Talk:Menorquín horse

Balearic pony?

There is no Balearic pony. At least, there is no Balearic pony in the Balearic Islands. Google books gets 1 hit from 1912 for "Balearic Horse", 2 hits from 30 years ago for "Balearic Pony". The governments of Spain and of the Balearic Islands do not mention any kind of "Balearic Pony", but do of course describe in detail the rather tall riding horse breeds of the islands. Google Scholar gets one hit for "Balearic horse", where it is part of the phrase "Balearic horse population"; and 0 hits for "Balearic pony".

There are plenty of Balearic ponies on the internet, of course. Here is a particularly good example, photographed in front of what appears to be an Austrian chalet. Why could that be, I wonder?

It's time to put this one to rest for good. This is Wikipedia, not Cowboy Frank. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't really know the answer of your Question, nut I thought an Universitiy homepage should be trustworthy source[1]. But maybe this is the answer:

Among the rarest of equine breeds, the Balearic island horse or pony is of ancient origin and little known. Because the breed is considered unimportant by officials, it is very hard to find information about and its existence is barely acknowledged.

And as it was used for riding and agriculural work, maybe it is extinct by now. --Kersti Nebelsiek (talk) 19:33, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that a page published by a university should be reliable. Unfortunately that one is not, as has been shown again and again. The horse breeds of Mallorca and Menorca are very much not extinct, though both are endangered and both are actively protected by "officials" (regional and national government). Neither of them even faintly resembles the "Balearic Pony" of the internet, which appears to be a total fabrication, and thus has no place here. Thanks for drawing attention to this. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Okie state and Cowboy Frank's web sites are far from perfect, (though even a blind pig finds acorns some of the time and these sites do hint at where to look for better info) but Okie state has been shown that they tend to copy stuff given to them by others, (often verbatim and without critical review) and thus they don't just make things up out of whole cloth, so calling it a "fabrication" is over the top. This information came from SOMEWHERE, and this source and this source suggest possible origins for their material. I think we also cannot discount anti-pony and anti-"local breed" bias when it comes to government recognition. My suggestion is that we teach the issue instead of ignoring it, due to the fact that we do in fact have five or six published works that aren't Okie State, Cowboy Frank, or WP derivatives but DO mention a Balearic horse of some sort. I don't have a lot of time on my hands to waste on another stupid round of discussions on the matter, but I'm wondering if the solution is to restore the Balearic horse/pony/ namespace with a sourced explanation of what the situation is. To the extent we have unreferenced conjecture, that can also be explained with a "some people (Okie State) say this, but studies show that it's actually that..." discussion. Would there be an objection if I recreated the Balearic page to try and explain it all, or at least to provide what information is out there? Montanabw^(talk) 22:18, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

So, that's one source from 1912 (can you read what it says, I can't, the snippet is just a bit of blank page?), and one that is copied verbatim from an old version of this or the old "Balearic horse" page. Which rather neatly illustrates why it is important not to include unreferenced rubbish in this encyclopaedia. And unreferenced rubbish is, unfortunately, what a lot of the OSU page consists of. Can anyone find one reliable academic reference for the existence of a "Balearic Horse"? If not, I suggest that it has no place in any article of this wiki, and that the current disambiguation page is all it needs or deserves. And no, a bit of a blank page from 1912 is not a reliable academic source. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

JLAN, The pages I could see had material on them, maybe there is a browser issue. But that aside, remember that your use of sarcasm and terms such as "fabrication" and "rubbish" are not helping here, they get in the way of your message. I'm not trying to make a case that a "real breed" called the Baleric exists, but rather to explain who, what, when, why, and if some people refer to horses in the region as "Baleric" horses -- if nothing more, to settle the problem once and for all. As far as scientific data, we do not require an academic reference to keep an article, we require, as the WP guidelines at WP:V state, "verifiability," which may not be identical to "truth." As an example, I kept repeatedly trying to dump an article on the Moyle horse, which I personally think fails any qualification as a "breed," (one guy's program, basically), but when it went to an rfd, it was deemed to have enough evidence (from various books, and yes, Okie state) by the wiki-demigods (or whoever lurked at rfd that week) to keep. So, frankly, any more, my opinion for a breed article is "does it meet the Moyle horse standard? " My point here is that we don't need a huge amount of discussion, but it is pretty clear that there has been a tendency to label horse breeds by geographical area, and sometimes this results in confusion when one breed is given multiple names, or if several breeds are lumped together with a single name (as here). Where confusion exists, I'd like to clear it up. Putting your nose in the air and implying that people are either stupid or liars does nothing to clear up the issue. So my point: Confusion exists. Let's not ignore it, let's educate. Montanabw^(talk) 22:32, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

So you can see something on the Google books Lydekker snippet for "Balearic horse". That's good, I can't - Google does not show the same bits of stuff everywhere in the world. What does it say? And does it have any relevance to this breed? If not, there is no reason to mention it here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Try it this way, minus the word "horse" -- you see the snippets here and can click on each one to get the full page where this author discusses a "Baleric group" of horses. I suspect this may, in fact, be the source of some of the confusion in the other books that mention a "Baleric" horse. I think Wikipedia is, therefore, the perfect place to sort this out and explain it. Montanabw^(talk) 00:01, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

