![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
As part of the Motorcycling WikiProject I am working though all the missing articles and stubs for British Bikes. To make things easier to sort out I have created a new category for British motorcycles. Please will you add to any British motorcycle pages you find or create. I've also linked it to the Commons British Motorcycles so you could help with matching pics to articles or adding the missing images to the Commons - take your camera next time you go to a rally! Thanks Tony ( talk) 12:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
In the section "1963 End of Production", it stated "A sporting single was not produced again till the BSA B50 models that were produced from 1971 through 1973." There is no source provided for this claim, nor could there be for it is incorrect. In fact, BSA's single-cylinder B44 "Victor" scrambler was hugely successful, winning the 500cc World Championship in 1964 and 1965, and the production derivatives were successfully campaigned by many privateers throughout the production span of the model, from 1967 until its demise in 1970. Therefore, I've removed the erroneous claim. Bricology ( talk) 06:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Of the two bikes in the main photograph of this article, the closer one is not a Gold Star (it is a twin), and so if another photograph of only Gold Stars is available then the photo should be replaced. 98.207.61.227 ( talk) 01:19, 6 May 2011 (UTC)David
Neither bike is a gold star or rocket gold star. KFO755 was registered in 1958 and has a 650cc engine. DAS570, which was registered and has a 646cc engine. On that basis I have removed the picture from the article. -- Biker Biker ( talk) 13:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
BSA Gold Star. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{
nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 13:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on BSA Gold Star. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 12:49, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on BSA Gold Star. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:32, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello all,
Firstly, if you think I am making a hash of all this & (and!) I am in the wrong place, please delete this new section or modify as you see fit!
I have mostly & infrequently made "minor" edits of a few articles, completely in ignorance of all the correct procedures but with good intentions and hopefully at least with accuracy and good grammar. So please consider me a child in these matters. I have no knowledge of coding or any computer tech other than as a casual home user. I find even the simplest action on here quite impenetrable! What may seem dead simple to you is not at all so to the outsider. I really have absolutely no grasp of the architecture and will have to spend some time reading up on "How to do it, although I have limited spare time. There must be a simplified handbook to be written...
Anyway, regarding the Gold Star page, I have made considerable changes and additions to it, initiated by the erroneous claim about YB32s & YB34s being Gold Stars. I am pleased that someone was at least keen enough to build the page in the first place, however there were a number of incorrect, misleading or ambiguous elements I felt the need to rectify and some areas that I felt needed expanding. I have not checked everything on the page. As a result some citing is now in need of updating. A number of the citations are from perhaps less reliable sources, or rather have been misinterpreted without knowledge of peculiarities relating to the Gold Star. There are many myths or misunderstandings that are often repeated in magazine articles. I can only claim decades of involvement with the machines, a lot of notes and BSA Parts lists, Club Membership (over 30 years of club magazines) and a number of well-regarded books to refer to, as listed. All of these contain a lot of factually correct detail. Regarding the YB32 aluminium engines, I have it on good authority, or should I say, the all too human memory of the GSOC Magazine editor who bought one in later years; that someone at BSA told him some had been built. It was news to me. I have no way of further verifying this but left it in the article with my justification to see if there were any responses. I am tempted to remove it. There are a number of machines that seem to have come from BSA at this time, that do not strictly fit the year, range, build spec. etc. lists available, or that were produced in very small numbers for specific, usually sporting / competition purposes. They could be allotted a separate section on the GS page or even a completely separate page of their own "BSA Works Factory Specials"
There are still some clarifications to be made on the page, that I have not attended to. -- Flowbench ( talk) 20:57, 19 January 2021 (UTC) Sorry I probably haven't worked out how to sign correctly...
Hi John B123, thanks for responding. I didn't get involved with bikes until the mid 80's. I bought a B32 & became completely a BSA competition model singles specialist, which at the time not much seemed to be known about. "It's either a B31 or a Gold Star mate". Info seemed hard to find but back then I knew no other bikers so didn't have much to go on! There are an awful lot of anomalies or short lived changes & variations. I know of at least one alloy B31 type cylinder head, almost certainly a "works" item, there may even have been barrels but never seen or heard of one. In period photos the works bikes often have details not seen on production models. Your P&C (P&S):-) info doesn't surprise me. After BSA made all those bits they had to make money from them somehow! The compromises & economic reality of production. Why invest in new tooling if you can use the old. That's why later GS cranks weren't that good; 30's design with late 50's power outputs = short life! And we know what lack of investment did for the industry. As you say, there are quite a few frame differences over the years, cast or brazed on brackets, headstock bracing fitted etc. The oil pump frame rail inserted section I only came across a few years back, being discussed on the Britbike forum. Someone had come across one & was asking about it & someone else knew a little bit about them. From memory I think only used on comp. bikes but I could be wrong. BSA probably using up the casting from rigid M20 frames!
