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Discussions moved from main project talk page

FCI classifications

Any thoughts? -- sannse 11:46 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

I have no fundamental problem with using the FCI groups as our structure, but to be fair to North Americans, we should be sure to map the US/UK to their FCI equivalents. This means that the group list should become a table, e.g.
FCI groupAKC GroupCKC GroupUKKC(?) Group
Pointing DogsSporting GroupSporting GroupGundog

Do you mean the list of groups should be a table, or that each of the group pages should include a table? The only problem I see is that the groups are not always equivalent. As well as there being more groups in the FCI, there are discrepancies between the groups dogs are in. The Little Lion Dog for example is in the Toy group for the FCI and the UK but the Non-sporting/Utility for the US (I haven't found info on the groups in Canada yet.)

Maybe we need to have pages for each of the classification systems. With the tables on the individual breed pages (which would list the groups) the comparisons should be easy to make. This seems to be a long-term job though, the alphabetical listing is enough work for now! -- sannse 20:53 Feb 7, 2003 (UTC)

I was originally suggesting that we form a table with the leftmost column containing the FCI taxonomy, and the other columns containing the closest match from the other taxonomy. I figured this would roughly work, seeing as the FCI taxonomy has more meat to it than the others.
The bottom line is that I don't care how it is formatted, as long as its clear. I do, however, want to allow people to navigate by the (possibly) more familiar group names from AKC, CKC and the UKKC(?).
As far as the individual dog pages, I say we colaborate in your sandbox on a template, then start propagating it.
matt 02:04 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, a table of comparisons in that way should work well, good idea. You're right that we need to make it easy for people to find the more familiar groups.

Breeds table

Play away on the table in my sandbox, let me know when you think it works. It looks like Dante hasn't been around for a couple of weeks but hopefully he'll be in soon and have a look too.

BTW, I think the best abbreviation for the UK Kennel Club is going to be "KC(UK)". Otherwise it will be too easily confused with the United Kennel Club in America.

sannse 11:02 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, I'll play with the table offline in a HTML editor and come up with a prototype. I also took some dog pictures today, to start filling in articles :-)
matt 02:06 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

How do you see the link to the standards working? Should we link directly to the standard for the respective breed on each kennel club page? Can we do that? Or were you thinking of linking to the breed list pages for each club, rather than the specific page for each breed? (as you have for the AKC)

Thanks for catching the mistake in the HTML, one day I'll get these table thingies right ;)

sannse 21:18 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

I've put how I am seeing it work on Vizsla. I was thinking that the link to the standard residing on the official site is the best plan. If we don't, we'll simply end up with a "external links" section at the bottom of each page. I think this a good thing to do.
matt 00:52 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

Looks good! I think that will work really well. I've added (external links) after the heading on that section of the table. I know the link colour is different but I think we need to warn people they are going off site. That's a very beautiful dog you have BTW :)

sannse 13:17 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

How should we warn people of offsite links without consuming too much space? Thanks for the compliment :-) I know he is a good representation of his breed because I got him from a very reputable breeder. I hope to update the picture with an adult shot in about 6 months. matt 05:57 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)
Oh...I see how you dealt with the external link problem. That works - good catch! matt 05:59 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)

Adding new breeds

Discussion moved to Talk:List of dog breeds

sannse 22:13 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Review Spaniel article

For anyone interested, I just put up an article on Spaniels that gives some background on what a spaniel is and then lists breeds that are probably classifiable as Spaniels. If anyone knows more about what makes a spaniel and what doesn't (and it's not just whethe the name includes the word "spaniel" ;-) ), I'd be delighted if you'd review the article and even add more info. Elf 17:42, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've been thinking for a while that we need a dog page footer but when i started to put it together, I decided that it still wasn't clear in my head what it should look like. I implemented a start on a dog-page footer. I'm thinking alternatively about maybe having two versions--one that goes at the bottom of each dog breed with simply a link back to list of dog breeds and a note linking to this project saying that it's part of this large-scale project... and one that goes on all other dog-related topics. But the latter isn't as clear in my mind as I thought it was. So I'm letting it sit for a bit and seeing whether anyone comes here and comments. Elf | Talk 00:57, 13 May 2004 (UTC)~

