User talk:Rmj8757

Your edits to Charreada
Hi there,

you are welcome to edit the encyclopaedia, but removing whole sections (along with metatags and other article data) as you did with Charreada is not the way to contribute. Issues like this can be contentious, but Wikipedia reports facts, not opinions. Denying that people might have a negative opinion of something you support and removing it only makes it more likely to come back and turn in to an edit war. What we need to do is work to bring together the evidence that is printed in external sources (in line with the policies WP:V and WP:CITE that you might want to look at), and put both sides of the case forward.

I don't know much about this topic, but i do follow horse related articles, but it seems clear that the sport is criticised and has been banned in some places, so this needs to be discussed and not ignored. If you've got some sources which disagree with their stance, then they deserve equal weight to the detractors. The best thing for you to do is come back to the talk page (at Talk:Charreada) with some sources that back up your position, and then other editors will help you to work this in to the article.

Any problems or questions, just let me know. Regards, OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 12:34, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Please don't continue to ignore this advice. If you keep on with this course of action, you will be blocked! OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 13:15, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I see you put "claim" back in to the Charro Statistics, and call the sacharro web page "self published". Yet you took out “Cathleen Doyle claims” to have seen 10 charreadas. Now, if I post that I have personally seen 84 Charreadas and 2 coleaderos in the USA, during the last 2 years where 43 horses were captured in non-tradition mangana, 27 horses were captured in traditional piales and 2387 steers were captured in traditional cola. I also personally saw 6 Charreadas in Mexico where 46 horses were captured in traditional mangana, 36 horses were captured in traditional piales and 156 steers were captured in traditiona cola and did not see any  animals injured. All the manganas in Mexico, were videotaped. Would that he acceptable. RMJ8757

Charreada
OK, you need to start engaging with other editors in order to improve the article, which will in turn create a balanced view.

I have no particular view on this issue, but I want to make sure the article meets the standards required of all WP articles. So, a few basic rules which everyone, including you, need to adhere to:
 * Everything that is written must have a verifiable, reliable third party source.  This means books, news articles and journal articles.  In some cases websites can be acceptable, but it depends what you're trying to prove.  In the case of this article, I think that some of the references need cutting back - the animal rights websites are fine to prove that people are objecting, but I would treat their 'evidence' numbers as suspect unless I can see some more reliable sources and i'm tempted to chuck them (along with the figures they promote) BUT it's important to try and find alternatives before doing this.   Items like emails or private correspondence are NOT acceptable unless subsequently published somewhere reputable.
 * Wikipedia does not write the truth, but what it can PROVE to be the truth (see WP:V for more info) - this means that subjects about which little has been written can be harder to work on, but as part of this, we cannot include unprovable statements such as x cows are caught every show, and none of them are hurt. Even if this is true, it has no place here, unless someone has written about it somewhere else.
 * Everything must be written objectively - comment statements in the main article like "this is just silly" aren't acceptable. You CAN bring this sort of thing up for discussion on the talk page Talk:Charreada and work with people to improve it, but like any other encylopaedia, it doesn't work if you have competing statements or personal attacks following other text in the article.
 * We are only discussing Charreada on this article - comparisons to other horse sports (or anything else like college sports) are largely unhelpful. The pros and cons of other activities are discussed on those pages, and this is just a case of 'defence by deflection' - which is basically saying "this isn't bad, because look how bad this is...".  We need to treat this, like everything else, on its individual merits.

I am trying to keep as much valuable content in as possible, but your current edits just aren't going to be acceptable under the rules. You need to work with the other editors, and i strongly suggest that you bring your issues to the talk page for a sensible resolution.

Regards, OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 14:23, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Again, an article cannot argue with itself; meaning that an article cannot state something as a fact and then contradict itself. (Mere existence of a "criticism" section doesn't mean that the article argues with itself - as a matter of fact Charreada is subject to criticism from various organization, and the article must report on that.) Likewise, judgemental language like "this is absurd, animal protection advocates are liars and fanatics" etc. has no place in the article; see the policy of neutrality.

Your edit of the article is still unacceptable in accordance with the Wikipedia policies. But at least, you have brought forward one factual question - did Cesar Chavez actually testify in favor of the Californian legislation? I am going to mark this claim as disputed, and you'll have an opportunity to discuss the issue on the article talk page. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 19:57, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Your replies would be helpful
Hi there,

Thanks for engaging on this issue, it will make it much easier to improve the article. Please understand that we are not trying to be biased, just trying to apply the rules which exist on wikipedia.

