Talk:Ruby (elephant)

Triple attendance: not vandalism

This edit made me suspicious when I first saw it, but it is not vandalism. The Phoenix New Times article states that the attendance that day was, in fact, triple the normal attendance. Dave6 ^talk 08:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd omitted that item when I wrote the original "Ruby" article, but thought it would be appropriate to clarify the significance of the "43,000" figure. Cactus Wren 05:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

"Unsourced" template?

Silly me, I thought that CNN and the Phoenix New Times were sources. Cactus Wren (talk) 00:52, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Not if they are in the external links section. "Sources" in WikiMadia parlance means "citations that show what text is being cited AND by what source." The original guidance was to use "uncited" when there were zero, and "needs more" when there were three or less. In addition, if this was done semi-automatically (which is how most of these tags are placed) it depends on whether the editor was looking for "no cite tags" (this article had none), or "no reflist tag" (this may have shown up as "none" since it was technically in the lead, which is not where it should be), or "no refs tags". Each of these would give a different number. I have moved all of the refs and external links to the reflist and used cite tags. There are now three citations, which should keep this from happening again.

I'm kind of surprised that one of the zealots didn't remove the External links as being inappropriate (see WP:EL). These really belong as proper citations (which they are now).

I also removed the "lead too long" tag after sectioning the article. If anyone has better titles for the sections, I have no particular preferences. I looked at several other famous elephant articles to see how they sectioned the article, and every one was completely different, so there seems to be no precedence here.

Finally, I remove the "cleanup" tag. This one I particularly hate, because the editor placing it almost never says WHY the article needs cleanup. I think it reads just fine now. It's organized by sections, and hes plenty of citations for its length and the fact that it is still a start-class article.Donlammers (talk) 15:53, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Criticisms?

this article seems very one sided giving the story in a very positive light and seeming to ignore all the evidence that its just a neat trick. Snoops have an article on it and its not mentioned at all. where should this kind of info go? http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/elephantpainting.asp — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.187.176.74 (talk) 21:15, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

If you can provide any solid, verifiable, encyclopedic "evidence that its {sic} just a neat trick", please feel free to add it. Cactus Wren (talk) 21:38, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I think this article is pretty definitive and was written by a scholar: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1151283/Can-jumbo-elephants-really-paint--Intrigued-stories-naturalist-Desmond-Morris-set-truth.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.192.19.231 (talk) 03:49, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Some details from a 40-year-old article

I don't have a link but as I recall the story was that Ruby was an ill-tempered, mean elephant: she would lure ducks with trails of grain and then squash them. Somehow they decided to give her finger paints and unlike the Thai elephants that are being directed by humans, she produced the paintings independently, apparently choosing colors that she had seen in daily events such as when firemen came and the painting included red and yellow from the truck and uniforms. The painting apparently improved her behavior.

I think I recall she was dismissive of the attempts of other elephants, destroying them when she had the opportunity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.37.99.86 (talk) 02:02, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Dead links in references

None of the linked references appear to currently work. Natematic (talk) 10:37, 2 July 2023 (UTC)