Talk:Critical Mass (cycling)/Archives/2006

"Bike lift"

Do other CMs do a bike lift, where everyone takes over an intersection and then holds their bike up in the air? If so, might be worth mentioning. pfctdayelise 13:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

In Calgary, we haven't been doing it at intersections, just at the end point of our rides, (See my photos.) It's also known as a "Chicago Holdup". --GrantNeufeld 22:03, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

That's cool. What a shame you only use the cc-nc license. :) If you ever feel like uploading some particularly good ones to commons under, say, cc-by-sa, then see what I wrote above on this page. pfctdayelise 23:23, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

In New York, riders are generally being chased by cops and are too busy avoiding the fuckers (I don't have to keep it NPOV on a discussion page, do I?) to do a bike lift. Boston CMs typically fade out rather than ending; although most months a bike lift is incorporated into the ride. Favored spots include the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth and the middle of the Mass Ave bridge. How about tunnels, underpasses, parking garages, and rotaries? Do other CMs ride those in a non-traditional manner with lots of whooping and hollering?DayKart 08:48, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

In London, bike lifts are done occasaionally when stopped at large junctions, and when the mass visits the site of cyclist death, where it is done as a kind of salute, along with a general wassail. It is always very moving. Ooooooooo 20:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Deleted Criticisms section

For the record, this is a copy of the section on Criticisms that was removed due to a lack of sourcing, even though the information in here was not really disputed by anyone. I'm placing this here in accordance with the Citing sources guidelines. Ideally, before comments like these are put in a Wiki article, citations from published sources should be provided.

==Criticisms==

Criticisms of Critical Mass include:

• The undefined goals of Critical Mass are not worth the confrontations that inevitably occur when a large group acts out of the ordinary in public.
• Critical Mass generates more ill will than goodwill towards cyclists, cycling and alternative forms of transportation.
• Critical Mass encourages lawless and dangerous traffic cycling techniques.
• Critical Mass is sometimes dismissed as nothing more than a politicised party; some Massers turn this criticism on its head, embracing it with the slogan "We're not going to the party, we are the party!"

--Serge 06:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I should clarify my previous comments. When I stated "the criticisms may be valid" I was simply trying to make it clear that my removal was not because I think there is no room for criticism in this article. On the contrary, I think that WP:NPOV is the most important policy at wikipedia. My removal of the criticism section was based on the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy--without stating who it is that has made these criticisms how can they be verifiable? WP:WEASEL states that "If a statement can't stand on its own without weasel words, it lacks neutral point of view; either a source for the statement should be found, or the statement should be removed"--I argue that the opening of the content that I removed, "Criticisms of Critical Mass include:", is a weasel term and therefore the exact sort of thing that WP:WEASEL recommends to avoid. In the absence of cited sources I can only assume that the authors of the criticisms are also the source--if this were the case then the section also breaks the no original research policy. As for other articles that include unsourced criticisms, wikipedia has many articles that need improved--where you find unverifiable content please feel free to remove it.

--JeremyA 15:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

thats simply not true. look at all the happy happy feel good language in the article and tell me its NPOV. go remove that then ill believe youre not a hypocrite.

Looking at these criticisms, it is hard to say any of them are really sourceable or justifiable. I think less controversial points might be:

• It creates confrontation
• It may turn the opinion of inconvenienced non-cyclists against cyclists, counter to what most participants would want
• Laws are often broken during the course of a mass
• Although the claim is that the mass it not political and has no goals, many of the individuals involved have specific goals in common

--Ooooooooo 20:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry to see you running by these critical comments, because it is important I believe to “document” the friction that is created when a radical idea involving self-organization and, yep!, a certain dose of chaos (study it and you have a learning system there) at a time in which our societies are looking for an much in need of new models of social organization. If someone has the time (sorry, I don’t) the answer might simply be to run a Google search of past media reports and pull out and source the complaints. Not a big deal and I think a rather useful contribution. ericbritton 09:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

no way dude! theres no leadership, everyone can do whatever! its all about freedom! except of course the freedom to criticize the actions of others. unless you are criticizing republicans, car drivers, suburbanites, evil corporate fascists, etc. then its ok.

Critical Mass is not an organization.

