Talk:Cycling

Cycling

Hi all, there is very little on cycling and getting about by bike in articles. But this seems a natural topic for this Wiki, especially in some European countries? What's a good way to suggest improvements? JimKillock (talk) 13:41, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

In the Get around section of cities and regions create a By bicycle section (see Amsterdam as example), where to hire, what routes are interesting. In country pages, any laws that you need to be aware of. Create Itineraries for notable cycle routes. Expand Tips for cycle trips.--Traveler100 (talk) 14:02, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added a few bits to Tips for cycle trips; I wonder if Cycling should divert there for now? I'll add a redirect. JimKillock (talk) 15:18, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Since the content here is added by users, the lack of information is simply because no/few editors have added this info. For future reference, the page Where you can stick it details the appropriate section to put various topics. For a city (especially Europe), the "Get around" section is where information about bike rentals and most paths should go. In large cities, bicycles are a common way to travel around the city, so paths should go in the "Get around" section the same way major roads, bus routes, and metro/subway lines are listed. Outside of cities, bicycle paths that are mostly for recreation and should be listed in the "Do" section, because these paths are an activity for travelers to do.

The dividing line between whether bike paths go in "Get around" or "Do" is not clear. In the example given, bicycle is a common way of getting around Amsterdam and so information about cycling is in the "Get around" section. In some rural areas (some regions and parks), cycling is also a popular way of getting around and can be put in "Get around". However, in a town which has only 2-3 bicycle paths and where most people use the paths for recreation and exercise only (not moving around the city), then bicycle paths and rental information should go in the "Do" section. For example, in the United States, many railroad tracks that are no longer used are being converted into sealed/paved paths where people drive to a parking lot along the path then walk or ride bicycles along the path for a few hours, and return to their cars later.

Legal information such as "Cyclists riding on roads must obey the same laws (traffic lights, etc.) as cars" or "Cyclists under 18 must wear a helmet" should be mentioned in the Get around/Do section about cycling. Laws should go in the country/region page where laws are consistent (in the U.S., traffic/cycling laws are made by individual states), with local differences mentioned on city/park/smaller region pages. However, for major cities, there is no harm in repeating the information...for example many visitors to Amsterdam won't look at cycling information on the Netherlands page, so mentioning laws on the Amsterdam pages that apply to the whole country is ok.

Bike paths should only be a separate itinerary page if they are long or there is a lot of content to add to the page. If information about one path is less than 4-5 sentences, it should be listed on the city/region page. If a path is, for example, 50 km long and there is enough information about it to fill the sections of an Itinerary article template, then making a separate page for that path is ok. AHeneen (talk) 01:31, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

That's very helpful thank you. I've started a general cycling page at User:JimKillock/Cycling which at the moment rounds up what I can find about the best places to go for cycling, and links to the main advice sources available on WikiVoyage. I'd appreciate any help / advice about content. JimKillock (talk) 11:15, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Help needed moving Cycling page

Hi, I think User:JimKillock/Cycling is ok to move to Cycling now. I can't remove the redirect I created at cycling though, can someone delete it for me? JimKillock (talk) 21:33, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, but I think I accomplished some of what you requested, Jim, by copying all of your user name space article text, making a few style changes and then pasting the whole lot by simply editing the Cycling page which just had your REDIRECT. You'll still need to get an admin to delete User:JimKillock/Cycling if it's now obsolete, though... Happy New Year from downunder! -- Alice^✉ 23:12, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

That's usually not a good idea as you lose the edit history by doing a "cut and paste move" like this. You can do it if you are the only author of the text you're copying, but otherwise it's best to ask an admin to delete the redirect and move the page properly. Fixing cut and paste moves is a hassle - delete the target page, move the article, undelete everything so that all the history is in one place. K7L (talk) 00:30, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

That's a good and valid point. Although Jim was the major contributor he wasn't the only one. Is there a way to preserve the edit history alone of the deleted page (since I provided a link to it in my original edit summary?). Sorry for my ignorance. -- Alice^✉ 01:01, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I have moved the article from userspace to mainspace, complete with history. A couple of minor edits by Alice got lost in the move. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you everyone! JimKillock (talk) 07:56, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Scope of article

The title and lead paragraph do not give a clear indication of the scope of this article. The topic of touring on bicycles is large and probably needs several related articles, as well as sections in specific destination articles detailing information specific to the destination. There is also a moderately large and useful article Tips for cycle trips which may also benefit from consideration of title and scope.

