Community Wiki cleanup

Question

Partially because of a little inspiration from Jeff's comments on our "useful accessory" question, and also a lot of looking around the site, I'd really like to do a bit of cleanup on the questions marked "community wiki".

A lot of these date to the early days of the beta, but now they kind of set a bad example.

The search query I'm using is wiki:1 is:question closed:0

There's 47 of them.

We have a few options with each question:

1. Leave alone (it should be a community wiki question)
2. De-wiki it (it's a constructive answerable question that should never have been made community wiki)
3. Close it (it's not constructive)
4. Lock it with the "historical significance" reason like we've done with What's your most useful cycle accessory?

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Offers to help by flagging each question with how you think it should be handled?

Answer 1

Let's start off easy. Stuff that's a useful index/glossary that I recommend leaving as it is:

• Terminology Index
• Dictionary of regional vocabulary differences (US vs UK) (why not Australia/New Kealand/Canada as well?)
• Different kinds of handlebars
• What kinds of brake designs exist, and what are their general pros and cons? (This one's a little messy, but I think it's got good information. Perhaps this one could use a little tidying up internally, but it's a good CW.)

Please vote this up to agree with leaving these as they are. Please vote down if you disagree and discuss in the comments.

Answer 2

These questions really belong on a forum, not here; they're either lists, or people chatting about stuff.

• What is a good iPhone app for bikers really doesn't belong here.

• Charities that accept bike donations is another list question that should be closed.

• What is your favorite/preferred road shoe? cannot be answered without opinions, and is a list of waycoolawesome road shoes, with people chatting about them.

Making this CW, please feel free to add to or change this list.

Answer 3

1. I think our Terminology Index and US/UK translation dictionary are good examples of things that should be left community wiki. Bike-friendly Bus networks is an ok example, too.
   Basic criteria: is a long list of undifferentiated answers actually useful?
2. I think things like Transporting Twins and How to clean up shouldn't be community wiki at all.
   Basically, if the question is repairable to being a constructive question, there's no reason for it to be wiki.
3. https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/1438/innovative-and-creative-bicycles should be closed.
   It's a "just for fun" question, no real attempt at any kind of useful information, and it's got a negative vote.
4. A lot of these questions are "polls" with phrasings like "what are your favorite" or "what are some". I'd be in favor of closing, but locking as "historical" would be fine.