Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cycling/Archive 1

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I would like to see mention of top achieved speeds by the pros for the indiv time trial. Also, discussion of basic bike efficiency if not already covered ...

I have been working up the utility cycling article. I need to start putting in references and to clean up some of the phrasing. But before I get stuck into things like footnotes and internal links I would like feedback as to content etc. Is there anything obvious left out etc that needs to go in?? --Sf 14:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

The following was on my talk page. --Christopherlin 22:45, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm a novice Wikipedia writer, so bear with me. I'm not sure where to comment on the WikiProject, so I'm putting something here for now.

As a "utility cyclist" I would suggest a less racing-centric hierarchy for this project. This would include:

• Top-level sections for "Competitive Cycling," "Utility Cycling" and "Recreational Cycling."
• Moving the top-level bicycle racing section into the Competitive Cycling section.
• Moving the top-level cyclists section into the Competitive Cycling section.
• Possibly even moving the Bicycle parts section into the Bicycles section - this seems too technical to be at the top level of a general article. But perhaps that's my bias - I'm always trying to keep novice cyclists from losing interest when the conversation turns too technical...

The utility cycling pages seem to be chaotic and bogged down in politics, of course... I'm not sure if I want to wade into that fray myself yet.

Drpritch 21:51, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I personally believe in being bold, so if Drpritch feels like he has something to contribute, then by all means he should go for it. Eventually things will get sorted out and categorized accordingly as the mass of information builds up.

As far as the current incarnation being racing-centric, I think that it's a question of whether we want to expand the hierarchy earlier or later. Eventually the non-racing parts will build up, but that requires contributions from wikis who are less racing-centric. Julius.kusuma 14:10, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have merged the Urban cycling and utility cycling articles. I was unable to see how both issues could be discussed without massive overlap. the resulting article still needs a lot of work. --Sf 14:46, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Since many of the articles are related to road bicycle racing, I think that we should give a higher priority to cleaning up Union_Cycliste_Internationale. It could be very effective as a hub to direct readers to other pages, but at this time it doesn't even link to road bicycle racing. Julius.kusuma 19:46, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I know it might sound like a stupid topic, but could someone please have a look at this stub from a bike-person's POV and add some more info? Pics maybe... Thanks. Harro5 05:02, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

If a person is already listed under, say, Italian Cyclists does that mean that he should not be listed under Cyclists? The category Cyclists by nationality is listed under Cyclists but the names/pages which belong to the "Cyclists by nationality" page do not show up under "Cyclists" unless it is added to that second category. I am asking because User:SimonP has been deleting the "Cyclists" category in what he claims is unneeded, and I am not sure what the best resolution is. Julius.kusuma 20:39, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Generally, by the Categorization scheme, articles go in the most specific subcategory. See under "creating subcategories". --Christopherlin 22:24, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I think we need to adopt one of the following guidelines:

1. There are NO individual cyclists categorized under "Cyclists" AND all national subcategories ("American Cyclists", "Australian Cyclists", "German Cyclists", etc.) are all direct subcategories of "Cyclists", OR...
2. ALL individual cyclists are categorized under the general Cyclists category as well as under their appropriate national cyclist category (which remain subcats of the "cyclists by nationality" subcategory of Cyclists).

What appears to be happening now is some folks are operating under Rule 1 while others are using Rule 2 (like me), and the result is kind of a mess. --Serge 01:34, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I am in favour of Rule 1, it makes sense to me. But I don't think the national subcategories have to be direct subcategories, because there are other possible ways of categorisation. i.e. currently there is the "Olympic cyclists" and "TdF winners" categories, and its best to keep these separate from all of the nationalities. And you could also have the category "Cyclists by discipline" (Road cyclists, Track cyclists, etc) to go with "Cyclists by nationality". --Vclaw 13:22, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Okay, so here is a revised guideline based on (1) above:

• NO individual cyclists are categorized under "Cyclists". A subcategory of "Cyclists" is "Cyclists by nationality". Individual cyclists should only be categorized in appropriate subcategories of "Cyclists", like "American Cyclists" under "Cyclists by nationality", or "Road cyclists" under "Cyclists by discipline". --Serge 20:51, 14 July 2005 (UTC) If no one objects over the next few days, we should start transitioning toward this.

