User talk:Mateusz K

Welcome
"Harness racing saw its own shadow one night last week at New Jersey's Meadowlands Race Track and, predictably, it was scared to death. The sport has always been scared—that city folks wouldn't like it, that dogs and jai alai would overtake it, that real or imagined scandal would ruin it. And, most of all, scared that it might do something foolish—or something perceived as such—which would give those supercilious thoroughbred types even more reason to look down their noses at the trotters and pacers. Indeed, with the exception of Canada, no person, place or thing has grown up with a bigger inferiority complex than harness racing." Douglas S. Looney Sports Illustrated August 18, 1989

Common travel destinations
WikiProject Horse racing/Harness racing

Nice to meet you
I see you like to work on harness racing articles too. Their aren't too many of us. I've created some harness racing driver articles- Del Cameron, Catello Manzi (We're cousins but I haven't met him in 40 years), Gene Riegle, Andy Miller, Julie Miller, Bruce Nickells, Wally Hennessey, Dave Palone, and Jim Dennis. I also did an article on Fast Clip. Articles I'd like to do- Buddy Gilmour, Bea Farber, Joe Marsh Jr, Ted Taylor, and the Popfinger brothers. I'd also like to do an article on the Superfecta scandal of the 1970's. As you probably know, harness racing resources are pretty thin online.

My father was business partners with Bruce Nickells in the 1970's and one of their horses was Fast Clip. Dad also had horses at one time or another with Ted Taylor, Roland Krueger, Max Lynch, Billy Pocza, and Tom Sells. I've been to about 20 harness tracks and grew up less than 30 miles from Roosevelt Raceway, but most of the racing I watched was at Sportsmans Park, Scioto Downs, Freehold, or Pompano Park. Most harness racing. My father discontinued his horse racing affairs around 1990 and I have only been to the track a couple of times since....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 19:51, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Harness racing infobox
I've created a rough draft here. Although I named it "Standardbred" while in draft space, I'll probably change that to "harness racehorse" when I move it to mainspace, to allow for the Morgans they used to race, and the Finnish Trotters. Are there any more parameters specific to harness racing you think it should have? I know a lot of times the trainer drives the horses in races, but I added a "driver" parameter for the ones who don't. I also added "gait" to signify whether it's a pacer or trotter. The test call, with Dan Patch, shows how it might look in an article (the stuff above is the actual infobox that has to exist in order to get it to appear in articles). Feel free to suggest anything I need to add. White Arabian Filly Neigh 01:15, 29 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I hate to rain on the parade, but I don't think we need a separate infobox (and we sure don't need multiple ones), though I do like the idea of adding an optional "gait" parameter and I also like losing the color stripe drama, so maybe those two concepts could be incorporated into the main Infobox racehorse. The concept is that infobox formatting, done right, can emit wikidata (I don't get the techie stuff) and maybe this one could be a "wrapper" for the main one... (scratching head) I am going to ping some infobox/template expert folks to comment... and .  Montanabw (talk) 17:34, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it's best to look at what is wanted and then work out how best to realise it. I'd normally recommend using Infobox racehorse for any racehorse. If Infobox racehorse doesn't have the parameters you want, then either make the case to add them, or perhaps consider creating a sub-box (module) that fits inside Infobox racehorse with the extra parameters needed for "harness racehorse". The module approach would be particularly useful if there are other common genres of horse-racing with notable horses to make modules for. --RexxS (talk) 17:54, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it's best to look at what is wanted and then work out how best to realise it. I'd normally recommend using Infobox racehorse for any racehorse. If Infobox racehorse doesn't have the parameters you want, then either make the case to add them, or perhaps consider creating a sub-box (module) that fits inside Infobox racehorse with the extra parameters needed for "harness racehorse". The module approach would be particularly useful if there are other common genres of horse-racing with notable horses to make modules for. --RexxS (talk) 17:54, 2 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Tell me where I'll find the "emit wikidata" thing; I don't get it either but I guess then we need to figure it out. However, I can't see how that would matter so much as to negate a new infox. There are already tons of boxes at Wikipedia that are similar but different, even one called Infobox named horse which some have been using for harness horses. (I've already replaced some). It seems to me that if "Box A" can emit wikidata then a "Box B" and "Box C" and on and on can too. So, all we have to do is "do it right". My thinking is the editors who do the all the heavy lifting should be given preeminent consideration by Wikipedia overseers. I thought a separate box with a distinctly different color name mast was worthy because Standardbreds have Drivers and more than one Gait, plus I want grooms to be recognized at Wikipedia just the way the Hambletonian does and how HoF Ron Waples says they should. And, down the road if we wanted to amend the sole infobox it could only be done if it "accomodated" the editors of horses using the existing "Main" box designed for Thoroughbreds. I would like to ensure the Standardbred racehorse Infobox differentiated, making it easily and quickly identifiable to readers and editors. P.S. Why do we use my Talk page? Is there no distinct forum? I don't really care, so welcome to my home. Mateusz K (talk) 20:12, 2 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Basically, we should have TWO infoboxes for individual horses: Infobox racehorse for horses that accrue racing records and all the stats that go along with them, and Infobox named horse for all the rest, such as show horses, Olympic horses, and other famous horses (such as Sergeant Reckless).  I think that if you guys can work with  to explain what is missing from Template:Infobox_racehorse, his idea of designing a harness racing "module" -- a set of parameters that can be added -- the point that they are both trotters and pacers IS a point well worth noting, and the ability to change "jockey" to "driver" makes sense too (though for racehorses, the "jockey" parameter is rarely used because most racehorses have a number of different jockeys throughout their career, even the ones closely associated with a single rider).    But grooms -- hmmm... that won't often be used in flat racing, but I can see how adding Eddie Sweat or someone in a few of the TB ones might be cool. What is going on "under the hood" of Wikipedia is a lot of stuff that I totally have no clue how to create that is related to wikidata and other stuff that has to do with machine-readable content -- like how a lot of WP entries show up in Google.  (I just wanna write articles that look purdy...)  RexxS, can you help explain this and maybe play with the template to see if you can make changes that allow the addition of the "gait" parameter (which only makes sense in Harness racing) and maybe creating the alternative of "jockey" or "driver" in that other spot?   Montanabw (talk) 03:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * First, let's deal with facts as to why someone might think we should not create a distinct Standardbred box. Is there a Wikipedia rule against it? If so, someone please provide a link and we can end this discussion. If there is no rule, then why is this even being discussed? One would think that the very nature of a separate Standardbred box certainly makes a lot more sense than the Thoroughbred racing usage of a brown box to differentiate a dirt race from a grass race which has a green box. Mateusz K (talk) 18:42, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The green stripe/brown stripe thing is a classic example of why a dozen different infoboxes are stupid. I've answered your other comments at my talk. WP has few policies, a lot of guidelines, and for the most part operates on "consensus," which can change, but usually after it has been talked to death for months. In short, consensus across wikipedia leans toward use of infoboxes, but not creation of dozens of different ones; better to have fewer  but well-designed ones.   Montanabw (talk) 19:11, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