My impression is that a better title for this article would suggest its scope. Renaming is quite easy and the sooner it is done the less work with link updating. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

What should this page be renamed as? Cycling seems the most appropriate title, IMO. AHeneen (talk) 05:40, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I can't think of anything better, or would have suggested it. It just seems a little vague and over-generalised. Is it about cycling as a mode of transport in general, as a means of sightseeing, exercise, getting around long-distance, something more? Who are the target audience?

It may be sufficient to simply explain the scope in the lead and leave the title as is. The problem as I see it is that after reading the title and lead paragraph, one remains unsure of what to expect in the rest of the article. This is not very helpful to either the potential user or potential editor.

Besides that, I think this is a very good travel topic, with the potential to become a major aspect of the guide. Getting a good structure at the start will help development. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Peter. I tried to cover two things,

• Touring
• cycling in cities

and I didn't try to research

• mountain biking which deserves a full treatment
• Tips for cycle trips which is already done
• Maps and GPS which is another topic that a traveller could do with a proper guide for

I kept the touring vs cities separate but it led to a lot of repetition, plus touring is the more important traveller topic. You aren't so likely to go to a city purely because of its biking facilities; and those should be on the city pages anyway, but touring, yes you will decide to go to very different places depending in expense, landscape, time available, etc.

If I had more knowledge or research time I would have separate articles / more information for different kinds of touring. I think bike touring in Europe / America / Africa / the far east and central Asia are very different.

Longer term this could be more of a hub page rather like the German wikivoyage page and the content here could move to one or two overviews. JimKillock (talk) 11:45, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Now that free and low cost cycle hire in many cities wouls lend itself to jims comment above

Also in Australia the extensive rail trail network is well described online - it is simply a process of adding to the locations as much as here sats (talk) 02:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

flexible bike rental

More and more places now have flexible bike rental systems where you can rent a bike at any station and than later return it at another station. Although most of those systems are limited to one town (albeit often provided by a handful of companies among them the national railway companies or nextbike) I think it would be best to have some general words on them put here and detailed information for the city articles.141.30.210.129 14:21, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Please plunge forward and contribute what you have in your mind. The approach of having general issues in the articles for travel topics and the specifics in the city/region articles is exactly what is expected in Wikivoyage. So please go ahead. Vidimian (talk) 15:10, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

As I live in Germany I included information mostly on nextbike http://www.nextbike.de/en/ and call a bike http://www.bahn.de/p/view/service/fahrrad/call_a_bike.shtml I think the system is similar for most cities that offer such a service, but I am not very knowledgebale about say Japan or Australia, so it'd be great, to give it a more global focus. Hope that what I wrote isn't entirely worthless though ;-)141.30.210.129 20:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not very knowledgeable about bike rental systems, so I can't say how complete is your coverage, but what you added looks great as far as I can say. Vidimian (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

maybe (?) breaking up into regional articles

it might be, that what is hampering the growth of this article is that the cycling situation in different regions is very different, and the country/continents section below is already very large, but by no means detailed or exhaustive on any one country/region. Is it therefore not better to write articles (along the line of "driving in the USA") about Cycling in Europe / Asia /Russia / Africa / South America / the USA / etc.? there already is a "cycling ind Denmark" article, I think...Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:46, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree. The coverage is random, scattered, and unorganized. Countries or regions should have their own articles in order to make it useful, but creating those articles without anyone willing to write them doesn't serve much purpose, either. Travel topics are notorious for lack of editing and contributions, probably also because they're hard to find. I'd say if you have enough information to start some more focused articles, plunge forward! ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:16, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I just created an article on Cycling in Europe by copying the Europe section of this article. We should either expand that article or trim down the Europe section of this one. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Remove Europe section

As I created the article cycling in Europe to reduce the size and improve the readability of this article, maybe we should remove or reduce the "Europe" section here141.30.210.129 18:13, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to log in, previous contribution mineHobbitschuster (talk) 18:14, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I removed most of it. To have somewhat more of an overview would be good, but I think we need more info before it can be written.

There is a problem now, that finding the info on Europe, with its link to the separate article, is hard with the current layout: continent headers do not stand out from the country headers, there is a massive amount of text where Europe is buried and the table of context in the banner is dysfunctional in these cases.

