Talk:MINI (BMW)

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SteveBaker 15:47, 21 December 2005 (UTC) In case anyone wonders why I chose to call this page 'BMW MINI' instead of 'New MINI' (although 'New MINI' redirects here) - it is because things that are 'New' don't stay new forever. There are already signs that people are using the term 'New MINI' to refer to the 2007 model - with the '01 through '06 models being called just 'MINI'. If that distinction sticks, then calling this page 'New MINI' would have been a very bad idea. Since we need to distinguish 'MINI' from 'Mini' and we don't want Wiki articles that differ only in CaPiTaLiSaTiOn - I decided to use the second most commonly used alternative name for the car: 'BMW MINI'.

FYI: At the time I split this article off from 'Mini', there were over 650 other pages referring to 'Mini' - about 150 of which were really talking about the BMW MINI. I fixed as many as I could - but in the case of perhaps 5 or 6 of those pages, it was not clear which car was being talked about - so I left them alone and posted a note to the talk page for each asking the authors to fix the link if they needed to. (Fixing 650 links in one session is *NOT* fun - but reading every single Wiki article that refers to the Mini was definitely an education in Mini trivia!)

Contents 1 External Links 2 Hydrogen Powered MINI 3 Anti Counterfeit Mini Campaign 4 Classic Mini article is FA - you know what's next! 5 Writing not good enough 6 Mk I and Mk II

[edit] External Links

There is a lot of back and forth addition and removal of links going on here. It's really counter-productive and must be annoying some people almost as much as it annoys me! I think the protagonists should post (on this Talk page) their points of view as to what consists a sensible link and what does not rather than having the 'discussion' in an edit war.

IMHO, we should link to the official MINI web site and to the top three or four fan sites ONLY. We cannot support links to every single little two-bit fan page - but I strongly believe we should link to the most popular ones because those are the places where our readers can find points of view that most definitely don't show up on the official MINI web site.

The Wikipedia external links guidelines (and remember they are ONLY guidelines) say that we should certainly include:

• Sites that contain neutral and accurate material not already in the article. Ideally this content should be integrated into the Wikipedia article, then the link would remain as a reference.
• Sites with other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article, such as textbooks or reviews.

...and it's "Maybe OK to add":

• Fan sites: On articles about topics with many fansites, including a link to one major fansite is appropriate, marking the link as such. In extreme cases, a link to a web directory of fansites can replace this link.

...and that it's NOT OK to link to:

• Sites that primarily exist to sell products or services.

I take this to mean that the recently deleted references to sites like MINI2 and NAM are in the 'Maybe' catagory - and I would prefer to include a couple of them on that basis. However, it is clear that we most definitely should not attempt to list every MINI Club or fan site on the planet. That's quite definitely contrary to Wiki policy.

Since the 'official' MINI site undoubtedly exists primarily to sell products, we should arguably not link to the main MINI site - but the Wiki guidelines also state that we should include links to:

• Articles about any organization, person, or other entity should link to their official site, if they have one.

...which says that we should link to the BMW MINI site. Since we have totally contradictory rules, we should go with our gut feeling - and since nobody has yet attempted to delete the link to the official MINI site, it seems that we all feel it should be there regardless of the guidelines (which are only guidelines).

Sites that contain much more TECHNICAL content about the MINI than makes sense to put in the Wiki are fair game for inclusion under the 'Should link to' guidelines - but we should strive to find the best set of information using the minimum number of external links - and again, not link all over the place just because we can.

In the spirit of discussion, I'm going to refrain from reverting or editing the links section for a few days to let everyone have a chance to discuss what links this article should have - but failing that discussion, expect me to revert any attempt to add more junk links and expect me to reinstate removed links that do in fact fall within the Wiki guidelines.

SteveBaker 06:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

My interpretation of WP:EL is that the external links section of this article should link to the BMW MINI site but not much else.

If there were one or two fan sites that clearly stood out from the rest I would have no problem with linking to them, but I agree fully that we should not link to every fan site in existence. The problem then becomes choosing the top sites and keeping the others off of the page--my experience with wikipedia so far is that this is not possible: Generally people adding such links are active members of, if not the creators of such sites and they are quick to cry foul if we accept some links to sites but exclude others. My prefered solution is to avoid having such links in an external links section. Instead I prefer to follow point 5 on WP:EL

"Sites that contain neutral and accurate material not already in the article. Ideally this content should be integrated into the Wikipedia article, then the link would remain as a reference."

