Suzuki Hayabusa

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'm hoping the article can be brought up to the standards of GA or even FA with a reasonable amount of additional work. It would be useful to Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycling to have at least one article on a model of motorcycle that can serve as a guide for what we'd like to see for the hundreds of other articles we have on individual bike models.

The article is fairly global in scope, with the main topics not touched being:

• The Ben Roethlisberger motorcycle crash [1], with perhaps some additional mention of other celebrities with custom Hayabusas. To me that topic is a little too lacking in substance, and the custom section does mention that celebrity customers boost sales, without dwelling on it. The coverage on his bio page Ben Roethlisberger#Motorcycle accident seems sufficient, also.
• Female speed record holders such as Trillium Muir and Leslie Porterfield [2] [3]. There are other pages that can cover them in depth.
• The prominence of the Hayabusa in Sportbike Motorcycle Drag Racing could be included, but I think perhaps efforts there should be focused on improving the page Sportbike Motorcycle Drag Racing itself rather than Suzuki Hayabusa.

Any guidance on these topics or anything else is most appreciated.

The other burning issue is the copyright status of some of the photos of custom bikes. In the Commons Custom Hayabusa category there is one image nominated for deletion [4] and another in the parent Hayabusa category [5]. The problem is the use of copyrighted and trademarked logos or characters, which you can see in the photos over there is very common on custom bikes. I can see the reasoning there, but for me it creates a dilemma. If I wanted to include a selection of customized bikes to show the range of styles, I'd want several that use copyrighted material.

If I put them here on Wikipedia, could I argue Fair Use on any one photo? I'd have to be saying I think that one is indispensable for purposes of discussion and criticism, but that's not really the case, is it? I could remove the Spider-man or Alien bike and use Superman or Transformers in its place, so there is no single image that can't be substituted. I don't need a specific one, but to properly illustrate the topic, there needs to be a few. What I'm hoping to have is 4 or 5 examples on Wikipedia and at least a dozen at WikiMedia Commons, to best give the reader a good survey, but I'm not certain what the best way to do that is. Purging all potentially infringing photos of custom bikes would give a distorted view of the custom scene; at least half the bikes I've seen use somebody's logos or characters without permission.

I've listed this under Everyday Life because that includes motorsport and other forms of recreation. Other relevant categories are Engineering and technology and Social sciences and society.

Thanks, Dbratland (talk) 22:01, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments by Midgrid (talk · contribs)

• Is there an article detailing the progression of fastest production motorbikes, like Fastest production car? If not, it could be worthwhile creation for the WikiProject.

• ⌛ Doing... I've added Fastest production motorcycle to Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Transport#Motorcycles, and it's on my own to-do list as well.

• On the copyright issue, perhaps these two discussions concerning a car modified to resemble a Pokémon character may be of use.

• Thanks!

• I think the image used in the lead infobox, whilst aesthetically pleasing, doesn't show enough of the bike itself. I presume the fact that the photo was taken at Bonneville refers to the bike's reputation for top speed, but this isn't immediately apparent.

• ✗ Not done ...yet. I'm going to wait for more feedback on this. Some other editors seemed happy with it. My defense would be that the two infobox pictures serve the purpose of being a basic illustration of what the bike looks like, while the lead photo tries to cover more broadly what the article is about: the quest for speed, motorcycle competitions, and customizing your bike, and it shows a rider. The inanimate bike isn't notable solely on its own volition, but because of rider/consumers who made it notable.

• The sentence in the lead that begins with "Media reported values from 299 to 303 km/h for the speed agreement..." sounds a little awkward to me. I believe that it should be changed to "The media reported..." or "Media-reported values ranged from...".

•  Done Reworded as "Media-reported values for the speed agreement in miles per hour were consistently 186 mph, while in kilometers per hour they varied from 299 to 303 km/h, which is typical given unit conversion rounding errors." I realized I never mentioned the consistency in the mph number, they always get that right but disagree about what that converts to.

• It seems a bit odd to me that the precise speed record and its gain from the previous record are given in the lead, but not the main body of the article, especially given the presence of the sentence "No previous motorcycle has broken the production model top speed record by such a margin".

•  Done Changed to "No previous motorcycle has broken the production model top speed record by such a margin, 10 to 14 mph (16 to 23 km/h), depending on which measured speeds the source was relying on for the CBR1100XX and the GSX-1300R."

• I believe that some more technical terms can be linked in the first and second generation infoboxes; at the moment the comparison between the engine and transmission/suspension fields is quite striking in this respect.

•  Done

• What does "∅" mean in the engine field of the first and second generation infoboxes?

•  Done That's supposed to be the diameter symbol, representing Bore (engine), but I see now that ∅ is more correctly the empty set. I was trying to reduce clutter but it only adds confusion.