I personally dislike the footer tables. Although I like the look of them, I worry that there are going to be too many and they won't work in duplicate (will we have one for pets, and one for animals, and one for the country of origin, as well as the one for dogs?) So I am waiting anxiously for the promised category system, which I hope will make all these footer tables obsolete. That said, I'm not going to try to stop anyone else adding them :) After all the category system has been in the works for a long time, might not be exactly what we want, and I understand people wanting something now -- sannse (talk) 12:01, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Can you direct me to a discussion on this category system? I couldn't find anything with a couple of quick searches. Thanks! Elf | Talk 22:35, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Wait, OK, I think I found some things, here and here; see their talk pgs also. Elf | Talk
Sorry, I wasn't clear, I mean the automatic categories that will be added one day... maybe... perhaps. They have mostly been discussed on the mailing lists, mostly on Wikitech-l I think. There is a thread about it here, but the fact that it's from June 2003 shows that these things don't move fast! That's the problem with all the coding being done by volunteers. There may be later conversation too but I didn't search further (the search was this one if you want to plough through it). The system is on test.wikipedia but not fully functional yet. I'm not sure I like the layout, but the idea seems great to me. But anyway, all this might not change your mind about using category boxes, perhaps they are the best thing for now. -- sannse (talk) 08:35, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I'm still thinking about this one. :-) Elf | Talk 16:37, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
OK, I'm done thinking (10.5 months later). :-) Here's the text of the aforementioned prelim footer template for posterity's sake (was named Template:Dogs-footer but I'm now deleting it):
{| style="margin:0 auto;" align=center width=80% class="toccolours"
|align=center style="background:#ccccff"| 
'''Topics related to [[dog]]s'''
|-
|align=center| [[List of dog topics|List of topics]]| [[List of dog breeds|Breed list]] | [[Training]] 
|-
|}
And it looks like this:

Topics related to dogs

List of topics| Breed list | Training
Elf | Talk 22:59, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Categories

Categories are here and argh we need to come up with a proposed strategy for dog-related articles. Currently the only dog-related category is Category:Dog breeds. Do we model categories & subcategories on the List of dog topics? Should the top-level category for our group of articles be simply Dog? And Dog should belong directly to: Pets, Canidae, Domesticated animals, ?? (none of which exist yet as categories, I believe). And I think that we want to be careful about putting types of dogs into the category Dog breeds; e.g., currently Sheepdog is listed as being in the category Dog breeds, but I don't think it should be there--should it? Unless we subdivide dog breeds into types of breeds & from there specific breeds...which would put many breeds into multiple types, which might be OK. Elf | Talk 05:22, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Or maybe the top level should be "Dogs", shouldn't it be plural? I think yes, "Dog" (or "Dogs") should belong to all those categories you mention.
On the next level, I think List of dog topics is a good starting point. Some of those would make good categories: certainly "Dogs in popular culture", "dog training" and "dog organisations" seem useful. How we decide which should be categories I'm not sure though.
I'm not sure about separating dog breeds into types of dog breed, I think that maybe we should just have one category (in which case Sheepdog would not belong there) I think we are going to have to be reasonably careful not to use too many categories, I have a feeling they might get a bit overdone for a while! -- sannse (talk) 18:09, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I finally broke off the intro of List of dog breeds into its own stubby article Dog breed. (I think a lot of things that link to the former shd really link to the latter because the latter didn't exist previously. But that's a project for another day...) Then I created Category:Dogs and Category:Dog types to complement Category:Dog breeds and I moved Sheepdog to the types category...and then got stuck again. Do the articles List of dog breeds and Dog breed belong to the category Dog breeds (which we already know should include each individual breed article), where they're likely to get lost among all the breed articles, or to the category Dogs (when in fact they're most closely related to the category Dog breeds)? So I'm backing off again while I think about it some more. Elf | Talk 23:10, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Another source of categorization--someone suggested on the Ctgzn page that we look at existing category groupsing on zeal.com; here is their top-level dogs list. From what I can see, though, dogs itself is a member of only 2 categories:

  • Library > Sciences > Animals & Wildlife > Mammals > Carnivores > Canines > Domesticated Dogs@
  • Lifestyle > Hobbies > Hobbies & Interests A-Z > Interests D > Dogs@

Elf | Talk 00:55, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think, though they are related to the "dog breeds" category, they shouldn't be in it because they are not themselves dog breeds. I think they should be in the parent category (as is the "dog breeds" category itself). You are doing a great job :) I'll try and join you in some work on this over the next few days. -- sannse (talk) 08:30, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
In a category you are supposed to find topics related to it. The list would be the first place visitors look. Especialy if the category has many articles. This is why it has normaly a top position. You have to be a very patient visitor if you woud search it in the parrent category. If the list relates to many topics we will need to add it to all those. Gangleri 22:27, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