Might I add that while lumping "cyclists" into one large category is counterproductive, I am also opposed to using only a Category:Cyclists by nationality. Like many athletes in our global era, most pro teams are composed of riders of multiple nationalities. For example Alexander Vinokourov, is one of the few Kazakh riders in the European peloton, yet has more in common with Andreas Klöden, Jan Ullrich (both German) and his (former) T-Mobile Teammates and other Tour de France stage winners than he does with other Kazakh national riders.

Likewise Viatcheslav Ekimov (Russian), Tom Boonen (Belgian), Roberto Heras (Spanish), David George (South African), and David Zabriskie (American), all have little in common by way of nationality, yet were all riders at one point for the U.S. Postal Service cycling team. I think we need to be careful in categorizing riders by nationality. ---David Gale 16:44, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

What is the relevance of the fact that many cyclists have more in common than their nationality to the question of whether they should be categorized by nationality? Another way to do it is by first letter of surname, which is completely arbitrary. The point is, we want to avoid having cyclists listed individually in Category:Cyclists. What if we did both?

• No individual cyclists are categorized under "Cyclists". Subcategories of "Cyclists" include "Cyclists by nationality", "Cyclists by surname", and "Cyclists by discipline". Individual cyclists should only be categorized in appropriate subcategories of "Cyclists", like "American Cyclists" under "Cyclists by nationality", "Cyclists with surnames starting with A" under "Cyclists by surname", or "Road cyclists" under "Cyclists by discipline".

We haven't gotten much feedback on this idea. Any agreement or objection? If not, I'll start reorganizing according to the above. --Serge 18:01, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Serge, thanks for taking the initiative for pushing the discussion here. Personally I'm in favor of (2) since (1) makes browsing harder. I tend to remember cyclists not by their nationality so if I vaguely remembers the spelling of a cyclist's name -- and we all know this is an issue thanks to the many different nationalities -- it would be great to be able to look at a complete list instead of having to look under individual nationality subcats. Julius.kusuma 20:57, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe we need a Category:Cyclists with surnames starting with A subcategory of Category:Cyclists by surname, as Wikipedia will already sort the category articles alphabetically. In fact, I don't believe we need a Category:Cyclists by surname at all, if we have both Category:Cyclists by nationality and Category:Cyclists by discipline. From a user point of view, interest in sportspeople are usually either based on their nationality or their discipline. And a "by surname" category doesn't add anything to the article. I mean, I could read the article about Alexander Vinokourov and be curious about other cyclists from Kazakhstan, or other Category:Road cyclists, but hardly other Category:Cyclists with surnames starting with V. So the category would just be noise in the article. If nobody protests I'll write some text about this in Category:Cyclists, and start reorganizing.--Per Abrahamsen 08:21, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you on this. Categories by name are not useful, and specifically against the guidelines on Wikipedia:Categorization. If you want to find all cyclists by name it may be worth creating a list for this (there is List of cyclists, but that is sorted by decade). I agree that categories by discipline are useful, and I've already created Category:Mountain bikers, Category:BMX riders, Category:Touring cyclists and Category:Track cyclists. I've not created a category for road cyclists yet as I'm not sure what the name should be - should it be Category:Road racing cyclists to differentiate it from touring cyclists etc? Also, I don't think Category:Cyclists by discipline is necessary - IMO it is simpler if the discipline categories are direct sub-categories of Category:Cyclists, and it makes them easier to find. Also per David Gale's comments, I think it would be useful to create Category:Cyclists by team, with sub-cats of category:Cofidis cyclists, category:Discovery Channel cyclists etc --Vclaw 13:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Category:Cyclists by discipline is unnessesary, unlike nationalities there are not enough different disciplines to clutter Category:Cyclists. I'm not sure about team categories, the team articles already tend to contain a list of riders on the team, and the rider articles tend to mention which team they are on quite prominently. So I'm not sure the team categories will add anything new. Adding templates like {{TMO}} and {{Team CSC}} for other teams would be useful, in my opinion. --Per Abrahamsen 13:31, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi I would like to join this group I am only new to wiki but have a passion for all things cycling related.

I am currently suffering from post Tour de France withdrawals so this seems like a likely substitute.

As a new wiki I have been aimlessly stumbling around the wikipedia changing things. If anyone can offer me some more direction on what is needed, that would be great.