I will get back to the page at some point. I realised it's easy to get a bit too bogged down in detail with something that is really "only" an encyclopaedia page. Keeping it short & to the point is quite tricky; what to put in or leave out. On the other hand, the GS is quite famous among m'cyclists & the baby boomer generation at least; "my uncle had one" I've heard a few times (mine didn't, I'm the only ever biker in the family!). It had a long successful career with quite a few changes so some good detail fills out the story a bit for the enquiring mind. Is this how everyone communicates on here, via the article edit talk page? I thought there might be some other way; a messages page or something. Thanks again Flowbench ( talk) 12:54, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
If you want to talk about content, the sources I tagged as personal web pages, blogs, fansites, scraper sites, and other utterly unreliable sources are not going to fly. They don't meet WP:RS. There's a good list of quality sources right there at the bottom of the article, so there's no excuse to lean on essentially worthless websites.
The editorializing is easily remedied if you can cite evidence to go with it. Like either name a reputable expert who shares these value judgements, or stick to facts. People don't really come to an encyclopedia for subjective color commentary. Readers want to know what are the solid-ground truths everybody more or less agrees on.
I'm honestly baffled by all the scare quotes. What grammatical or typographic purpose do the serve? Like the distinctive feature of the GS swingarm was a kink. That is, "a sharp twist or curve in something that is otherwise straight." We call that a kink. Why would you call it a "kink", as if the word isn't really the right word? I'm just confused by all the quotes.
My edit summaries refer to specific points in the MOS. If they're unclear, please say so. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 01:09, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
"I'm honestly baffled by all the scare quotes". And I stated it clearly in all the tags:
{{what?|reason=why the scare quotes?|date=January 2021}}
If you hover over
clarification needed you will read why the scare quotes?. What exactly does a person have to do to announce that the problem is the fcking scare quotes?Scare quotes. WHY ARE THERE SCARE QUOTES around plunger?
Take Motorcycle suspension#Plunger suspension. Quotes around plunger? No.
Let's back up to "Adding tags for non-obvious or perceived problems—without identifying the problem well enough for it to be easily fixed". I identified the problem, didn't I? REPEATEDLY. *whispers* The problem is the scare quotes.
Look you seem like someone who needs to be shouted to and I don't want to shout to get your attention. If you can't read more carefully then I'm going to start ignoring you and do what I think needs to be done to fix the article.
Go read MOS:SCAREQUOTES and scare quote. Unless anyone can explain what they're doing there, I'm going to delete them.
Your comments on the club website links suggest a need to review Wikipedia:Reliable sources. I might have mistaken one or two, but from what I can tell, the books listed are not self-published, they are published by established publishers like Haynes and Osprey. The club website is self-published. You can claim that some of these authors have some connection with the club, but that doesn't transfer some kind of aura of reliability to the club, and particularly to whatever gets put up on their website. I and the other editors in WikiProject Motorcycling, WikiProject Automobiles, have been removing links to clubs for years. Go back to the WP:RSN from 2009: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 44#Use of owners' club websites to verify automotive data. Same discussions have happened at WikiProject talk pages and elsewhere. You can push the issue if you want to but there is widespread consensus against fansites, owners clubs, self-styled experts' personal web pages.
Can you just stop with the attitude? Stop with this indefensible accusations of "drive by" tagging. All I'm asking you to do is look at the clearly identified issues I've raised and explain if you can. If not, then let's fix them. The point of what we're doing is to collaborate to make article better so let's focus on that. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 20:12, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
References
Dennis Bratland In response to your main points; as you will have read in my initial comments above, I did point out that the citing was now incorrect following my edits. I had simply left them on the page & I did not check any of them, beyond wondering if they were all reliable. As you have looked at the citations I take your word for it. All of them were on the article page when I came to it; I haven't changed or added any. They may well be insufficiently robust & will therefore need changing. I would certainly never consider citing any of the unreliable source types you list. As you say, there is a good list of quality sources appended to the article & in fact my own short list of books, included in my intro' above contains a huge amount of cross-referenceable data. You have noticed something unsatisfactory about the article as did I & as you seem to have been editing here for years, you clearly have the advantage.
"Scare quotes"; is not a phrase I have come across before. It may be a difference between UK & US sloppy usage. I realise it is common on social media to use quote marks for comic purposes or as a way to express disbelief of others etc. That generally is not how I use them within the small circle of people I write to or text, more usually to signify something that may need further clarification. It's probably a bad habit. I accept it may be an ungrammatical usage & I can see, now that you have somewhat brusquely pointed out, that the usage is perhaps excessive & even a bit kinky... I think I removed some & will get to the others.
Just as in Redrose64's straight to the point comment to me on not using ampersands; where I would have been quite content to correct them, I found he had done them all by the time I looked. Many of your inserted comments are pertinent & you could probably have advised me here & saved yourself time, rather than go through them all. I am quite open to advice & useful conversation about the subject / article building process. I am now also aware that there is Wikipedia manual of style that I will no doubt benefit from.
