Talk:Boulonnais horse

I'm not really sure of the importance of the "See Also" section, especially the last two links. Do these need to be included? - Dana boomer (talk) 16:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've added a photo from France. Sorry for my bad english, I think that's I have writed must be bad ! --Tsaag Valren (talk) 15:49, 20 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

This review is transcluded from Talk:Boulonnais horse/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sasata (talk) 19:13, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hello again, I've signed up to review this article. Will have some comments up in the next few days. Sasata (talk) 19:13, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Comments

• "…is a heavy draft horse breed now bred mainly by the French government due to their decreased numbers." I didn't know the French government had decreased numbers.

• Rewritten :)

• lead needs some work. For example, what does the horse look like?

• Completely rewritten.

• "In the late 18th century, breeders looked for lighter colors," Why? What breeders? Breeders of the French Government? Did breeders in general want lighter-colored horses, or just those brewing the Boulonnais?

• I changed this to "preferred" lighter colors. I don't know why - horse colors tend to go through fad periods. It was just those breeding the Boulonnais - specified. I hope it's better now?

• please convert hands into non-horsey units (otherwise I have to click on another article and get out my calculator to find out how tall it is). Similarly, why is the weight given in only imperial units?

• Added in conversions.

• "…it has no heavy feathering on its lower legs" do not know what this is… link or gloss?

• Linked.

• "The breed is generally branded on the left side of the neck with an anchor." Really? Someone takes a massive ship anchor, heats it up in a fire, and presses it against the horses neck? Also, maybe link branding

• LOL. Tried rewording this, see what you think. Linked.

• no recorded history from 55 BC to the 17th century?

• What I'm trying to explain here is that the Numidians brought horses in 55 BC that turned into the native French horse. Then the comtes took these horses, mixed them with a few other breeds, and created the original Boulonnais. So, the history of the native horse is basically irrelevant (kind of like how we don't explain the entire history of the Arabian in the Thoroughbred article, despite the fact that the latter was developed from the former). I've done a little bit of clarifying and linking to show that the original breeding by the comtes was during the Crusades (not in the 17th century), but honestly there's not a lot to go on with this breed.

• link registered, broodmare

• Done.

• "The Boulonnais was once a popular workhorse in France, with an estimated population of over 600,000." When?

• Early 1900s, added.

• "Unfortunately, the smaller Boulonnais type has died out." Unfortunate to who? (NPOV)

• Fixed.

• "The larger Boulonnais is still bred in small numbers, with an estimated population of less than 1,000 animals remaining in Europe." Says who, and what year?

• Added the who (American Boulonnais Horse Association), but they don't say what year.

• "Many studs are government funded," studs = stud farms, or male horses?

• Stud farms. Linked.

• link artificial insemination and embryo transfer

• Done.

• "…which was later to play a large role in the creation of the Selle Francais." details?

• The Anglo-Norman was renamed the Selle Francais after having a few other bloodlines added to it. I'm a little confused, however, as to how details of this would be relevant to the Boulonnais article, since the Boulonnais was only used to create the Anglo-Norman.

• "It was also used in the creation and refinement of the Italian Heavy Draft[10] the post-World War II improvement of the Schleswig breed," run-on

• Whoops, there was supposed to be a comma after "draft", now added.
• Hi Sasata, and thanks for the comments. I'm apparently slipping, as many of these things I should have noticed and dealt with before the nomination. It's getting late here today, so I will begin working on these tomorrow morning and should be finished by tomorrow evening at the latest. Dana boomer (talk) 02:11, 29 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I'm in no real rush :) Sasata (talk) 02:14, 29 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I think I have all of the above finished. Thanks for taking a look! Dana boomer (talk) 13:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Hendricks mentions that a large show specializing in this breed is held yearly at Wimmereux

• I'll take a look at this later. Dana boomer (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

• interested in including any info from this article?

