Talk:Pit bull

Older discussion here: Talk:Pit bull/archive1

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In the PBT controversy, there are apparently several diverse opinions:

1. that pit bulls are perfectly nice, acceptable animals and should not be banned or restricted in any way;
2. that pit bulls are inherently vicious and are too dangerous to be around people;
3. that pit bulls are themselves responsible for attacking humans, and should therefore be restricted or even banned;
4. that some owners of pit bulls train the dogs to be extra vicious, and therefore the owners should be held accountable when their dog attacks a human;

I think there may be some overlap here, especially between #2 & #3. I personally adhere to #4 (with a mild overlay of #2). A lot of people who disagree with #2 or #3 or both, adhere to #1.

If there's a controversy, let's NOT TRY to get to the bottom of it, let alone have Wikipedia take a position on it. Instead, let's describe the views which the various adherents espouse. --Uncle Ed 14:55 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Ed, I don't think that we have had disagreement over any of the above yet. That is, the article is it has stood has refrained from saying point blank that "pit bulls are good" or "pit bulls are bad". The disagreement has been over phrasing things that different parties believe in a NPOV way. Here are some key differences in the latest versions of the article:

Tannin: In Australia, pit bull terriers have been responsible for four of the seven dog attacks in Australia in which people have died between 1991 and 2002.

º¡º: According to The Age, pit bull terriers have been responsible for four of the seven dog attacks in Australia in which people have died between 1991 and 2002.

Tannin: In Australia, there is general agreement as to how many injuries or deaths can be attributed to pit bulls.

º¡º: In Australia, there is disagreement as to how many injuries or deaths can be attributed to pit bulls.

Tannin: The "Endangered Dog Breeds Association of Australia, a pit bull lobby group, ...

º¡º: The "Endangered Dog Breeds Association of Australia", a breed protection group, ...

In other words, we don't appear to be disagreeing over what was said, we seem to be disagreeing over how to represent what was said. -º¡º

I'm glad that we can have a peaceful, amiable discussion about dogs that have been called dangerous and violently aggressive. --Uncle Ed

Can you provide a citation for that? -º¡º

A citation proving that we can have a peaceful, amiable discussion? Hmm, I'm not sure. Maybe this talk page, eventually :-) --Uncle Ed

BFB, taking those three in order, and for the sake of simplicity just accepting your phrasing above as is:

• #1: I prefer my version, as it ain't just the Age, it's 'most everyone except the PBT lobby. But your version is fine, provided only that is phrased exactly as above.
• #2: Here, your version is quite unacceptable. It's nowhere near true. However, I would not object to simply leaving the entire sentence out completely. We already know how many deaths PBTs have caused, so there is no real need to discuss what people say about that - the entry is supposed to be about the dogs, and if anyone wants to write about the public debates and media spin and lobby groups and BSL and such, then some other article would be a better place for that.
• #3 The euphemisim "breed protection group" is inferior to the plain, tell-it-like-it-is phrase "pit bull lobby". Seeing the group's web site is linked to, however, perhaps there is no need to describe them at all. WTF? With a single click, interested readers can see for themselves - and if it comes to that, the ridiculous figures the EDBA quote in the face of the numbers everyone else accepts speak for themselves.

That would give us this:

• According to The Age, pit bull terriers have been responsible for four of the seven dog attacks in which Australians have died between 1991 and 2002. Most state governments have introduced new legislation to deal with the problem. The Endangered Dog Breeds Association of Australia, however, denies these figures, and claims that pit bull terriers have caused no known fatalities, and that only 8 of 750 investigated bitings involved this breed.

(On the "most state governments" thing: Queensland, WA, NSW and Victoria have all acted in the last year or two. I'm not sure about SA and Tas. The Herald-Sun article can just be linked to in the external links section, if it isn't already.) Tannin

A quick afterthought. On reading that over, it doesn't make the main point clear - that the figures per Age are widely accepted, and not controversial. Needs to be rephrased. But not tonight. Bedtime! Tannin

Nice going guys. Someone had to protect this page because you all are going at each other like a pack of vicious dogs. I would laugh at the irony, but you are all BETTER than this! Please try to get along, please?

I'm unprotecting the page now, so try to act human -- or at least humane... --Uncle Ed 20:42 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

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Tannin, sort of as closure, and sort of to establish a baseline before editing the article further, I wonder if we can state the heart of the disagreement as clearly as possible. Here is what I think it was:

You want to state "4 out of 7" as a fact, while I want to state that "so-and-so says 4 out of 7" as a fact.