As to your initial comments, I am sorry that you found the "drive-by" comment distasteful. I think it is true to say that nearly everyone at some point has fired off comments these days, without thinking who will be reading or whether a different phrase might be more appropriate. Also one man's tongue-in-cheek is another man's ear bashing... I actually assumed he was referring to me, as I hadn't seen your inserted comments at that point. I just thought, "Oops what have I done wrong? I'd better go & check." Regarding WP:OWN & WP:RS I had to look them up. There's nothing like a bit of jargon... For myself, I can only say I make no claim to the article. I believe collaboration can be a very good thing, along with politeness. I also have a feeling that pretty much all of this could be on another page or even deleted as only a small amount is about the actual editing. Flowbench ( talk) 20:54, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
"Regarding WP:OWN & WP:RS I had to look them up. There's nothing like a bit of jargon.."No. No, I'm sorry, but you didn't have to look them up. I courteously saved you the effort of looking them up. I linked them for you so all you had to do was click. How considerate of me! How much more welcoming to newcomers can one be? That's is typical of the kind of utter nonsense the two of you are up to here.
John B123 you can throw around WP:DRIVEBY, WP:TAGBOMB and WP:BITE all you want, but the evidence is right here. Everyone can see the diffs. You're gaslighting me and I'm not amused.
Please admit that I clearly told you the problem was scare quotes. It's in the {{ what?}} tags. I repeated it in the edit summary: "I'd just delete all these apparently arbitrary scare quotes but I suspect there's a point behind them. We just need to be told what it is." I did not demean whomever added the quotes. I charitably, respectfully said maybe there's a point. What an open mind I have! Perhaps it's my own ignorance. Even though I was pretty sure that they are simply a bad habit of someone who sandbags their writing with extraneous junk, like saying utilise instead of use because the extra syllable makes them seem smart. See how nice I was to not say that? But see after a while, when you're enough of a dick to someone, the sarcasm starts to come out. One thing you might want to try to understand about Wikipedia is that when you've been obstinate and disingenuous enough, we begin to excuse a bit of sarcasm. When you bring it out in people, you can't exactly whine that you're the victim of sarcasm.
The decent thing would be to retract the false accusation of "Adding tags for non-obvious or perceived problems—without identifying the problem well enough for it to be easily fixed." After having been informed in the tags, and informed again in the edit summary, I told you a third time in my talk reply.
Even if you don't know what scare quotes are, I did inform you the problem is with the quotes. You have eyes. You can see them. What if you saw "The BSA %^^^Gold"" Star..."
? Gee, what's that random punctuation doing there? Can I explain it? You're sitting here telling me I didn't bend over backwards enough to make you understand I wanted to know what the purpose was of the OBVIOUS extraneous punctuation on the page right in front of your eyes. While you sit here with a wondrous machine that lets you type in words like "scare quotes" and you'll be given 23,800,000 results in a mere 0.57 seconds, the first one of which is none other than a definition of scare quotes. The second is the Wikipedia article
scare quotes. You have 128,000 Wikipedia edits and you're acting like you arrived on the planet Earth five minutes ago. I think it would be honest to admit
posting this without bothering to read my edit summary, or examine the tags in the article at all. I'd happily forgive such an oversight. We all make mistakes.
If I had used the banner {{ Copyedit}}, you still wouldn't have bothered to look at the diff or the edit summary. You'd be on the talk page whining that I should have used inline tags to specifically identify where precisely the issues are. Juxtapose your two different, contradictory complaints: not identifying the problem clearly enough, and too many tags. Which is it?
Someone with 128,000 edits thinks a web 1.0 WP:FANSITE written by (we can only assume) boomer "Rickard Nebré" (see what I did there?) is a reliable source? Astonishing.
So yeah, sarcasm. That's where it comes from.
