Talk:Norton Manx

Special Category for British Motorcycles

As part of the Motorcycling WikProject I am working though all the missing articles and stubs for British Bikes. To make things easier to sort out there is a special Category:British motorcycles Please add to any British motorcycle pages you find or create. It will also help to keep things organised if you use the Template:Infobox Motorcycle or add it where it is missing. I've linked the Category to the Commons Motorcycles of Britain so you could help with matching pics to articles or adding the missing images to the Commons. Thanks Thruxton (talk) 20:29, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Article rating

As an iconic motorcycle in motorcycling history, I've raised the article rating from Mid-importance to High-importance.Orsoni (talk) 08:47, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we should be rating single models as High, at least not very many of them should be High. You could easily rate 50 or 100 other models as High by the same criteria. If anything, we should consider downgrading Britten V1000, Daimler Reitwagen, Honda NR500, Roper steam velocipede, Vincent Black Shadow and Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede to Mid. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:12, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, the Manx is important, but it's hard to make that argument for a limited number of models. Generally the most important "things" are overview topics and manufacturers. I think it's best to keep individual models as Low or Mid without a larger effort to find a bright line to distinguish more-important models. tedder (talk) 16:32, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

So what should be rated high then? Why shouldn't an individual model not receive that rating?. --Biker Biker (talk) 17:10, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know. I'd like to hear a good proposal of what gets ranked above low/mid. Generally it's a power law. Do you have a way to draw a bright line between high/mid bike models? tedder (talk) 17:13, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd say inclusion in a half dozen or so major collections or lists, plus well-documented influence and impact (the Super Cub had orders of magnitude more impact than the Britten or Honda's oval piston oddity). Probably only about 10 bikes, at most, should qualify. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:12, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I understood the article rating as meaning the importance the article had to the Wikipedia motorcycling project and not to the industry itself. In any case, I believe that the bike deserves a high-importance rating in both interpretations. The introduction of the featherbed frame redefined race bike design and as late as 1971, the bikes were still being used in Grand Prix competition. I would submit that, redefining frame design and setting the standard for the subsequent thirty some years until Antonio Cobas introduced the twin-spar aluminum frame in the 1980s as, worthy of a high-importance rating. I agree that the impact of some of the other bikes in the high-importance category, while technologically advanced, failed to have as much of an impact on the industry as the Norton Manx.Orsoni (talk) 09:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I added up various categories of accolades and museum collections to see how that plays out. The table is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Motorcycling/Importance rankings. If we added a column for being the first with a major technology, and maybe a couple others, like the AMA list of classic bikes, it could be helpful. Some models are poorly represented because there were slight variations in different museums, which could be combined. Like some of the Harleys of the 30s and 40s, and a few British models. It's not meant to be definitive. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 06:01, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

...So I've been obsessively collating data and it's clear the Norton Manx will rank High importance by this method, there's no doubt about that. I don't think it would be that terrible to rate the list as High and maybe the next 50 to 100 as Mid. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 05:40, 28 June 2011 (UTC)