Title: Genetic diversity of a large set of horse breeds raised in France assessed by microsatellite polymorphism

Author(s): Leroy, G; Callede, L; Verrier, E, et al.

Source: GENETICS SELECTION EVOLUTION Volume: 41 Article Number: 5 Published: 2009

• Yes, I'd love to see that. Even if it doesn't have information on the Boulonnais, it should be useful for writing other French horse breed articles. Dana boomer (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I just noticed it's full access at Pubmed Central. Sasata (talk) 15:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

This one looks ideal, but unfortunately it's in French, and I don't have access. Just listing it here for completeness:

Title: Towards a revival of the Boulonnais horse: an adapted economic promotion and a plan for genetic management.

Author(s): Loywyck, V.; Lagneaux, D.; Stievenard, R., et al.

Source: Equ'Idee Issue: 45 Pages: 14-17 Published: 2002

• I don't speak French, so don't think I'd be able to do much with it. It looks interesting though. Dana boomer (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

• is it of any importance that the National Norman Horse association declared in 1876 that the Norman, the Percheron, the Picardy and the Boulonnais are "substantially the same breed, and should be called the Norman horse"? More details from a modern source here

• I've added in some information on this. The second ref (Horses in society) looks like an interesting book overall, and appears to have some great information in it. It's just been added to my (rather extensive!) Amazon wishlist.

• along these lines, might it be worthwhile to compare the Boulonnais with some other (French) horses or similar breeds and briefly compare distinguishing characteristics?

• My main problem with this would be OR. There's not really (as far as I can find) a source that actually sits all the breeds down and compares them one to one. And, it's not something that we usually do in breed articles (unless there's a really common comparison), so I wouldn't really even know where to start. Dana boomer (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

No problem; I'm used to seeing this section in mushroom articles, but I guess people don't go into the forest hunting for horses to eat! Sasata (talk) 15:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

• didya know these horses were used to haul heavy blocks of stone used in Parisian buildings?

• Added a bit. How cool! Dana boomer (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

I actually have that on my "to do" list. I think Dana is doing fine to confine this article as it is. What I've found in preliminary work is that many breeds of the 1800s were more of a regional name than a "breed" as we understand them today, and even the surviving breeds have distinguished themselves since the last 1800s...and some have basically become extinct. There really is no longer a Norman horse as far as I can tell, (we don't even have an article on them) they are one of those extinct ancestral breeds like the Old English Black. The most direct discendant was the Anglo-Norman horse which today is largely incorporated into the Selle Francaise. Be cool to find out if the Picardy exists, or if it was simply a regional designation for the Boulonnais. Anyway, as the other horse breed geek at WPEQ (Tho I haven't done much on this particular one, its Dana's) I can say that sources from the last 1800s are only of use for the history section and cannot be considered a reliable source for the status of most modern breeds. Montanabw^(talk) 22:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

I've added a bit in on this, as it is interesting on the breed politics side. However, you are correct that eventually one of us needs to create the Norman horse article and actually explain all of the politics. BTW, take a look at the information in the second link in that comment (the book is Horses in Society, from 2006). It's one of those really rare books that actually explains the reasons behind what the registry was doing and goes through it step by step. Quite interesting. Dana boomer (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for all the changes. Image is fine, no dabs, links fine. I think all the GA criteria are met, so I will pass the article now. Good working with ya again! Sasata (talk) 15:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

• About the grey coat color there's an explication : selection made ​​at the end of XIXe century, is mostly for grey coat colors, dark coat colors disappeared due to the use of these horses for carrier fish by night : grey horses were popular because more visible by night : Emmanuelle Dal'Secco, Les chevaux de trait, Paris, Éditions Artemis, 2006, p. 110 (ISBN 978-2-84416-459-9)

• A sentence about this is already present in the article (second paragraph, Breed Characteristics), although in the French version it's sourced to a different source. Which one is the correct one, or is the information present in both? Dana boomer (talk) 11:34, 12 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