That is the Balearic group of islands, not a "Balearic group" of horses. I repeat, I only have snippet view of this book; if you can see all pages 137-8, please tell me what they say. Page 224 is about donkeys. Anyway, I see references to Majorca and to Palma, so it definitely does not refer to the Menorquín. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, you apparently are not willing to click on a link, so: go to [and click where the blue says page 224 it references the Baleric group of donkeys, may be useful]; then the next one is the blue link that says "page 137>>" click on that one it references horses "in the Balearic group" and goes on to page 138, and yes I can see it. Click on the blue link off the snippet. You are a big boy and well able to use wiki markup syntax, I am quite confident that you are able to click on a blue link in Google books. Montanabw^(talk) 22:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm just smart enough to click on a link. Are you smart enough to post one that works? The one you gave above does not. As mentioned before, Google does not make the same content available in all countries. As also mentioned before, reference to the Balearic group is to the group of islands, not to some fictional "Balearic group" of horses. If you can read the relevant pages of the book, kindly quote them here so that we can establish once and for all whether they contain any mention of the island of Menorca or of the Menorquín horse. If they do not, then what relevance do they have to this article? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:14, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Source info

OK, here is the summary of what's out there. My point is that we need to "teach" the issue and not ignore it, lest a new "Baleric Horse/Pony" article get created by someone else and this whole thing starts up again. Many of these refs suggest some sort of pony breed, not the Menorquin or Mallorquin. So here is what we are up against:

1. Lydekker, The horse and its relatives - Page 137 discussed ad nauseaum above.
2. Which Horse of Course By Mary Ellen Bauer p. 61 This seems to be the source for the Cowboy Frank page (same photo, anyway) and looks like it's actually a Haflinger, but there you have it.
3. Guide to the Horses of the World and Illustrated Guide to Horses of the world appear to be the same book, both have a snippet on p. 102 that looks to be cribbed straight from Lydekker, hence my concern.
4. International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds By Bonnie L. Hendricks, Anthony A. Dent p. 60 We all have our criticisms of Hendricks, but she quotes Summerhays on this one, so she clearly didn't make it up. Again, the pony definition.

So, in short, while each of these can be critiqued, the point is that the information is out there and must be dealt with. Ignoring it doesn't make it vanish. That's my point. Feel free to propose some sort of language we can pop on the dab page and into each article on a horse breed originating in the Balearic islands. I'm open to any reasonable idea. Montanabw^(talk) 22:31, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, I have the Summerhays book, a handbook for children from 1948, The Observer's Book of Horses and Ponies; this was a quite well-regarded series in its day. He has a "Balearic" on page 55; island of Majorca, Palma district, convex profile, upstanding mane, descended from the "wild tarpan", dark to light brown. Do any of these points seem relevant to the Menorquín? They do not. Wrong island, wrong colour, wrong horse. I see little value in pursuing the errors of the early part of the last century, but it seems to be a passion of yours, judging by the performance over the laughable "Four Foundations"; if you want to take this one further, Summerhays cites his sources as: Lady Wentworth; Capt. M.H. Hayes; Col. D.O. Philpott; Maj.-Gen. Sir James Johnstone; Prof. Janikowski; E. Iverton and A.E. Pease. I expect one at least of those will take you back to Lydekker, The Balearic horse page would probably be a good place for this stuff if you think it really important. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:12, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

JLAN, can the sarcasm and try to assume good faith. You know that there are a lot of theories about horse origins that have been disproven, but were perfectly reasonable at the time, given information available (such as all these old source claiming everything descended from the Tarpan). It is not "laughable" to discuss what is clearly published in a half-dozen books still available today, and thus address the issue and in doing so, try to remove misinformation by explaining the theory but that it has been superceded. As you know, one cannot copy and paste out of Google books and I am not going to bother to manually keyboard in several pages of text here for you. Ask someone else from the USA to verify content if you don't want to trust me (which, it is obvious, you don't). I'm glad you have Summerhays, and I agree that some of these other sources reference what sounds like a scrubby little pony of some sort, yet other works describe the possibility that a "Balearic" horse is more refined, but THE POINT is that these same books also do not mention the Menorquin or any other breed AT ALL. I'm not going to beat this to death. You need to learn that collaboration isn't doing everything your way. I have spent a great deal of time that I could be devoting to other things in finding references and sources, while beating my head against the wall trying to explain my point a half-dozen different ways. I'm done. The material needs to stay in. Where, how, and how many sources is debatable, but the issue exists. The fact that the information is problematic is WHY wikipedia needs to address it.Montanabw^(talk) 23:42, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Menorquín horse. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://archive.is/20030502012908/http://www.emenorca.org/home_en.jsp?file=7&idi=en to http://www.emenorca.org/home_en.jsp?file=7&idi=en

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)