I'm done. I'm ignoring both of you. You're gaslighting me, you're wasting my time, and I've been far too patient. Go back to doing actual work on the article. The problems with this article are easily fixed and you're both perfectly capable of doing it without all this drama. I'll take care of it myself if no on else does. If you have a complaint about me, take it to an appropriate noticeboard. You have no good reason to carry on this discussion. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 23:33, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for improving the article. What would we do without you? -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 00:18, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
Dennis Bratland You certainly take no prisoners. You seem to have been unable to see anything in my previous comments as even a cack-handed attempt at diplomacy. That does not mean you should expect me or anyone to grovel. Your last response has made so many assumptions it is laughable. You misconstrue everything to suit your own ends. I chose my words carefully enough that there might be room for us to start again on better terms. You chose to continue with your attack. You will note that I haven't insulted you or used any four letter words. Believe you me, I have a comprehensive capacity for both taking & giving insults of any sort. But I did not come here for that. "We" are not "up to" anything other than attempting a pleasant collaborative effort, such as it was. It is not a conspiracy. If you hadn't intervened so heavy-handedly & engaged in angry & pedantic nit-picking whilst an edit was ongoing, we, or I, rather than feeling obliged to respond to your onslaught, would have definitely spent all this time working on & improving the article to a standard that you, yes even you would surely have found, if not immediately perfect as you appear to expect but at least acceptable. As it is I have found your intervention quite unpleasant & unhelpful in it's exceptionally abrupt manner & in the sheer volume of points you seem to demand rectified NOW! like a boot-camp sergeant-major. So many, that your accusation of WP:OWN could well be applied to you. Any or all of these comments could have been made with a kinder or more friendly tone, as displayed to me by John123. You are talking to another human being, not some soulless drone you can kick about with intemperate diatribes. I was hoping to engage with an interesting project but I am dismayed to find here all of the things that are all too prevalent in the worst aspects of social media. You have displayed little understanding or sensitivity other than on your own behalf and are certainly no ambassador for Wikipedia. 86.144.36.135 ( talk) 12:39, 22 January 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flowbench ( talk • contribs) 12:39, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
BTW, please try to remember to
log in,
sign your posts, and, if you must, use {{Reply to|Dennis Bratland}}
(aka {{re|Dennis Bratland}}
as you can see above) if for some reason you think you need to get the attention of the person you're
replying to (in fact that's rarely necessary. Note how you and John were able to carry on this discussion with me even though I never pinged either of you in my replies). If you were to click
Show preview and click on it before you click publish changes, you'd see that [[Dennis Bratland]]
goes to a nonexistent Wikipedia article, not a
user page.
I'm going to take the initiative to close this unproductive discussion. If you want to discuss the article, please start a new thread. If you have a problem with me, please follow the steps at WP:Dispute resolution. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 18:28, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
In regards to the changes/comments to the infobox:
-- John B123 ( talk) 23:29, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
I think there are answers to all these questions but they depend on a deep understanding of the times, the market back then, and how racing classes worked back then. Complicated ideas just don't belong in at-a-glance facts in infoboxes. That's where we give the simple, short answer. Clubman's racer is a complicated answer.
But anyone who wants to write at length on this topic, explain it for the general audience, whether here or in a related article, would be most appreciated. I think the information should be included but just not in the |class=
field. At least not until we refactor the whole concept at a higher level at
Template:Infobox motorcycle -- which is a viable option but that horse goes before this cart. If other editors support keeping "Clubman's racer" instead of standard, I'll go along with it but this is why I'd prefer not to. --
Dennis Bratland (
talk) 01:56, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
|type=
field. Perhaps this is the best way to go for now. --
John B123 (
talk) 11:38, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
So regardless of what we do or don't have in the infobox, modern readers really need someone to explain what a Clubman's racer is, what "sporting" meant at the time, what it meant to have four or five compression options, and so on. Nobody today could conceive a single model that could be competitive at both the IOM and trials; we live in an era of much greater specialization. The Gold Star was notably configurable, so probably something like
Class Standard configurable for road racing, scrambles, trials, and touring
I've made current version of the infobox too busy, so probably some of the excess detail, like listing all compression ratios, should be moved to the body of the article and replaced with only a range 6.5:1 to 13.0:1, and replace the power field with simply 18–42 hp (13–31 kW), leaving the particulars for the body text. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 23:30, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
Widowmaker was a common term in the 70s for the H2.- John B123 - do you actually have a facsimile image of 1970s text showing widowmaker? I only skimmed through the 2015 link which would not load quickly due to the images and I have minimal time presently, but Ctrl with F only showed the (two) sub-ed comments.-- Rocknrollmancer ( talk) 14:23, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Changing the angle slightly, the late Peter Williams (motorcyclist) seems to have 'invented' (see what I did there - no scare quotes, whatever they are) the term Wagon Wheels (see here) around the time of his 2010 book (writing this from memory). I have no historic proof that it existed before then (neither does anyone else on the racing groups I am part of) but I have semi-verified that the term wheelbarrow was applied (based on the cast wheels) to circa 1980 in Motorcycle Sport *somewhere in the house* - not exactly what I wanted but better than nothing. rgds.-- Rocknrollmancer ( talk) 16:31, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
I'd love to see Motorcycle testing and measurement expanded with more reliable facts that can help the general reader understand what performance claims and critics reviews mean in the correct historical context.
