Talk:Bicycle rack

Choice of terms

A number of people have expressed concern with the choices of terms used here on a discussion on if Bike racks and Bicycle stand should be merged. In an effort to keep the two topics separate I am starting the discussion here on the choice of terms. My preference would be to use the terms Bicycle storage rack, Bicycle transport rack, Bicycle luggage rack. I am however OK leaving the present terms in place. --Keithonearth (talk) 23:22, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Bike rack or bicycle rack would both be problematic choices as article names, as these terms are colloquially used very widely to refer to at least three very different devices: bicycle stand (fixture at which to park/secure a bike), bicycle carrier (to transport a bike or a car/bus/etc.), luggage carrier (to transport something with a bike). The latter three currently used terms are far less ambiguous and also very widely used in industry literature. It is bad practice to lump together very different topics in the same article, not the least because this makes cross-linking difficult, e.g. with other-language editions of Wikipedia. Therefore, I would leave them and would simply merge the material from bike rack into bicycle stand, and make bike rack a redirect to bicycle rack. The term luggage carrier (french: porte-bagages) is defined in several international standards, by the way: ISO 8090, BS 6102-4, BS EN 14872, ISO 11243. (If we ever get an article on different kinds of "luggage carriers", I wouldn't mind moving to "bicycle luggage carrier" to be even more specific.) Markus Kuhn (talk) 18:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)