So, if a club site has useful information we should include that information in the article and cite them as a reference. I see this as important because content that is outside of wikipedia is of little use to the goals of the project (we cannot guarantee free access to such information); properly cited content within wikipedia is of much greater use. JeremyA 06:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

But WP:EL tells us that it's OK to link to the top fan site. IMHO, it would be very wrong to ONLY link to the official MINI site because WP:EL warns us about linking to commercial sites. The official MINI site is also a poor choice because it has almost zero links to other sites and to get to the section where you can talk to MINI Owners, you have to already own a MINI. People seeking information about the car (eg because they want to buy one) NEED to be directed to somewhere like MINI2.com in order to find the kind of information that will never be in this Wiki. eg. Suppose you were thinking of buying an MCS automatic. Nowhere in this Wiki are *we* going to say "The automatic is having terrible software problems - don't buy one" - that information isn't on the official MINI web site - or in any place that it links to. However, go to MINI2 or NAM or one of the other big "fan sites" and you'll find lots of threads about the MCSa that list it's problems. I think we are doing the reader a disservice by excluding the one and only source of 'real' information about the car. Admittedly, there is a problem with picking "the one true fan site" and excluding the wannabies. However, that's no worse than the situation right now where entries are being added and subtracted about daily. At least if the principal editors here are in some sort of agreement - and a conclusion is reached here and clearly stated, argued, and agreed then we can explain to people WHY we are removing their entries. My proposal is to link to MINI's official site and to MINI2 - and to delete all others. I'm happy to listen to arguments as to why some other fan site might be more appropriate - but IMHO, it has to fulfill several criteria: (1) Large membership. (2) Independence from BMW/MINI. (3) International audience. (4) More than just a set of forums, more than just a news site. SteveBaker 15:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem of choosing the 'top' fan site is indeed an issue - but the problem of keeping other fan sites out of the links is there whether we link to one or to none.

Where possible I prefer linking to articles—we already have an article on MINI2 (which, because it is the subject of the article, has a link to the MINI2 website that I have no problem with), why not just link to that article. Likewise, if there are other notable fansites articles could be written about them too (articles on any non-notable fansite would, of course, be likely to be the subject of an AfD).

Equally, if you were concerned about the commercial nature of the BMW link we could also just go with a link to the BMW article, which already has links to many BMW pages. JeremyA 19:28, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

So, why not just add http://www.gomotoring.com to the external links list? This website displays RSS feeds from every major MINI Cooper fansite on the web. --Ivan Diaz 18:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Because gomotoring is a for-profit site - if we advertise that site - then the floodgates would open and we'd have to link to them all. The Wikipedia guidelines for external links are quite clear on this policy - so, no, we can't link to gomotoring. SteveBaker 21:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, that makes sense. --Ivan Diaz 23:26, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hydrogen Powered MINI

I don't like this section. It talks about a one-off concept car that was trotted out in 2001 and has not been seen since. If we are going to talk about concept cars then let's have a section about concept MINI's and add the Hydrogen car into that - but as it is, it doesn't fit.

I have already removed the sentence that says that the hydrogen MINI would have the same "power and efficiency" because it's not at all clear how you measure the relative efficiency of two utterly different fuels such as gasoline and hydrogen. By miles-per-gallon? That would make zero sense. Miles per dollar? Since there is no common source of cheap commercial hydrogen, that makes no sense. Miles per kilogram? Again - what sense does that make?

I vote to delete the entire section about the hydrogen MINI along with the photo.

SteveBaker 03:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Followup: It looks like the copyright bot removed the photo of the hydrogen MINI - so I took the time to research the MINI concept cars and rolled the Hydrogen MINI into that new section. If anyone has some USABLE (ie with allowable copyright status) photo's of those concept cars, it would be nice to add one or two.

SteveBaker 15:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anti Counterfeit Mini Campaign

I've noticed billboards in the San Francisco Bay Area warning people about fake Minis out there. These billboards have the Mini logo on the corner, so if the manufacturer is paying for this campaign, this counterfeit business must be fairly serious.

Nah - it's a clever advertising campaign. Go to http://www.counterfeitmini.org/ enjoy the fun! SteveBaker 00:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Classic Mini article is FA - you know what's next!

So - after just a couple of months of work, the classic Mini article made Featured Article. How about we try to push this one up there too?

I've added some photos that add a bit of interest to the article and put in a bunch of references - but we could really use some more quality source material. SteveBaker 02:52, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I put the article up for WP:GA/N hopefully that'll create some feedback. SteveBaker 18:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

OK! We made it to "Good Article" - Peer review is up next. SteveBaker 22:15, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Comments from Peer Review seem to have dried up - so I'm moving on to WP:FAC. SteveBaker 15:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Writing not good enough

Per the "writing not good enough" critique, I've tried to clean up the lead paragraph a bit...

