Gabygsp

Please don’t bite me, I’m a newbie!

I’m a university student in a Wikipedia Education class, and I’m currently learning how to contribute to Wikipedia.
I am approaching my subject in good faith.

If you have any concerns or questions, my tutor’s name is BlytheKombucha (talk · contribs). Thanks!

Hello Gabygsp. I certainly don't want to bite you, but you will note that I reverted your changes to Kiwi (horse). You said you changed overall tone of the article to better fit with the encyclopedic tone of Wikipedia. I don't think you chieved that at all. Let's look at the lede paragraph alone -- the lede as it was, and then your changes.

You removed "He is especially renowned for his last-to-first victory in the latter event, and " and replaced it with "He achieved a historic victory in the 1983 Melbourne Cup.". The original which you removed is accurate, and your change to "historic victory" really is meaningless. Furthermore you inserted "1983 Melbourne Cup" immediately following a sentence which already specified we were talking about the 1983 Melbourne Cup. I don't think it was really an improvement for you to change "Kiwi raced from 1980 to 1987" with the less succinct "Kiwi's racing career spanned from 1980 to 1987". Moriori (talk) 02:49, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi Moriori. I edited this article as a mandatory task assigned by my university tutor. We were required to edit an article that had been tagged by Wikipedia as having issues. The issue with the article was with the lack of adherence to an encyclopedic tone. I removed aspects of the article that made it hard to understand for a reader without previous knowledge of horseracing. For example a 'last-to-first' victory appears to be a racing specific term, which would maybe serve its purpose better if it were explained in the Racing career section.

Also, I don't believe the part about Ann having a preference for a chestnut haired horse is very relevant to the Background section, I left that part in of course, but re-structured the sentence a little so it wasn't so our of place. It would be more relevant perhaps if an actual physical description of Kiwi was provided.

You also dispute where I changed 'Kiwi is especially renowned for...' to 'He achieved a historic victory in the 1983 Melbourne Cup'. You said that this change is meaningless. I was only trying to avoid the wordiness and the assumption that universally the 1983 win is what Kiwi is renowned for. The statement might be viewed as incorrect if in actuality, Kiwi is renowned for winning both cups consecutively. If this is a quote though, this is a legitimate reversion and just needs a citation.

I agree that the sentence 'Kiwi's racing career spanned from 1980 to 1987' is less succinct, however it is only 2 more words than the original and links more accurately to the article, considering there is an entire section titled 'Racing career'.

What also makes the article less encyclopedic is there are not many references to back up claims. For example, where it says 'Kiwi was still considered by numerous bookmakers as an outsider', there is no citation to prove this claim and the use of the term 'outsider' is colloquial unless you are quoting one bookmaker directly.

In the sentence 'Even to this day, Kiwi is the only horse to have won both the Wellington Cup and Melbourne Cup consecutively', I removed 'Even to this day' and I see you have added it back. I don't think was necessary at all as it is already stated Kiwi is the only horse to have won both - the fact that he still is the only horse 'to this day' is implied. Also, the re-addition of 'even to this day' reverts the article back to a non encyclopedic tone.

By reverting this, it appears to me that you do not appreciate any edits at all, no matter if they improve the overall article and remove the 'may not reflect an encyclopedic tone' tag. This is all I was attempted to contribute towards.

I did however notice that some more detailed facts about Kiwi were added by a different user, including his race time at the Wellington Cup in 1983, which I think is great.

I don't mean to bite either. I know you are not the original creator of this article and I understand you are a Wiki admin, however I feel that it is unfair to judge somebody else's contributions based on your own opinion of what is meaningful and necessary.

I hope you don't take any of this personally. I also won't need to edit this article again for my class. Gabygsp (talk) 04:11, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Of course I don't take this personally, and me being an admin has nothing to do with it. I do casual editing sometimes, always with the intention of improving Wikipedia. I can see that you didn't quite get what I was on about, but never mind, you say you will not be editing the article again. If you edit different articles and wish to make amendments, do so incrementally and then any revert may not remove a good edit you have made. You mentioned "encyclopedic tone" above. To me, by far the most important component of encyclopedic tone is good writing. Currently, the article has such gems as "At the finish line, Kiwi won the race". Really! Moriori (talk) 23:25, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice. Just to clarify, the line you mention 'At the finish line, Kiwi wont the race' was not my contribution and also, it was added after I edited. :)

I wasn't suggesting you wrote that line, but was commenting on the poor writing in the article. Cheers. Moriori (talk) 21:59, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh sorry! My apologies. Yes I definitely agree...Gabygsp (talk) 00:24, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Physiotherapist1234 (talk) has asked you to join them for a nice cup of tea and sit down here.

Physiotherapist1234 (talk) 00:46, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

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Nobody1966 (talk) 01:08, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

lovely article! Madspalmer (talk) 03:28, 19 May 2022 (UTC)