Talk:Irish bull terrier

Editors / Moderators

I started this page back in the early 2000s and for some reason people tried to remove it and when that failed severely edited it. I have added the withers height which is approximately 18 inches the 1930s Staffie standard before it was ruined by the show bunch. I know more about this breed than most so contact me if you wish to edit my additions please.

The difference with the APBT is that this dogs ancestor was interbred with Coon hounds and Bulldogs to bring up the size in the US. Something the Americans appear to be continueing with today with the Extreme Bully etc.

It was good news today that the UK are looking to lift dog specific legislation so the Irish Staff or Old Thyme Staffie will no longer be murdered by ignorant bureaucrats. I hope the breed will be established as a working dog capable of ratting or defending the family but still light enough to be picked up if necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr Nobody (talk • contribs) 17:22, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Dr Nobody, it appears that you misunderstand how Wikipedia works. It doesn't matter how much you personally know about something. You have to provide citations to reliable independent sources for any information that you add. {{u|zchrykng}} {T|C} 22:17, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Please butt out of this page and I have yet again added a reference. Also there is no such thing as an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier which is why I have amended that aswell. In reality the Irish Bull Terrier is the 1930 s Staffordshire Bull Terrier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr Nobody (talk • contribs) 22:46, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Dr Nobody: please review WP:OWN, WP:CIVIL, WP:3RR, and WP:REFB. They should help you. {{u|zchrykng}} {T|C} 02:35, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

This book refers to both "Irish" and "English" Staffordshire Bull Terriers. i.e. Staffordshire Bull Terriers (English and Irish) IQ125 (talk) 11:32, 18 October 2018 (UTC)( Blocked sockpuppet of SirIsaacBrock, see investigation)

There is no such thing as an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier please check with the Kennel Club it is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. The Irish strain is not a separate breed but the 1930s standard for the SBT. Why are you interfering in a subject I started years ago and that you know absolutely nothing about ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr Nobody (talk • contribs) 14:46, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Dr Nobody, I will reiterate that you should review WP:OWN, it doesn't matter that you started the article, it only matters what reliable independent sources say. zchrykng (talk) 16:07, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Does it matter that the Kennel Club name only a Staffordshire Bull Terrier ? Dr Nobody (talk) 23:20, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I have now done everything I can not to tread on the toes of the Moderators to highlight differences between the APBT and IBT. I have no idea why they do not want this correct now referenced NON plagiarised information published Dr Nobody (talk) 13:25, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, I suppose if you won’t bother to follow the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, you have got the response you deserve. Roxy, the Prod. wooF 13:53, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Lets explain this to you, a source has to say X, if it does not say X we cannot use it as a source for X (see wp:v). As far as I can tell none of your sources compares the IBT with the APBT, so you edit violates wp:snyth as you are taking two sources and drawing a conclusion neither of them makes (see wp:or.Slatersteven (talk) 16:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I have now used two reliable sources to describe the types of head of the two different breeds. I have reworded these descriptions as apparently I was plagiarising. One point of this page is to educate people on the difference so that innocent dogs are not put to death in particular staffordshire bull terriers or their longer legged cousin the ISBT (actually just the pre 1948 standard for the dog)Dr Nobody (talk) 17:31, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but they do not say what your edit said, it is OR. If this is a genuine difference why cannot you find a source that actually says it?Slatersteven (talk) 18:10, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

So I'd just like to butt in here. No point of this page is to prevent innocent dogs from being put to death. This an encyclopaedia, not a soapboax and not a means of influence social behaviour. If you are genuinely editing this page with any intent of order to prevent innocent dogs from being put to death then I think your goals and Wikipedia's are not the same and would suggest that you find an alternative outlet for your passion. For the references; I'm assuming you've read the policies people have been linking you to above. For a reference to support the point you're making the reference has to explicitly state that point. It seems from the comments around this that you are trying to use references to support points that are not actually made in the references. It seems more like, reading the comments above, that you're taking what some references say and deriving your own outcome or decision from them. This is know as synthesis at best and original research at worst. Wikipedia is based on verifiability and is purely based on what reliable sources say, not what we think they are say. We don't get to interpret or determine anything from the sources, editor's opinions and own knowledge doesn't matter, only what reliable sources say. Canterbury Tail talk 19:06, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

