Talk:Italian Heavy Draft

Upgrade
One thought on the great upgrade you are doing. I'd be really careful about Hendrick's historical claims. The claim that this is the only draft breed developed in Italy may be up for challenge (I don't know this for certain, I just worry about it). For one thing, "Italy" as a nation is one of those things with lots of shifting around borders (note the issues we occasionally have at Lipizzan) so something that developed in, say Northern Italy when it was governed by the Holy Roman Empire might be considered a German breed (in fact, isn't that kind of a side issue at Haflinger?) even though it has an equal claim to be "Italian." And of course, also speaking of the working Haflinger, what IS really a draft breed (I mean, we know it when we see it, but ... again, wouldn't our little Haflinger friends have been "draft" horses at one point??)  I'm not taking a position on whether to keep or toss the claim, just raising it -- but I tend to view some of Hendrick's claims as being too much drawn straight from breed association propaganda and need to be viewed with a careful lens. Definitely your call, though. Montanabw (talk) 01:07, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've taken out the bit about "only draft breed". I hadn't even thought about the fact that the borders of Italy have not always been the same. As for Haflingers, I really don't know what their classification is. They do a little bit of everything, and are quite good at most of it. I guess their specialization is work in mountains, but that includes packing and riding, so... Dana boomer (talk) 14:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Works for me. Speaking of Hafs, saw one at a show out here last summer, going western. A little lively for a western pleasure horse, but well-behaved and totally adorable!  Lady who owned him was totally in love with him as well. I've often said that if there were no Arabs, I'd go into Morgans, but these Hafs have a similar attitude and energy to foundation Morgans, so now I have yet another alternative. (Well, and I kind of like Paso Finos, too...)   Montanabw (talk) 18:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * We Finns just chug them into the Universal horse category alongside with Fjord horses :) But that won't make it easier for you will it? Pitke (talk) 06:55, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Darn, no. In the USA, if there is a "generic" horse, it's the excessively ubiquitous American Quarter Horse.  ;-)   Montanabw (talk) 04:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment that might be useful to the GA review
Probably in the "Uses" paragraph, it would be nice to have something about the typical Mortadella of horse meat that is the Roman tradition?--Brunswick Dude (talk) 18:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think that this is specific to the Italian Heavy Draft, it's just generally made out of horse meat, and the breed was developed long after the Romans disappeared. So, IMO, it would be off topic for this article. Dana boomer (talk) 19:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * When I say "Roman", I mean Rome as of the city of today, without excluding medioeval Rome, not antiquity. In Rome the meat horse made of Mortadella is a delicacy even today and there are sources for that. You ought to search a little and you'll find. If you need my help I can direct you to some sources. Please drop a line in my talk page. --Brunswick Dude (talk) 15:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think what Dana is saying is that a lot of different breeds are used for horsemeat in Italy and Rome, not just this one. So absent some sort of source that says something definitive "the Mortadella only comes from the meat of the Italian Heavy Draft ..." we can't really use it here. Does that make sense?   Montanabw (talk) 05:32, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it does actually. Thanks and sorry about the confusion. --Brunswick Dude (talk) 02:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Revisions
I'm moving some hidden text to talk, as it looks like a full discussion is in order amongst the lead editor(s) of the article (and this is not me), particularly because any revisions to a current GA need to be made carefully so that we do not accidentally downgrade the article by problems with sourcing of new material. The GA criteria is quite strict on such matters. Montanabw (talk) 19:51, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

From Justlettersandnumbers:   I really don't think this is quite accurate; I think the selection for the TPR began in about 1911 when some farmers requested that the Deposito Stalloni purchase a/some Breton stallion(s), which it did (Breton can still be crossed into the breed, according to the standard, I think). Obviously they had some kind of heavy horse before, but I don't think it was "rapid". I'll try to dig into this a bit. The list of contents of the archive of the Comune of Ferrara is online, but unfortunately most of the documents are undated.


 * Thanks, Montana, I should probably have done that myself. So, the source: the ANACAITPR itself, which I submit is far more likely to be reliable than many of our textbooks, which tend to be written by people who have probably never even seen a TPR. The date 1860 which you see in about 10000 internet pages on this breed as the beginning of its history is (a) simply the date of unification of Italy, (b) apparently wrong, as we've just celebrated the 150th anniversary, on 17 March 2011 and (c) not related in any case to the rapid heavy draft. I have done my level best to find out the date of foundation of the Deposito Cavalli Stalloni of Ferrara (some of these definitely date to Austro-Hungarian times, the one at Mantova was founded early in the C18), but without success so far; I've asked a friend interested in military history to see if he can find it. It strikes me as extremely unlikely (though of course not inconceivable) that either the Austrians or the Italians would have set up something like that right at the time of transition. I'm happy to assist with translating and or interpreting the page I've linked above, which I believe constitutes an authoritative source which could be used to make substantial improvements and additions to this article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Italian name
Suggest adding something along the lines of this sentence after the first: 'The full Italian name of the breed is Cavallo Agricolo Italiano de Tiro Pesante Rapido, "Italian Rapid Heavy Draft Farm Horse", but the abbreviation TPR ) is normal in colloquial speech and frequent in informal written contexts'.

See e.g. youtube for informal confirmation of informal use. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)


 * In English, all sources call it what it is here, but I see no problem with adding the Italian form and a literal translation. I don't really know if there are any of these in English-speaking countries, so TPR in normal colloquial speech should be qualifies that we are talking about Italy.   Make the tweak, if I think it will be a problem based on the English sources (which can at least be viewed as reliable for and common English use), I can edit your edit and we can get to an agreement.  Montanabw (talk) 00:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC)


 * You've put a cn tag, but which bit do you want it for? The official Italian name is in the breed standard, the colloquial one is like Paris, everybody knows it. I am not going to cite Google in an article, but please look at the hits for these two searches and then decide whether to remove the tag:


 * cavallo "TPR"
 * cavallo "Cavallo Agricolo Italiano da Tiro Pesante Rapido"


 * The problem with the English sources is of course that they are all copied from each other, and none of them is authoritative. What-ho! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:33, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I've tweaked your sentence a bit, removing some of the detail, since it's really not necessary to say it's used in informal verbal and written communication, rather than just saying "informally". I don't think a ref is needed for the revised version, because it is often referred to as such in the literature, so I have removed the CN tag. The convention on WP is generally to go with the most common name in English sources. Dana boomer (talk) 14:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, whatever. The point is that it is ALWAYS called a TPR in conversation because the full name is just too damned long, but no-one is going to say 'always' in the article because they'll be shot down. And yes, we call it a Tee-pee-ah when talking about it in English, too. IMO the detail I included was just what was needed, relevant but not verbose. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:38, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * This is an ongoing question of when and how to acknowledge the official foreign language name of a foreign breed and when to use the common English translations. As a rule, this is English wiki, so we use English rules WP:V is our guide here, and there has been long conversations across multiple articles that have resulted in things like the Germany article NOT being titled "Deutschland."  If you have an English source for "TPR" it would be good to include it, because others might ask later.  I agree that we don't need a source in the lead, necessarily, but if naming is an issue, we may need to explain.  I don't know.    Montanabw (talk) 22:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)