With regards to the Gold Star, the bit about the certified dyno tests cries out for context. The general reader is likely to have some awareness that historically, early to mid 20th century, power claims lived in the realm of pure fantasy, often inferred simply by engine displacement. Notoriously American car manufactures advertised unfalsifiable BHP numbers, somehow descended from SAE gross hp, that told you next to nothing about what you were really buying. DIN ratings brought in some sanity. What I'm saying is our highest priority should be to give readers a way to know what the Gold Star's power certificate actually meant, why that was different from what you'd get with the next bike, and how a rider's expectations in 1950 differed from 2021. For me context, a sense of historical and geographic place, is the definition of encyclopedic. It's that kind of information that makes an encyclopedia article more than a dictionary definition or a statistics database. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 21:35, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
As part of the Motorcycling WikiProject I am working though all the missing articles and stubs for British Bikes. To make things easier to sort out I have created a new category for British motorcycles. Please will you add to any British motorcycle pages you find or create. I've also linked it to the Commons British Motorcycles so you could help with matching pics to articles or adding the missing images to the Commons - take your camera next time you go to a rally! Thanks Tony ( talk) 12:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
In the section "1963 End of Production", it stated "A sporting single was not produced again till the BSA B50 models that were produced from 1971 through 1973." There is no source provided for this claim, nor could there be for it is incorrect. In fact, BSA's single-cylinder B44 "Victor" scrambler was hugely successful, winning the 500cc World Championship in 1964 and 1965, and the production derivatives were successfully campaigned by many privateers throughout the production span of the model, from 1967 until its demise in 1970. Therefore, I've removed the erroneous claim. Bricology ( talk) 06:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Of the two bikes in the main photograph of this article, the closer one is not a Gold Star (it is a twin), and so if another photograph of only Gold Stars is available then the photo should be replaced. 98.207.61.227 ( talk) 01:19, 6 May 2011 (UTC)David
Neither bike is a gold star or rocket gold star. KFO755 was registered in 1958 and has a 650cc engine. DAS570, which was registered and has a 646cc engine. On that basis I have removed the picture from the article. -- Biker Biker ( talk) 13:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
BSA Gold Star. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{
nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 13:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on BSA Gold Star. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 12:49, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on BSA Gold Star. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:32, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Hello all,
Firstly, if you think I am making a hash of all this & (and!) I am in the wrong place, please delete this new section or modify as you see fit!
I have mostly & infrequently made "minor" edits of a few articles, completely in ignorance of all the correct procedures but with good intentions and hopefully at least with accuracy and good grammar. So please consider me a child in these matters. I have no knowledge of coding or any computer tech other than as a casual home user. I find even the simplest action on here quite impenetrable! What may seem dead simple to you is not at all so to the outsider. I really have absolutely no grasp of the architecture and will have to spend some time reading up on "How to do it, although I have limited spare time. There must be a simplified handbook to be written...
Anyway, regarding the Gold Star page, I have made considerable changes and additions to it, initiated by the erroneous claim about YB32s & YB34s being Gold Stars. I am pleased that someone was at least keen enough to build the page in the first place, however there were a number of incorrect, misleading or ambiguous elements I felt the need to rectify and some areas that I felt needed expanding. I have not checked everything on the page. As a result some citing is now in need of updating. A number of the citations are from perhaps less reliable sources, or rather have been misinterpreted without knowledge of peculiarities relating to the Gold Star. There are many myths or misunderstandings that are often repeated in magazine articles. I can only claim decades of involvement with the machines, a lot of notes and BSA Parts lists, Club Membership (over 30 years of club magazines) and a number of well-regarded books to refer to, as listed. All of these contain a lot of factually correct detail. Regarding the YB32 aluminium engines, I have it on good authority, or should I say, the all too human memory of the GSOC Magazine editor who bought one in later years; that someone at BSA told him some had been built. It was news to me. I have no way of further verifying this but left it in the article with my justification to see if there were any responses. I am tempted to remove it. There are a number of machines that seem to have come from BSA at this time, that do not strictly fit the year, range, build spec. etc. lists available, or that were produced in very small numbers for specific, usually sporting / competition purposes. They could be allotted a separate section on the GS page or even a completely separate page of their own "BSA Works Factory Specials"
There are still some clarifications to be made on the page, that I have not attended to. -- Flowbench ( talk) 20:57, 19 January 2021 (UTC) Sorry I probably haven't worked out how to sign correctly...
Hi John B123, thanks for responding. I didn't get involved with bikes until the mid 80's. I bought a B32 & became completely a BSA competition model singles specialist, which at the time not much seemed to be known about. "It's either a B31 or a Gold Star mate". Info seemed hard to find but back then I knew no other bikers so didn't have much to go on! There are an awful lot of anomalies or short lived changes & variations. I know of at least one alloy B31 type cylinder head, almost certainly a "works" item, there may even have been barrels but never seen or heard of one. In period photos the works bikes often have details not seen on production models. Your P&C (P&S):-) info doesn't surprise me. After BSA made all those bits they had to make money from them somehow! The compromises & economic reality of production. Why invest in new tooling if you can use the old. That's why later GS cranks weren't that good; 30's design with late 50's power outputs = short life! And we know what lack of investment did for the industry. As you say, there are quite a few frame differences over the years, cast or brazed on brackets, headstock bracing fitted etc. The oil pump frame rail inserted section I only came across a few years back, being discussed on the Britbike forum. Someone had come across one & was asking about it & someone else knew a little bit about them. From memory I think only used on comp. bikes but I could be wrong. BSA probably using up the casting from rigid M20 frames!
