Why a Motorcycle Wiki?

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Question: No offense but why would I use this site over wikipedia.org?[edit | edit source]

  1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines), not a bike reference site. Its goals go no further than an encyclopedia, and material that does not fit this goal must be moved to another Wikipedia project or removed altogether
  2. Ablity to make subpages that include reviews (which can be acknowledgely biased), videos, and additional information. On Wikipedia subpages are not allowed on the MAIN namespace. Having subpages on the main namespace is something useful for now as when we make a page such as Suzuki GSX-R1000/Videos it links back to the main page.
  3. Ability to include relevant youtube and googlevideo videos of each model.
  4. Other people will inevitably look for a motorcycle wiki in other places than wikipedia, and I aim to accomodate them. Prominent examples of successful topics for community wikis include Star Wars/Star Trek(Wookieepedia), Transformers, Muppets, Game Strategy Wiki, and one of my main inspirations for this wiki the 350z-Tech wiki.
  5. Wikipedia is also quite controlling when it comes to posting images of bikes. Most of my images come from the Honda Motorcycle Identification Guide. They aren't creative works and hence I'm not worried about copy right infringement with them.
  6. We aim to be more inclusive than wikipedia.
  7. The ability to easily program and verify bots for the wiki to make mass edits (say change every instance of "V4" to a link about V-4 motorcycles), of course wikipedia has this but it takes quite alot of work to obtain bot status. Anyone who wants to be approved for bot status will be given access to a test version of this site to test out their bot on first.
  8. It's very likely that wikipedia will delete any of your hard work you've put into making model specific motorcycle models see http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Great_LucasCruft_Purge and http://wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Improv%27s_War

I originally considered simply making a simple php database driven website, but decided a wiki meets the goals of this project better than anything else, with one of the major factors being that it allows other people to contribute. --Budlight 07:39, 22 October 2006 (PDT)

I'm not going to disillusion anyone about this site (like I believe the admins at wikipedia do), I made it as a hobby, and it's likely to take whatever direction I decide. However, I do hope that you enjoy it and would appreciate any obvious corrections you make--Budlight 04:50, 10 November 2006 (PST)

GFDL[edit | edit source]

This site is not releasing or licensing it's content under the GFDL.

  1. As the main editor at this time I see no reason to.
  2. Its likely I'll want to delete stuff in the future and the GDFL doesn't support deleting stuff. see http://wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Wikipocalypse:GF%27DL
  3. The GFDL is simply a buzzword to make people feel like they are a part of something when in cases like wikipedia they aren't really.


Wikipedia[edit | edit source]

As for plagiarism, yes I originally seeded much of the info from wikipedia, however, the information base is now many orders of magnitude greater than that on wikipedia. I'm not trying to plagiarise in any way but you can freely copy any information from wikipedia as long as you reference them as the source. I have created a template for articles which are from wikipedia.

{{Fromwikipedia|title=Honda_VFR800}}

to attribute wikipedia as being the source of the original article. I've added this tag to the article in question.--Budlight 07:39, 22 October 2006 (PDT)