No you are wrong my passion is simply to educate and the paragraph on fictitious should to be expanded upon in the anatomy section as a factual rebuttal. The APBT was bread larger by the Americans in the 1800s by introducing other breeds eg Coonhound which is why the head is slightly different. The SBT / ISBT has very distinct cheek muscles and a pronounced stop the APBT generally does not. The ISBT is generally under 20 inches being around 18 inches and the APBT generally over 20 inches. The head shapes are available from the reliable sources I quoted so highlighting them in a modified fashion surely should be OK; I have not pressed the height issue as all I can reference is the old standard for the SBT which was 18 inches at the withers. Dr Nobody (talk) 20:34, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

As we have said, find as RS that compares them and says they are different.Slatersteven (talk) 23:15, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Well presumably people can read here if I publish both descriptions however I have just published the description of the IBT head. Dr Nobody (talk) 17:35, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Reboot

Would it be possible to (a) stop trying to force something into the article that people apparently don't like, and (b) put any criticism of past behavior and lack of familiarity with our myriad policies to the side, and stick to the content, and clearly explain what the problems are with it? When someone too stubborn for their level of experience runs into the Wikipedia new editor meat grinder, it usually ends badly, and it would be kind of cool if just once we could somehow avoid the inevitable.

I'm going to ask at WP:DOGS for one or more people who know about breeds and about what counts as a reliable source in the dog breeding world to come comment here. That might help. Mr Nobody needs to understand this is a collaborative project so he might not get his way. Everyone else needs to understand the guy is fairly new and it's hard having your edits reverted with very little help about what could actually be done to fix it. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll give this a try, in what I hope are clear and simple terms in a series of easy-to-digest bullet point. (Pings to the previous participants @Dr Nobody, Floquenbeam, Zchrykng, IQ125, Roxy the dog, Slatersteven, and Canterbury Tail:.)

• Just include what the sources say, without any "therefore, ..." conclusions being drawn by you (or manipulative wording to lead the reader to such a conclusion).
  • Sources have to be reliable; blogs and forums and other self-published or user-created material does not count – no matter how correct it may be. Same certainly goes for personal knowledge or opinion.
  • Sources have to say what you claim they say, not something just kinda similar or vaguely related, nor from which you think you can extrapolate a new claim.
  • If two or more sources disagree, we note that they disagree, and leave it to the reader to investigate those sources and make up their own minds. We do not try to adjudicate between them and decide which one is right, or try to synthesize a compromise between them.
  • Any claim that involves analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis (AEIS) must come from a secondary source. No AEIS material from an editor's own mind, or from a primary or tertiary source, can be used in a Wikipedia article. These words for source types have very specific meanings on WP, and do not match the definition used in every other field (they cannot, since different fields define them very differently). This is covered at WP:PSTS (primary, secondary, tertiary sources).
  • You cannot copy-paste from sources. Limited block-quotation is permissible, with proper sourcing and attribution. Even copying from a legally public-domain text requires attribution. WP doesn't rip off others' writing.
• It's entirely normal and everyday for two or more dog fancier organizations to:
  1. have not quite perfectly matching specifics in their versions of a breed standard for essentially the same breed – things like head size, withers height, etc.
  2. have different names for essentially the same breed.
  3. have different standards for what a breed encompasses. (Is this variant a colour variety within the breed? A defined subbreed? A separate breed? Unrecognized at all? It varies by organization.)
  4. have differing rules on what is and is not a permissible outcross (if anything).
  5. offer full to provisional to absolutely zero recognition for a new breed or subbreed or colour variety derived from an old one.
• We cover all this stuff by neutrally observing what is written in the breed standards and related documentation, and less primary sources like breed encyclopedias (tertiary), and especially any secondary sources like books, academic journals, mainstream newspapers, and other materials not published by any of the kennel clubs or breed associations themselves.
  • Magazines can also be used, but are considered weak sources because their fact-checking standards are low and their propensity for credulity and exaggeration is high. This is especially the case in the pet-breeding sphere; most breed profile articles are written by breeders of the breed in question, with a vested interest in promoting that breed and circumscribing its definition and nomenclature to match that of whatever organization they're a recognized breeder within.
  • It is not permissible to treat any particular one of these publications or publishers as the holy truth or go on some kind of righting the great wrongs campaign to push your version of what is "correct".
• It's standard practice here to merge closely related short topics that don't work well as stand-alone articles so that they form a single, more comprehensive, better sourced article on the overarching topic. Thus, someone's insistence that this version of a particular terrier breed or breed group is distinct, and that other one isn't legitimate in your view or the view of some particular organization you're familiar with, is irrelevant.
  • If the sources treat them as essentially the same topic, and they cannot be cleanly separated, and we don't have enough material for multiple stand-alone articles, then they remain merged in one article.
• I'll reiterate what the others said about the non-content stuff: Wikipedia is not a forum for discussing things like animal welfare and saving dogs from being put down. It is not a promotion vehicle for any particular viewpoint. It is not a place where anyone gets to control an article, even if they wrote 99.99% of it. It is not a debate battleground for endless "sport argument". Trying to "win" on Wikipedia is a waste of everyone's time; your debate skills and persuasion techniques are meaningless if reliable sources do not back the viewpoint you're advancing.

