Talk:Knute hitch

Origin field for this hitch
I'm not a big proponent of using the origin field in the infobox for crediting individuals for originating knots, especially those with a simple structure. My preferred usage of this infobox field is to be able to flag a knot as "ancient" when a knot is known to have been in use for more than a few hundred years.

In cases where a specific person is apparently responsible, or credibly claims responsibility, for a well-known publication of a knot I usually mention this in the text. In cases where the history of the knot has been researched to a significant extent and a reliable independent source makes statements about the originality of the knot, then I feel it can be justified to put an individual's name in the field. Personally, I try to only use it to flag ancient knots but I don't necessarily revert others' use of the field if it meets the above criteria. (More detail should be added on this subject at the infobox template and project page guidelines.)

Regarding the Knute hitch, it is both a fairly simple construct and Brion Toss seems to be making these claims himself. Though I have great respect for him and his knot writings, this falls below the threshold where I think this field should be used. As far as originally, ABOK shows a similar construction at #1965. It is a hook with two holes where the eye would normally be. The line is run though one hole, back through the other, and then the end is brought around front and passed under the bight formed between the two holes. Obviously it's not a knute hitch, on several counts, but it's also not a stretch to imagine many such hitches having been tried through the tens of thousands of years people have been hitching cord through a hole in an object... --Dfred (talk) 19:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)