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There are some special considerations when editing horse articles versus editing mainstream articles on topics like cookies or books. Part of this stems from the fact that horses have a romantic aura and therefore draw bored young girls to try to edit horse-related articles. Another part is that we have many individuals who want to sell their breed, training program or book and use Wikipedia to try to do so. Finally, we have well-meaning people who want to help but don't know how. This essay is designed to help all of the above groups with some quick pointers.
☆A horse's parents should always be referred to as its sire and dam. Please don't call them its mommy and daddy or even its mother and father. Grandparents should be called the grandsire or granddam.
☆When citing information from breed associations, the oldest association within the breed is generally the best source. Most of the later groups were formed as splits simply because somebody got mad at the original group, and they tend to push agendas more. Note that many associations have changed their name since they were first created, howver. It is also not uncommon for two associations to merge.
☆Always use the proper terminology for colors and markings. A horse has a white star on his forehead, not a white blob on his forehead. Horses with no markings should be referred to as solid, not "plain".
☆And to follow up with the above point, don't call a horse's coat its "exterior". It is not a car. (Yes, somebody actually wrote that one into an article.)
☆Discipline names, such as saddle seat or team roping, should be in lowercase, unless of course they begin a sentence.
☆Individual horses should be referred to by their correct registered name with all spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and spacing as it appears on the pedigree, no matter how bizarre it looks. Because of registry rules mandating names stay within a certain length, weird spellings are very common.
The above names may appear at first glance to be the victims of typos, but they are what the horses were registered as, so that is what we should call them.
☆Also per above, a name should be written simply as Secretariat, NOT as "Secretariat" or Secretariat.
☆Use gender-specific language when a horse's gender is known, but use they or it in cases where it's not known.
☆Do not refer to horses as "boys" or "girls". They come in three sexes; stallion, mare and gelding. The first two are male and female, in that order; the third is a castrated male.
☆Breed names should be capitalized. There's a big disagreement over this, but they are in capitals in almost all books and magazines now, so that's the style we go with.
☆Baby horses, under six months old, are referred to as foals. Foals old enough to be weaned are weanlings. Do not call them babies, or even worse, horse children.
☆Horses have a universal birthday, January 1, to make competition like racing more precise and more fair. However, the universal birthday is not as commonly used in show horses, so it's good to find out exactly when a horse was actually born for the purpose of clarity in its article.
☆When a brand new account shows up and starts editing an article on a specific breed, trainer, or discipline, they are almost always involved in it. However, not all of them are out to cause trouble and can make valuable edits if helped along.
☆No, you can't make an article about your pet backyard horse, or if you do it'll just be deleted. There are a lot of notable horses that don't have articles but qualify for them.
☆Wanna know why so many articles have bad pictures or none at all? We can only use free-licensed pictures. If you have real complaints about the pictures, take some and upload them!