Talk:Nyquist (horse)

Editing tips for all

Hey all, given that I'm not a huge Nyquist fan, (OK, Nyquist is nice enough, it's that I'm not a big Doug O'Neill fan) I'll do some editing here, but others can take the lead this year. I'll just give y'all some editing pointers from my last two years taking the last two Derby winners (and last three Preakness winners) through the FAC process. (Because I'm too anal to totally stay away) It is really helpful if the article is edited correctly from the get-go, so if someone wants to take it up to featured article, they don't have to go in and redo a bunch of things. (Trust me, you miss plenty even when you think you are being meticulous.) Much of what I am suggesting comes from lessons learned the hard way. So here is what I suggest:

1. Do not exceed the sources. Be extremely careful about WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Even if something is really common knowledge, source it anyway.
2. Put the source with the material, don't lump three footnotes at the end of a sentence (or worse yet, a paragraph) if it can be done any other possible way. Stuff gets rearranged as an article develops, and lumping multiple sources together can mean that sourcing gets lost.
3. ReFill is a godsend, but you still should go in and be sure to add parameters that were missed, particularly author name and article date.
4. Where you don't use ReFill, try to use the pull-down citation templates in the editing window. If you enter the url into the template and click on the little magnifying glass next to the field, at least half the time, the template will propagate most of the citation for you.
5. NAME ALL REFS. You never know which ones will get reused later.
6. Also, don't name solely by source, or even just author. On these racehorse articles, we will have multiple sources from Blood-Horse, the Daily Racing Form and the New York Times. We will have multiple articles by Steve Haskin, Claire Novak, Jay Hovdey, Mike Watchmaker, Melissa Hoppert, Joe Drape, etc... Sometimes, I've even had multiple articles from the same source on the same day. I like to use author last name and date, where possible, though there are other methods that can work too.
7. Watch the breathless sportswriter prose. I know it's fun to love these horses, but we can't get too crazy and unencyclopedic in tone. (That said, you can sometimes sneak in a little sparkling prose, just don't overdo it)
8. Wikilink all the jargon. We can get away with using technical language, because most concepts have articles or are in the Glossary of North American horse racing and Glossary of equestrian terms. A piped link such as Glossary of North American horse racing#F for Foo funny horse word is really helpful to the non-aficionado.

All for now, I'll do some cleanup from time to time, and feel free to ask any questions. Montanabw^(talk) 02:53, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

First race

What was his first race Stuart hallam (talk) 16:16, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

It's in the article, see 2015 season and the chart. Montanabw^(talk) 08:48, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Races

OK, since he is set to race in the Preakness later today I added that to the table. All we have to do to publish the result is remove the hidden tags and fill in the time and place he finished in. (This method could be useful in the future, too.) White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 19:28, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Excellent. I may actually remove the hidden tags to make it easier for someone to update (generally, I've been beaten to the punch in past years, even though I'm sitting at the TV with laptop open --reverting vandalism takes precedence (people sometimes write really stupid things right after a race... sigh). Montanabw^(talk) 21:18, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Sources

Parking some potentially useful source material. Montanabw^(talk) 02:44, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

• Source on his early years, particularly as a two-year-old in training: http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/211704/brennan-got-nyquist-through-kindergarten