Close? -º¡º

Close, but no cigar. You are misrepresenting me when you put it like that, BFB. (I'm sure that you did not intend to do so, but it amounts to a misreprentation just the same.) The trouble with saying "so and so says X" in this instance is that to simply say "The Age said X" clearly implies that it was only The Age that said it, where we know for 100% certain that it was also the RSPCA and various of the Murdoch papers (the Herald-Sun and the Courier Mail as an irreducable bare minimum), and though we have no direct evidence for or against, we can very confidently assume that the other papers in those two stables picked the story up as well (which is to say all of the major metropolitan dailys in Australia), and further assume, seeing as the Herald-Sun story came from AAP, that it went to as many of the regional papers, radio stations, and national TV networks as cared to carry it. Certainly it came as no surprise at all to me, and I generally don't read newspapers, and never watch TV news or current affairs, so I almost certainly first learned of it via ABC radio - which would make sense, as there was quite a fuss about pit bulls not too long ago (after a couple of particularly gruesome attacks, the details of which escape me), and all the media outlets were carrying stories about them.

We also know that there has been no response to that particular statement from anyone except the pit bull lobby (i.e., it is generally accepted), and that every major media outlet which we know about, and every politician that we know about, has either carried the 4 out of 7 number, or expressed other views that amount to more or less the same thing.

So what we really need to do is find a way of expressing the simple facts of the matter briefly and precisely: i.e., that The Age said 4 out of 7 and almost everyone accepts that, except for the EDBA who dispute it.

At present, we have a tiny minority group's version of the facts accounting for more space than the generally accepted and uncontroversial account. That is not a reasonable and fair summing up of the matter. Tannin 15:24 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

As a general rule, statistics should not be cited from secondary sources. Newspapers are not primary sources unless they've conducted the study themselves (even if no other citation is available). Editorials that argue strongly for a particular POV are especially unsuitable for use as the basis of an encyclopedia article statistic.

Obviously there is a great deal of dispute on this particular "4 out of 7" statistic, despite your presentation of it as generally accepted. The fact that any group disputes it (notwithstanding your characterization of such as a "pit bull lobby") in and of itself warrants presenting the numbers as sourced (i.e. "X, Y, and Z say 4 out of 7, whereas A, B, and C say 2 out of 100 [or whatever]") rather than as undisputed fact.

We also know that there has been no response to that particular statement from anyone except the pit bull lobby (i.e., it is generally accepted)

That nobody involved in this discussion has yet found a particular response to that statement from anyone but the 'pit bull lobby' (which you seem to be defining as "any group that is not in favor of immediately euthanizing all pit bulls") does not imply that it is generally accepted, nor that there are no other responses.

Major media outlets and politicians, despite any prestige they may otherwise carry, do not somehow assume infallible status when they pronounce on pit bull related deaths. It may even surprise you to learn that major media outlets and politicians have been known to fabricate statistics at various points in the past to suit their purposes. -kwertii

Kwerti, the fact remains that the figure has gone unchallenged anywhere we know about. Mate, I live here: I'm not completely bloody blind you know. No-one (except the pit bull lobby) has disputed the figure. Everyone (except the pit bull lobby) regards PBTs as a public safety problem. (Whether this near-universal belief is right or wrong is a seperate question, of course.) For your ridiculous statement: Obviously there is a great deal of dispute on this particular "4 out of 7" statistic you have not the slightest shred of evidence aside from the pit bull lobby's website. If you tried a bit harder you could find the pit bull lobby's press releases, and the pit bull lobby's publications, and you would still not have any evidence. The fact remains that the entry as it currently stands does not fairly reflect the state of affairs. Tannin

Thanks for all the response above, tannin. I'm not ignoring you, I'll reply soon, but I'm not wiking much today. -º¡º

Me neither, mate. It's Easter so I don't have to work, and someone up there likes us, because evey day so far has been perfect: 20-something degrees, no wind to speak of, clear skies with just a few puffy white clouds. When it's like this, only a mug would wiki before the sun sets. ;) --Tannin

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Kwertii is persistently imposing a biased point of view on the Pit bull entry by editing out relevant, factual, referenced, information that does not support his beliefs. This has not quite reached the point of being outright vandalisim, but it is getting very close. Tannin 14:14 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Counterpoint

Nonsense; I was removing Tannin's heavily biased anti-pit bull rants. Tannin refused to acknowledge that the question of "are all pit bulls inherently public dangers?" is a matter of opinion, not fact, and spent quite some time making edits to pit bull along the lines of "All pit bulls are inherently dangerous and should be immediately destroyed". Tannin backed up these assertions by repeating variations of "I'm right! It's a well known fact that all pit bulls are dangerous and must be destroyed! Stop denying well known facts!" over and over again. When pressed, Tannin (much later) offered as "references" [1] (http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/2001/10/31/FFXS7JJJETC) a newspaper editorial on how dangerous pit bulls are, and [2] (http://www.aloha.com/~lawson/dogbites.htm) the personal homepage of a lawyer whose primary practice seems to be suing pit bull owners -- not exactly unbiased primary sources.

