WikiProject Motorcycling

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This week we focused on WikiProject Motorcycling. Started in October 2006, the project has grown to include over 3,000 articles and 88 members, although only a fraction of the members are active. The project maintains a lengthy to-do list and provides helpful resources for anyone researching or sourcing articles about motorcycles. The project's tongue-in-cheek "Collaboration of the Century" is the motorcycle article. We interviewed project members Tedder, Dbratland, and Brianhe to learn more.

What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Motorcycling? What kind of motorcycle-related articles do you like to work on?

Tedder: I'm a motorcyclist. I've travelled via bike from North America to South America, minus the impassable Darien Gap, where we hired a drunk boat captain to sail us from Portobelo to Cartagena. I also teach motorcycle safety to new motorcyclists. So I'm very interested in most aspects of motorcycles and motorcycling.

While I don't have a library of motorcycling books like others such as Dbratland has, I contribute when I see interesting magazine articles explaining an interesting motorcycle topic. Occasionally I'll collaborate with others, like the cluster of articles related to the BMW F650 single- which as an amusing study in WP:NCCN, since the F650 was replaced with an entirely different motorcycle, also called the F650, and the first F650 became the G650. User:TimTay and User:Biker Biker were the others involved significantly on this project.

Another area that takes time and involves headache are the various outlaw motorcycle clubs, such as the Hells Angels. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about them before he went to the great cannon in the sky, and the motorcycle gang articles end up attracting a weird crowd.

Dbratland: I have a Ducati 125 Bronco that I wanted to restore, but I found out you can't really work in your garage while trying to watch a toddler. So instead I worked on Wikipedia articles while watching the baby (I'm a stay at home dad). At first I only wanted to expand coverage of Ducati's pushrod singles, within only the scope of the Italian motorcycles group. I realized that you couldn't really explain that history without explaining who the Berliner Motor Corporation was. Somehow from there I got drawn into wider motorcycling subjects. Now my goals have changed, and I'm more focused on the most popular motorcycling articles and the Top and High importance articles — at least the ones that are actually about motorcycles and not so much celebrity gossip or crime.

Brianhe: I'm a Ducati rider and had a Honda ST1100 before that; initially my interest was mostly in these brands and comparing specs between similar models. Lately I've become more interested in a variety of international models, especially the domestic motorcycles of India. This fascinates me in the way that the industry is experiencing its own unique evolution of bike models, making research for the articles a learning experience in itself.

The project maintains four "Special Interest Groups" for British, Italian, and Japanese motorcycles as well as motorcycle sports in general. How successful have these groups been? Would you suggest this country-based approach to other projects?

Dbratland: I suppose with less than a dozen highly active participants in motorcycling, there isn't a pressing need to split off into special interest groups. If more editors join the motorcycling project, and then perhaps the groups will become more important.

Brianhe: Agree with Dbratland that national SIGs haven't really seemed to pay off for us (yet). The project's editors seem to have pretty wide ranging interests and so we really haven't formed enclaves around particular topics.

Tedder: The number of active editors is too small for SIGs. They are a good idea, as they represent the major categories of motorcycles to the US/UK viewpoint, but they aren't global and aren't active.

After some reassessments, WikiProject Motorcycling only has one good article (bicycle and motorcycle dynamics). What has been the greatest challenge to getting motorcycle articles up to GA status and maintaining that status?

Dbratland: It was before my time, but I think bicycle and motorcycle dynamics was mostly the work of the Bicycling and Physics WikiProjects. The biggest challenge now for WikiProject Motorcycling is gaining experience with getting one article all the way to GA or FA status. Once we've learned how to do that we can probably do more; I'm imagining it isn't really as difficult as it appears to the novice. The articles Motorcycle and Motorcycling are probably too large in scope to be good candidates, and the motorcycle gang articles, while prominent, are too controversial. There are a number of articles on models of British bikes and BMWs that might be good candidates, and I'm hoping that Suzuki Hayabusa, Kawasaki Ninja 250R or The Art of the Motorcycle could get within reach of GA before too long. My biggest challenge personally is that I get distracted by other things and don't stay focused.