It's just a bicycle ride. There is no evidence it being an organization. Nobody sets an agenda for CM. Dan Korn 03:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I think this is an important distinction, but I am not sure as to how clear this may be to most people so may warrant a couple of wise words of explanation:

CM is a “non-organization”, and a fine one at that. This is not a trivial phrase, and as a negation takes us back to the root words “organize”, not far behind which are concepts such as “systemization”, “hierarchisation”, “coordination” and yes! that wonderful word “control”. Now all of these concepts at the end of the day assume some kind of great knowledge of at least some part of the world in which we live – knowledge which we/they can then put to work to achieve Our collective entry here under Organization does a quite good job of scoping out the history and main lines of thinking and practice on this subject.

A non-organization (a category here which incidentally I rather think we should be at least considering fleshing out) is more closely aligned to concepts such as Self-organization, which here is brightly introduced as “a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (though not always) display emergent properties”

Where does that leave us? Well, as friends [Dan Korn] explains to us it is “a bicycle ride but not quite “just a bicycle ride”. I have been following CM since the very beginning since it is right up two alleys of my own interest: better and softer ways of getting around in our daily lives, and active citizenry. And I would hate to see it trivialized, not least because it is, as I see it, an important example and learning system on its own. And we badly need ‘em. ericbritton 09:32, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

screaming about how theres no agenda doesnt make it go away. and at most rides, it winds up being 'piss off drivers'. just because nobody is holding a gun to your head saying "do this, do that" doesnt mean there is no 'agenda', and social pressure is not the same thing as 'no pressure'. just STOP LYING. ok? just stop it. everyone knows that a large number of CMers are there to piss off drivers and if you say anything against it you are somehow 'trying to start an agenda and be a ledaer, oh how evil'. but if you start a fight with a car driver, oh, thats ok, thats 'freedom' and the evil car oppressor was trying to kill you. there is a hierarchy and organization - its called 'who is cool' and 'who is not cool', and its especially harsh in little social cliques that are basically mentioned in the damn article, you know, the bike messengers or whoever who get together and 'monitor bicyclist needs', etc etc etc.

you might as well say 'fourth of july' is not 'organized' or 'hierarchical'. yeah. holidays are not hierarchical, people just do them. that doesnt make them free of an agenda, free of control, leaders, etc. people are people and we have not morphed over the last 20 years into some new species devoid of our apelike qualities from our ancestors. you know what is organized? indymedia. what has a hierarchy? the nation. what has control? the leftist social cliques and their domineering mental attitudes that spray shit like 'we have no organization or control or hierarchy'. isnt the very act of deleting 'criticism' basically an act of control? what the hell is so bad about leadership anyways? martin luther king was a leader, was he evil too? amy goodman is a leader, howard zinn is a leader, hello people. wake the f!@!#$ up, you have not discovered some new way of thinking, you just go out and like to gather in groups and be aggressive - thats as old as monkeys flinging poo at each other.

POV-section: Conflicts

Burndownthedisco (talk · contribs) added the POV template to the Conflicts section of the article. Please describe any specific concerns about that section here. Thanks. —GrantNeufeld 17:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for not doing so earlier. Feel free to remove the tag or edit it in any way that you (or anyone else) see fit; I felt that phrases like "declared war on ", "so-called "agreed upon" route". "police abuse" (the last one particularly because of its uncited nature), among others, violated the NPOV policy. At the very least, the language in that paragraph is often unprofessional and unencyclopedic; at worst, it displays lop-sided favoritism (to my eye, at least) toward the CM crowd, portraying Brown and the police as ill-behaved tyrants (whether they are or not, of course, is not the provenance of this article ;]). So, in other words, perhaps a POV tag is not the right tag for that section, or perhaps it does not need one at all, but at the very least, that paragraph needs a thorough re-write, preferably with some citations about statistics and police abuse. wilhelm 04:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I have never ridden in a critical mass, though I can't claim to be completely free of bias, and most of the newspaper reports have disappeared from the Web, but as far as I can tell, the basic truth of this section is pretty solid. A second hand quote from a newspaper at (http://www.brasscheck.com/cm/who.html) says "Brown said on Monday that he would crack down on the mass ride-along -- which can draw as many as 3,000 cyclists -- because it clogs the city's streets, stalling traffic and impeding pedestrians. He vowed to pull the police escorts now authorized for the event, and ticket cyclists who run red lights and commit other traffic infractions." Reportedly, the San Francisco Chronicle used the phrase: "Following the June ride, Mayor Brown gave a speech where, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, he "declared war" on Critical Mass and said that he would try and prevent future rides. Police began to draw up plans to clamp down on the bike ride. Editorials in the major daily newspapers endorsed the call for the crackdown." (from http://rwor.org/a/v19/910-19/919/critms.htm). But again, this is all second hand information.