• Present in both. --Tsaag Valren (talk) 16:26, 12 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

• Unless there's an issue with the source I have, this should be addressed. Dana boomer (talk) 00:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

• 95% of horses are breed in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie region : [PDF] Espaces naturels régionaux and Emmanuel Caux, Annuaire des étalons Boulonnais, 21e édition, Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2011, p. 4

• Added to 20th century and today section. Dana boomer (talk) 00:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

• 75% of these horses are breeded in Pas-de-Calais : Jean-Paul Labourdette, Le Petit Futé Côte d'Opale, Petit Futé, 2007, (ISBN 9782746919280), p. 31

• Added to 20th century and today section. Dana boomer (talk) 00:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

• In 1999, fifteen foals have been exported to Brazil and a stallion in Argentina, but the average in early twenty-first century is more than a dozen horses a year mainly in Brazil and Belgium for breeding, and Germany for forest work : Nathalie Pilley-Mirande, « Les traits français dans le monde » (French draft horses in the world), in Cheval magazine, issue 371, october 2002, p. 62-65

• Added to 20th century and today section. Dana boomer (talk) 00:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

• Several types have historically existed:
• The mareyeur (fishmonger ?) for fish transport by night
• The trait Picard (Picard draft) in Picardy area : Louis Moll and Eugène Nicolas Gayot, La connaissance générale du cheval : études de zootechnie pratique, avec un atlas de 160 pages et de 103 figures, Didot, 1861, p. 524
• The Cauchoix in Pays de Caux
• The bourbourien (or Funes-Ambact), the largest of all, in the Nord (French department) : Pierre Aristide Adolph Lefour, Le cheval, l'âne et le mulet, Maison rustique, coll. « Bibliothèque du cultivateur », 1868, p. 69

All these types formed the modern Boulonnais horse. Before around 1860, Cauchoix were named "horses of the good land" and trait Picard "horses of the bad land". : André Sanson, Applications de la zootechnie : Cheval-âne-mulet-institutions hippiques, Librairie Agricole de la maison rustique, 1867, p. 149

I have created a new "sub-types" section and added some information on these types, as well as reworking some other bits of the article to match this information. Please let me know if there is additional information needed here. Dana boomer (talk) 01:46, 25 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

If you can, give me all french source I'll try to translate =) --Tsaag Valren (talk) 09:16, 12 May 2012 (UTC) --Tsaag Valren (talk) 09:16, 12 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Tsaag! I'm still working on getting some stuff brought over from the French version - I'll probably work through the rest of that integration and start on these comments tonight. I'm not sure what you mean by giving you the French sources? If there is anything you see in the article that is sourced to the wrong thing or that I translated wrong, please let me know. Again, I really appreciate your help on this! Dana boomer (talk) 11:34, 12 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

citation juste above : Towards a revival of the Boulonnais horse: an adapted economic promotion and a plan for genetic management. Author(s): Loywyck, V.; Lagneaux, D.; Stievenard, R., et al. Source: Equ'Idee Issue: 45 Pages: 14-17 Published: 2002. If it's really in french, I can translate :) --Tsaag Valren (talk) 16:23, 12 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I'd completely forgotten about that article that Sasata mentioned! I'll need to check the databases that I have access to, to see if I can get a copy of it. If not, I might be able to get it through our resource request board here on en.wp. If I do manage to get my hands on it, I'll forward you a copy - it would be great to see if there's any useful information in it. Dana boomer (talk) 11:40, 13 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

ok, it's great ! Another question : can you add this pic in the article ? There's very few pics, I think.

