Talk:Service animal

Untitled

There are a LOT of changes going on on this page and a lot of errors being committed. First, I think we need to understand that Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia of the United States, but of the whole world. U.S. Laws like the ADA do not apply in other English speaking countries such as Australia, the UK, or Canada but this Wikipedia page does. It is therefore not reasonable to define service animal for this article in terms only of U.S. Law. This is especially true when U.S. law is itself inconsistent. There are different definitions of service animal under several U.S. Federal laws and even more definitions under various state laws.

What I suggest is that we go with the generally accepted international definition supported by both Assistance Dogs International and by the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners. The term "Assistance Animal" is more commonly used internationally and means the same thing as what the ADA calls "Service Animals." Step one is that this page should be renamed "Assistance animal," and should start with an explanation of the various terms used around the world that are the same thing as we are describing in the article.

My second concern is the amount and accuracy of the legal information being posted on this page. There is far too much detail being included to make this a useful SIMPLE article for people who have difficulty reading or comprehending English. We cannot throw every single fact there is to know about service animals or assistance animals into this one article and need not try. This article only needs to be a simple general overview. Additional articles can be added and linked to if additional information is needed.

The ADA does not in fact say half of what various editors to this page have suggested it says. And that's why I've opened up this discussion. I think that instead of massive daily edits we need to organize behind the scenes and work together to make a high quality cohesive article instead of a half dozen people working toward different goals.

Stashkitty (talk) 00:32, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't have a particular opinion about the article itself, but maybe you (@Stashkitty) could post about this on the Simple Talk page? It might get more eyes on the issues you have and help fix them faster. --Lithorien (talk) 00:38, 15 January 2016 (UTC)