Wikipedia talk:How many legs does a horse have?

message: I'm not sure that WP:HORSE is the best acronym for this page - the first place I saw it, (without having read the policy), I thought it meant "I think Statement A is horse shit".  Maybe WP:LEGS would be better.  Maybe I have a dirty mind.  -- stillnotelf is invisible 23:40, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  -- stillnotelf is invisible 02:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would have thought that the definitive "rose is a rose" would have been Shakespeare in Juliet's balcony speech where she mused "that which we call a rose/By any other word would smell as sweet". There is a lot to be said, however, for the  duck test, i.e. If a bird looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you can infer that it is indeed a duck, even if it is not wearing a label that explicitly states its identity. -- Alias Flood 23:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I will research the rose quote and get back to you. wvbaileyWvbailey 23:03, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Indeed it was Gertrude Stein. This from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." Sacred Emily, 1913. I have no idea what it means. Nobody knows what any of her writing means. That must be why it's considered so good.wvbaileyWvbailey 18:36, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I think the horse/legs example illustrates the point without as, uh, crude a reference.  The problem is that bandying words like "horseshit" around quickly gets one accused of personal attacks or of being a dick.  Personally, I curse fluently, so I'd never be offended; but many people would be offended by a WP:SHIT policy.  Using weaker words should help with that problem.  -- stillnotelf is invisible 23:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I do agree that, to label someone's writing "bulls**t" or "horses**t" might seem a bit ... what shall we say? ... aggressive? But to label someone a "dick" is pretty rough too. Better to label someone's writing "bulls**t" (bullticky? bumsuck?) than to label the person who wrote it "a dick", unless of course they are a dick, in which case it's completely justified ... right? What I will do is actually read the reference that I quoted, i.e. "On Bullshit" and report back; I have a cc right before me. (Novel concept, this?) Whether the 5-legged horse problem and the duck problem and the rose-as-sh*t problem are the one-in-the-same has become unclear to me. So much philosophy, so little time. wvbaileyWvbailey 23:03, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I read the book (truly. Not the easiest read, actually). I also noted that Bullshit is a page in Wikipedia. The book itself observes that bullshit is more an enemy to truth than a lie because, after enough practice the bullshitter comes to believe his bullshit and every word he says or writes is suspect. This causes me to wonder exactly what the "Legs" parable means. Does it mean: "To thine own perceptions be true?" To have the courage to shout: "The emperor has no clothes! And horses have four legs and you can't talk me out of it!" Back in mid '60's when I came east to college I had a couple of the college secretaries convinced that Denver was still a stockade fortified to keep Indian attacks at bay. But one in particular refused to believe it. If I'd been writing my history of the West on wikipedia should she have written in response: "LEGS!" Or "Bullshit!" or what exactly?wvbaileyWvbailey 18:36, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  After much cogitation I will now render my opinion (I think that "rendering" means boiling down dead beast-bodies into fat: yes, my trusty Webster's does indeed corroborate this usage...) that this is the "WP:Horselegs" policy, so much kinder a moniker than the "WP:horsesh*t" or "WP:bullsh*t" policy. wvbaileyWvbailey 22:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done, the alternative abbreviations/links are a done dudu. If they don't work mea culpa, then flagellate me with a wet noodle, etc. wvbaileyWvbailey 03:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

text: You're right, calling someone a dick is aggressive - the page says Telling someone "Don't be a dick" is something of a dick-move in itself, so don't bandy the criticism about lightly. It is also an assumption of bad faith to cite this policy when a weaker statement is sufficient.  So...yes...you're right :) -- stillnotelf is invisible 23:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Old mock

message: Shouldn't this essay credit the actual source? 72.199.30.31 16:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Abraham Lincoln]] 

message: "How do I nominate thee? Let me count the ways ...." [How do I nominate thee? Lemme know the ways! thanks, wvbailey!]Wvbailey 23:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, that nuke almost made me spit out my coffee. A very fine piece of work.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.162.33.43 (talk) 05:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

text: I also agree (and might add that the nuke was well played), but at the same time I'm just trying to figure out how I ended up here when I searched "horse with three legs"...--Macks2008 (talk) 14:11, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Best article in wikipedia 