  --Tsaag Valren (talk) 22:28, 17 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

I've added in the picture and done some work on your remaining points above - I believe I have now addressed everything, so if there is anything I missed, or need to do more expansion work on, please let me know. Thanks again, Dana boomer (talk) 01:46, 25 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

I've restored the quoted reference names which were removed without any supplied reason in this edit. This article is a candidate for featured article and newcomers will look at this to learn techniques such as named references. It is thoroughly irresponsible to give the impression that unquoted attributes are acceptable, as unquoted names have a much restricted character set. Something as simple as a space will cause the reference to fail unless its name attribute is quoted. It will leave someone who adapted what they saw in an FA for their own article struggling to understand why it doesn't work for them. For the sake of all aspiring editors, those of us who know better really need to be setting the best example in our best articles, or preferably in all of them. --RexxS (talk) 16:04, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Rexx, I'm not sure why you are continuing this edit war. Your edit also reintroduced sfn templates and other ref changes that are currently under discussion. Please enter the discussion (see my talk page, although I don't know why it's there instead of here), rather than continuing the edit war. I would also appreciate you self-reverting your re-introduction of sfn templates and other ref changes currently under discussion, per WP:CITEVAR. Also, if the quotation marks are such a great thing, can you point me to a guideline mandating their use? I have never heard of anyone (newbie or not), having problems with non-quote marked ref names that would be solved with quote-marked ones, so forgive me if I'm having a little trouble believing the seriousness of your argument. Dana boomer (talk) 16:16, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

I too, am unaware of any guideline mandating the use of quotation marks around names for named references. Also, changing from plain <ref> and </ref> to {{sfn}} is a change of referencing style ... it does change the appearance of the references and should be discussed when such a change is reverting. Perhaps the folks trying to impose that change could discuss here on the article talk page why they think it's merited, rather than just trying to edit war that change in? Ealdgyth - Talk 16:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

I have made one edit to fix a problem you introduced. You have now made how many reverts? I am known to observe a strict 1RR on all my edits. So please tell me again just who is edit-warring?

You will need a better refutation of the points I make than "I can't find a guideline". I don't rely on artificial props to support my position; you need to address the points I raise, not attempt to dismiss them through hyperbole ("such a great thing", indeed!).

I spend quite a bit of time now training new editors to edit Wikipedia. The hardest thing for them to learn is referencing. Anything we can do to make it easier for them to get decent references into articles is a godsend. We know that a reference name with a space in it needs quotes. It is really, really much easier to teach everyone to quote all reference names than it is to get them to learn exceptions to the practice of not quoting them.

It's worth remembering that half-proficient newcomers copy what they see in featured content and adapt it for their own articles. If all ref names are quoted that adaptation can't really go wrong. If those ref names are not quoted, then even a simple space will cause an error and it's not obvious to them why.

In short: if a guideline needs to be written, then let's do it. I assume my stance is to be the basis as nobody has advanced any other position. --RexxS (talk) 21:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hey RexxS, I agree with what you are saying actually. And you have strong rationale for implementing that specific change/improvement. However that edit also changed the citation style, which we do have a specific policy against - implemented because it caused edit wars and idiotic arguments along the lines of "this template is better". The full revert is, therefore, something of a red rag to a bull. --Errant ^(chat!) 21:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, now that I've had a chance to study the history in detail, it's unfortunate that the revert that I reverted made multiple different changes, However, per CITEVAR, if one form of citation style is as good as the other, then the article is no worse off pro temp whichever one is used. Whereas it is important that we don't leave our best articles showing poor practice while we have to spend time convincing others why it really is better to quote all attributes, and reference names in particular. --RexxS (talk) 21:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Maybe you should have investigated BEFORE reverting, then? And can you then take ownership of the fact that you changed the referencing style (it does indeed change the citation style - it adds linking among other things) so, no I don't agree that the citation styles are "as good" as the others. And before anyone screams at me about edit warring - I haven't ever edited this article that I'm aware of (it's possible I did so in the distant past, but I haven't taken part in the last few days reverting) ... so I'd like to know why the original editor who introduced the {{sfn}} style still hasn't addressed that issue? And still - point me to a WIKI guideline about the quotation marks, please? Ealdgyth - Talk 22:30, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, of course it would have been better to investigate beforehand. But I would have still reverted in order to improve the article. And I've made precisely one more edit here that you have. I do agree that citation styles are not all created equal, but CITEVAR makes that assumption and it wasn't me that brought up CITEVAR. I have no problem whatsoever with defending {{sfn}} when used appropriately (many refs to different pages of the same book for example), and I can even deploy reasoned arguments why it's superior in those cases. Do you want me to? Why do you need a wiki guideline for something that's common sense and has been explained to you? You're not unintelligent and can follow my reasoning as well as the next person, if not better. Please tell me why it's so important for you to defend the indefensible here? --RexxS (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