I will get back to the page at some point. I realised it's easy to get a bit too bogged down in detail with something that is really "only" an encyclopaedia page. Keeping it short & to the point is quite tricky; what to put in or leave out. On the other hand, the GS is quite famous among m'cyclists & the baby boomer generation at least; "my uncle had one" I've heard a few times (mine didn't, I'm the only ever biker in the family!). It had a long successful career with quite a few changes so some good detail fills out the story a bit for the enquiring mind. Is this how everyone communicates on here, via the article edit talk page? I thought there might be some other way; a messages page or something. Thanks again Flowbench ( talk) 12:54, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
If you want to talk about content, the sources I tagged as personal web pages, blogs, fansites, scraper sites, and other utterly unreliable sources are not going to fly. They don't meet WP:RS. There's a good list of quality sources right there at the bottom of the article, so there's no excuse to lean on essentially worthless websites.
The editorializing is easily remedied if you can cite evidence to go with it. Like either name a reputable expert who shares these value judgements, or stick to facts. People don't really come to an encyclopedia for subjective color commentary. Readers want to know what are the solid-ground truths everybody more or less agrees on.
I'm honestly baffled by all the scare quotes. What grammatical or typographic purpose do the serve? Like the distinctive feature of the GS swingarm was a kink. That is, "a sharp twist or curve in something that is otherwise straight." We call that a kink. Why would you call it a "kink", as if the word isn't really the right word? I'm just confused by all the quotes.
My edit summaries refer to specific points in the MOS. If they're unclear, please say so. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 01:09, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
"I'm honestly baffled by all the scare quotes". And I stated it clearly in all the tags:
{{what?|reason=why the scare quotes?|date=January 2021}}
If you hover over
clarification needed you will read why the scare quotes?. What exactly does a person have to do to announce that the problem is the fcking scare quotes?Scare quotes. WHY ARE THERE SCARE QUOTES around plunger?
Take Motorcycle suspension#Plunger suspension. Quotes around plunger? No.
Let's back up to "Adding tags for non-obvious or perceived problems—without identifying the problem well enough for it to be easily fixed". I identified the problem, didn't I? REPEATEDLY. *whispers* The problem is the scare quotes.
Look you seem like someone who needs to be shouted to and I don't want to shout to get your attention. If you can't read more carefully then I'm going to start ignoring you and do what I think needs to be done to fix the article.
Go read MOS:SCAREQUOTES and scare quote. Unless anyone can explain what they're doing there, I'm going to delete them.
Your comments on the club website links suggest a need to review Wikipedia:Reliable sources. I might have mistaken one or two, but from what I can tell, the books listed are not self-published, they are published by established publishers like Haynes and Osprey. The club website is self-published. You can claim that some of these authors have some connection with the club, but that doesn't transfer some kind of aura of reliability to the club, and particularly to whatever gets put up on their website. I and the other editors in WikiProject Motorcycling, WikiProject Automobiles, have been removing links to clubs for years. Go back to the WP:RSN from 2009: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 44#Use of owners' club websites to verify automotive data. Same discussions have happened at WikiProject talk pages and elsewhere. You can push the issue if you want to but there is widespread consensus against fansites, owners clubs, self-styled experts' personal web pages.
Can you just stop with the attitude? Stop with this indefensible accusations of "drive by" tagging. All I'm asking you to do is look at the clearly identified issues I've raised and explain if you can. If not, then let's fix them. The point of what we're doing is to collaborate to make article better so let's focus on that. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 20:12, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
References
Dennis Bratland In response to your main points; as you will have read in my initial comments above, I did point out that the citing was now incorrect following my edits. I had simply left them on the page & I did not check any of them, beyond wondering if they were all reliable. As you have looked at the citations I take your word for it. All of them were on the article page when I came to it; I haven't changed or added any. They may well be insufficiently robust & will therefore need changing. I would certainly never consider citing any of the unreliable source types you list. As you say, there is a good list of quality sources appended to the article & in fact my own short list of books, included in my intro' above contains a huge amount of cross-referenceable data. You have noticed something unsatisfactory about the article as did I & as you seem to have been editing here for years, you clearly have the advantage.
"Scare quotes"; is not a phrase I have come across before. It may be a difference between UK & US sloppy usage. I realise it is common on social media to use quote marks for comic purposes or as a way to express disbelief of others etc. That generally is not how I use them within the small circle of people I write to or text, more usually to signify something that may need further clarification. It's probably a bad habit. I accept it may be an ungrammatical usage & I can see, now that you have somewhat brusquely pointed out, that the usage is perhaps excessive & even a bit kinky... I think I removed some & will get to the others.
Just as in Redrose64's straight to the point comment to me on not using ampersands; where I would have been quite content to correct them, I found he had done them all by the time I looked. Many of your inserted comments are pertinent & you could probably have advised me here & saved yourself time, rather than go through them all. I am quite open to advice & useful conversation about the subject / article building process. I am now also aware that there is Wikipedia manual of style that I will no doubt benefit from.