message: Let's say it had a birth defect and it was born with a double-leg in the back of it's head.  Then it would have five legs!  --68.192.46.244 (talk) 00:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed it would. To examine this conundrum we have to resort to philosophy. How many horses do we have to examine before we can assert that "For all horses: 'Horses have five legs?' " Suppose we live in an odd place (say: New Hampshire USA) where there's lots of granite and therefore radioactivity and therefore plenty of mutants. Or an even worse place: center Wyoming where there's a huge, abandoned open-pit uranium mine (been there, seen it, seen the uranium oxide, seen the workers with their little geiger counters) with all its dust etc and so there's lots of mutants (haven't been there in years but hear rumors, so let's pretend, go with me here ...). Ergo the wild horses (and the ranchers' cows, etc) now all have 5 legs. Let's say that you, dear reader, have lived in such a place all your life (virtually impossible, as there's nothing out there, but go with me here ... this is philosophy, after all). Thus all your experiences of horses is one of "five-legged horse." Then as far as you're concerned: "All horses (cows, sheep, dogs, cats, chipmunks, squirrels, etc) have five legs." As far as you're concerned, this assertion is not bullshit, this is fact. What is "fact"? Again, so much philosophy, so little time. Look what happened to Aristotle: he was a philosopher and then he died. Proof of the (non-bullshit) fact that: If you philosophize then you die. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 21:34, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What If Its a Mutant Horse? 

message: Essentially, make "leg" synonymous with "appendage" or "extremity". It's perfectly valid, in theory, to redefine a word in a very specific way, as long as all parties involved accept the redefinition. Once that condition is met and you redefine it, you've redefined it. That's how animals became deer in England, in a manner of speaking. After all, there's nothing about the concept of a leg, or the written word, or the sounds of the word, that inextricably tie them to a strict, immutable definition. Äþelwulf <Small>Talk to me.</Small> 08:25, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You know a true or false prophet by his fruit. (Matthew 7:16) And you know a leg by the weight it bears. A kangaroo has five legs by this definition, but a horse or dog or calf still has four. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 02:36, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  What if you redefine "leg" to include tails? 

message: Just curious as to why thats there, it seems out of place yet its hilarious. --Flyingcandyman (talk) 22:38, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no idea. Let's keep it. :-D -70.171.224.249 (talk) 03:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Nuke 

message: If this was a real quote from Lincoln then I have just lost respect for his idiotic logic. When **WE** redefine something and **WE** agree on it then for the purpose of that discussion it counts as whatever we agree to count it as. You can't redefine something and then state the definition doesn't count. This whole page has become a mockery of real logic for what purpose? 99.251.114.120 (talk) 15:14, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: If Lincoln was an idiot, what does that make you? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:33, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In my case, it is to make me laugh on a cloudy, gloomy day!  WPEQ thanks the creators of this page!  Montanabw(talk) 19:01, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the purpose of this nonsense? 

message: Robert Stalnaker, in his extremely influential paper "Assertion" (1978), discusses the example. His develops a semantics to deal with assertions to which different truth-values are given depending on the context (e.g. "a horse has five legs" is true in a language in which a tail is counted as a leg, false in some languages in which it doesn't).
His solution to the riddle (to be precise, he rather takes the riddle as an example) exploits what at the time was a new tradition in linguistics, called two-dimensional semantics.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.242.143.129 (talk) 01:49, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philosophical Discussion 

message: I gotta say this page is amazing and I can't beleave that.</br> 
I am giving this page a </br> 
1934589761984576119345897619845761193458976198457619999999999994568746534829/10 MoMoCool2005 | Talk•••Contributions 13:42, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Very nice.  Nixinova  T  C  20:40, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amazing page 

message: The page shouldn't be non-indexed because it's unlikely anyone is actually searching google for how many legs a horse has because they don't know. If they are, they're probably trying to find the current infobox which will disappear if it's noindexed. O0factuallycorrect0o (talk) 10:07, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: O0factuallycorrect0o you won't believe it, but that's how I ended up here. And no, I didn't ask it myself but this went viral, as Google suggests horses have six legs, per this page.  :) --Aleksey Chalabyan a.k.a. Xelgen (talk) 18:50, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: , I am confused as to what you mean.  Did you get here because you were trying to figure out how many legs a horse has?  Or did you get here because you heard that google gives out bad information based on this essay?  I hope it is the latter.  Your response to me seems o say both things.  ~ GB fan 19:24, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is used by all age groups including young kids who are just learning about the world, so don't make assumptions of the knowledge level of searchers. Someone Not Awful (talk) 23:16, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

text: User:k6ka I'd encourage you to get involved in the discussion above about it. ~fl 03:16, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing the noindex 

message: The horse has only 4 legs Rijishapk (talk) 11:56, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes it does and that is what this page says.  Google is taking a snippet of this page that it actually doesn't say.  ~ GB fan 12:07, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 29 April 2019