If someone cannot absorb this stuff and work collaboratively, within WP's rules, that's a shame, and Floquenbeam's prediction that something like an editing block would become inevitable will turn out to be true. At some point, the hassle of dealing with someone who refuses to get it and will not adjust to the WP way far exceeds the value of their non-problematic contributions, and they have to be ejected.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

RS lacking

Gareth Griffith-Jones, thanks for trying to improve this article. My primary concern is that the only 2 sources cited for the Irish Bull Terrier include a self-published book by an unknown author and The Telegraph article that doesn't recognize the breed. What we're dealing with is a hybrid dog based on anecdotal information and like so many other labels, apparently became somewhat ubiquitous because of the misinformation in this WP article which was created in 2005, thus resulting in the name spreading via word of mouth. Do you have availability to the book "The Story of the Real Bulldog" which is the primary cited source used in this article to verify if it even mentions Irish Bull Terriers or even Irish Staffordshire Bull Terriers? See inside the book here. There is no mention of the Irish Bull Terrier that I can find.^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 15:45, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing. My main concern is regarding the Staffordshire Bull Terrier article. You may have seen that I removed the banner there yesterday and intend having another go at editing here later. I shall try and find the book in my local library. Cheers! ... Gareth Griffith‑Jones ^{The Welsh Buzzard} 10:33, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I own the book and placed the citations in the article, they are all in the book. I reverted the changes back to the citations. Please don't delete them again, they add strength to the article. IQ125 (talk) 13:17, 14 November 2018 (UTC)( Blocked sockpuppet of SirIsaacBrock, see investigation)

Gareth Griffith-Jones, I restored the tag you removed because there is a discussion over at that TP that has not been formally closed. Hopefully, we can get the issue resolved among ourselves, so with that in mind, are you thinking we should keep the article as a standalone despite the fact it fails WP:GNG? I think the information it contains is important for readers to know but it can be added as a section in the proposed merge article, otherwise we're likely to be debating every pit bull advocacy on the planet for a long time to come. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 15:46, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. On reflection, I now consider my initial reaction, of not merging, to be wrong.
This morning, I have shown my support for the proposed merge at Talk:Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Let us hope we can resolve the issue among ourselves. Gareth Griffith‑Jones ^{The Welsh Buzzard} 12:03, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

This has not been the easiest article to find reliable sources for verification but it is an excellent example of how good collaboration and research can resolve issues plaguing even the most problematic of articles. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with you, GGJ. I hope we cross paths again. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 13:39, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words, and I am certain that we shall bump into each other again before too long—in the nicest possible way.
I know that you started the section, but may I suggest that you could formally add your support in the main body below? ... Gareth Griffith‑Jones ^{The Welsh Buzzard} 15:18, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Merge proposed