Types vs breeds vs both

A related question: should Collie, Fox Terrier and so on be in Category:Dog breeds or Category:Dog types? My first thought is that they should be in Category:Dog breeds, but I'm not sure. What do you think? -- sannse (talk) 17:17, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

My feeling is that they should be in Category:Dog breeds. If you put them in Category:Dog types, that's fine, but they must appear under Dog breeds as well. I would NOT put them in Dog types instead of Dog breeds. My reasoning is that a person looking for a 'Lassie' dog would look under 'Collie' and believe that to be a breed, rather than a type. (When they get to 'collie' and find Rough, Smooth, Border etc., well, it's a bonus...!)
I'd also like to refer to Elf's point above wrt to List of Dog Breeds and Dog Breeds article. It's a little confusing at present; the link dog breeds links to different articles depending on where it's placed. Hmm...now that I think about it, that's probably what you meant, Elf. I see, the dog breed article stub didn't exist before, so everything used to point to List of Dog Breeds? Boy does that need changing!--Quill 01:40, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Umm, yes, I see you point about searches being easier with "Collie" etc. being in "Breeds". We have to be careful though that we don't put things in a wrong category, even for helpful reasons. One other possibility is putting links to Collie etc. in the intro at the top of "Breeds". That would meant that they are easily found by someone going to "Breeds", but we aren't implying that a collie is a breed in itself.
On the linking of the Dog breeds article, yes, the linking does need some sorting - another job on the list :) -- sannse (talk) 07:09, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'll have to go check the "Breeds" link to see what you mean by the intro at the top. Don't have all the categories straight yet! Quill 11:21, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
None of us have really, we have only had them for a couple of weeks :) By intro I mean the part on Category:Dog breeds that says "This is a collection of article titles about dog breeds.. ". maybe we could add something like "For groups of breeds such as collies or fox terriers please see Category:Dog types" -- sannse (talk) 16:57, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'd put them all under Dog breeds by the same argument that they're on the List of dog breeds page. I think I've got Fox Hound already under category:Dog breeds but Hound under Category:Dog types, for example. It's a tough distinction in some places. Maybe they could go in both... that's the advantage of allowing multiple categories.
On a related note, I was going to ask whether we wanted to have subcategories that map onto the hierarchy of categories for dog types used in some of the existing pages--e.g., Dog types->Hunting dogs->Gun dogs->Setters->Irish Setter? Elf | Talk 23:22, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Categories, Cont'd....

I'm running into a problem--maybe you guys have this clear in your minds and I just haven't caught up yet:

When we have a dog grouping that is also the name of a formal Dog Group in a Kennel Club, how are we treating it? I got confused with Working Dog and Herding Dog.

If I want to say, e.g., that a hunting terrier is a working dog, I need to be able to link that to articles about dogs that hunt and dogs that work, rather than the Gun Dog or Working Dog Groups in a particular kennel club.

We need to decide on consistent title format, and what category each type of title goes into. Right now we're linking inconsistently through no fault of our own.

The categories I can think of that are causing trouble in various articles are: Herding, Hunting (links to Gun dog), Working, Gun and Sporting, I think.... Quill 22:48, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

At the moment, all dog types/groups/categories are unrelated to their grouping by kennel club, since we all know that's arbitrary. So working dog should discuss list some of the kinds of dogs that are considered to be working dogs because they work, not because they're in those classes in some kennel club; terrier should discuss terriers because that's what they are and not simply because some kennel club says they are or aren't; and so on. These are what almost all articles & links should be to, because very few references are made (at least so far) to the actual "Blah Group" titles. In fact, pretty much the only places "Blah Group" is referenced is in the breed tables, so we could turn those into standard links to the Blah Group articles. For example, a hypothetical Working Dog Group article should explain the various names that various kennel clubs call this group, why they include or don't include dogs (in general, probably not in specific), stuff like that. The only kennel-club related group article that I know that exists so far is Terrier Group (oh, yeah, and FCI Terrier Group, and I don't believe that we ever quite ironed out whether the list of dogs under terrier and the list of dogs under Terrier Group really needed to be maintained separately or just have one article with some kind of table that identified which clubs thought each breed was a terrier...
Please see the beginning of a discussion on exactly this topic at List-of-dog-breeds talk page's group article discussion. (Hmm, that discussion probably really belongs here-- shd move it -- ) Elf | Talk 03:27, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Okay, this makes sense now. I'm thinking we do need Blah Group articles. Then we could put Dog Groups with a bulleted list on the...dog topics page? Categories? Quill 09:52, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

More about Categories

1. Viewing Categories

  • Is there a way to preview the categories I'm linking to when I write a new article? When I click the preview button, I don't see [categories:]
  • If you want to check Wikipedia for dog categories, how do you do it? When I typed in 'category', well, there were thousands--would take me to long to get to 'D' for dog.