"so-called "agreed upon" route" is certainly accurate. There are no leaders of Critical Mass, so there is no way to have an agreed upon route, despite the fact that Mayor Brown said there was.

As far as Police Abuse, that one is certainly documented in enough places, from the same site (http://www.brasscheck.com/cm/) and others (http://www.bclu.org/stories/demonstrations/lacm.html, links from these sites). When 105 people are arrested and brutalized, and none are charged, it's clearly abuse. - --205.147.11.242 22:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a bad idea to use terms like "so-called" in an encyclopedia, and it's silly to argue about whether an emotional label like 'abuse' is justified. I just spent a large amount of time adding particulars on this page (such as exact dates, names, etc.), and feel I have thoroughly cleaned out all the questionable POV aspects in the information about the July 1997 ride. I removed what I recognized to be typical rumors and axes-to-grind. I think I avoided the temptation to give my version of what happened, and instead only included basic verifiable facts that contribute to the average reader's understanding of conflicts in Critical Mass rides.

I also removed the POV tag and renamed the two "conflicts" sections to distinguish conflicts with motorists from conflicts with authorities. I feel qualified to make these many changes, as I have been a San Francisco participant from the start of the San Francisco ride, and rode in many of the notable rides (NYC, before and after police crack-down, Budapest 2006, SF July 1997). Joel Pomerantz, a.k.a. Unclepea 09:28, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Critical Mass wiki project?

Very disappointed to see that the excellent List of Critical Mass rides has been deleted. Any idea how one can access the old page? It was really useful.

Since Wikipedia seems to have decided the list (and possibly the Critical Mass article) are too biased, how about we create a Critical Mass wiki project? Probably the easiest way to do this would be by using WikiMedia's Wikia service (previously known as Wikicities). Anyone up for helping to set this up?

I don't think the subject is or can be adequately covered by the Cycling Portal or the Cycling Wikia.

--Nsayers 11:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I've set up a Critical Mass Wikia project! It's at CriticalMass.Wikia.com! I've moved the List of Critical Mass rides page that was deleted from Wikipedia. --Nsayers 22:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

thats horrible! CM is supposed to have no hierarchy or leadership, here you go centralizing it and dominating it with alpha male social control trope

Thi "List of CM rides" is redundant since there are already websites dedicated to covering that exact topic. WP's list looks like it's mostly just a copy of my own website on the topic, anyway. It's unlikely to ever be as complete and up-to-date as my own directory, which is updated almost daily. -MichaelBluejay

Page moves

There have previously been a number of moves made to this article. I think that any move needs discussed here. I personally do not see any reason why this page should be moved--this is by far the most common use of the proper noun Critical Mass. The original nuclear physics term critical mass is undisambiguated, and there is a disambiguation page for other uses. However, if this page is to be moved, there at least needs to be consensus for a disambiguation term--it has previously been moved to Critical Mass (activist), but activist is definitely not what most Critical Mass riders that I have ever met would use to describe themselves --JeremyA 23:11, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree with both, the request for pre-move discussion, and the realistic dissociation from the 'activist' label.Unclepea 19:07, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Cities that Critical Mass rides

I think this article needs something, maybe a link, or a timeline of when events first started happening at different cities to demonstrate the scale of the Critical Mass. At the moment it seems very San Francisco centric. I know events take place in Amsterdam and London, as I have attended them, but I do not know if this is a global phenonomen, and if similar events take place in smaller regional towns and cities. Catchpole 17:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This page [1] gives some details on the worldwide nature of critical mass. I agree the article is SF-centric, but as CM originated there, that's not too unreasonable. I think a timeline would be great. Doctormatt 17:42, 5 October 2006 (UTC)