Tedder: We definitely don't "deserve" claiming that as a GA. Thankfully, the two-wheeled worlds are very similar, so we benefit from the shared enthusiasm that is seen in the dynamics article. That same sort of crossover is hinted at in the Stoppie article too. I think we have a productive handful of editors who are more concerned with improving the long tail more than anything: so many of our articles are unsourced, so the occasional collaboration that occurs is delightful and something we can be proud of.

A great example of our collaboration is Harry Hurt. In 2007 Brianhe created an article on his groundbreaking study of motorcycle crash factors, but we didn't create Hurt's biography until a few days after he died. That article was a collaboration between 5 of us over a few days, as well as some great outside help.

The project's page includes lists of frequently used books and magazines formatted for use in citations. How do the sources used in motorcycle articles compare to those of other kinds of articles? Do you feel it is easier or harder to find reliable sources and historical information on motorcycles than other subjects?

Dbratland: I just had this text file with {{Citation}} filled in with a number of books and magazines I was citing over and over in different articles, and I decided that I might as well share it on the project page in case anyone else could use it.

I think the main problem with motorcycling sources is that they focus heavily on the post-WWII industrialized west, and ignore the developing world, especially Africa, China and India, and they ignore the US and Europe prior to the 1950s (other than an obsessive dissection of the history of Harley-Davidson and Indian). In other words, there is lots of source material about the places and the period where motorcycles were a leisure time toy for the middle class, or a symbol of freedom and rebellion for a subculture that developed after WWII. There needs to be a lot more said about motorcycles as a practical means of transportation for people who aren't in love with speed or expressing their individuality, or any nonsense like that — they just need to get somewhere and can only afford two wheels. But until more source material is published, there's not much Wikipedia can do about it.

The Chinese motorcycling industry makes more motorcycles than any other country, but it is organized much differently than the discrete manufacturers and brands we are familiar with in the West, and solid source material on Chinese motorcycles is hard to come by. The book Wikinomics argues that Chinese products are made in a manner comparable to Wikipedia articles! I'm hoping a Chinese speaker will take a strong interest in the motorcycling project, because it's a country that is becoming extremely important to motorcycling and will probably be dominant in the future. You could say the same for India.

There is little written about the culture of the packs of young men who zip around on sport bikes, speeding and doing stunts, with most of the attention given to the older outlaw biker culture. Most of what has been written about the custom scene focuses on Harley-Davidson style choppers, or on British Cafe racers. There is a huge scene around custom Japanese motorcycles, associated with the African American community, and other minorities. But I've found it hard to find extensive source material, though that is improving.

But if you want to write about motorcycles and motorcycling in the mainstream culture of the developed world during the last 30 or 40 years, there is lots of source material, and a good deal of it is online.

Brianhe: The number of truly independent written sources for new model information (reliable power and top speed figures in particular) is fairly limited; we seem to cite 4 or 5 industry magazines very heavily. There are a few web sites that I consider reliable but many are either highly opinionated blogs, or simply republish manufacturers' press releases. I've tried to include citations from my fairly limited personal library. Unless it's a sensational crash, wider-interest publications such as mainstream newspapers don't frequently cover motorcycle related topics, with a few exceptions such as the recent obituaries for Harry Hurt, which makes us probably over-dependent on trade publications.

Tedder: To add to the above, certain historic motorcycles have a disproportionate amount of coverage, but it's amazing how difficult it is to find the basics on other models, even popular ones. It's really difficult to determine what material has been published from a neutral point of view, rather than simply republishing a press release. Most of the magazines suffer from this. I think we have learned to be skeptical of quoted numbers (weight and horsepower, for instance). Some of it comes back to the sixth sense, especially if it's a matter of sorting through differing numbers. A good example of the variation and distrust of numbers can be seen at Talk:Suzuki Hayabusa.

Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?

