Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse racing/Harness racing

Always B Miki

I completed my first harness racing article on Always B Miki, the fastest Standardbred of all time! (The exclamation mark seem to be mandatory). I'd appreciate a second look to see if I got it right. I can then go update Wiggle It Jiggleit since the two faced on several times in 2016.

FYI, unable to find an equivalent of Equibase to give the overall statistical profile, I asked some of my online friends and they recommended that I check with stats@ustrotting.com . Sure enough, they replied within two days with a lovely summary (they call it racelines). Maybe if we ask nicely, they can provide info for other articles that we want to upgrade. Jlvsclrk (talk) 06:01, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Good work. Mateusz K (talk) 10:48, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Whatever they provide, be sure to cite it properly, probably with a similar format to a hardcopy book or other off-the-internet source.

Terminology

There are a number of terms that need to be standardized ASAP to avoid having to go back and make changes. Remember that proper English is irrelevant as private property can be spelled any way the owner wants. To start:

Race names:
Free-For-All Pace OR Free For All Pace

American-National OR American National

Mateusz K (talk) 10:56, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• Link the articles where there are concerns and we can look at them. My personal opinion is that I loathe hyphens unless absolutely necessary, but that can be overridden by a source that says that said hyphenation is used today. Frankly,

Good Articles

Somebody commented somewhere else thst while we have many Thoroughbred-related Good articles and some Featured articles we have no Standardbred GA or FAs (that I can find anyway). To remedy this, I think we could pick out at least one harness article to get GA, maybe two, within the next month or so. I would be willing to either help with expansion and then be co-nom, or do the review if it happens to be an article I've never edited or only edited once or twice. (This is why I suggested doing two within a short time frame; I've written GAs and reviewed them, but you can only review what you haven't done, so if I did part of the writing work somebody else would have to review.) I'd suggest starting with Dan Patch or another really iconic horse like Hambletonian because then finding sources would be easier. (That's not to say that it'd get reviewed within a month; I've had Billie Nipper, a woman who lived in Tennessee and painted really good pictures of famous show horses, up for review since July, and no takers.) Any thoughts? White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 23:28, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Great idea. Other candidates would be Albatross, Niatross and Cam Fella. I'd love to upgrade Somebeachsomewhere (recent enough for there to be lots online, old enough to have achieved legendary status) since it also counts as Canadian content for the WikiProject Canada 10,000 challenge. Regardless, I'll be there to help though I'm just starting to figure out how to find harness horse info online and don't have any books to fall back on as with Thoroughbreds. Jlvsclrk (talk) 00:19, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Google Books and Google Newspaper archives often have good info on the older ones; that's where I get a lot of sources for the horses and people on List of World Grand Champion Tennessee Walking Horses, especially the ones before around 1990. The International Museum of the Horse may have some info on the older/most iconic horses; they're cited on several breed articles. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 23:08, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I still miss not having the Equibase summary, which tells you when and where they raced so you can do a more focused search. Oh well, I'll learn! Just let me know which article to focus on and I'll be there. Hambletonian sounds interesting and the image we have would look great on the front page! Jlvsclrk (talk) 19:22, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I think maybe Dan Patch (I love how the owner changed the name of his farm after the horse set a record, also might be a good DYK hook if it hasn't been there already--don't think it has). I'll start working with what's there to get it sourced, then we can go from there. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 23:02, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Cool! Just read the current article on him and sounds like a lot of fun to research. I'll just finish with Wiggle It Jiggleit first. Jlvsclrk (talk) 03:11, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

In this regard, we still need an adjustment to the racehorse infobox. I left RexxS a note on his talk page and at Template talk:Infobox racehorse to make the change to move "Gait" to immediately below "Breed" Mateusz K (talk) 00:25, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

• We could try to get Standardbred to GA class also. That needs more work than the horse biographies (compare Thoroughbred -- an FA, or Shire horse -- a GA). Montanabw^(talk) 09:10, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I've just completed my first pass on Dan Patch, adding stuff from a terrific book on him and some cool articles that White Arabian Filly found. Does anyone want to give it a look and see if its headed in the right direction. Thanks! Jlvsclrk (talk) 06:57, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Task force tagging

What's done to date: ---

• Category:Harness racing venues by Montanabw^(talk)
• Category:Standardbred racehorses done by White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 20:33, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
• Category:Harness racing venues in Australia
• Category:Harness racing venues in Canada. Have to destub most of them
• Category:Harness racing venues in Norway
• Category:Harness racing venues in Sweden
• Category:Harness racing venues in the United States

Still to do: Driver articles- Carmine Abbatiello, William Popfinger, Frank Popfinger, Joe Marsh Jr., Buddy Gilmour, Ted Taylor, Bea Farber, Del Insko, Glen Garnsey, George Sholty, Peter Haughton, Vernon Dancer, Ken McNutt, Real Cormier, and more.

• • I'll add these as red links at the task force page, so we can see at a glance if they "go blue."

Most other articles other than those above

Might I suggest also working through the Harness Horse of the Year articles as a starting point. Jlvsclrk (talk) 03:35, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Agree with Jlvsclrkre re HHoY. - To avoid having to go back and fix infoboxes, we need to fix the racehorse infobox so that the Gait appears at the top underneath "Standardbred" as per my request to the Template Editor. For me and anyone who knows anything about harness racing, this is essential formatting not necessary for T'breds. Also, should we, if someone knows how, do some Harness Racing stubs to replace something like the {{-horseracing-bio-stub}} with the harness racing designation & an icon of a harness horse, not a T'bred.

• To do a stub template, we need an icon of a harness horse; anyone want to create one? Montanabw^(talk) 22:40, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

New categories to create:

Would like to add something like the following. Please post suggestions for wording and use of capitals plus whatever else. Should we create one for countries that only have trotting races? Mateusz K (talk) 19:37, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Category:Canadian harness races for trotters
Category:American harness races for pacers

I'm of mixed feelings. On one hand, as a general rule, I loathe categories that have too few articles in them. On the other hand, where there is a need, it should happen, even for a few articles. Right now, we have Category:Harness racing, with subcats Harness racing in the United States‎, Harness racing in Canada, etc. The Canadian category has 23 races and is pretty clear which are trot or pace races, so my gut says "maybe not". But for the United States, yeah, I can see it. I'd say the main thing is to incorporate it into the category scheme properly, whatever the title is. Maybe "American pacing races" and "American trotting races" will do. I don't think that we have to add "harness races for" -- but that's JMO. Montanabw^(talk) 22:38, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages

Hi, Today I added "Popular pages" wikilink for "WikiProject Horse racing/Harness racing" to the project page. Popular pages is a bot-generated (monthly) list of pageviews, useful for focused cleanup of frequently viewed articles. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 17:05, 4 January 2022 (UTC)