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Staffordshire Bull Terrier#Merger discussion for a proposal to merge the dubious Irish bull terrier into that broader article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:42, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Irish Bull Terrier v. Irish bull terrier

@SMcCandlish: This article should be capitalized as Irish Bull Terrier, the same as Staffordshire Bull Terrier and all the other Terrier breeds, see Category:Terriers, please change it back. IQ125 (talk) 15:27, 15 November 2018 (UTC)( Blocked sockpuppet of SirIsaacBrock, see investigation)

Mac - the source IQ125 is edit warring over appears to be a limited print self-published book. See Northbrook Publishing - "Specializing in Custom Publications, Digital Marketing, and Collateral/Ads for industries since 1996." The author is an unknown. Also see this archived link. I removed the source entirely. IQ125, if you continue the edit warring and disruption, it will not end well for you. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 20:49, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Atsme, the only one edit warring here is you! And it may not end up well for you, so stop it now and stop vandalizing the article. IQ125 (talk) 11:57, 16 November 2018 (UTC)( Blocked sockpuppet of SirIsaacBrock, see investigation)

IQ125, There is no call for your unpleasant undertones immediately above.
You will see that I have been copy-editing this dubious article too and completely support Atsme with the proposed merger and the subsequent revisions. Gareth Griffith‑Jones ^{The Welsh Buzzard} 14:56, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

IQ125 appears unclear on what WP:EDITWAR means and should read that page. Reverting destructively again and again to try to get what you want when multiple other editors are undoing you reverts is definitely editwarring and will get you blocked, IQ125.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:30, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't be capitalized, per MOS:LIFE, since it's not a breed. Hell, MOS:LIFE doesn't even sanction capitalizing standardized breeds (yet?), though it's a de facto standard (i.e., there appears to be consensus for it that isn't yet recorded in the guideline, though I intend to fix that at some point; it's not urgent because zero editors are going around trying to lower-case real breeds). Capitalizing isn't any kind of standard practice for random groups or alleged groups of mongrels, ferals, landraces, breed groups, dog types, crossbreeds, hybrids, species, subspecies, or any other kind of grouping of canids or other animals (or plants). More to the point, we had huge-ass RfCs about this kind of thing, many of them over many years, and the consistent community consensus was to not over-capitalize these things, with breeds left out of that decision as a then-uneasy truce. Only standardized breeds and their plant equivalent, cultivars, get the caps treatment here. We really don't care that some dog people like to capitalize every dog-related thing there is. Hell, I think everyone in this discussion is dog people, and they don't go around doing it (at least not on Wikipedia). We all know what the average quality of the writing in Dog Fancy magazine is.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:30, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

IBT/ISBT relationship to ABPT

The IBT or ISBT was a progenitor to the ABPT and is not a fictitious and fake breed. Without the IBT there would be no ABPT!! Many of you that are editing the article have zero knowledge about the IBT and should immediately stop entering bogus information that you know nothing about. IQ125 (talk) 12:06, 16 November 2018 (UTC)( Blocked sockpuppet of SirIsaacBrock, see investigation)

Assertions like this are unhelpful noise without reliable sources to back them up. Please also see WP:NOT#FORUM, WP:NOT#BATTLEGROUND, and WP:NOT#SOAPBOX.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:32, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Is ths unhelpful noise aswell https://www.dogbreedinfo.com/irishstaffordshirebullterrier.htm Dr Nobody (talk) 23:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that is unhelpful noise, and is certainly not a reliable source. It is a self-published blog written by Sharon Maguire. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:11, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Are two AMAZON books https://www.amazon.co.uk/Staffordshire-Terriers-English-Canine-Library/dp/185736242X/ref=sr_1_1?ie= and https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Staffordshire-Bull-Terrier-Guide/dp/1526907267 other unreliable sources? Dr Nobody (talk) 11:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, they are. Gareth Griffith‑Jones ^{The Welsh Buzzard} 11:09, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

As I said elsewhere why have you pages on Bigfoot or the Lochness monster as its improbable they have ever existed Dr Nobody (talk) 16:40, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Dr Nobody, because reliable sources have written about the myths and the people who believe they aren't myths. zchrykng (talk) 16:52, 20 November 2018 (UTC)