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Horses in warfare

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page
Result: Kept- Reasons for putting the article up for review were sourcing, citation, and MoS issues that have been resolved over a month-long revision process. Article now meets standards to maintain GA status. -epicAdam (talk) 01:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I have reviewed this article as part of GA Sweeps and had a few problems with it as listed at Talk:Horses in warfare/GA1. Most are pretty minor but some are more serious. Given the size of the article, its importance and the nature of what I perceive to be its problems I would prefer to obtain community consensus on this article before making a decision on it. My personal feelings are that it would probably only take a small amount of cleaning up for this to be a GA but I am interested in other people's views on the subject.--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:16, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delist: There are a number of sections and paragraphs that require citations (there are even some maintenance tags on the page)... I just went through and edited the article to take care of some basic WP:MoS issues. Further, the web citations provided are formatting improperly.

I just ran this semi-automated javascript programthat has some additional items that could be considered beside the problems you mentioned:

  • You may wish to consider adding an appropriate infobox for this article, if one exists relating to the topic of the article. [?] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
  • Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long – consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style.[?]
  • There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view.
    • arguably
    • are considered
    • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).[?]
  • Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
    • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”

There are also other problems that I have listed below:

  • Reorder the sections to present the history of horses in warfare first. A history of the subject is almost always provided first so that readers can gain a background before delving into technical details like horse size, breeds, and training.
  • "800 to 1000 pounds (400 to 500 kg)" What??? 1kg does not equal 2lbs!
  • Does measuring horse height in hands add to the article? Just because its a customary unit of measurement for horses does not mean that it's appropriate to use it in an encyclopedia. I would mention that "hands" is a customary unit equal to yadda, yadda, yadda... at the first instances, but then use standardized units (feet/meters) for the rest of the article.
  • The article also has "pseudo information", i.e. text that's not necessarily false, but typically uninformative (like filler). Often times the information is met with a "Tell me something I didn't know." Even worse than that is having uncited pseudo information. For exmaple:
    • Conversely, a warrior or soldier also required some degree of protection from enemy weapons, and an overemphasis on light equipment could easily prove fatal in some situations.
    • Weight carried affects both speed and endurance.
    • Other Equids: the entire section is great for articles on donkeys and mules, but it goes too far off topic here. Unless there is some type of magnificent war donkey, which I would definitely be interested in.
    • The details on various methods of training horses, and war horses in particular, vary as much as the cultures and historical periods that produced them.
    • In addition, some war horses were trained for specialized uses. A horse used in close combat may have been taught, or at least permitted, to kick, strike and even bite, thus becoming weapons in the extended arsenal of the warriors they carried. Other horses, used for raids or reconnaissance, were taught to remain quiet at all times, to avoid whinnying to other horses or otherwise betraying their presence.
    • Periodically great leaders or changing conditions would organize several tribes into to one force, and create an almost unstoppable power.
    • It is most likely that the decline of the knight was brought about by changing structures of armies and various economic factors, rather an obsolescence caused by new technology. By the sixteenth century, the concept of a combined-arms professional army first developed by the Swiss had spread throughout Europe, and was accompanied by improved infantry tactics.[61] These professional armies placed an emphasis on training and paid contracts, rather than the ransom and pillaging which reimbursed knights in the past. This situation, when coupled with the rising costs involved in outfitting and maintaining knights’ armour and horses, probably led many members of the traditional knightly classes to abandon their profession.[62] (This isn't an article on knights. Unless this article is trying to make the point that horses somehow aided to their decline)
    • Horses are trained to be able to reenact historical battle scenes today. Examples include the Battle of Hastings reenactment and assorted American Civil War reenactments. Due to changes between ancient and modern horses, equipment and materials, it is sometimes difficult to create reenactments that are fully authentic with original equipment and horse phenotypes of the represented time. However, to the greatest extent possible, many reenactors attempt to accurately reflect details of equipment, training, weaponry and battlefield conditions.
    • Equestrian competition by definition this doesn't belong in an article on warfare; even the reenactments are a stretch.
  • Don't just leave things at "though this claim is disputed." Explain why it's disputed, and by whom.

I am going to add maintenance tags in areas that need help. Please let me know if you have any additional questions. Best, epicAdam (talk) 22:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: The article has undergone vast improvement. MoS, sources and prose look good and should keep its GA status. Best, epicAdam (talk) 16:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

KEEP At least, don't panic and give us a couple weeks (not a couple DAYS) to get this tuned up. None of these problems are major, however, please be aware that the GA team at Wikiproject Equine is busy and we would appreciate your patience. At least two people who have helped extensively with this page are on vacation, one internationally. To answer a couple of your questions:

  1. 1 There is no real infobox for the project, though I did add the Equidae template to the bottom, if that works.
  2. 2 Horses are always measured in hands in English-speaking countries, it's a term of art.
  3. 3 Some of the comments on relevance of content do point out some fill, but other material is in there because it is of historic significance (say "war horse" and most people think of Knights, the original article was exclusively about the knight's horse and expanded from there. We can work on making it read better, but this is by its nature a long article and many other GA articles are just as long, if not more so.
  4. 4 We can tune up the footnotes, but this may take some time, as one of the people with the hardcopy books is the one who is out of the country.