2. Category 'Films about Dogs'

  • Elf, may I add to this list? If I add by 'editing' that list, (as opposed to writing an article first and placing [[category:]] at the bottom) is it a problem? I'm assuming that the list is being generated by articles....Also, I don't see this list is our List of Dog Topics--should it be there, or is it already somewhere else and I'm just missing it?


Quill 23:06, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  1. Viewing Categories
    1. I also thought that the categories weren't previewed, but either I just never noticed or they just changed it so that the preview category displays at the very bottom of the preview page, below the edit box, below the disclaimers.
Okay, thanks Quill 01:02, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    1. Wish I knew. Search doesn't seem to work. You could start at Category:Main Page, make a guess that Natural Sciences is the only subcategory that might contain dogs; from there, if you know about the sciences, you can select Biology, then if you haven't given up, you could select Zoology, then if you still haven't given up, you could select Animals, and then Domesticated Animals, and then you'd get to Dogs and any dog categories that are already linked into it. I don't like this hierarchy for finding Dogs but I don't have a better suggestion at the moment. (I didn't invent it, BTW; I just hooked in under Animals.)
No way, Jose! Quill
  1. Category 'Films about Dogs'
    1. Hmmm, interesting question. The Categories were supposed to help replace the List of... articles, but since the lists are indeed generated by finding all articles that contain a category link, that means that items can't be in the list unless there's an article on them, and in fact many films about dogs might not warrant their own articles. So that leaves us with either having a separate List of films about dogs article, which is silly, or having 2 separate lists on the category page, one that's autogenerated and one before (or after) it that's manually managed, which also seems silly. I don't have a good answer. I don't know whether that's been addressed in any of the generic Wikipedia:Categorization discussions (BTW, see the topic "Query - finding pre-existing categories" on that page for another suggestion) on various pages--I haven't been able to keep up with them. (I just skimmed thru several pages & don't see anything on this particular topic.)
    2. Yeah, it probably should be in List of dog topics. I didn't put it there because I noticed that there's a list of Dogs in film in List of fictional dogs, and then I couldn't decide whether to put the link in Topics or in Fictional or whether to create an entirely new article like Dogs in films (which you'll note is not the same as Films About Dogs), but then I thought there might be some way to have one article that covers both areas and then I could move the content of the Films about dogs and the content of Dogs in film to the same page, and then I couldn't decide so I abandoned it entirely and hoped that the answer would come to me in a dream sometime real soon. So far, no luck.

Elf | Talk 01:32, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm...not ignoring your response, Elf, just trying to think of something logical to get us out of this.
I suppose the obvious is impossible, that is, a List of dogs in film that's both generated and can be edited manually? (Just thought I'd ask.) Doesn't user:wcrowe do computer stuff? Let's ask him!
It's further complicated by the fact that not all Films about Dogs or Dogs in Film are fictional etc. etc. Seems we'll have to do something manual, like maintain a page of dog films which need articles, or create a manual dog films list that must contain either a blurb or a link to the article--I don't know. If you come up with any Joseph-like revelations, please share!
Quill 01:02, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Non-list lists

I've just discovered something completely by accident: Wikipedia will generate a list in category:blah that we can access but that does not show up in a Search.

