Wikipedia’s Motorcycle Project

Google a motorcycling search term and the odds are you'll come up with a Wikipedia entry. That's not by chance: Since 2006, a bunch of motorcycle-minded volunteers have been trying to make Wikipedia the go-to resource of choice for any and all things moto. Not an easy task, to put it mildly. Yet hardcore daily-riding motorcyclists like Brian Henry and Dennis Bratland are determined to give the other motorcyclists of the world a free source of reliable, constantly updated information about the people, events, machines, and all other aspects of their world. Their efforts are part of what is called "WikiProject: Motorcycling."

If you’re old enough to remember the days before the Internet, you’ll recall how frustrating could be the search for information about bikes, riders, inventors, technical details, and events; there was no single book that could provide what you needed, despite very large tomes aspiring to be the encyclopedias of motorcycling. Too much to know, too many lost and almost-lost bits of crucial information, too many biased and unreliable sources.

Brian Henry is a native of Washington state, holds a degree in electrical engineering from Brown University, is a reserve Naval officer, lives and works in the Seattle area, and currently rides a Ducati 1098. Some of his Wikipedia articles can be seen here.

Take, for example, power and performance data. Sure, Cycle World is a reliable source for that nowadays for tested machines, but how about for a 1939 Velocette Mk. VIII KTT? Can you believe the reports of the British bike magazines of the time? How was the bike tested? What were the undisclosed biases in reporting the data? And what if someone somewhere in 1938 had done alternative tests but not reported the results in a magazine but in a technical paper that few people read? You see the problem: Not only are the data often missing, they are also too often skewed by factors not reported for one reason or another—national chauvinism, commercial pressures, personal preferences on the part of the testers, and so on.

So far, Wikipedia, though often criticized, is probably our best hope for eventually yielding a one-stop shopping center for knowledge. Not "truth" as Wikipedia itself makes clear, because its design precludes doing the exhaustive original research that might disclose something close to truth, assuming such a quality can be had in any non-quantitative subject. Wikipedia requires the knowledge it presents be based on published material, the assumption being that if it was published by a reliable source—itself a term subject to valid debate—then the knowledge is more rather than less likely to be accurate. This is because when the source is a major magazine or a book, the interest of the publisher in demanding that the material in it be accurate for liability purposes is clear, and thus a Wikipedia citation of that source is more likely to be defensible than if the source were not subject to the scrutiny of people or institutions with easy access to legal tools to correct errors of commission or omission.

Dennis Bratland lives and works in the Seattle area as a software tester, is an Air Force veteran, holds degrees in English and computer science from Gonzaga University, and he and his wife currently own a Yamaha Vino 125, Honda CBR600RR, Kawasaki Ninja 250 and a 1965 Ducati Bronco. His activity as a Wikipedia editor can be seen here.

Humans being the self-interested types we are, of course, true disinterested research is hard to expect. That's why Wikipedia is set up to allow competing viewpoints to amend material about any subject, so long as the amendments cite reliable sources. What is essential for this process to work best is "expert editors"—people with specialized knowledge of a subject who can and will provide the basic article on a subject that can be reviewed by others expert in the field and then posted. This is the current conundrum facing the motorcycle project, because as Brian Henry told me in our email discussions, such warping of the intention of Wikipedia as "sock-puppetry" and "meat-puppetry" are too common. In both forms of online behavior, someone posts an article that presents material not for the expansion of knowledge but for hidden personal or commercial gain.

In ferreting out such behavior in posted or edited articles, the legal term Cui bono?—to whose benefit?—is the standard by which decisions are made when there is doubt about an article. If the beneficiaries of an article are people just curious about the subject of the article, no harm is done by it. But if the beneficiaries are the commercial interests of an individual or a group, then the objective of Wikipedia is not served. Obviously, in deciding this sort of problem, watchdog volunteer editors are themselves potential beneficiaries for reasons only they know. This is a problem the Romans, like all ancients, knew well, which is why another Latin phrase—Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?—applies: "Who shall watch the watchmen?" For Wikipedia, the watchmen are supposed to be both the editors and the users of Wikipedia, for if meat-puppetry or any other form of commercial use is suspected and then detected, it can swiftly and publicly be corrected or at least debated on the "Talk" page of the article, if not by changes or deletion of the article itself.

In my email discussions with Henry and Bratland, I was impressed by their commitment to the project of expanding the body of knowledge available to anyone with access to the Internet about a vast array of motorcycle-related topics. When I asked what they would ask me to say to people who are themselves interested in being "expert editors," they replied that they want them—you—to get involved by sharing what you know, so long as it can be verified by the Wikipedia methods. They acknowledge that those methods can be confusing or frustrating, so they suggest that anyone interested in helping sign onto Wikipedia and carefully read the various rules by which it works before submitting an article or changes to an existing article. It can be time-consuming to learn the wiki-ways, but it will be worth it if our knowledge is increased. They also asked for contributors to help with photos, again keeping in mind the copyright restrictions, so it's best if the photos are the contributors' own.

In my time working in and for motorcycle, automobile, and aviation magazines, beginning in 1973, I've not encountered a project with such enormous potential benefit for all who want information about motorcycles and motorcycling. So to the question of "Cui bono?" regarding the WikiProject: Motorcycling, the answer is easy: We can all benefit.