Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Motorcycling/Assessment

Importance scale
I don't know how to defend BMW as a Top importance article but Honda as High. Sales figures would place Honda at the same ranking or higher, wouldn't they? Could we find less controversial examples of companies/models? -- Brianhe (talk) 20:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * As I wrote, they are suggestions, so are not cast in stone. Any well written justification that leads to consensus will decide, or change, the final suggestions. I am entirely flexible with these. ww2censor (talk) 20:33, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Top-importance rating
May I suggest that editors make suggestions for the top-importance rating here instead of us seeing drive-by assessments at this highest level. ww2censor (talk) 22:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I lowered the ones I did from Top to High, so currently the Top category is empty. My suggestions are:
 * Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics
 * Motorcycle
 * Motorcycle club
 * Motorcycle history
 * Motorcycling
 * Outlaw motorcycle club
 * I could perhaps be convinced, with a little prodding, to support Motorcycle training, Motorcycle safety, Motorcycle engine, and Motorcycle rally.


 * This also makes me wonder if we don't need main articles on Category:Motorcycle customization and Category:Motorcycling subculture. --Dbratland (talk) 06:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Manufacturers
I feel like BMW is too broad an article to be rated very high as a motorcycling article; especially since we have BMW Motorrad and History of BMW motorcycles. Those are the ones I think are High importance within this project. With Honda or Suzuki and the others, there aren't separate article on their motorcycling work. When it comes to quality, those two are better overall as WP articles than they are as motorcycling articles; Suzuki barely gets started. It might make more sense to create separate articles (not just lists) on Suzuki motorcycles and Honda motorcycles to keep from getting too caught up with fixing the problems with the automotive and aviation and nuclear interstellar vegetable slicer & dicer sections of those articles.

The British and Italian companies are very important for their cultural and historical influence, in spite of their small market share. China and India are woefully ignored because they have had little influence on motorcycle design and culture, and Western myopia, in spite of their overwhelming market share. This is a hard problem and I don't know the answer. Even when you find news on these motorcycle companies, it usually seems very biased, and is often contradictory. I'm curious to read the book Wikinomics because it might shed light on the confusing structure of Chinese motorcycle manufacturing; the companies are much less distinct from one another compared to the brand names in the west. The point being Indian and Chinese companies should have a high importance even if it will be a long while before the articles on them are any good.

I can see historical giants like Indian and Norton as Mid importance and defunct companies like Matchless or Zündapp as Low. Small volume extant manufacturers would be Mid, and most customizers or one-off builders would be Low by default, unless they are highly notable.--Dbratland (talk) 06:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that BMW is too broad for a Top level article; I actually had already changed the wikilink for the assessment page to point to BMW Motorrad. I'd like to see the project put some more emphasis on China/India articles (example, Bajaj Auto) due to the sheer volume of riders there, it would help to make the encyclopedia coverage more nation-neutral. -- Brianhe (talk) 16:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * As the first for sale motorcycle manufacturer shouldn't Hildebrand & Wolfmüller also be here? ww2censor (talk) 17:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, Hildebrand & Wolfmüller should at least be High.--Dbratland (talk) 17:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Motorcycles
Plug for Honda Super Cub

I nominate Honda Super Cub for Top importance article as the best selling powered vehicle of all time (according to Wikipedia, with citation). A Discovery Channel show cited in the article has also named it "the greatest ever" motorcycle. -- Brianhe (talk) 16:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It was also in The Art of the Motorcycle, but the AMA's list favors the Dream. I've mentioned elsewhere that one tool for demonstrating the importance of a bike is how many of these collections or lists it is on; including the List of motorcycles in the Smithsonian Institution and hopefully lists from other important museums.  The fire at the UK National Motorcycle Museum kind of creates a problem, since the bikes were destroyed at random.  Although perhaps which ones they make the most effort to replace in the collection demonstrates their importance.--Dbratland (talk) 17:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Biographies
I already suggested Mike Hailwood, but maybe Carl Fogarty, Joey Dunlop, John McGuinness and Evel Knievel should also be top to name a few. Any more suggestions out there for motorcyclists? ww2censor (talk) 17:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Valentino Rossi gets thrown around a lot as the best rider ever. As the highest-paid racer (and one of the top-10 paid athletes, see ), he would rank a Top, if not for outright skill and accomplishments. -- Brianhe (talk) 20:00, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's another, Pierlucio Tinazzi the hero who rescued 10 people from the 1999 Mont Blanc tunnel fire on his K75. -- Brianhe (talk) 05:02, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Consolidated list of Top importance articles
This is only a first pass, and articles can always be promoted and demoted.
 * Motorcycle
 * Motorcycle history
 * Motorcycling
 * Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics
 * Motorcycle club
 * Outlaw motorcycle club