Can we use it to solve some of our categorizing problems? Like put articles there while we're deciding what topic or group they should belong to? Or hold them there until they've been entered manually onto the right list, and then whoever enters them can go back and delete them from the holding page? Is this making sense? Quill 23:27, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

But that will put a non-category at the bottom of those articles. Do we want that? I suspect that if we start adding category:to be assigned to articles we may be heading for arguments. Perhaps it is better to make a list in the Wikiproject area instead - we would still be able to access it, but it wouldn't be part of the article space. Of course, it would need maintenance - just an alternative suggestion :) -- sannse (talk) 16:53, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Yes, good point. Too bad there isn't a way to hide the category to be assigned. I think a list of articles awaiting categorizing somewhere in the Wikiproject area is a good idea. Among all of us we would be able to maintain it. It might even help us sort out which categories are needed/work best. Quill 21:28, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Categories (part 23)

I have been working on adding categories working down the mammals branch of the tree of life, adding categories in a taxonomically systematic fashion. As far as dogs are concerned, I have started a Category:Canines, to which each species listed in the Canidae family article will belong. I think this will mesh nicely with the work of this project. Dog stays as a member of Category:Dogs, and becomes a member of Category:Canines too. Category:Dogs becomes a subcategory of the canines category. The category path is then Life -> Animals -> Chordates -> Mammals -> Carnivores -> Canines -> Dogs, and below that is completely in the hands of this project. Please give me a shout, or at Tree of Life talk if you see any problems with this. User:Pcb21, Aug 20 2004

Overview to Dog Categories

  • Halló! Category:Dogs has a wide number of subcategories. To my knowledge only Category:Dog breeds is linked so far to Wikipedias in other languages. Could somebody make an Overview? Thanks! Gangleri 21:46, 2004 Oct 19 (UTC)
I did not look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds/Categories before writing this. Sorry! Gangleri 22:40, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)

Main InterWiki links for the Wikipedia Dog breed Project items:
en:Category:Dog breeds: bg: | ca: | cs: | da: | de: | en: | eo: | es: | fi: | fr: | he: | ja: | ko: | nl: | no: | pl: | pt: | ru: | sr: | sv:
Related changes: bg: | ca: | cs: | da: | de: | en: | eo: | es: | fi: | fr: | he: | ja: | ko: | nl: | no: | pl: | pt: | ru: | sr: | sv:
en:List of dog breeds: cs: | da: | de: | en: | eo: | es: | fr: | he: | ja: | nl: | no: | pl: | pt: | ru: | sr: | sv:
History: cs: | da: | de: | en: | eo: | es: | fr: | he: | ja: | nl: | no: | pl: | pt: | ru: | sr: | sv:
more ...
Last update InterWiki list: 15:00, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

  • P.S.: Maybe it would be the best to have a navigational template to include at the top of all categories about dogs. Regards Gangleri 12:12, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)
  • Last update: 11:14, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)) Gangleri

relating to categories

  • Halló! During last days I experienced very different views on this subject (on articles about writers, persons and also in other Wikipedias). My question is what / which categories should be specified for the individual articles here?
I don't quite understand this question. Elf | Talk 00:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Last week I added some links for the Icelandic writers. See category de:Kategorie:Literatur (Isländisch). de:Steinunn Sigurðardóttir is in six categories: women, author, writer, Icelandic writer, litherature of the 20th century. Because sometimes I am in doubt myself about an Icelandic dog name I assume it is also hard for other people to know if it is a bitch or a male dog. In articles about people from other cultures you would not imediately know if it is relating to a man or to a women. What was puzzeling me editing all those articles was that many of these indications where missing and the order was arbitrary. I am German and worked in faultfinding, maybe autistic and expect things in the same place. Imagine that the French user interface, the syntax etc. would be completly different. Gangleri 22:42, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)
  • Some articles shows both dog breed and dog type and some only one of them. Please comment. Thanks! 00:25, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)
See "Types vs breeds vs both" subhead above. Elf | Talk 00:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I am very happy having both! Gangleri 22:42, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