Thanks

Iggi.au

Here's a suggestion... Seems like the biographical entries for many riders are incomplete or mere stubs at this point. Fix up your favorites and go from there... --Serge 14:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

There is a real lack of race-related photos, and in order to remedy that I contacted a few team websites to see if they would let their images be used in Wiki. Phonak says yes, although they didn't respond to my request for a GFDL-type of release. Liberty Seguros-Wurth's website clearly states that their images may be used for commercial documents even. So I've uploaded a few images from both of these websites under the fair-use license instead. I'm trying to get in touch with a few other teams' website managers. The two websites are here for Phonak and for LSW. Julius.kusuma 12:41, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

More update: Iles Balears, Saunier Duval-Prodir and Fassa Bortolo says go ahead with open-source use of their images. Julius.kusuma 13:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

T-mobile also said to go ahead with proper credits, and not using the photos against them. Julius.kusuma 15:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The pending task, #5 as of now, regarding recumbents is a little insulting. I added a task "Make the point that recumbents while exceeding the performance of conventional, or diamond framed bikes, in some situations, there are many situations in which they perform poorer." Maybe a task to discuss the differences between these two types of bikes would be better.

Here's the POV version of the task I toned down: 1) Make the point that recumbents are banned from Tour de France since 1934 and we shouldn't be riding diamond frames 2) Make the point that recumbents while exceeding the performance of conventional, or diamond framed bikes, in some situations, there are many situations in which they perform poorer.

Is this still required? Recumbent bicycle is quite substantial now. - Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 14:39, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Was bold and crossed it off the todo. Christopherlin 07:23, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The article on Transportation is currently nominated on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. Vote for Transportation there.--Fenice 09:11, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

As I mentioned in the Talk:Mountain biking page, I think that article and the Mountain bike article could use some work. The material in each of those pages is good, but the organization leaves something to be desired. Here's what I'm thinking:

• Mountain bike - Just information about the equipment itself, and not about riding it. (This is similar to the division between Ski and Skiing.)
• Mountain bike racing - Anything specific to racing, including the history of mountain bike races, the types of mountain bike races, and a list of mountain bike racers. The current Bicycle racing template would point to this page.
• Mountain biking - Non-race oriented information about mountain biking, including organizations, types of riding, and whatever else.

Also, I'd move the North Shore section to its own separate article, linked from Mountain biking, since it's a topic in its own. Perhaps other famous mountain bike areas could be added, like Moab, Utah and others.

Any comments? --Elkman 19:38, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

• I generally agree with this proposed organization. There is a lot of information to be added to each of these 3 categories and this would make it easier to find the relevant info. Mark Tatum 06:44, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Is there anywhere with a explanation if the the road bicycle racing races are categorized? They have some numbers "1.1" or "2.0" which indicates how important they are. --Per Abrahamsen 11:07, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll shortly be working on a few regional trails in NE Illinois... specifically the Illinois Prairie Path, 61 miles of rails-to-trail paths in Cook, DuPage and Kane Counties. I don't see a category in either the hierarchy or Wikipedia for it to belong, however. Any suggestions? --Rob 14:47, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

List of cycleways and List of rail trails list a number of trails by country/state/province. If there isn't a category (or categories) for the trail articles those pages link to, perhaps there should be. --Teratornis 05:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Quite ironically, the wider cycle racing-related parts of the Lance Armstrong article can really use some re-work. Very little is mentioned of his early career as a classics one-day racer, and I think that this is a missed opportunity to introduce the wider world of cycle racing to the newer Lance Armstrong converts. Who is with me?  ;-) Julius.kusuma 20:05, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, though this point probably belongs on the talk page for that article. --Serge 22:39, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I can't find a Wikipedia article which discusses any of the following in depth:

• choice of gear type (hub/deraileur)
• suitable range of gears
• suitable step between gears, and good/bad shifting patterns

If such an article exists, can anyone direct me to it.

If there is no such article, I'm prepared to write an initial version, but I would like suggestions as to a suitable name for the article.