Brands (Aprilia, Moto Guzzi, Triumph, Bajaj, etc. undecided):
 * BMW Motorrad
 * Honda
 * Suzuki
 * Kawasaki
 * Yamaha Motor Company
 * Ducati
 * Harley-Davidson

Models:
 * Honda Super Cub

Bios
 * Mike Hailwood
 * Carl Fogarty
 * Joey Dunlop
 * John McGuinness
 * Evel Knievel

I guess if you object to one, please comment. If you want to add one, please insert it in the list.--Dbratland (talk) 17:48, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Just popped in from my holiday but don't have time to comment or add anything right now but will get to it after Sept 6. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 22:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats and importance
I requested compilation of pageview stats which just showed up at WikiProject Motorcycling/Popular pages.

Interestingly, of the top 10 viewed articles, we currently have:

which is a significant mismatch with what the Wikipedia reading public is telling us. Can we use the pageview data as a guide for importance ratings? Maybe a rule of thumb such as the top 20 project pages are automatically ranked as Top importance?
 * |4 High importance
 * 1 Mid importance
 * 1 Low importance
 * 4 unassessed importance
 * }
 * 1 Low importance
 * 4 unassessed importance
 * }
 * }

— Brianhe (talk) 03:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * It looks to me like a lot of these hits are spillover from interest in other topics that overlap motorcycling, like Honda and BMW cars, reality TV shows, and gangs, gangs, gangs. I would lean towards letting the Automobile project take the lead on the first two, while WikiProject Motorcycling focuses on BMW Motorrad and Honda motorcycles, and let WikiProject TV be the main project on Jesse G. James.  Somebody took Motorcycling off The Outsiders (novel) and nobody objected.  I don't really know what the best thing to do is with the outlaw motorcycle gang articles.


 * But with the articles which actually are about motorcycles, yes, I think most popular ones should have High importance.--Dbratland (talk) 03:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * My opinion is that we should take over any articles we are willing to take over. In other words, if nobody is working on Jesse G. James and someone here wants to, we should. However, we're probably one of the smaller projects that is actually active, so if anyone is !owning the page, leave them to it.
 * Certainly some of the motorcyclist bios are things that we should handle- Steve McQueen, Evel Knievel, Valentino Rossi, Travis Pastrana. Not sure why Sandra Bullock's spouse should be any different.
 * Oh, and it's not a gang, it's a club :-) (ducking and running) tedder (talk) 04:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Dealing with unassessed backlog
The unassessed backlog is many thousands of articles. A quick perusal suggests that many of them are about individual race results. Would it be reasonable to start by automatically tagging these as "low"? — Brianhe (talk) 20:10, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Can we reassign the racing articles to the WikiProject Motorcycle racing and let them be ranked over there? Currently 13 of the 18 Top Importance Motorcycling articles are bios of racers, which I don't think is justified. But it has to be done because there's no Racing Project assessment for them to be ranked in, so instead they get inflated importance within the scope of all motorcycling. As far as the race results, a better use of time would be to move them to the Racing Project rather than tag them at all. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:24, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a more than reasonable approach. Will start moving unassessed races and racers. Later on I might take a try at characterizing the remaining articles if it looks like a blanket approach to a large number of them would work. — Brianhe (talk) 20:55, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I gave this a try by hand and realized there's just too many Speedway entities. Talked to the owner of Yobot and we're a go to use automation to move these to the racing project, if we can a) notify the project and get no objections and b) confirm that this category tree is correct. Brianhe (talk) 04:51, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Excellent work! --Dennis Bratland (talk) 05:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to look at adding assessments on speedway articles. I can start working through the 'Unassessed' category for this project and/or the Racing project. Let me know if this will conflict with any automation that's going on. --Michig (talk) 07:42, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The Motorcycle racing project template doesn't appear to have parameters set up for class and importance. There wouldn't seem to be much benefit from assessing under that project while that is the case. --Michig (talk) 09:41, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * While moving those race only articles to the racing project is something I certainly approve of, that project does not appear to have much activity. Even the portal is rather out of date with the latest news being from 2008 and some results from 2013. Deos anyone know if there ary consistantly active editors in that project at all? It should be quite easy to add class parameters to the project's assessment but getting them over there should be the first priority. ww2censor (talk) 10:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
 * If the racing project is inactive it may be more appropriate to merge it into this project or the motorsport project as a taskforce rather than a separate project. --Michig (talk) 11:08, 6 January 2015 (UTC)