Fortunately, Tannin seems to have quieted down a bit since the page was temporarily locked, and has even found a primary source for cited statistics. In the (admittedly rather unlikely) event that anyone is interested, I trust that the page histories of pit bull, Talk:Pit bull/archive1, and Talk:Pit bull will speak for themselves. kwertii

Indeed they do speak for themselves, as does your determination to misrepresent the facts of the matter, Kwerti. Even in your second sentence above (never mind the PBT entry and its talk page) you repeat and compoud the untruths. I have never said "should be" anything in that context - that would be an opinion as opposed to a fact (and, further, an opinion I don't happen to hold), and I invite readers to check this for themselves. The facts you are so keen to bury under an avalanche of personal abuse (as I have said all along) are widely available and uncontroversial. Their general thrust is contested only by a tiny, self-confessed lobby group. Time you got with the real world and stopped making up untruths about other contributors. Tannin 04:56 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

By the way, you have also mangled the the sequence of events in your post above. One can only assume that this is deliberate dishonesty. Tannin

I do not keep a logbook on my desk of interactions with the various wikipedia articles; I recreated the sequence of events from memory, and apologize for any specific inaccuracy. The general theme remains the same, however.

You also will note the use of the words "along the lines of"; I realize you did not use the exact indicated words specifically, but that was the gist; hence that qualifier.

I am still not sure just what the "pit bull lobby" you keep referring to is; I'm certainly not a part of it, so I can assure you that people other than the "pit bull lobby" disagree with your views. The fact that a view is widely held does not serve to make it a fact. So what if most people whom you know in Australia (or even most people in general) think that pit bulls are a public danger? This does not somehow translate that opinion into a fact.

You almost religiously kept inserting statements to the effect that "Pit bulls are a public danger" into the article. You repeatedly removed my and others' edits that changed it to something more NPOV like "Many people perceive pit bulls as a public danger," terming this NPOV recasting as "misleading apologia."

When others and myself removed your statistics of dubious veracity (the aforementioned anti-pit bull newspaper editorial and the homepage of the pit bull owner-suing personal injury attorney were presented as NPOV sources), you accused us of "POV censorship" and claimed that statistics backed by these sources were "verifiable, properly referenced, relevant facts". When another user presented you a link that contradicted the statistics in the anti-pit bull editorial in The Age, you summarily dismissed it as biased and being the work of the "pit bull lobby".

Your edit summaries and talk-page explanations to rationalize your determination to remove NPOV from the article and cast the statement "pit bulls are a public danger" as an etched-in-stone fact of nature again consisted largely of chest-beating and summaries such as (stop trying to pretend that the danger is a matter of opinion. It is F A C T fact.) and (It's a fact. Deal with it.)

You have repeatedly immediately ripped into several other users who presented sources contrary to your opinion with comments such as (Stop pretending that you have documented your claims - they are demonstrably biased, AS I HAVE DEMONSTRATED OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN TALK AND IN THE ENTRY), while at the same time ignoring other users who pointed out to you the inherently biased nature of your sources by dismissively attributing any contradictory information to the mysterious "pit bull lobby".

Perhaps they'll have us both as "annoying users" after this. Again, I find it unlikely that anyone else is much interested in the details of this dispute (and incidentally, your emotional attachment to your position is remarkably strange), but I wanted to place both sides of the issue here.

kwertii

Oh, so the Pit bull abuse is over here now? I'm siding with kwertii here and my opinion is that Tannin was in the wrong. Kwertii has captured some good Tannin quotes above, and in what he writes above Tannin shows his tendency to insult editors he agrees with ("Time you got with the real world..."). -º¡º

Once again, we see a determination to distort the record from the fanatics. I imagine anyone that is interested has reviewed the page history and seen for themselves by now. Kwerti, I do indeed have an emotional attachment: however, it is not to a particular point of view on PBTs - there are matters I care much more about - it is to accuracy and against naked distortion of fact. These "statistics of doubtful veracity" as you describe them are something that you have been entirely unable to discredit despite a sustained and singleminded effort (which is no surprise, as they are univerally accepted outside of a tiny lobby group) - indeed, your search (or BFB's, I forget which) only succeeded in turning up further instances. (As documented both in the talk page and in the edit history of the article.) Had it not been for the determination of the PBT fanatics here to ruthlessly censor the entry in the first place, they need not have appeared in the entry at all. Tannin

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above from wikipedia:annoying users. If someone could refactor it, and the rest of this page, to be in greater accordance with feng shui, then I would be most pleased. WikiLove to you all. Martin 10:57 May 14, 2003 (UTC)