How to avoid additional maintenace categories

  • Halló! I am sitting here a while and was before at Template talk:Stub#Breaking up the category (and Template talk:Stub#Adding an icon?).
  • I think the basic purpose for the whole discussion is finding valuable information. What questions can arrive:
    • Is the article a stub?
    • Is the clasification completed?
    • Does it contain an image?
    • Is it an article or a redirect?
    • Is it about a breed or about a group, type, family or another point of view?
    • Is it categorized or not. If yes where?
    • ...
  • Because I looked at many "dog breeds" (in a wider sense) lists I want to describe here some taughts.
  • First there is allways a dilema between an "official list" (viewed by visitors) and a "working list". If somebody works alone on that list he does not obay so many ruls as if the list is used in common.
  • The first lists I saw beside the English one is the one made by de:Benutzer:Caronna, the one made by pl:Wikipedysta:AndrzejzHelu and the Japanease ja:犬の品種一覧 list.
  • If I work on my homepage I can make a version for visitors and one for my self asing a parameter as "?&x_trace=-genesis-" for [1] to get [2]. I have not asked if PHP is supported in articles. (Note: It would be a great help because we could show randomly pictures of dogs as done for the pictures at [3].
  • But to come back on the "working list(s)". I would be happy to adopt a common standard because I want to create more, expand existing ones etc.
  • According to my opinion a list about dog breeds should contain:
    • the name in the language of the Wikipedia
    • the alternative names (placed at their alphabetical order) wikified to see the existence of the redirects
    • the original name of the breed (with transcription if another alphabet is used)
      • Note: great compliments to the Japanease list showing (almost) all English names of the breeds!
    • an unique reference if possible; because of the international character of Wikipedia the FCI no's should be used whereever applicable and a FCI- if not
    • the country of origin (wikified)
    • for da:Hunderacer I added in comments the homepages of the breeding kennels responsible for that breed in Danmark
    • I used bold for anything else than a breed and italic for redirects
    • "_" could be used to indicate the presence of the talk page
    • I can imagine that "(stub)" could be added to the list
    • also @b, @t, @bt, @?, @^ and @- could be used for the categories
    • T+ and T- (from taxonometry (?)) could be used for clasification
    • <-fi, <-ja could be used for taking information from that Wikipedia
    • ->it, ->es could be used to support the dog breeding articles in other Wikipedias
    • something for Do not edit! in order to avoid redactional conflicts, maybe ─
    • some taughts about all the messages which could be contained in the article as article needs reworking, possible copyright violation, ... should be done
  • Informations at the Talk page: If they would be identified in the "working list" they could contain valuable links as done at Talk:Italian Greyhound. There could be also quasi stubs maybe worked without profund knowledge of the language, parts of the editing code, see also, external links, existing InterWiki links, links to Wikipedia images and so on. This is the best place to drop a note and we could use them as a notepad.
  • There are some discussions at de.wikipedia about the color for the classification. Because some participants (in the future many because we expect new friends) of the English Wikipedia create articles in other languages the same color is used then. I would prefere to have the same look and feel.
  • I thing that enough for today! Regards Gangleri 00:34, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

WDP feature request

  • I think we should start a feature request about displaying the content of a category in the same manner as "My contributions". I mean as a list with newest changes displayed first. It should be possible also to display the content of (some) special pages (as categories and so on) with a Startig from and Until input mask. This would save both database resources and user resources as well. What is your opinion about this? Regards Gangleri 05:25, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)
  • Questions:
    • How to see new articles in a category if you do not have sysop priviledges? Should you remember them all? Should you look at all?
    • What turn around would be available until such a feature would be available? We could insert the ~~~~~ (five "~"'s) for the system timestamp in the "working list". But then it will be overloaded and this would be no automated solution. Gangleri 00:58, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
Great questions that I've also wrestled with. Every once in a while I go to the categories pages and manually read thru the list and try to remember whether I've seen the topic before. Seems like there should be a better way. Of course this page isn't the place for requesting new features. Elf | Talk 04:22, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Either I'm totally misunderstanding what you guys are looking for here, or can't you just click on "related changes" on the category page, and see what's been most recently updated or added? [[User:Lachatdelarue|Lachatdelarue (talk)]] 14:14, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure what Related Changes is supposed to do; never figured it out. It doesn't help with what has been added to the categories. For example, Akbash Dog was added to Category:Dog breeds on Oct 17, but it does not show up when I click Related Changes on the Category:Dog breeds page. Elf | Talk 19:13, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I just realized that related changes only shows recent changes to wikilinks in the text portion of the category page, and not the articles in said category. Hmm. Maybe that should be the feature request: have related changes include changes to the articles themselves, and that should show what's been added too. [[User:Lachatdelarue|Lachatdelarue (talk)]] 20:15, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Breeds by countries

I have thought from time to time about whether a list of breeds by country would be of interest to the general public. I think it would be, actually. I haven't done anything about it because it would be so hard to do. For example, the various serbian/balkan dogs--where would you put them without upsetting someone? "Balkans" isn't really the name of a country, it's a region. Likewise with Bichons--"Mediterranean area" would have to be the country of origin, esp. since there are some citations of origins in France or Spain or Italy--or would we list it in all places just to be safe?

And would you use the *current* country name or the name at the estimated time of origin? We could go by the FCI's country selections whenever a breed is recognized by them, but there are whole trainloads of dogs not recognized by the FCI. In other words, it would be a hard list to come up with, but it might be interesting.