Murray Langton 09:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

How about calling it Bicycle gearing? Go ahead and get it started, get the relevant pages to link to it, and I'm sure others will help contribute to the content. Julius.kusuma 15:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggested name. I've been working (slowly) on a first version, and expect to have something to put on Wikipedia in a few weeks. Murray Langton 09:19, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

On that note, I've been thinking that several articles under Category:Bicycle parts should be merged into a larger article, possibly Bicycle drivetrain. It would be an integrated treatment of everything from the pedals to the rear wheel. Bicycle gearing would logically follow as well. The idea was that things like cassette, crankset, chainring, and crankarm typically don't get many links from outside cycling, and it would be easier to read about all of them in one place. Comments? --Christopherlin 16:42, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that merging all the drivetrain components together is a good idea, but remain of the opinion that component description is distinct from gear selection. On that note, I've added a new page 'Bicycle gearing', with only a single link so far from 'Bicycle'. There are still two sections to be completed, which I don't really have the experience to do - racing gears and off-road gears. Murray Langton 15:01, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I started to add an actual commentary on the UCI ProTour 2005 page. Feel free to either contribute, help clean-up a bit, or take some of the writing to add to the individual race's pages. Julius.kusuma 15:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I've been coordinating the efforts of several volunteers to flesh out a list of Los Angeles bike paths and it occurs to me it might make sense for us to develop some sort of standard structure for bike path articles. I've been using one that's somewhat non-ideal, for lack of any existing structure to work with. Does anyone have a standard structure that works better? Could we perhaps bat one around? Tom guyette 06:26, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

In all the editing I've been doing around LA Bike Paths, the structure for bike path articles has evolved to the following sections, in this order (critique of order is welcome): Description, Cautions, Entry Points / Parking, Ownership, Current Condition, Future Plans, References, See Also, External Links. It's embodied in the Arroyo Seco bicycle path article, and not yet fully applied to the other articles I've been editing. Any thoughts? Tom guyette 04:48, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The current Wikipedia article for the Little Miami Scenic Trail is a far cry from what is available on external sites. I would like to improve the Wikipedia article. Here is a very detailed description of the trail on an external site. The trail is long (about 70 miles, and getting longer at both ends) and has many towns, parks, sights, businesses, bridges, and other attractions/objects/items along it. The external site about this trail could benefit from the kind of hyperlinking that is easy on Wikipedia. For example, on this page the author did not know the name of the Jeremiah Morrow Bridge and he guessed its height incorrectly as 100 feet when the roadway is actually more than 200 feet above the trail. Trail users often stop to gaze at the impressive structure. Anyway, how would you suggest organizing an article about a long trail? The external site breaks the trail into sections and describes each one separately. Teratornis 07:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Team infoboxes

With all the cycling teams, what about infoboxes? --Christopherlin 05:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The biographical entries for professional bike racers ideally would contain a biographical sketch (which should be more than a mere prose rendition of their top cycle racing results) and a curriculum vitae or palmares. I have very detailed results listings for the top women cycle racers for the years 1997 - 2003. This is all in electronic form. For the years 2004 and 2005, the UCI now maintains a very good and easy to use database, similarly detailed.

The question is: what should be included in a rider's Palmares listings? How much detail? Just the GC and stage victories, for example. Or maybe the GC and individual stage finishes (top 5, for example). Since it is in electronic form, it is no extra problem to be this detailed, but it can make for quite a long listing in some cases.

JFPerry 22:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I usualy list only wins, plus sometimes "noteable results" in the classements of the grand tours, especially Tour de France. Both because I believe that is the only thing people (even themselves) will care about after they stop as professionals (which is the critiera I keep in the back of my mind), and because I don't want to violate a compilation copyright on the various databases from where I extract the results. It is quite legal to extract individual items from a database, but not to copy the whole database. And somewhere in between is the barrier between legal and illegal.--Per Abrahamsen 08:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that copying a large fraction or even all the facts from the database is infringing. See Idea-expression dichotomy on the copyright article and main article idea-expression divide. --Christopherlin 22:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The facts aren't under copyright, the compilation of facts are. You need to look into a discussion of compilation or database copyrights. It ought to be mentioned somewhere in Wikipedia, it is the same law that prevents us from mass-copying IMDb, but not from recreating it movie by movie.--Per Abrahamsen 09:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

One thing more: Only include a level of detail that is maintainable. For the rider pages I try to keep updated, adding the occational win is not a problem. But if I had to update all of them after every race they participated, it would be more work than I'm willing to put into Wikipedia. So don't put in more details than what you are personally willing to keep up to date.--Per Abrahamsen 13:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