I've taken your message to me and reposted it at Talk:Charreada with some comments and questions. If we can discuss each item separately, then hopefully we can present both sides fairly. To help, if you can keep replies by section, and indent them using colon marks (3 of them at the minute it will help make it readable. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 17:42, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Clarification
Can you let me know who you mean by "the Charros?" You appear to be referring to an organization, not to individuals, so any help would be appreciated. Montanabw (talk) 22:20, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

You can do this so I don't have to
When you add citations, the "quick and easy" way to get them to be formatted properly for wikipedia with all the necessary info is to run this script: http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/view/Reflinks What you do is type in the name of the article you want to fix (for example, Charreada) and the script will convert all your bare URLs (like http://www.whatever.com/article.html ) into fuller citations. See the diffs from my last edit to Charreada where I ran that script to fix your new refs. I just discovered this a couple weeks ago myself (after five years' editing on wikipedia) and it's been a godsend when I'm editing. I sometimes have to do additional cleanup later, but it gets all the main stuff in. By the way, your writing is improving a bunch here and I wanted to let you know that you are doing a good job of editing with a reasonably neutral point of view.

Oh and If you want to do a good deed, watchlist Calgary Stampede, keep your fingers on the "undo" button and help us ALL with the POV editing and vandalism that is going to hit that article when Prince William and Kate show up there tomorrow, the hardcore animal rights folks are going after that article a bit lately. Montanabw (talk) 18:45, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

NPOV stuff
Rmj, you presumably know the webmaster at the Charros site, so please tell them to keep the hysterical PETA IS WRONG titles out of that external link at the Charreada article. I tried rewording it three times and finally have just tossed it. You are aware that we have a fragile truce here keeping this article neutral and factual. Stuff like this will draw the animal rights activists to the article, and if you think it was biased before you became involved, please help me keep it calm and neutral, you haven't survived the edit wars we had at rodeo a couple years ago. And this topic is HUGE, you know that. Seriously, look at the talk page of horse slaughter if you want to see the world you'll face if that crowd gets wind of this article. Montanabw (talk) 20:30, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


 * How about (Charro discussion of Mangana and Piales, or what some call "Horse Tripping") Then the link. Something like that was there at one point. It is not as bad a roping to the bone, which is totally nonsence.


 * The bigger problem is that the oversized "second coming" typefaces, unneeded animation and editorial tone clearly identify the site as an amateur work, it is clearly an editorial. Looks like other editors on the page over the last 24 hours have kept it tossed out.  My take is that the title you propose could work, but for the link to return, we probably need to balance it with a link from PETA or SHARK that states the opposite view.  If you'd prefer not to see that, then maybe just keeping it out, the links already there to scharro.org will get a person to that page after a while anyway.   Montanabw (talk) 20:47, 1 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree with that. If you look at fox hunting, you will see there are an equal amount of animal rights vs hunt supporter POV websites shown for balance.  We either go down that route, or leave them all out (or just as references, not EL) OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 08:53, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

You don't think this is propaganda:

http://www.ahrn.org/ahw/02ahrn.htm

http://www.idausa.org/facts/horsetripping.html

If you remove the charros side, then remove the other side too. Just be fair. RMJ8757


 * It might or might not be propaganda, but we don't have it in the external links section like the link under contention, so its not comparable. On the other hand, if you want the external link restored to the pro-horse tripping website, we would certainly have to include links like this for balance, which would promote them more.  The sacharro link is still in the inline referencing, so people can still access it from this page.  OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 14:10, 2 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Further to this, as you clearly edit both the sacharro and legalizehorsetripping websites (identical email address to your WP username for a start), you have a major conflict of interest in promoting them. As the article stands, views are presented and inline referenced to the person saying them, and the same applies to both groups.  OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 14:22, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Would you please explain the conflict of interest. What you seem to be saying, is that if one person writes two books about the same subject Charreada, one of which speeks about the event and the other about complains about the event, only one of them could be referenced. That does not seem to make any sence.


 * OK, happy to try and explain. In this case, both sides of the argument are clearly Points of View, which under the policy at WP:NPOV, must be controlled to ensure that only referenced facts are included (e.g. a study showed that 4 out of 5 elephants weigh over a tonne), rather than opinions (e.g. heavy elephants are the best or heavy elephants suck), or if they are necessary for the article, that they are clearly identified at being biased opinion, which is what we do here by saying things like "animal rights groups say... xxx, but supporters say... yyy"


 * On top of this, there is a policy on Conflict of Interest, which you can read at WP:COI. Specifically this says that you shouldn't try to push the opinion of yours by using references which are created by you, or your associates.  You can see this section at WP:SELFPROMOTE and another section at WP:SELFCITE.  In short, because you edit the two websites at sacharro and legalizehorsetripping, you put forward your opinions there, and you are inherently biased towards promoting them (as anyone would be with their own content), and therefore you have a conflict of interest.