I'm also not sure what the article name would be--perhaps we could do it by having a different Category for each country (sort of like there are for Writers by Country and such)--and, heck, surely there have got to be getting on close to 1000 breeds out there, so some of the categories might be lightly populated, but others would be quite full. Just sort of thinking out loud now, and it might also addresss some of what Gangleri's trying to do, too. Elf | Talk 05:48, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Personaly I think searching for dogs by countries / regions could be done having both categories for countries where more then n dogs come from and a list where the others are listed and the categories mentioned. This keeps the list small enough. It is also a good starting point to check for dogs in Wikipedias for that language.
Akita Inu could be in Category:Japan same as Icelandic Sheepdog is in Category:Iceland. If other people decide about the category system for animals from that country they can move them. Regards Gangleri 12:35, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)
I actually started this in October; meant to speak to it but maybe I never did? Just did a quick check and I have three lists written, List of Spanish, Japanese and Korean dog breeds. I started with those because it was clear that there were breeds developed in those countries but without worldwide recognition. Quill 23:25, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dog type subcategories?

Hey, since we don't already have enough to work on in the dog project to keep us busy (we call this "humor"), it occurred to me as I work slowly through every dingdang existing breed article fixing the AKC link and changing stub to dog-stub and similar boring cleanup--we currently have about 500 breeds in List of dog breeds, about 250 of which already have stubs or articles. When you go to Category:Dog breeds, it's almost overwhelming already. I'm starting to think that having subcategories for the different types (in addition to listing them in the main category) would be very helpful for navigating the various breeds and also for us to identify breeds that haven't yet been classified into the various articles such as scent hounds, terriers, and so on.

I'm willing to start tacking in these subcategories as I go (sigh--a few dozen articles to redo, as I've only managed to make it through A, B, and C so far), but I'd like to work out what they really ought to be first. NOTE that many breeds will be members of multiple subcategories, if they're used for hunting and herding, say. The question is how far to break down the categories?

Here are how the various main (English-language) kennel clubs break down the breeds:

FCI AKC KC ANKC CKC NZKC UKC
Sheepdogs and Cattle Dogs (except Swiss Cattle Dogs) Herding Pastoral Working Herding Herding
Pinscher and Schanuzer - Molossoid breeds - Swiss Mountain and Cattle Dogs and other breeds Working Working ? Utility? Utility Working? Nonsporting? Guardian
Terriers Terrier Terrier Terrier Terrier Terrier
Dachshunds
Spitz and primitive types Nonsporting Nonsporting
Scenthounds and related breeds Hound Hound Hound Hound Scenthounds
Sighthounds Sighthounds and Pariahs
Pointing Dogs Sporting Gundog Gundogs Sporting Gundogs
Retrievers - Flushing Dogs - Water Dogs
Companion and Toy Dogs Toy Toy Toy Toy Companion
Miscellaneous Misc.
Northern

You can see that it's a mishmash and impossible to draw clear lines. So these might be starting points (terriers and Toys seem to be the general category most agree on--although what dogs are therein are different!). But if these are starting points, we're back to discussing what exactly ARE the subcategories we want, to be able to accommodate all breeds? For exampe, to start with:

And does even that cover all the hunting groupings we could want?

Just starting to think--and it hurts my brain and I'm out of time. So... initial thoughts? Elf | Talk 22:46, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have to think about this Elf. My first thought is that I like your idea; if I understand correctly there will be a lot of cross-referencing. The policy in some other projects is only to put articles into the most specific category, which I don't like, because a) invariably people can't find things b)how does one know all the categories that exist and therefore which one to use c)what do you do with 'crossover' topics. Lotta work ahead.
Quill 00:01, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The ones that really worry me are those that are in different groups in different countries - toy vs utility/non-sporting for the Shih Tzu, for example. There are also a lot that would not be in any category if we used the lists of the major breed associations (only 200 or so breeds in the AKC for example). The FCI is the most inclusive with around 340 or so breeds, and also has the advantage of having a classification system different enough from the others to cause minimal confusion. For those not in one of the FCI categories, we have two choices: an "unclassified" category, or try to fit them in to one of the categories ourselves (something that the general confusion in systems shows us is not a simple thing!). There would still be issues with using the FCI groups - looking at Shih Tzu again; it would be in "Companion and Toy Dogs" as it is for the AKC, even though it is utility/non-sporting elsewhere. Another alternaitv4e would be to use multiple categories AKC-Toy, CKC-Toy etc. I'm not sure I like this option, which would result in at up to six categories per article and duplicate information in the table. So those are some initial thoughts from me, but no conclusions at all. There is a lot to consider here :) -- sannse (talk) 00:28, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually I think "nonsporting", "utility", and "miscellaneous" are pointless categories as far as wikipedia is concerned; they're inventions of the various breed clubs. I think I was creating the preceding table to sort of show that we need to come up with categories that make sense in the real world; we don't have to group them into an arbitrary 7 or 8 groups because we don't have to organize dog shows & best of group & such around them. So we can have as many as we want--within what one's brain can grasp. So we might actually start with some of the article titles as listed in Category:Dog types, hence:

  • Bird dog (or is that the same as gun dog?...)
  • gun dog
  • pointer
  • spaniel
  • retriever
  • sighthound
  • scenthound
  • hunting dog (see Q above about subsubcategories)
  • Companion dog (Hmmm, this feels somewhat like a noncategory, too--aren't all dogs potentially companion dogs? I think I would NOT include this as a subcategory)
  • Toy dog (question--would all toy dogs also go into companion dog category if we keep that one?)
  • Terrier
  • Pastoral dogs (rather than trying to break into Herding vs. Livestock Guardian? or is "pastoral" too obscure and it would be better to have 2 categories?)
  • Mastiffs
  • Spitz
  • Northern (or sled dog? and/or are spitz and Northern the same thing?)
  • Working dog misc? (OK, I see the argument for "Utility"--youse gotcher carting dogs, guarding dogs, carriage dogs...)
  • OK, maybe Unclassified, too, to cover anything else--keeps us away from all the categories of the various breed clubs.

Elf | Talk 03:00, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I started on this a bit with Category:Scent hounds and Category:Sight hounds. While I was at it, I added the parent Category:Hounds with scent and sight hounds as subcategories of that; this way, everyone can see how the subsubcategories idea looks. I like the subsub categories idea a lot. More categorization is better than less, right? :) (well, until you get to overcategorization) It's easier to see the groupings and gives people more information. Of course, If people decide that they don't like this idea, I'll be more than happy to go back and remove the main hounds category. I'm going to stop for now until I hear people comment more on subsub categories. - Trysha 07:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Ooops, I just commented on this at Category Talk:Hounds; subcategories are great but I think that therefore dogs should be in only one of the categories, not both Hounds and scent/sight hounds. Elf | Talk 16:25, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Shih Tzu question

Moved anon question to Talk:Shih Tzu. Elf | Talk 20:44, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

How about a genetic basis of categorization?

Since modern science asserts that DNA underlies all natural (and unnatural) selection, why not base a dog breed grouping scheme on genetic info. After all, it was the Victorians who were obsessed with Linnaeus and categorizing everything based on appearances (since they didn't know about DNA).

Some insightful research has been done at the National Human Geneome Research Institute. It is analyzing the genes of the various dog breeds. Since the research is still is its infancy, there are many breeds excluded. Also, the research only reveals which breeds are very similar, and those that are very different. There is a large grey area in between. (It's like being taught a history that begins at the earth's beginning, then skips to the last couple of years -- but doesn't reveal anything about the interveneing years.) But there will continue to be research, and there will continue to be more clarity revealed.

For example, it shows that the Basenji split off quite early, as did the Eastern-breeds (Chow, Shiba Inu, Shar Pei, etc). And it shows that the Belgian Sheepdog and the Belgian Tervuren are essentially the same breed.

Here is a rough map (look on page 21 of the pdf file) of dog breeds, as calculated by the Canine Genomic Research At NHGRI. You will note, quite reasonably, that German Shepherds are more closely related to Mastiffs than to other "herding dogs." In fact, the old taxonomy of "working dogs" and "toy dogs" and the like is a false construct. The dogs are organized by genetic origin. And though the relation between very similar and very dissimilar dog breeds is currently understood, it would be fortituous to base a Wiki evolving document on the evolving forefront of our scientific understanding of dog breeds.

68.15.221.177 04:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)Garrett

Categories (yet again)

Should there be a "gun dogs" category, or should it be divided into more specific categories such as "spaniel", "pointer" etc, OR should the categories "spaniel", "pointer" and such be subcategories of "category:Gun dogs"? (as you can tell, I'm new to this "creating categories" thing) Pharaoh Hound 22:42, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

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