Talk:Uffington White Horse

Map doesn't display

I hope it's not bad manners to put this at the top, but I wanted to make sure it was visible to experienced editors. When you click on the excellent UK location map thumbnail, the larger image doesn't have the dot to locate the horse. I don't know how to put this right, so I leave it to those more skilled with maps.

Afterbrunel 17:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

The map you see in an article is a standard basemap image, with a bit of template programming to place the red dot. When you click on the map, you are clicking a hyperlink to the basemap only, in this case Image:Uk outline map.png. The missing red dot will happen on any map you click, it is a feature of wiki. However, I have put a message on the template talkpage to see if any template experts have a comment to make. MortimerCat 18:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Age

"The figure is believed to date back some 3,000 years to the Bronze Age, and was probably carved by the Dobunni, a local Celtic tribe. " Some problems with that - the date of 1400 BCE was arrived at by Optically stimulated luminescence dating, not by belief. The Dobunni, like other Celtic tribes, date to the late Iron Age not the Bronze age. I propose to reword, keeping the reference to the Dobunni (as references to other outmoded theories are retained, as interesting historical record), and then stating that recently, scientific dating has shown a date of 1400 BCE. Any issues with that?

Go for it. --Doradus July 1, 2005 11:58 (UTC)

Berkshire

References to Berkshire are far overstated.

The fact that it was previously in Berkshire is not particularly relevant, because the period of history relating to the historical counties is neither relevant to the creation of the White Horse, nor to a significant event in its history, nor to the present-day reader. By the same token, one could write (and in my opinion equally irrelevantly) that it was in "Wessex" during some point in its history.

Also the "Berkshire White Horse" as a name for the figure is implausible. Google shows at the most two or three independent hits for "Berkshire White Horse" (not including multiple copies of the same document, plus one or two pages containing word lists for search engine spamming which happened to contain that combination of words), consistent with that being a description which one or two people happened to use rather than its actual accepted name. By contrast, for "Uffington White Horse" Google finds well over a thousand matches.

I will leave "Berkshire Downs" but remove other Berkshire references.

Good idea. The only terms it's generally known by are "Uffington White Horse" or simply "Uffington Horse" (which is a redirect page worth adding, come to think of it). Grutness ^hello? (I've been wanting to put my sig on this page :)

I've placed it, for Wikipedia readers like me who couldn't have told what county it was in. (I knew it was England, but for all the context there was it could have been in Ireland-- or Nova Scotia.) Didn't occur to me that there might be an issue. H

Say, how does that "Bronze Age billboard" theory square with the other turf-cut figures? --Wetman 05:25, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Not very well, I wouldn't think. I don't think the theory is that widely believed for Uffington, and I shudder to think what was being advertised at Cerne Abbas! Grutness...wha? 06:37, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

BCE

On a separate matter, I am also going to change BCE / CE, to BC / AD, because that is the usage which is more widely understood, and is also in general use in Wikipedia. I would suggest not departing from this usage on this individual page, inconsistent with the Wiki as a whole. Rather, look at / participate in the discussion on Talk:Centuries. If there is genuinely a consensus for use of BCE/CE (which I rather doubt) then let it be discussed there and then implemented consistently throughout Wikipedia.

(Addendum: Wikipedia:History / Wikipedia talk:History standards may be a better starting point than Talk:Centuries.)

--Trainspotter 13:27, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Images

I've added an aerial shot which I feel shows the white horse better than the "from the ground" shot. Are there now too many images? --Dan Huby 12:23, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The new (and very good!) aerial photo basically renders my drawing of the horse redundant, so if you want to remove that feel free. Grutness...wha? 01:00, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

The aerial shot is entirely appropriate for this article, but the caption says "The White Horse as seen from space". This is a screenshot of the horse from Google Earth of an image taken on December 31, 2004. Around this time, satellite imagery did not exist on GE that would produce images this resolved, so photos of this resolution were taken by airplane. However, because I have no direct proof of this, I'm changing the caption to "Aerial view of the White Horse". torq (talk) 14:32, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I am adding a photo which I took in winter while standing next to it which I thought was interesting WRT different season. Cas Liber 06:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

It's nice - I've moved it around a bit, as the end of the article became very scrappy - also resized all 3 images in that group. - Ballista 06:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

If we get any more images, it might be worth considering a gallery at the bottom of the page. Grutness...wha? 08:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Should it be mentioned that the horse was vandalised by hunting activists? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.15.63.111 (talk) 03:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC).

It already is mentioned - have a look at the last paragraph of the section headed "Vicinity features and recent events". Grutness...wha? 11:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Mexican version

Can be seen in google earth at 31°39'45.05"N 106°35'15.90"W, 430 metres from nose to tail, but I don't know anything about it - who did it, when or why. Anyone got any idea? 81.157.195.129 (talk) 18:03, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems unlikely that the Mexican horse is based on the Uffington Horse, which the article seems to imply in its current version. Still, a good reference. I suggest a further reference to the animals visible in the Nazca lines. And close by the Mexican horse, to the south-east, there is also a lizard. EugealCrayfish (talk) 01:04, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Popular Culture Section

This is a trivia list by proxy. It also contains some items that are commercial products, of dubious relevance to the actual horse. This looks like viral marketing and promotion rather than a genunie attempt to impart information.

