Talk:Handlebar

History note

The previous history of a page at Handlebar is now at Bicycle handlebar. Anthony Appleyard 12:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disambig and Replaced with Disambiguation Page

This seems to me to be a disambiguation page for handlebar to split bicycle and motorbike. Should it be reformatted as one and have that convenient template at the bottom? Goodnight mush^Talk 04:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As pointed out by Goodnightmush, this page exists solely to direct users to either bicycle handlebar or motorcycle handlebar. As per guidelines, this consitutes a disambiguation page, not an article (see WP:D). I see no reason whatsoever to keep this as an article so I have replaced it with a disambiguation page. DubiousIrony ^yell 05:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is suboptimal for at least three reasons:

The information about handlebars on vehicles other than bicycle and motorcycles is now lost.
Several articles; Tricycle, Yamaha Phazer, Freestyle Scooters, All-terrain vehicle, Kick scooter, Zip line trolley, Mobility scooter, Floor buffer, Protei-5 Russian diver propulsion vehicle, Jeff King (mushing), King (TV series), and Auto rickshaw; all link to handlebar in the non-bike-vehicle sense.
At least two articles, particularly countersteering and Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics wikilink to handlebars generically for a convenient definition and brief explination that is neither bicycle nor motorcycle specific.

For these reason, I suggest we revert this change -AndrewDressel (talk) 13:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do share your concerns, I made this change in the spirit of "bold, revert, discuss". If you believe that the article was more useful and more in line with WP guidelines the way it was, I understand a revert. Here's my reasoning:

The article was in a strange half-article half-disambiguation page limbo for a pretty long time. All of the content was duplicated in the motorcycle and bicycle handlebar articles. I made the decision to make it into a disambiguation page based on the WP:D criteria "Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead."
I agree that a short definition may be beneficial, I have restored the longer definition as used by the article in previous revisions, in the style of disamb pages such as conflict. I think it might be better if it was cut down to something a bit shorter (I'm also not sure about all the wiki links to vehicle types) but I can't really think of any better way to phrase it right now.

One last thing, I'm not sure how to best include related information (such as handlebar moustaches and the song by the Flobots). I think they should either be both hatnotes (i.e. For the moustache, see handlebar moustache. For the song by the Flobots, see Handlebars) or they should both be in the bullet-list. Thoughts? Thanks for taking the time to comment, it's appreciated! DubiousIrony ^yell 18:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. I like your changes and have added some of my own. As for other meanings, I followed the example in Fairing. -AndrewDressel (talk) 18:59, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice, I like your most recent revision. This is a bit of a strange situation because articles that link to handlebar are just looking for a generic definition (e.g. Auto rickshaw, kick scooter) but the WP guidelines frown on linking to dab pages to provide definitions. Still, I think this is the best solution when you think about ease-of-use for the readers. I've only been here for a few months though so maybe someone can provide additional insight.

I think it might be possible to expand this into a real article, but it would have to be sourced (not to mention the possibility of it falling back into a stub repeating stuff listed on the motorcycle/bicycle handlebar pages). I think what we have now (a dab page + separate articles for various sub-handlebars) is the best solution. To anyone reading this: feel free to make ATV handlebars, scooter handlebars, etc. provided they meet the criteria for an article :D Cheers, DubiousIrony ^yell 00:10, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]