I'm not defending the indefensible - we're supposed to follow guidelines. You're defending the person who kept edit warring the sfn templates in ... isn't defending edit warring indefensible? The best cycle is Bold editing, reverting and then discussing - but there was precious little discussion going on ... on both sides. And no, Dana didn't edit war after she reverted the first bold edit .. everyone else after that first revert was edit warring. I get that you think sfn is superior - and on this article it might be better ... but the article was originally minus that style, so changing it (and it is indeed a change - it links, does it not?) requires consensus ... not edit warring until the people objecting throw up their hands and give up. What instead appears to be the case is that it's more important that some little quote marks get placed rather than following the CITEVAR guidelines ... you admit that you not only reverted the quotations marks but also template additions. Why I'm putting up a fuss? I don't want to see folks thinking that this is acceptable - I choose NOT to use sfn on most articles I work on - and I don't want a bunch of folks descending on the articles I've worked on and changing the style and edit warring to make it stick. If folks don't stand up for the guidelines - they quit being guidelines and then we have chaos. As for why I don't like sfn - I prefer a style used in history - author title page number - for short citations and the full citation elsewhere, rather than using a publication date. I find this easier for folks to remember than trying to remember which year a certain book was published. SFN doesn't allow that. And on long articles, it adds greatly to the number of templates that must be rendered - thus slowing down both editing and loading speeds. There is no one size fits all solution for referencing on Wikipedia, and it's generally nice to discuss why this change is better for THIS article... with the principle editors. In the end, if you aren't the one contributing the majority of the content - you shouldn't get to force the main editors to conform to your preferences. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:28, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Of course "author title page number" is "allowed": {{sfn|Wilson, ''Animal Movies Guide''|p=161}} out of Appaloosa, for example; {{sfn}} is very flexible, very fast, low server-overhead, and very powerful; albeit not as powerful as wp:ownership. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 11:18, 6 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

If that works, then you (or someone at least) needs to add that to the sfn template documentation - as I read it and did not see it as a option (I will admit that I might have missed it... in which case perhaps a bit more emphasis on it would be good?). And Jack, I generally agree with you, but you do realize there is an upper limit on the number of templates that can be served from a page without problems? Accusing everyone who doesn't necessarily jump on the template wagon as having ownership issues isn't really going to help your cause... drawing battlelines and such and calling the other side of a disagreement names (which is what you mean by "owners" here) doesn't increase the other sides desire to work with you. Honey does catch more flies than name calling ... I'm suggesting this for your own good, because you DO do a lot of good work, but sometimes the screams of ownership and stuff make folks just want to ignore what you're saying because you can't take the trouble to explain beyond "it's the future" or "it's the best way"...Ealdgyth - Talk 12:35, 6 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Of course it works; it's working fine in Appaloosa, as are the others in there. See {{sfnRef}}'s doc for the companion template that supports this. The idea behind "short footnotes" (Help:Shortened footnotes), is that they're short and sneaking titles in there isn't "short". Doing this, with whatever mechanism, clutters up the wikitext with repetition and likely inconsistencies. {{sfn}} is a fast, low-overhead template that generates <ref>...</ref> using a coherent |name= scheme that results in MedaiWiki performing the collation of duplicates automatically. The quoted attribute that this thread is nominally about are really just an initial tidy I do on the way to best practise; when I properly fix-up an article's references, there is not a <ref> left in the wikitext. See, for example, any of the 62 articles in Wikipedia:Featured topics/Battleships of Germany; or any of the German battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, and I'm most of the way through the ironclads… See most of Wehwalt's articles, Crisco's, Mark Arsten's, and many more. There are more than ten thousand articles using this mechanism; more every minute. It's going up by about fifty per day. That's site-wide consensus. Oh, there are upper limits to this approach. See Pedro II of Brazil, which uses more {{sfn}} than any article I know of; almost six hundred of them. It's not at the limit yet, not even close; I think it will become a problem at around two thousand instances. We're gonna need a WP:Featured book process before that happens, though.

