have a markedly higher-pitched whinny at first.

On the other hand, I once saw a mini-mule foal, and it had the darndest call, a high-pitched cross between a bray and a whinny that came out sounding sort of like a piglet's squeal more than anything! It was SOOO funny! Unbelievably cute too. The owners wouldn't sell, can't blame them! Montanabw^(talk) 16:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Kicking and biting

For some reason an editor keeps removing this information so I added a citation. More are available. I'm not sure why they keep trying to censor the article, but I'm sure they will explain themselves at some point since they've been reverted a couple times now. ChildofMidnight (talk) 04:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It is the person attempting to add information who has the burden of demonstrating that it is relevant. Per the "edit, revert, discuss" rule, the earlier version is relevant. The reason I am reverting this is that the context where it was added was irrelevant to the content. ALL horse afficionados usually claim that their favorite breed is a very nice animal and ALL horses could, when provoked, kick and/or bite. We could justify adding this phrase to all 350 horse breed articles on wiki. A detailed section explaining that minis are "real" horses was placed into this article at least two years ago (I have been editing wiki for three) by what appeared to be editor consensus at the time, Consensus can, of course change. But the edits being made to this article are not helping as is and need to be further discussed. Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Follow up: In an attempt to further address the concerns of those who deem it important to emphasize that minis are not pets and could hurt people even though they are small, which is a legitimate point, I rephrased the kick and bite bit to emphasize the flight or fight instinct generally. What this article actually needs is to have the lead material brought down into a new section on characteristics that expands on this in more detail, the problem actually is that the lead is trying to also be a characteristics section. But it is important that this article be properly expanded accurately. Montanabw^(talk) 23:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)