• I think the use of the phrase "speed king" might be a touch on the informal side for an encyclopaedia.

•  Done

• "...the Hayabusa's handling was considered excellent for a machine of this class". Are hyper sport bikes usually difficult to ride? Could do with a little clarification here.
• "Bragging rights" could be linked, as there is an article on it(!). It depends how idiomatic the phrase is, which is something I'm not too sure about. There are a couple of other phrases that I would consider to be borderline in this respect, such as "losing face", "[speed war continuing] underground", referring to the bike's internals as being "under the skin" etc.

• ✗ Not done I'll solicit more feedback to get a better sense of how obscure these idioms are.

• The sentence "The agreement between them and the other brands has never been officially acknowledged by the manufacturers, though media sources report it via unnamed informants, and by testing the top speed of motorcycles known to be capable of exceeding the arbitrary maximum" could do with a citation.

•  Done The citations just before and after this sentence are the main sources for this -- I just repeated the refs on the sentence as well as in the neighborhood.

• "...so 2001 and later Hayabusas had a steel instead of aluminum rear subframe, adding 10 pounds...". The weight gain should be converted, as the other weights in the article already are.

•  Done

• "...US$13,425 in 2009 dollars" reads awkwardly due to the repetition of "dollars". I would recommend changing the phrase to something like "at 2009 prices". Is there any information available for other countries?

•  Done and ⌛ Doing... There are very spotty sales figures. The data is mostly in proprietary market research reports that cost $500 to $2000. You have to just try to find a newspaper article that mentions sales. I'll add any I come across.

• I think it would be useful if the "Performance and measurements" tables were sortable, so the range between claimed values can be identified more easily.

•  Done

• "Competition in the hyper sport bike segment...". Surely "market" would be a more suitable word?

•  Done

• "This increased competition led to Suzuki lightly revising the GSX1300R for the 2008 model year, but delivering a large horsepower increase by fine-tuning the old engine's head, pistons and exhaust." The wording needs to be improved, as it first glance this sentence apparently contradicts itself. I would suggest changing "but delivering" to "which nevertheless delivered".

•  Done

• "A redesign meant to strengthen the appearance without departing much found approval when presented to dealers and focus groups." Another sentence in which the wording could be improved. Departing much from what?

•  Done

• "The target was to produce at the crankshaft more than 190 brake horsepower (142 kW)...". I would prefer "The target was to produce more than 190 brake horsepower (142 kW) at the crankshaft...".

•  Done

• "Design of the new Hayabusa was done by Suzuki's Koji Yoshirua...". I would reword this to "The new Hayabusa was designed by Suzuki's Koji Yoshirua...".

•  Done

• The first instance of "custom", in the planning subsection of the second generation section, should be linked to Custom motorcycle.

•  Done

• "Engine changes were an increase in stroke by 2 mm..." could be changed to "Engine changes consisted of an increase in stroke by 2 mm...".

•  Done

• The technical revisions section for the second generation is written in a mixture of past and present tense, and there are quite a few unconverted units in there as well.
• I found a couple of sentences separated by three spaces when correcting typos; there may be more elsewhere in the article.

•  Done

• The burnout image should be cropped to remove the border.

 Done.

• Are any Japanese sales figures available? I imagine that Suzuki's home market would be of great significance. On a similar note, is there any evidence of whether or not the Hayabusa has affected Suzuki's total bike sales since its release?
• In India, why is the Tata Nano directly comparable to the Hayabusa? One is a microcar, the other a hyper sport bike.
• "Another top modification...". Again, this is a bit informal: I would prefer "favoured" or "most popular" instead.
• I would move the Commons link for custom Hayabusas to the bottom of the page, with the other Commons link.
• "The very popularity of lengthened and lowered Hayabusas means boundaries must be stretched and rules broken in order to get noticed." What does this mean, exactly? That some of the custom bikes are illegal? Could do with some clarification.
• "Lotus Seven-based Megabusa" makes it sound as if the vehicle is a bike based on the car. I would recaption the image "Megabusa-engined Lotus Seven".
• The paragraph on land speed records could do with an introductory sentence, along the lines of "Hayabusa engines have been used in motorcycle land speed record attempts".
• I would put the Japanese character 隼 in brackets. To be honest, I don't think that section belongs in the article in its current state: the information about the bike deriving its name from the bird could be included near the beginning of the article, and the remaining information moved to the dab page, with the hatnote moved to the top of the article.
• Does citation [39] cover the whole table or just the 2010 row? If it's the former case, then I would recommend putting the citation in a more general place, perhaps along the lines of the qualifying and race tables in this article.

That's just about all I can think of. I hope these comments are useful!--Midgrid(talk) 23:20, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks! I think I can do most of these tomorrow as soon as I'm feeling better (: .--Dbratland (talk) 19:20, 7 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]