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The list "Types of road bicycles" includes Mountain bicycles - clearly an error. perhaps this list would be better at
bicycle, in which case mountain bikes could stay in the list. --
Singkong200515:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)reply
Meosphere list
Added an external link to list of manufacturers of road bikes. As a road biker, this is helpful information and the type of information that you can find external links to all over wikipedia. The list was the result of much research as well as the input of many road bikers adding information. Please consider reversing your deletion. Respectfully,
Eliasone
Well, the first problem is that yesterday's edit was anonymous. It's hard to believe a user who hasn't got an account is sincere. True, the majority of anonymous edits are useful or at least not bad, but most linkspam and other bad edits are anonymous. Then there's the site, this Meosphere, which has flashy ads and looks more like a kid site for goofing around than a serious source of information. Anyway, now that you've got an account and an argument, I'll revert my reversion for a few days. What you should do, however, now that you're trying to be taken seriously, is put a serious list of roadbike makers right into Wikipedia. It can be a section of
Road bicycle, a subcat of
Category:Cycle manufacturers, a section of
List of bicycle manufacturers, or elsewhere in the encyclopedia.
Making an encyclopedia is a lot of work. It isn't just knowing something and putting it in. You have to organize the knowledge, fix the bad parts, connect the good parts together, watch out for people who don't understand what they are doing and otherwise tend it like a garden.
Jim.henderson03:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)reply
Article Name
This article's opening paragraph seems to contradict itself. It says a road bicycle is any bicycle that's used on the road, then goes on to say most have "drop handlebars and multiple gears", I think if we take a global view it's very clear that most bikes used on the road do not have drop bars. Even at a more local level I believe that few places have predominantly bikes with drop bars on the road.
This confusion likely arises from two desires: one, to use the term road bike to mean any bike used on the road; two, to use the term to refer to the sport oreanted drop bar bikes (on wikipedia inexplicably referred to as a "
Racing bicycle". I would like to change the article name to be more conventional, to resolve this confusion. The Road bicycle page should have the "Racing Bicycle" page on it.
Keithonearth (
talk)
05:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)reply
Here in the UK, when someone says "road bike" they mean a racing-style bike or something similar, e.g. a traditional touring bike. This is as distinct from traditional utility bicycles which are - in the main - also ridden on the road. (I think the US manufacturers call that sort of machine a "pavement" bike.) I would say that in this sense, most road bikes are racing bikes.
You indicate that a traditional touring bike is essentially similar to a racing bike. I disagree with this assessment entirely. David Herlihy's excellent works on the touring vs. racing culture in France in the early 20th Century shows conclusively that the split between racing and touring bicycles occurred before either style had achieved any sort of dominance in the industry. The two bicycle types are distinctly different, as are single speeds and other road bicycles made by companies such as
Rivendell Bicycle Works and
Surly Bikes. Racing bicycles are a subset of road bicycles, not vice-versa. If any merge were to occur, it should be merging racing bicycles in to this article.
Ebikeguy (
talk)
14:41, 24 April 2011 (UTC)reply
Hi there. I think my point was more that in some parts of the world, phrase "road bike" doesn't just mean "any bike designed for the road". Here in the UK, the phrase "road bike" is used to mean a racing-style bike and their close cousins. I'd agree that merging "racing bike" into "road bike" would be the right way to do things.
British cyclo-touristes - including myself - tend to ride bikes that are essentially not that different from a racing bike, so apologies if my example was a bit regional: see
Chris Juden's article to get an idea where we're coming from. However, this is a bit of a red-herring.
My original question is essentially this: in the UK, "road bike" means a lightweight "racing bike" or something similar. Many cycle manufacturers use the same classification. How widespread is this globally?
Ah! Thank you very much for the clarification. In my 30+ years in the US biking industry, I have not encountered the specific definition of "road bike" to which you refer. Here, a road bicycle in anything ridden on the road, versus a mountain bike that is ridden on trails. It seems there is quite a difference in regional usage. Perhaps we should make reference to such difference in the article? Cheers,
Ebikeguy (
talk)
15:55, 1 May 2011 (UTC)reply