I certainly appreciate constructive criticism, but keep in mind that this article is maintained by some experienced editors, and though the GA standard appears to have tightened up, the article easily passed when it was nominated the first time. So give us a chance to fix it. Montanabw(talk) 03:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response Hi Montanabw. I apologize that you feel like the article (and the editors who work on it) are being attacked by a slew of reviews. I just wanted to dissuade your fears of "Horses in warfare" being immediately delisted. A request was made at WP:GAR for a community review, to determine whether or not an article at present continues to meet GA standards; I felt that "Horses in warfare" did not. However, as per all community GA reassessments, no action is taken on an article until a consensus is reached and the primary editors have a chance to both respond and correct any flaws with the article. This process can often take weeks to complete, so there's no worry about the article being immediately delisted. To respond to some of the points you raised:
  • Simply because there is a customary unit of measurement does not mean that it's appropriate for an encyclopedia. The entire point of providing the information is so that people unfamiliar with a topic can understand it; hence why it was recommended that the use of "hands" be explained as a primary method of measuring horses, but then stick with units more familiar to readers for the rest of the article. However, again, this is only a recommendation. I am unaware of any WP:consensus on the issue. If there isn't, then it may be a good time to propose that a consensus be found.
  • I am not at all worried about the length of the article; in fact, I think it's a good size. However, as far as achieving good (not professional) prose, there are many redundancies in the text, which make the article difficult to read; a situation of which I'm sure you are aware.
  • Editors with sources: that's fine. Like I said, there's really no rush. Nobody wants to delist articles; that's not the point of the entire GA system. But, until User:Jackyd101's GAR recommendation, there had been relatively little work done on the article at all. Think about a GAR more as a method by which to bring attention to an article, as opposed to an all-out assault. :-)
If you have any other questions, or would like additional help with the article, please let me know and I'll see what I can do. Best, epicAdam (talk) 06:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. Some answers to the assorted questions raised, whoever raised them:

  1. Horses are measured in hands. That's an absolute. And it is wikilinked (though we can wikilink it more, certainly) We are not going to change over 1,500 horse articles on this. There are other things with odd measuring systems, the nautical mile, the troy ounce, etc., though there is certainly no objection to someone adding conversions as well if someone wants to do this. (A hand (length) is 4 inches and then one-inch increments. i.e a horse that is 15 hands is 60 inches at the withers, a horse that is 15.1 is 61 inches, 15.2 = 62 inches, 16 hands = 64 inches, etc.)
  2. Any other inaccurate conversion stuff can be fixed, obviously (Bad lb to kg stuff, for example, isn't there a template for this??)
  3. Reordering sections is up for discussion. The current version was intended to first provide an overview to make the rest (i.e. the history) make sense by providing a set of parameters and basic principles more or less common to all eras (i.e. form to function, for example, or when/why did the saddle start to matter?) Beyond that, it is pretty much ALL history after than, starting with antiquity and coming up to the present day. There may be an improved way to rearrange things, but this is an article where blind adherence to a set template is not necessarily the solution
  4. The table of contents seems suited to the length of the article, redundant things can be combined, but good subsections make it much easier to find material. I really don't see a huge problem with this.
  5. I see no reason to respond to a cut and paste template of suggestions not customized to the issues with this specific article. Some apparent "weasel words" simply reflect that a situation (such as the debate over the size of the knight's horse) are discussed in extensive detail in a footnote or at a wikilinked article. One must choose between a who/what/when discussion that becomes irrelevant and endless when one is also complaining that the article is too long. Make up your mind which problem you want to fix, eh, don't just apply rules out of context.
  6. I am cool with fixing redundancies. However, finding them is an issue - when you see an article too much, you know how one's eyes can blur. It WOULD be very helpful if you could create a separate section on the article talk page and give a short list that we can use strikeout on as we fix them, or discuss if they are a problem.
  7. Feel free to slap on the fact tags, but be aware that some sections have a source at the end of the paragraph that covers the entire paragraph. I never know quite how to handle those -- do we REALLY need five footnotes to the same page of a book in one para???
  8. I am not sure who put in all the suggestions as to what's relevant and what's not. There was a stable consensus on this for quite some time and I for one am reluctant to throw out a lot of material that does not in fact have much in other articles. For example, modern competition at the Olympic level is ALL derived from warfare. Equestrian at the Summer Olympics points out that civilians weren't even allowed to compete in the Olympics in Equestrian competition until the 50's. That's quite relevant. Historic reenactments may not be warfare, but they educate people about how horses were used in warfare (at least the better ones do). That's relevant.
  9. Calling material pseudo-information" is a but much. Just slap on fact tags.
  10. The material on medieval knights was already cut down a ton and transferred into Horses in the Middle Ages, but this was the core of the original article and most certainly relevant
  11. Mules and donkeys won many a war by preserving the supply line. So are you saying that supply isn't part of "warfare"? Ah, but the folks who wanted this material added were quite vehement that they were...and consensus of the time agreed.
  12. There is some stuff in the South Asia section that needs work. It does need to somehow be saved, though, as it helps provide a worldwide perspective to the article. I wish we had more on the Mongols, too.

Hope this helps! Montanabw(talk) 18:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - just note that I am actively working on updating references, etc. The web references have been cleaned up, and I'm slowly working through the sourcing issues. After those are taken care of we'll work on weasel terms, etc. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, the article has a new lead, which is much longer. Much of the missing citations are in now. Dodgy refs are gone (we're still waiting on a few page numbers, but nothing spectacular.) Some expansion of topics covered has taken place, but we're still good with 42K of readable prose. Considering the scope of the subject, that's not bad at all. Just updating on progress. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:36, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So can we keep GA status, now, pretty please?? Montanabw(talk) 01:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]


ATTENTION: We have, for the most part, completed the re-edit of this article and would appreciate it if all who weighted in here will please comment and close this reassessment. Several editors, Dana in particular, have worked VERY hard on this update and it would be nice to get this article out of limbo. Can someone please explain how we can wrap this up now? Thank you. Montanabw(talk) 01:10, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And if a vote is needed, I vote KEEP. Montanabw(talk) 01:10, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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