As to your initial comments, I am sorry that you found the "drive-by" comment distasteful. I think it is true to say that nearly everyone at some point has fired off comments these days, without thinking who will be reading or whether a different phrase might be more appropriate. Also one man's tongue-in-cheek is another man's ear bashing... I actually assumed he was referring to me, as I hadn't seen your inserted comments at that point. I just thought, "Oops what have I done wrong? I'd better go & check." Regarding WP:OWN & WP:RS I had to look them up. There's nothing like a bit of jargon... For myself, I can only say I make no claim to the article. I believe collaboration can be a very good thing, along with politeness. I also have a feeling that pretty much all of this could be on another page or even deleted as only a small amount is about the actual editing. Flowbench ( talk) 20:54, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
"Regarding WP:OWN & WP:RS I had to look them up. There's nothing like a bit of jargon.."No. No, I'm sorry, but you didn't have to look them up. I courteously saved you the effort of looking them up. I linked them for you so all you had to do was click. How considerate of me! How much more welcoming to newcomers can one be? That's is typical of the kind of utter nonsense the two of you are up to here.
John B123 you can throw around WP:DRIVEBY, WP:TAGBOMB and WP:BITE all you want, but the evidence is right here. Everyone can see the diffs. You're gaslighting me and I'm not amused.
Please admit that I clearly told you the problem was scare quotes. It's in the {{ what?}} tags. I repeated it in the edit summary: "I'd just delete all these apparently arbitrary scare quotes but I suspect there's a point behind them. We just need to be told what it is." I did not demean whomever added the quotes. I charitably, respectfully said maybe there's a point. What an open mind I have! Perhaps it's my own ignorance. Even though I was pretty sure that they are simply a bad habit of someone who sandbags their writing with extraneous junk, like saying utilise instead of use because the extra syllable makes them seem smart. See how nice I was to not say that? But see after a while, when you're enough of a dick to someone, the sarcasm starts to come out. One thing you might want to try to understand about Wikipedia is that when you've been obstinate and disingenuous enough, we begin to excuse a bit of sarcasm. When you bring it out in people, you can't exactly whine that you're the victim of sarcasm.
The decent thing would be to retract the false accusation of "Adding tags for non-obvious or perceived problems—without identifying the problem well enough for it to be easily fixed." After having been informed in the tags, and informed again in the edit summary, I told you a third time in my talk reply.
Even if you don't know what scare quotes are, I did inform you the problem is with the quotes. You have eyes. You can see them. What if you saw "The BSA %^^^Gold"" Star..."
? Gee, what's that random punctuation doing there? Can I explain it? You're sitting here telling me I didn't bend over backwards enough to make you understand I wanted to know what the purpose was of the OBVIOUS extraneous punctuation on the page right in front of your eyes. While you sit here with a wondrous machine that lets you type in words like "scare quotes" and you'll be given 23,800,000 results in a mere 0.57 seconds, the first one of which is none other than a definition of scare quotes. The second is the Wikipedia article
scare quotes. You have 128,000 Wikipedia edits and you're acting like you arrived on the planet Earth five minutes ago. I think it would be honest to admit
posting this without bothering to read my edit summary, or examine the tags in the article at all. I'd happily forgive such an oversight. We all make mistakes.
If I had used the banner {{ Copyedit}}, you still wouldn't have bothered to look at the diff or the edit summary. You'd be on the talk page whining that I should have used inline tags to specifically identify where precisely the issues are. Juxtapose your two different, contradictory complaints: not identifying the problem clearly enough, and too many tags. Which is it?
Someone with 128,000 edits thinks a web 1.0 WP:FANSITE written by (we can only assume) boomer "Rickard Nebré" (see what I did there?) is a reliable source? Astonishing.
So yeah, sarcasm. That's where it comes from.
