A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize articles about various dog breed descriptions. These are things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to start out by following them—mainly, we just want you to write articles! But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. If you add or change something that's inconsistent with the rest of the dog breed articles, that's OK--someone will most likely notice it and edit it for you.

Dog breeds task force of WikiProject Dogs

This task force aims primarily to provide a full description of the various Dog breeds. A consistent outline format is provided, including a list of various breed characteristics.

No classification of dog breeds has been clearly defined. See this example on dividing a topic into a hierarchy.

Categories[edit]

By convention, category notation goes at the end of the article before interlanguage links:

• [[Category:Dog breeds]]: All dog breed articles about a specific breed should be labeled with this.
• [[Category:Dog types]]: All articles that could refer to a group or type of breeds should be labeled with this. Examples: terrier, scent hound, sled dog, working dog.
• On some occasions, it is appropriate for an article to be both in BREEDS and TYPES based on the way people might be searching for it among the category pages. Examples: Collie, Foxhound, Welsh Corgi. (People might not know that there is more than one type of collie, or foxhound, or corgi, so might often go to the BREEDS list first rather than the TYPES list.)

FYI, both are subcategories of Category:Dogs.

There have been occasional discussions about creating additional subcategories for each of the dog types, because there will likely be over 600 dogs in the BREEDS category when all is said and done. If this happens, breeds would be listed in BREEDS and in the subcategory. (noted Feb 20, 2005).

A list of articles needing cleanup associated with this project is available. See also the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.

• /Templates: List and description of templates related to dogs and dog articles.
• /To do: Dog-related articles that have been started but aren't up to standards, are missing breed tables, need wikifying, etc.; photos whose origin needs to be chased down; stuff like that.
• /Breed grouping: Current breed grouping strategies (talk page discusses possibilities)
• /General: Random stuff that should be sorted into other catgs...
• /Categories: Current dog-related category strategy, list of these categories, and organization of categories (covers all dog-related articles, not just dog breeds) (talk page covers related discussions); for an up-to-the-moment list, you really need to start at Category:Dogs and work your way down, but we'll try to keep this project subpage up-to-date also.
• /Portals: Working copy of, and discussion about, dog-related portals.
• /Breed source list: Initial research on breed names & kennel club reg's

Tips for ambitious participants[edit]

If you want to keep tabs on what anyone is doing with any breed page--for example, newcomers creating new breed pages, you can add every breed in List of dog breeds to your watchlist, including articles that don't yet exist. (Just click on the link, which gives you an edit page, and simply turn on Watch this Page.) Yup, it takes a while to add them all...

(An alternative (quicker) way to achieve the same effect is to:

• display your watchlist
• click the "edit raw watchlist" link
• copy and paste the text from this page to the end of the list
• click the "Update Watchlist" button.)

Or focus on a subset of breeds, existing and not, in which you're particularly interested. Or just browse when the mood strikes you.
Recent changes for Category:Dog_breeds will show the changes of the articles in that category.

• See Category:Dog stubs to browse through to find articles that are partial but not complete.

There is are also public watchlists at:

• User:Sannse/dog watch
• User:Elf/watchlistbreeds
• User:Elf/watchlistdogrelated

The related changes links will show all recent changes to articles and talk pages listed on these pages. This is freely editable, but please take care in removing articles from this list.

There currently exists an article entitled List of dog breeds, which enumerates the various recognized breeds. Breed articles that already exist and are labeled with Category:Dog breeds appear on that category page, as well.

Title: The article for each breed shall be titled based on the apparently most-common official breed name from the major registries. These names have been placed in the List of dog breeds page. (E.g., Welsh Corgi (Pembroke).) Where the major registries are evenly split on the name, or where the breed is not recognised by the major registries, the article title shall be chosen using the most commonly used name in English language sources, such as the English translation of the name used in the international Fédération Cynologique Internationale breed standard.

Redirects: When creating a new page, redirects (or disambiguations under other possible names should be created to point to the page (e.g., Pembroke, Pembroke Welsh Corgi).

The article on each breed shall include the following information:

The following list is only a general suggestion, and should be re-ordered as necessary.

• The {{Infobox dog breed}} template, giving basic tabular information on other names, country of origin etc. (see template below). The Weimaraner article shows this template in use.
• Lead section: summary of general information about the breed, brief history, brief description.
• History
  • Recognition by kennel clubs
  • Sub-breeds and variants
• Characteristics
  • Appearance
    • Subcategories of the breed
    • Coat types and colors
    • Height and weight ranges
    • Build and proportions
    • Ears, tail, muzzle, etc.
  • Behavior (optional)
• Health, including possibly--
  • Common medical issues
  • Medical distinctions from similar breeds (optional, e.g., "Unlike other giant breeds, the xxx does not generally suffer from hip dysplasia")
  • Life expectancy
  • Care (optional)
• Training (optional)
• Roles (typical roles, dogs sports, activities etc)
• Controversies (optional)
  • Legal and regulatory matters (optional)
• In popular culture (optional)
  • Famous [breedname]s (optional)
  • Fictional [breedname]s (optional)
  • Notable people who own [breedname]s (optional)
• See also (optional)
• References: Include sources for the info that you put into the article, at least as much as you possibly can, both books & other web sites
• External links (optional): Links to web sites that expand on the encyclopedic info provided by wikipedia. Generally excluded are local breed clubs (too many hundreds to try to maintain the links), commercial sites (where the ads or intent to sell something are blatant), forums and blogs (not particularly encyclopedic).

Each dog breed article will have an infobox; see /Templates subpage.