Dbratland: WikiProject Automobiles is larger and better developed than motorcycling, and it provides us with a lot of policy guidance, for example on popular culture sections, or image standards.

Also, I think we'd be lost without all the work done creating and maintaining {{Convert}}.

WikiProject Crime intersects quite a bit with the outlaw motorcycle club articles. I often wish we could hand over all of these articles to them, or to anyone, since working on them can be so thankless! You can't really say much about motorcycle gangs without offending somebody and starting a debate, and motorcycle clubs don't really have much to do with actual motorcycles or with riding motorcycles.

Tedder: I agree, there is some overlap between the Crime, Automobiles, and especially Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycle racing. The latter group allows for a fantastic division of articles: we don't have to worry about keeping abreast of rule changes and standings in 2010 Grand Prix motorcycle racing season, and they don't have to worry about the BMW R69S.

What are WikiProject Motorcycling's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?

User:Dbratland: I would be thrilled if an experienced editor who had worked on GAs and FAs would take pity on us and help us choose a candidate article and see it through to at least GA status. One of these days I'll probably come knocking on the FA Team's door.

Motorcycle testing and measurement is a rather sorry article that I hope will some day serve as a reference for the many articles about motorcycle models, because I think readers are currently given a bunch of statistics about horsepower, torque and so on from diverse, conflicting sources, with little explanation for where this data comes from or how to evaluate the merits of the data. It needs an expert in mechanical or automotive engineering with access to good source material on testing methodology. Similarly, I hope someday List of motorcycle milestones will become a tool that helps maintain other articles.

The articles on Motorcycle safety, Motorcycle training and Motorcycle helmet mostly reflect the point of view of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, government policy, and the editorial bent of mainstream motorcycle magazines. It's a point of view I happen to share. Those who oppose wearing helmets or requiring rider training are poorly represented on Wikipedia, which is kind of odd given the libertarian bent of so many Wikipedians, Jimmy Wales not least among them. Since I have so much trouble understanding their beliefs, it's hard for me to do them justice in an article. Bernard Rollin has an essay against helmet laws in the book Harley-Davidson and Philosophy, but the logic of his argument is lost on me. As with the outlaw motorcycle clubs, the people best able to speak for this point of view seem to have a hard time understanding and conforming to Wikipedia's rules, and they often get blocked from editing before they can learn how to contribute constructively.

Brianhe: Maybe this is too specific, but cleanup on Infobox motorcycle would be appreciated, especially in the formatting of the optional dry weight parameter. In broader terms I'd like to see our coverage a little less USA and Europe focused, one thing we could use is expanded coverage of Chinese motorcycles and scooters; laws, training and customs (Freeway motorcycling restrictions in Asia, Motorcycle training, Lane splitting) and the like.

Tedder: We're certainly short on template help, but.. pick a task! Whatever interests you. We have topics ranging from motorcycles ranging from the Vespa to the high-speed Concours 14 to TV/film articles such as Long Way Round to technical/historic articles like Motorcycle fork to military history articles like the SdKfz 2. The popular pages can be used to spark the imagination, as well as our list of unreferenced BLPs. I wish our coverage of Chinese and Indian makes was better, especially the Bajaj and related bikes. They are massively popular everywhere except North America and Europe. Finally, we're short on good copyeditors and wordsmiths, which doesn't require specific knowledge.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Dbratland: There is lots of virgin territory in the motorcycling space. I'm often amazed at those who talk about Wikipedia as if it were "done" and merely in maintenance mode. There are so many unwritten articles about Ducati singles of the 50s and 60s, or the full history of Honda motorcycles, or the the very first motorcycles, like the Daimler Reitwagen or the Roper steam velocipede, and Glenn Curtiss's G. H. Curtiss Mfg. Co. List of motorcycles in The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition is filled with redirects and redlinks. It goes on and on and on. There's lots to do for anyone who wants to help.

In the next WikiProject Report, we'll step away from the computer screen and go outside (but not for too long lest Wikipedia succumbs to vandals and trolls). Until then, explore other projects in the WikiProject Report archive.

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