You raise an excellent point regarding the maintainabillity of the pages (with reference to the curriculum vitae or palmares). However, provided a sufficiently high standard for inclusion in the Wikipedia is set and maintained, this should not be a problem. Based on my own judgement concerning this, there are only about 15 active women cycle racers (road racers) whose pages would need to be maintained at any given time. This could easily be done even if one had to get the information from the individual race web sites rather than a central database (UCI), the latter of which could then be used for fact checking. Of course, this also depends on how much detail goes into the Palmares. JFPerry 21:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I have added material (palmares, photos) to rider's pages even when I do not believe the rider should have been included in the Wikipedia. By doing so, I'm not making any committment at on-going work on those pages. When I create the page, that's another thing. I understand that to be a committment to watch, maintain, and eventually extend (though that - especially the biographical section - may take time). JFPerry 21:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Photos are always fine. I don't think we should raise the level of details in a palmares section of the riders whose page we don't want to maintain, it makes it harder for someone else to adopt. I maintain pages for a number of lesser riders, and as long as that only means noting the rare wins, that is easy. But if someone added information about all the races they have participated in, I would not be able to maintain that level, and would probably just give up on the article. For an retired rider we can add as much details as we want, as there will be no maintainenace burden.--Per Abrahamsen 09:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Palmarès template

JFPerry, I noticed that you made a large note under the p. of Jeannie Longo. I found this somewhere else as well; perhaps a template for this note would help keep it in synch? But it kind of gets in the way, so maybe a footnote? Let's hear your thoughts. --Christopherlin 21:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I'm slow with this response. I just found your query. Probably a footnote would be the best way to present that info. I have experimented with some different formats for the curriculum vitae (palmares listings). For example, see the manner of presentation on Diana Ziliute where the results are in paragraph form with small national flags used as separators. JFPerry 15:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Hub disambig doesn't lead to dura-ace or record. Before Zunaid's incorporation of rim (wheel) in Bicycle wheel and quick AfDing of the stub, I made a Spoke nipple stub and cleaned up the formula at Spoke. I once came up with a scheme for sorting stuff into three categories: motivation, perseverance and control (feet, seat and hands). This sort of works, but would put front and rear tires in separate categories. Carbon nanotube aerogel doesn't have to be a type of rim - yet. Parts proliferation screams for a scheme. Don't look to me for this - I'm a sulking slob who types bad URLs. Metarhyme 06:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

motorized bicycles? steam tricycles? many jurisdictions consider these just like a regular bicycle. Perhaps a new category is required under the cycling project? --CylePat 02:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

You already created Category:Motorized bicycle. At present it contains your user page (which should not be in a main namespace category), Motorized bicycle and the fork you created at Timeline of motorized bicycle history. Unless and until there are a significant number of articles to collect together, I'd say this is redundant. - Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 14:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Would it be possible to add a section on how to ride a bicycle? I don't know if that fits within the confines of what should be on an on-line encyclopedia but I'd find it interesting. Possibly it could be about the science, physics and physiology of cycling, thus it wouldn't necessarily be a "how to" page but would be about how to to ride a bicycle well. Also, this section could run the gamet of going from a child learning how to ride a bicycle to an intermediate or advanced cyclist perfecting their skills. I'm suggesting this because this is something that I'm interested in learning about but I have yet to find any good info on the web. - I don't know about the Web but you need to read Cyclecraft by John Franklin, the definitive guide. HMSO publish it. User:Richard Keatinge

So there's a Category:User car under Wikipedians by transportation, so why not Category:Wikipedian cyclists? Seemed like a good name. --Christopherlin 20:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

...And somehow, there are four different userboxes: {{User Bicyclist}}, {{User bicycling}}, {{User cyclist}}, and {{User Cycling}}. And there are two more Wikipedian categories: Category:Wikipedians who love to cycle and Category:Wikipedians interested in bicycling.

There are WikiProject userboxes for other projects. For here, that would involve another userbox and category. And there already is {{WikiProject Cycling}} as a orange message-style box.

Anybody else think this is fragmented? --Christopherlin 07:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Depending on feedback (positive and negative), this may need to become a separate WikiProject.

I'm starting a series of articles on specific, notable trails in the Chicagoland area. I've also created a couple of categories for this purpose: Category:Chicagoland bicycle trails and Category:Grand Illinois Trail. So far the articles I'm concentrating on are Illinois Prairie Path and Grand Illinois Trail.

Illinois seems to have a good infrastructure when it comes to encouraging bicycle use, although the laws need a little help. If anyone wants to help, please leave a comment. Thanks! --Rob 20:08, 29 December 2005 (UTC)