--LPfi (talk) 00:20, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Scope of this article and Tips for cycle trips

The budget travel article also has some material about cycling, which would fit better in this article. /Yvwv (talk) 16:28, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Should we have an article about bicycle commuting / urban cycling? /Yvwv (talk) 00:53, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Cycling travel wiki - BikeWOW

Hi,

This is a useful page, along with some of the travel guides like Cycling the Western Sahara. We're also doing an entire wiki devoted to cycle touring / bike travel at BikeWOW.

We're currently figuring out what works best on BikeWOW, Wikipedia, and here. Your insights are welcome!

--67.205.210.122 13:26, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Alternative banner for this article?

Banner currently used in this article

Suggested new alternative banner

I created a new alternative banner for this article (I initially created it first and foremost so that it would be used at the top of the parallel article in the Hebrew edition of Wikivoyage, yet I later decided to also suggest that the English Wikivoyage community would consider using it here as well). So, which banner do you prefer having at the top of this article? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 08:28, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I vote for the alternative. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:51, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I like the current (top) one better. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 12:10, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I like the alternative, and I think #1 should instead be used at Urban cycling. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 14:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm torn. The new banner seems excellent for the Hebrew Wikivoyage with its right-to-left format, but here on the English Wikivoyage the cyclist would be covered up by the title. I think the ideal option would be to find a similar image with the cyclist on the right. Between these two I think I prefer the current one, but not by a lot.

If we do change the banner in this article, I agree with SelfieCity that the current one would be good for Urban cycling. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:38, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be a simple solution to mirror the image horizontally? 94.119.64.0 14:44, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't really like the idea of that kind of image manipulation, producing impossible views of whatever destination is featured in the banner. But I don't know how others feel. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:00, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: you have a good point there. A mirror image actually changes the scenery, and makes the image a hopeless one for trying to work out layout of a place. It's too confusing for travelers. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 16:17, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I'd hold out updating the banner until there is a version with the cyclist on the right. People don't like when you mirror an image, but I'm sure there's another similar pic. --ButteBag (talk) 23:17, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Beach cruiser vs fatbike

The description of a beach cruiser: "very wide tires and is best adapted to loose soils" fits with what I have heard called fat bike. Are those the same thing or should fat bikes be described separately? --LPfi (talk) 08:38, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

I think fatbikes have even wider tires Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:25, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Category:Cycling in Denmark and Category:Cycling in the United Kingdom

Swept in from the pub

I cannot get these categories to work. Am I doing something wrong? --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 13:50, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Why do you want to create these categories, how many sub-articles are you planning on writing about cycling in the UK? And even so, wait until they are created, add the PartOfTopic and use the blue icon at bottom of page created when no category exists. --Traveler100 (talk) 13:31, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

I’ve finished, actually. There’s only one subarticle for the UK, Scotland, and only one subarticle for Denmark. So maybe those categories aren’t necessary? I don’t know a lot about categories yet, but thanks for your help so far. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 14:21, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

I think the general notion is that you want a category to contain more than a few articles, but not too many – somewhere between 10 and 1,000, to give some very round numbers.

There has been very little research done on categories. It is my belief (which could be wrong, of course) that most categories are nearly useless to readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

On Wikivoyage categories are basically a maintenance tool. Tracking articles with missing information or in the case of isPartOf or PartOfTopic to place articles in a hierarchy of categories based on the bread crumbs. This is useful for checking articles are listed in bottom level regions and for running update bots though articles as well as provide statistics by region. On Wikipedia contributors can add articles directly to categories, here on Wikivoyage article categories are controlled through templates. --Traveler100 (talk) 09:23, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Nonetheless, if a new category is created and items which the {{IsPartOf}} template should be placing in the new category aren't there, it may be necessary to edit each of the articles, then save them (without actually changing anything) just to get them to populate into the category. That looks to be what's happening here; I haven't looked at the template code to see what it does with a category that doesn't exist yet. K7L (talk) 12:28, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

That is correct, if the category is created after an article is added to the category then the article needs to be resaved to see it in the category. If an isPartOf or PartofTopic is created with a category that does not exist it is added to Wikivoyage:Maintenance panel categories, also at the bottom of the page there is a small blue hierarchy icon, which when you click goes into create category page. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:56, 8 September 2018 (UTC)