Talk:Horse collar

Hiperbole

POV article, note that this article bases all its assumptions in some discredited studies made a century ago. For example, the article says that horses are superior to oxen in ploughing, this depends on many circunstances. Also, the ancients (greeks and romans) used oxen for ploughing and had a far more productive agriculture than any region of medieval europe and early modern europe.

Expansion

I recently expanded this article with about 50% of its new material. I hope the history section is suitable now, although there isn't much said about the horse collar in the modern era except for the experiments of Lefebvre des Noëttes, an early 20th century French cavalry officer.--PericlesofAthens 22:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Agriculture

I have removed Category:Agriculture again since if this article were to be included there would be literally 100's of other articles that could justifiably be placed in the category. The cat had 360 odd entries and many were redundant or inapprop. A category such as Category:Agriculture should be kept to within the 200 article/subcat count. -- Alan Liefting- (talk) - 09:58, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see the point, but how to we link this to agricultural pursuits? Is there a better subcat? The horse could not pull a plow with any force or power without the horse collar, it was a major milestone of technological innovation that allowed horses to be used more extensively in crop agriculture, as they could cover more land in a day than could slower-moving oxen. Somehow it would be nice if people looking at the history of ag could find this article? Thoughts? Montanabw^(talk) 05:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

KNOW —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.36.182.47 (talk) 21:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Categories

I had removed Category:Middle Ages and Category:History of technology but another editor did not agree with the change. Horse collar does not belong in those categories. If all of the equivalent articles were included in these categories it would result in an overpopulated and hence unwieldy category which is of little use for navigation for readers. Categories exist to aid navigation for readers and therefore should be set up with this purpose in mind. If an article entitled Horse tack in the Middle Ages existed it would be appropriate to include it in Category:Middle Ages. Similarly a History of horse tack technology (or History of horse collar technology) article would belong in Category:History of technology. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OVERCAT seems to argue specifically against creating excess categories such as those above, which would be very narrow and only have a few articles each. By your standard, why would "traditional Chinese objects" fit here when history of technology does not? The horse collar was developed in China, but its impact revolutionized agriculture in Europe. I can't see a real good reason to include one and not the other. If you have ideas for EXISTING categories to add about technology of the mIddle ages or something similar, I'm open to suggestions, but it WAS a significant technological advance for medieval Europe, so somehow that's got to be figured out. Montanabw^(talk) 23:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Follow up: There is no suitable subcategory within History of technology to place this, if there were a Category:History of Middle Ages Technology or something, I'd be all over it. I found a narrower Agriculture cat, and added that one. The traditional Chinese objects cat, while wierdly named, includes the compass and crossbow, so I guess that one is a keeper. Montanabw^(talk) 23:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added the article to Category:Technology in the Middle Ages.--Srleffler (talk) 00:57, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Work effort of 50% more foot-pounds per second

I have to back up the anonymous editor on the question of "work effort of 50% more foot-pounds per second". It's bad form to assert that a quantity is increased by a percentage and then imply that that fact is dependent on the particular (linear) units chosen. If the "work effort" is increased by 50%, it doesn't matter whether the units are foot-pounds per second or watts—both will increase by the same amount.

"Work effort" is an odd term, which isn't defined here. The fact that this quantity is expressed in units of foot-pounds per second, however, unambiguously establishes that "work effort" is a synonym for power.

Fixing these issues is not WP:SYNTH; it's covered under WP:NOTOR.--Srleffler (talk) 23:26, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your edits fixed it; the concept was important, I'm not an expert on physics, and what you did works for me. Montanabw ^(talk) 20:30, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Srleffler. Right, a source shouldn't get repeated verbatim if it's wrong, or uses jargon, or something else. If some part of it is wrong, that part should be rejected outright for being unreliable. Some sources are basically reliable, but use jargon or might use an odd way of saying something like "power". In that case, it's okay for editors to rephrase the source in an encyclopedic way while still considering the source "reliable". 108.20.176.169 (talk) 18:58, 3 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]