Either way, it's a trivia list and should be rewritten and restructured. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.143.5 (talk) 19:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the above, but it should not be removed wholesale as User:79.72.142.21 is insisting on doing. Some are referenced, and some (e.g. The Scouring of the White Horse by Thomas Hughes) are notable and relevant. Dave.Dunford (talk) 16:15, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

My comment on User 79.72.142.21's Talk page:

You may wish to make your case at Talk:Uffington White Horse#Popular_Culture_Section. I've reverted your wholesale removal of the "cultural references" but I have removed some of the less notable and less relevant entries. Some, such as the The Scouring of the White Horse (Hughes) and The Ballad of the White Horse (Chesterton) are most definitely relevant and notable. Also, please be careful about removing referenced material if you remove large sections of text. Dave.Dunford (talk) 16:21, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

User:79.72.142.21's response, on my Talk page:

It's not a matter of "making my case". I removed a haphazard list of trivia of no clear relevance to the subject matter and with nothing in the way of reliable, independent sourcing to indicate sustained, non-trivial coverage. Changing the section title from "In popular culture" to "cultural references" is a ridiculous solution. If you believe the list of trivia is important then the burden is on you to prove it via sourcing and alter the format from a list of factoids into legible prose as per the rest of the article. 79.72.142.21 (talk) 17:05, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

My response to further comments on my Talk page, which is not the place to discuss this:

I have explained above, and in my edit summaries, that at least some of the references you have removed – notably the The Scouring of the White Horse (Hughes) and The Ballad of the White Horse (Chesterton) – are notable and relevant, and that some of the other references you have removed were referenced. Also, I did not just "[change] the section title from "In popular culture" to "cultural references" – I also removed some of the less notable and less obviously relevant references, as I actually agree with you to an extent: I'm also no fan of trivia, and the section was too long. But the fact that the Uffington White Horse appears in numerous works of art and fiction is notable in itself, and the White Horse is a key feature in several of the references you removed. The references you removed are not all "trivia" and your cull is too unselective in my opinion. Thomas Hughes and G. K. Chesterton are notable authors and the Uffington White Horse is a significant feature of two of their works that you have removed, as well as other works by lesser authors. Nirvana and XTC are significant artists. Hughes and XTC, at least, have local connections. Please explain why you disagree and perhaps we can establish a compromise. You should perhaps note that the original reversion of your edit was not by me, but by a bot, which might give you cause to reflect on your accusations of "edit-warring". Dave.Dunford (talk) 19:22, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

@79.72.142.21: I've started work in my user space on a revised version of the section in question, turning the bullet points into prose, adding references, trimming irrelevant asides and categorising the entries by notability and relevance: User:Dave.Dunford/Uffington White Horse. I'd welcome your input. Dave.Dunford (talk) 21:01, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

The IP's insulting and aggressive revert goes against the spirit of Wikipedia, but there does seem very little in the cultural references section which meets the criteria of notabililty, and the citations are not independent reliable sources, with the possible exception of Bramwell. There should be the material for a discussion of how the White Horse is depicted in modern culture, but I think would probably better be a separate article. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:33, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Have a look at my sandbox page. My conclusion is similar to yours, but I think there are a few entries that are worth keeping. Dave.Dunford (talk) 06:37, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this. Hughes looks OK to me. Chesterton and Sutcliffe are potentially notable, but I do not think that the citations meet the criterion of discussion in a reliable secondary source - the blog on Sutcliffe is not good enough. Todd does not seem notable. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:12, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Section now re-inserted, converted to prose, trimmed, and with additional citations. Dave.Dunford (talk) 08:25, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

German Page does not link up

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Hill does not redirect here if you change to english, but it should. I don't know enough about wikipedia to fix this, if someone would do that it would be awesome, thanks. Atanar (talk) 11:59, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi Atanar and thanks for this. I've had a look here and on DE but, while I hate to disagree, I think it is already correct. That is, the German article, which is called after the hill and covers both the hill and the horse which is one of its features, switches in EN to Whitehorse Hill which is the equivalent. The difference is that here there is a sub-article, this one, about the horse, which doesn't have a parallel in DE. It's mildly annoying that you can't go from this article to the German hill article, but I am not sure if that is fixable. I'm sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear, but does it answer your question? Best wishes DBaK (talk) 16:08, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Note for Atanar – I had a look at adding the German Hill link to the English Horse, if you see what I mean, so at least it would answer my last point above. It refused because it wants a 1-2-1 mapping between articles and I found myself looking at this and this and very rapidly needing some paracetamol and a nice nap. In other words, the one mapping we already have is the right one and we probably can't do much else till the DE wiki grows its own article about the Horse sich selbst and not just the hill. Sorry! I'm happy to defer to more knowledgeable editors (i.e. pretty much all of them) but that is how it looks to me. Cheers DBaK (talk) 16:16, 7 August 2021 (UTC)