This may be of interest to you
Saw your new category on the Hambletonian Stakes... thought you might be interested in creating a navbox like the ones we have for the flat races like Kentucky Derby. They aren't that hard to create and you could add it to all the relevant articles to cross-link them to others. Montanabw (talk) 22:35, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Harness racing task force tech done
Created the task force, it's all yours, go for it! See WP Horse racing talk page. Montanabw (talk) 18:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I noticed that you created some duplicate categories, probably by accident. I merged the "Triple Crown of Standardbred racing winners‎" category into "Triple Crown of Harness Racing winners", given that the titles are called Harness racing triple crown, not Standardbred racing triple crown. On the other hand, your Category:American Standardbred racehorses duplicated  Category:American standardbred racehorses, but I like your capitalization better, but I posted at the horse racing project page to see if consensus agrees -- the older one has more articles in it, so more work to switch.   Montanabw (talk) 07:36, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I screwed up quite a few. Thought I got them all sorted out but there might be even more. Thanks. Do we really need the consensus routine just to capitalize standardbred? 16:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd say just get them all into one category or the other. What I have found is that deleting categories by the process is a crapshoot, but once you move everything and blank out all the categories and content on the abandoned one, a bot comes by in a few weeks and will automatically delete it (wink). There is actually a huge capitalization-of-animal-breed-names battle out there that I strongly advise trying to avoid at all costs. It's more contentious than abortion or climate change, though not quite as contentious as the debate over "The Beatles" versus "the Beatles" ...   Montanabw (talk) 01:03, 13 January 2017 (UTC)