Talk:The Royal British Legion Riders Branch

New
Have put up an original article on this articles temp page — Preceding unsigned comment added by Motorbike1 (talk • contribs) 15:33, 28 September 2009‎

"Branch" or "Club"
Hi fellow bikers at RBLR. Personally, I am happy if you try helping to improve the wiki articles. But please take care about WP's policies and guidelines!

Concerning your current removals of "MC" entries: please read the article motorcycle club carefully. Wikipedia is not an (outlaw) biker's rulebook! The article and the category contain "clubs, groups, organizations, associations, ..." - the RBLR is described as "charity". Wikipedia does not care about that "1%ers" try to force other clubs not to label themselves as "MC", Wikipedia refers to encyclopedic sources where "club" is a generic term for multiple kinds of groups. HTH. --Trofobi (talk) 20:17, 7 January 2013 (UTC)


 * [Edit conflict] Note that Wikipedia uses the plain English phrase "motorcycle club" to refer to any motorcycling group. The special politically correct jargon of outlaw motorcycle clubs, or "one percenters" is not followed, in which "motorcycle club" only means territorial, exclusive, semi-criminal or criminal clubs/gangs. Because this subculture is far less than one percent of motorcyclists, let alone the mainstream of society, their special terminology is just confusing to the general reader. This has been debated dozens of times and the consensus has never changed. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:19, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Why not allow a clarification?
Regarding the designation 'club', and the recent removal of an amendment to the aticle. I have read your post above, and wonder why you did not allow me to enter the paragraph of clarification that you removed? It seems strange that an entry for an organisation cannot be modified by that organisation.

I fully understand your point about the RBLR being within the 'club' classification on Wikipedia, and your point about 1%ers, but we (the RBLR) avoid potential problems by emphasising that we are not a club. To ignore the potential ramifications of a motorcycle organisation being labelled an MC or MCC is ill advised.

RBLR Webmaster

Sjgarth (talk) 00:43, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sjgarth, nice that you join the talk now. I personally could live with changing this article to avoid the word "club" - but we cannot remove or rename the category - and we have to accept the guidelines for articles (and there are a lot of them, Wikipedia is one big bureaucracy...) like correct names, reliable sources, no original research, avoid conflict of interest, ... Can you post here a draft of text change according to these for discussion? Your recent edits did not fit that.
 * Which legal form of organisation does the RBLR have? Prhps we can use that instead.
 * And concerning the article motorcycle club itself - if you read the whole article I think it is well explained that "club" is the generic term for multiple different kinds of associations and doesn't follow the 1%ers criminal "laws" - but feel free to suggest additional info, especially with additional sources, but please suggest them to the talk page of that article instead forcing an editwar.
 * I hope Dennis will also answer soon and give us his opinions. --Trofobi (talk) 01:32, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This same thing has come up twenty times at Talk:Patriot Guard Riders. They think some horrible doom will befall them if the Wikipedia article calls them a club. They never explain what this doom is, and they never explain why Wikipedia's sources always call them a club. Calling them something other than a motorcycle club has gained no consensus at all among many, many editors.We get a lot of people from companies, organizations, or groups who think the Wikipedia article about them is "theirs" and they think they get to say whatever they like about themselves in "their" article. What Wikipedia is not explains this. Wikipedia is not your web host. Wikipedia is not your soapbox, or your means of promotion. Also see WP:OWN and WP:COI. The Royal British Legion Riders Branch may not use Wikipedia as a medium to present themselves to the public. A group might consider themselves a "state of mind" or a "movement" or a "religion". Who knows? Wikipedia calls a spade a spade. We use plain English.Most motorcycling media use plain English too. Special legal designations are obfuscating, and they only apply to one country. Often they are about tax issues. They have little to do with calling a spade a spade. A group of motorcycle enthusiasts is a motorcycle club. Simple.What "ramifications" are at issue here? And why can't this group use its own web site to issue claims or denials about itself? If anybody is worried that they are claiming to be a club on Wikipedia, tell them the Wikipedia article doesn't belong to Royal British Legion Riders Branch. They have their own web site and they can say what they want about themselves there, not here. Wikipedia just dutifully follows what books, newspapers, and magazines publish. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:52, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This is from the RBLR's own website: "In July 2004 a meeting took place at The Royal British Legion Village to discuss the possibility of an ex-services motorcycle club becoming an official branch of the RBL." It's obvious that the RBLR doesn't have a problem with the everyday term "motorcycle club". Sjgarth is entitled to his or her opinion, but they aren't speaking for the RBLR. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:47, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I am a member of RBLR, and everyone in my local area calls it a club. --Biker Biker (talk) 10:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 May 2024
The website address of the branch has changed. On the right side of the page, the address needs to be changed to the correct one.

New address = rblr.org.uk Eaglewolfs (talk) 08:42, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅  — Paper9oll  (🔔 • 📝)  09:42, 5 May 2024 (UTC)