I'm done. I'm ignoring both of you. You're gaslighting me, you're wasting my time, and I've been far too patient. Go back to doing actual work on the article. The problems with this article are easily fixed and you're both perfectly capable of doing it without all this drama. I'll take care of it myself if no on else does. If you have a complaint about me, take it to an appropriate noticeboard. You have no good reason to carry on this discussion. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 23:33, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for improving the article. What would we do without you? -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 00:18, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
Dennis Bratland You certainly take no prisoners. You seem to have been unable to see anything in my previous comments as even a cack-handed attempt at diplomacy. That does not mean you should expect me or anyone to grovel. Your last response has made so many assumptions it is laughable. You misconstrue everything to suit your own ends. I chose my words carefully enough that there might be room for us to start again on better terms. You chose to continue with your attack. You will note that I haven't insulted you or used any four letter words. Believe you me, I have a comprehensive capacity for both taking & giving insults of any sort. But I did not come here for that. "We" are not "up to" anything other than attempting a pleasant collaborative effort, such as it was. It is not a conspiracy. If you hadn't intervened so heavy-handedly & engaged in angry & pedantic nit-picking whilst an edit was ongoing, we, or I, rather than feeling obliged to respond to your onslaught, would have definitely spent all this time working on & improving the article to a standard that you, yes even you would surely have found, if not immediately perfect as you appear to expect but at least acceptable. As it is I have found your intervention quite unpleasant & unhelpful in it's exceptionally abrupt manner & in the sheer volume of points you seem to demand rectified NOW! like a boot-camp sergeant-major. So many, that your accusation of WP:OWN could well be applied to you. Any or all of these comments could have been made with a kinder or more friendly tone, as displayed to me by John123. You are talking to another human being, not some soulless drone you can kick about with intemperate diatribes. I was hoping to engage with an interesting project but I am dismayed to find here all of the things that are all too prevalent in the worst aspects of social media. You have displayed little understanding or sensitivity other than on your own behalf and are certainly no ambassador for Wikipedia. 86.144.36.135 ( talk) 12:39, 22 January 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flowbench ( talk • contribs) 12:39, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
BTW, please try to remember to
log in,
sign your posts, and, if you must, use {{Reply to|Dennis Bratland}}
(aka {{re|Dennis Bratland}}
as you can see above) if for some reason you think you need to get the attention of the person you're
replying to (in fact that's rarely necessary. Note how you and John were able to carry on this discussion with me even though I never pinged either of you in my replies). If you were to click
Show preview and click on it before you click publish changes, you'd see that [[Dennis Bratland]]
goes to a nonexistent Wikipedia article, not a
user page.
I'm going to take the initiative to close this unproductive discussion. If you want to discuss the article, please start a new thread. If you have a problem with me, please follow the steps at WP:Dispute resolution. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 18:28, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
In regards to the changes/comments to the infobox:
-- John B123 ( talk) 23:29, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
I think there are answers to all these questions but they depend on a deep understanding of the times, the market back then, and how racing classes worked back then. Complicated ideas just don't belong in at-a-glance facts in infoboxes. That's where we give the simple, short answer. Clubman's racer is a complicated answer.
But anyone who wants to write at length on this topic, explain it for the general audience, whether here or in a related article, would be most appreciated. I think the information should be included but just not in the |class=
field. At least not until we refactor the whole concept at a higher level at
Template:Infobox motorcycle -- which is a viable option but that horse goes before this cart. If other editors support keeping "Clubman's racer" instead of standard, I'll go along with it but this is why I'd prefer not to. --
Dennis Bratland (
talk) 01:56, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
|type=
field. Perhaps this is the best way to go for now. --
John B123 (
talk) 11:38, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
So regardless of what we do or don't have in the infobox, modern readers really need someone to explain what a Clubman's racer is, what "sporting" meant at the time, what it meant to have four or five compression options, and so on. Nobody today could conceive a single model that could be competitive at both the IOM and trials; we live in an era of much greater specialization. The Gold Star was notably configurable, so probably something like
Class Standard configurable for road racing, scrambles, trials, and touring
I've made current version of the infobox too busy, so probably some of the excess detail, like listing all compression ratios, should be moved to the body of the article and replaced with only a range 6.5:1 to 13.0:1, and replace the power field with simply 18–42 hp (13–31 kW), leaving the particulars for the body text. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 23:30, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
Widowmaker was a common term in the 70s for the H2.- John B123 - do you actually have a facsimile image of 1970s text showing widowmaker? I only skimmed through the 2015 link which would not load quickly due to the images and I have minimal time presently, but Ctrl with F only showed the (two) sub-ed comments.-- Rocknrollmancer ( talk) 14:23, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Changing the angle slightly, the late Peter Williams (motorcyclist) seems to have 'invented' (see what I did there - no scare quotes, whatever they are) the term Wagon Wheels (see here) around the time of his 2010 book (writing this from memory). I have no historic proof that it existed before then (neither does anyone else on the racing groups I am part of) but I have semi-verified that the term wheelbarrow was applied (based on the cast wheels) to circa 1980 in Motorcycle Sport *somewhere in the house* - not exactly what I wanted but better than nothing. rgds.-- Rocknrollmancer ( talk) 16:31, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
I'd love to see Motorcycle testing and measurement expanded with more reliable facts that can help the general reader understand what performance claims and critics reviews mean in the correct historical context.
With regards to the Gold Star, the bit about the certified dyno tests cries out for context. The general reader is likely to have some awareness that historically, early to mid 20th century, power claims lived in the realm of pure fantasy, often inferred simply by engine displacement. Notoriously American car manufactures advertised unfalsifiable BHP numbers, somehow descended from SAE gross hp, that told you next to nothing about what you were really buying. DIN ratings brought in some sanity. What I'm saying is our highest priority should be to give readers a way to know what the Gold Star's power certificate actually meant, why that was different from what you'd get with the next bike, and how a rider's expectations in 1950 differed from 2021. For me context, a sense of historical and geographic place, is the definition of encyclopedic. It's that kind of information that makes an encyclopedia article more than a dictionary definition or a statistics database. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 21:35, 24 January 2021 (UTC)