I don't care what happens to this article; heels were dug in and revert-all resorted to, which is about ownership, battleground, and resistance to raising the bar on quality. My name's not Jack, btw; that's a fictional twelve year old boy with a knife and a sharp stick. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 13:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Gents, this argument is circling toward the "idiotic" end of the spectrum. Are you really compelled to keep it going. Mucho tedium all around. RexxS has a sensible argument about quote marks (although; in fairness to our god-programmers they do give surprisingly good error messages, in ALERT RED, when ref templates get fucked up - I've not looked at cite.php but I suspect it might be quite good!). I suggest if people are pissed at the initial rewrite, rather than argue about it here they raise it at an administrative noticeboard and see it WP:CITEVAR sticks - it might be an interesting experiment. --Errant ^(chat!) 23:31, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ahem, there are a few ladies in this discussion as well :) OK, so, Rexx, I agree that you do have a fairly good argument about the use of quotes by newbie editors, although I still find them annoying. And, I'm much more unhappy about the sfn templates then about the quotes. So, why don't we revert back to the last version without the sfn, then re-add the quotes. Would that make everyone happy? Rexx, is there a script that you use that can add the quotes without changing other stuff? Dana boomer (talk) 23:37, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Sadly, I don't have a script for that - I wish I had because I would not have felt the need to revert of course. Anyway, I can see on the FAC that I'm also causing Montanabw concerns by arguing, and I really don't want to compromise the FAC - you folks have put too much into it. Get a stable version; I won't get in your way again, and if you want the quotes, just ping me when things have settled down and I'd be glad to add them for you by hand. --RexxS (talk) 00:42, 6 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

We're on HTML5, which uses XML syntax rulz. According to the World Wide Web Consortium, the web's standards body (“Leading the Web to Its Full Potential”):

• http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/documents.html

  Documents in the XML syntax must not make use of any features of the HTML syntax that do not follow XML well-formedness constraints (for example, documents in the XML syntax must not use unquoted attribute value syntax and must not omit tags).

• http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/syntax.html#syntax-attr-unquoted

It's a pity that this article is going to not be an example of best practise :/ Br'er Rabbit (talk) 16:50, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Last I checked, we're Wikipedia, not the WWWC - so I'd like to see a Wikipedia guideline here ... if this is really so important, it shouldn't be that difficult to get a guideline set up for this. Of course, this doesn't address the fact that you are changing <ref> and </ref> to {{sfn}} ... would you care to address THAT part of your edits? Ealdgyth - Talk 16:53, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

And ... can we drop the "trendy" speak of "rulz" instead of plain English "rules". It's just annoying, and doesn't lend your arguments and statements any weight. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:54, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia exists on the web and the W3C sets the standards for web content. We don't need our own rules on topics where the W3C has already established standards; we just need to ensure our practices conform to the same standards as all other large sites present on the web - that way our content is reusable and that's one of our fundamental goals. --RexxS (talk) 21:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Br'er Rabbit; don't take this the wrong way :) but before making an argument it is a good idea to know what you are talking about. Unquoted attributes are 100% acceptable in HTML documents using the HTML Syntax. They are not acceptable in HTML documents using the XML Syntax, however Wikipedia pages are served in the former syntax. The page you linked to explains this. (ps the HTML syntax is not going away, and all browsers implement both parsers). Y'all are edit warring - yes, all of you - so please stop. --Errant ^(chat!) 21:30, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