• For the "MINI is both the name of" statement, I strongly think the car should be mentioned first, and the BMW subsidiary should be mentioned second, because most readers coming to the article are probably more interested in the car.
• I added a mention of the British Motor Corporation in the lead, just to better explain what "The BMW MINI" meant (and because I think it's a fairly important fact to introduce up-front)
• The predecessor Mini, and how long it was manufactureed, were mentioned in several places throughout the lead paragraph, I tried to consolidate those facts to be near each other
• I moved the mention of colloquial names ("classic Mini", "new MINI", "BMW MINI", "MINI in all caps") into a single sentence
• I tried to reduce the number of parentheses... sentences probably read better if the information is included in a normal sentence.

Some additional suggestions for the lead paragraph:

• Is the "Morris car plant" reference very important? If not, could it be moved down to the body of the article?
• I think the "classic Mini" reference doesn't need to be explicitely stated. I think it should be more or less obvious to the reader, and could either be moved down to the body, or removed completely.

--Interiot 18:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I like your rewrite very much - thank you! However, in your zeal to condense it - it's now too short (WP:MOS says two or three paragraphs) - so we need to find some more words to pull from the body of the article or revert to a more leisurely description without having to pack so many facts into so few words. I think you also inadvertently introduced an untruth: BMC didn't make the Mini for 40 years - the company changed names and ownerships a dozen times over that period and it was also made by Authi, and a bunch of other overseas companies under license. I thought it was important to mention the Morris plant because it ties the MINI to the history of the classic Mini (which was also made by Morris for some span of it's life). There is a very real danger of getting the impression that BMW just did a knock-off of BMC's design - which isn't really what we're trying to convey here. Also, I wanted to establish naming ("classic Mini" versus "BMW MINI" early on because when one reads the article, it's easy to confuse Mini with MINI (they sound identical) - hence the desire to use 'Classic Mini' everywhere where the old car was referred to (unless it's obvious from context). I'm a little busy at work right now - but I'll take another spin at this tonight. SteveBaker 20:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I changed the "by British Motor Corporation" part to indicate it was done by its successors. I reworded the sentence a bit, because that sentence was getting a little long. But it lost the "made for 40 years", and IMHO there's a tiny bit of discord between "and its successors" and "To distinguish it from its predecessor", but maybe that's just me.

I guess I don't think it should be condensed per-se... I just think it shouldn't often wander off to a different topic and then revisit a topic that was covered a sentence and a half earlier; and I think that a single sentence shouldn't be overly long. Sure, expanding the lead sounds good. In terms of more things to add to the lead section... I think it would be very good to summarize the rest of the article, introduce the reader to things that they'll read in more detail later. Things to include might be... 1) what type of car it is... especially leaning towards the fact that the original Mini was believed to be a very unique body style, 2) a brief overview of the various models maybe. There's probably more that could be included in a summary...

Ahh, maybe the Morris detail can be mentioned in the body? Also, what kind of article can this be if it doesn't mention the words "go-kart-like handling"?? :) --Interiot 20:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

(It would be an article with one less hard-to-find citation!) SteveBaker 00:52, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

If "MINI" isn't an acronym for anything, which as far as I'm aware it's not, then writing it in all caps is a logoism, like writing "Macy*s" instead of "Macy's," and there's no good reason why anyone other than the BMW marketing department should do it. Surely there are other, less pretentious ways of distinguishing the BMW Mini from the classic Mini. --Mr. A. 23:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mk I and Mk II

We're getting pretty close to the release of the Mk II MINI - with the prospect of a 4-door version, the MINI traveller, a roadster, etc coming along eventually. I think we need to think fairly seriously about a major reorganisation here. Right now, the Mk II is just a little extra 'forward looking' section tacked onto the end of an article that's basically about the Mk I MINI - but over time, the Mk I stuff will become ancient history and the Mk II section will grow. If we look at the way the classic Mini article has turned out, we need to think in terms of changing this article to have a similar structure. Shifts in the where the cars are built need to be tracked - we'll need a timeline showing Mk I to Mk II transition (remembering that the MINI One, MINI One/D and Convertible models will transition to the Mk II platform at different times).

I'd really like to have another shot at Featured Article status - I still don't quite understand why we didn't make it last time around ("writing not good enough" is not an easy thing to "fix") - but the article deserves a shot at joining the Mini article with a gold star. SteveBaker 17:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)