 * This is especially true as your sites don't meet the quality standards normally accepted for external references for Wikipedia as set out in the rules at WP:V and WP:CITE. In particular, it doesn't meet the standard of WP:SELFPUBLISH, which relates to websites which people publish themselves.   Their inclusion here must be for a purpose, such as showing that this opinion exists, but we must identify that it is self published in the text, so that it is not mistaken for unbiased fact (such as an academic, peer reviewed research study).


 * The exact same rules would apply (and have applied on other articles) the other way round, for instance if PETA, or one of their activists, started placing self published links or text which said negative things about Charreada without the relevant proof. They would have a conflict of interest as a campaign body against the practice, and we would doubtless remove their link in the same way.


 * Hope that all makes sense. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 12:06, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Talkback
But you allow this propaganda or what you call self published references:

http://www.ahdf.org/tripping.htm

http://www.idausa.org/facts/horsetripping.htm

http://www.ahrn.org/ahw/02ahrn.htm

None of these is anything more then unsubstantiated ranting, with vague references to going to a feedlot or feedlot people say. There are no dates, times or places and most importantly no names associated with this information. So if my page is inappropriate, then take this down too. It just seens to be fair. RMJ8757

I see you put "claim" back in to the Charro Statistics, and call the sacharro web page "self published". Yet you took out “Cathleen Doyle claims” to have seen 10 charreadas. Now, if I post that I have personally seen 84 Charreadas and 2 coleaderos in the USA, during the last 2 years where 43 horses were captured in non-tradition mangana, 27 horses were captured in traditional piales and 2387 steers were captured in traditional cola. I also personally saw 6 Charreadas in Mexico where 46 horses were captured in traditional mangana, 36 horses were captured in traditional piales and 156 steers were captured in traditiona cola and did not see any animals injured. All the manganas in Mexico, were videotaped. Would that he acceptable. RMJ8757


 * Please bear in mind that there a multiple editors here, and everyone edits in their own way, so i did put the 'claim' back in to the article, but had nothign to do with the editing relating to the Cathleen Doyle refs (not that I disagree, but that's beside the point). I have just gone through again to make sure that the anti- arguments and references are also clearly defined as being claims, rather than fact, in order to maintain the neutral point of view.


 * In regards to the videotaping, that's not valid here as it is a primary source, which is not allowed on WP, (and at a guess probably doesn't prove beyond doubt whether injury occured or not. Injuries leading to lameness may not be immediately apparent, for instance, if the animal is full of adrenaline which masks the clinical signs).  What you need is for external people (preferably academics) to write about it and ideally conduct a properly conducted, peer reviewed study.  OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 12:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Please explain POV and OR. It seems that it is reasonable to have what Charreada does to help humans, if you allow the AR groups to complain about what happens to animals.


 * Sorry, I thought we'd already linked these but see WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. In short, sentences like "they are not naive" are impossible to prove or accurately cite.  Are we saying that there are no naive charros?  Has anyone ever proved that?  If it was true, and presented here for the first time, then its original research (OR), and isn't allowed.  Sentences like "Good performance fosters positive self-image" is a point of view (POV).  Some people may disagree, and think that "good performance fosters arrogance and reliance", but in either case it needs a reputable citation. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 13:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Rmj, basically, the neutral point of view is a core value of wikipedia, we need to be very neutral and either take no sides, or if there are inevitable sides, then present each side fairly. Because this is an encyclopedia, we can only use source material that has been published elsewhere, not our own personal opinions or personal research.  (We're kind of letting you get away with your publishing statistics a bit more than the rules usually allow, but that's partly because the other side's aren't any better and partly because you've been pretty cooperative with us, given how passionate you are about the sport. (grin)).  If you want to compare your charreada article with something a little similar in terms of animals and controversy, look at an article that has similar problems with passionate people -- I just created an article on dog ear-cropping, and it looks like I am about to go off to the races with someone who has a strong POV on anti-cropping view, and I am trying to keep that article neutral too.  (sucks to be me... whine, whine, whine)  Montanabw (talk) 21:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Stats
Be useful to know how many horses went to slaughter during the season. Just curious if anyone tracked the fate of animals after. Cattle are generally sent to slaughter, horses less often. Montanabw (talk) 00:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

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