nice user page; you know that the technique has been copied many times? That the original was by me? ;) and well-formed markup is best practise. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 22:56, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Don't be a jerk. Unquoted attributes are certainly well-formed markup. Sure, style preference comes into it, but quoted or unquoted is totally fine for HTML5. I'm trying to be helpful by passing on my knowledge, throw it back if you like, who cares. --Errant ^(chat!) 23:01, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Teenagers! methinks I've not been a teenager since before you were born. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 23:19, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

I'm trolling you because it is so easy. Apologies; it's mildly fun and I'm sat here bored waiting for something to compile --Errant ^(chat!) 23:31, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict) Let's not descend into name-calling, if we can help it, please.

Errant, you are quite right that all HTML specs expect the user agent to cope with both quoted and unquoted attributes, but we both know that a space is the attribute delimiter, so we either have to ban spaces from attribute names or quote them. The simplest rule of thumb is to always quote. And look at the bigger picture: we've only just moved on from an XHTML spec which requires quoted attributes. Who is to say that we won't go back to an XML-compatible spec at some point? I know we could get a bot to go through and try to quote all the attributes then, but isn't it more sensible to start from a point where we've already encouraged use of quotes as far as possible? There's realistically no chance we're ever going to move to a spec that deprecates quotes for attribute names, so why not go with what we know will always work? --RexxS (talk) 23:25, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

It's unlikely we will switch to XML spec in the future, for a variety of reasons (which if you have any interest in W3C I will be happy to bore you with - but the short summary is that it's related to an abortive attempt to make HTML valid XML as standard (XHTML) which has been put to one side for sanity reasons). In terms of whether to quote or not; from my own style perspective, I am happier not to quote unless required as I like clean syntax. As I mentioned above you give a compelling argument as to why, without the aid of a robust visual editor, it is more user friendly to use quotes. I'll probably start using them myself going forward because of it. However, here I was explaining to Br'er Rabbit why his argument was flawed. We are sliding off-topic, I'm happy to brainstorm about these things elsewhere (a user talk maybe) if it's still of interest, although I do tend to get a bit bored of the intricacies of the HTML spec :P --Errant ^(chat!) 23:38, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re-users are not guaranteed to follow our serving style. ;) PS: you can guarantee that once I've made a revert, I won't make one again on the same article, so no fear on the edit warring front. --RexxS (talk) 21:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

The problem is now clear; as soon as someone started discussing HTML5 vs XML, you lost those of us who are primarily content editors. Basically, my own view is that I really don't care in the least if I use a [ or a { or a " - If someone goes in and changes this stuff, I have personally just given up fighting about it so long as the content I need remains. I only wish that either all of these formats were declared equal (CITEVAR does, kind of, except that apparently CITEVAR has it's issues too) or else that there was one simple format and that it was consistently used until replaced by something better that was hashed out by the programmers out of my viewing. I am definitely one of RexxS's copy and pasters, at least until I fully understand how something works; and I understood <ref> pretty well; just in time to hear that I need to change it all. The new stuff is more confusing, and Ealdgyth's comments about rendering pages slowly and the need to factor in multiple citation styles ARE well-taken -- for example, if I had my way, I'd go strictly with Chicago Manual of Style. And people spatting over HTML syntax usually don't happen to cross-check on citation formats for the liberal arts... But all I know is that these articles should not be caught in the middle of this stuff; I think I'm going to add programming language to the things like law and sausage that no one should watch while being made...! Montanabw^(talk) 05:17, 6 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

Is not mentioned in this article, but it is in the French, which has improved since this was forked from it. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:32, 29 August 2015 (UTC).Reply

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