Talk:Equine prepurchase exam

Talk: Equine Prepurchase Exam
I am hoping to get some feedback on this article that I recently posted. I am a first-time Wikipedia author and am anxious to get comments/suggestions on ways I can improve the article! Thanks!

Sherryj (talk) 01:47, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * One thought is that prepurchase exams are not unique to horses; could you do some literature research and expand the scope to include prepurchase exams of other companion animals and/or livestock?  Also, Wikipedia style for article titles is to make them sentence style, meaning lowercase.  I will move the article from "Equine Prepurchase Exam" to "Equine prepurchase exam". --Una Smith (talk) 20:38, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * SherryJ- Welcome to Wikipedia!  Great job for a first article.  I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of consolidating the references using the reference used twice or more method, and the  book citation template.  This way, the reference list at the bottom populates itself with just a few references.  This seemed appropriate since each reference was from one particular part of each book.  The references you used are all good ones, but I think there's probably a bit of over-referencing.  When the statements you make are likely to be challenged, then every sentence probably needs a reference.  In this article, because the statements are less likely to be disputed, I would think it appropriate to make fewer citations after a general theme is discussed.  The Manual of style and Citing Sources are resources I've found helpful too.--Getwood (talk) 01:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it is fine to have a horse-specific article on exams, those for other animals need their own articles. Anyone editing this article may want to compare with material in horse care, or at least make some cross-wikilinks to it.  Montanabw (talk) 03:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Getwood- Thanks so much for your help in rearranging my citations! I knew that I probably had cited my sources incorrectly/too much, but wasn't sure how to go about fixing it. Thanks! Those modifications really helped clean up the article. If you think of anything else I should do to improve this article, I would love to hear the feedback!

(Sherryj (talk) 18:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC))

Una Smith- Thanks for moving my article title to sentence style. That is something I would have never thought of doing, so I'm glad you caught it. I'm going to see what kind of information I can dig up on other prepurchase exams, but I will most likely leave this article specific to horses. Do you think I should add any info to the article? Is it in-depth enough for wiki-users now? Thanks for all your help so far....

(Sherryj (talk) 18:45, 6 April 2008 (UTC))

Sherry, you may also want to wikify the article more. I agree that this article should remain specific to horses, or at least, equidae. Montanabw (talk) 05:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Gjs238, Thanks for taking the time to make some very-much needed revisions to my article! I appreciate all of your input. Just wondering though, how can I categorize my article better? I noticed that you removed a few of the categories I had added, and for efficiency-sake I just wondered how I can improve upon this in the future to make sure I am connecting my article to relevant categories. Sherryj (talk) 03:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * IMHO, I think Gjs kind of was overdoing the category removal stuff, basically if an article is in both a category and in a "higher" category within the same general "tree," that is discouraged as repetitious, but sometimes there is a need for it, particularly if an issue (like this one) fits both for various reasons. This is, to me, both a medical category and a management category.  Maybe look at all the sub-groups of Category:horses and see if you are comfortable with where the article is nested, and if not, feel free to alter the category listings.   Montanabw (talk) 03:38, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Montanabw- Thanks for your input. I am going to reevaluate how my article is categorized and try to relink it to some subgroups. Thanks for your help, I really am pretty clueless when it comes to this Wikipedia thing, so I appreciate all the help I can get. Let me know if you have any other suggestions on ways I can improve this article! Thanks!

Sherryj (talk) 13:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Getwood is the guru on the veterinary topics, User:Ealdgyth is the best in WikiProject Equine for explaining citation and footnoting. I like to wordsmith and am good in a street brawl!  (LOL) You may want to join WikiProject Equine, by the way.  Montanabw (talk) 22:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)