Talk:Roller coaster

HIST406 Critique

The Wikipedia entry for “Roller Coaster” provides a brief discussion of the history of roller coaster technology, followed by several sections dedicated to roller coaster etymology, mechanics and safety, with a somewhat detailed explanation of the various types of roller coasters. The article is satisfactorily written and some obvious care has been applied to grammar and page arrangement, it flows well with concise and easy to understand language, for the most part. Although not perfect, the entry’s appearance and readability is of good quality overall. The article explains the common amusement park roller coaster as “a specialized railroad system, a roller coaster consists of a track that rises in designed patterns, sometimes with one or more inversions that turn the rider briefly upside down.” It proceeds to give a brief overview of its history, from the conception of the basic idea of the roller coaster in fifteenth century Russia to the complex modern steel roller coasters of today, giving particular attention to their rise to popularity at the end of the nineteenth century. The article gives a short explanation of how this piece of technology became known as a “roller coaster” and then explains in slightly more detail the mechanics of various forms of roller coasters as well as the safety regulations and precautions involved in roller coaster use. The mechanics and safety sections in particular are lacking in valid or thorough sourcing, which is especially problematic for such technical subjects. The article proceeds to differentiate between the various types of roller coasters by type and height categorization. The article excels here, providing plenty of links to more specified types of roller coasters, links to major roller coaster manufactures, as well as a full gallery of images of the different types of modern coasters. The biggest pitfall of this article is also perhaps the most important aspect of any article – its documentation. The sourcing is incomplete and weak, far too few sources were used period for such a detailed piece of technology, and much of the jargon and factual evidence presented was left un-cited. Most of the sources that were referenced are informal commercial internet articles one would find in a typical Google search of “roller coasters”. There are seemingly no true scholarly sources consulted at all in the references, and the page has indeed been marred by frivolous and spurious additions as there has been hundreds of edits made in just the past two years. There are many illustrations provided, but they are for the most part of the same general subject, there are no technical illustrations or diagrams as to the intricate inner workings of the roller coasters operation, and there is only one sketch of any pre-twentieth century roller coaster of any kind. With all its setbacks, the Wikipedia entry is just about as informative and useful as the “roller coaster” entry on Encyclopedia Britannica or other conventional encyclopedias, Wikipedia’s entry’s lack of appropriate citations, however, make it less reliable than conventional encyclopedias. Overall, the subject is covered thoroughly enough for any typical Wikipedia user, but its lack of effective sourcing and the absence of a variety of illustrations leaves it a fairly weak article with much room for improvement. My most stressed suggestion would be to go through and cite all the technical and complicated information with a reliable source, removing what cannot be verified, and then to collect a many more credible, academic sources to apply to the entry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HIST406-11kparsley (talk • contribs) 00:17, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Roller Coaster Wiki

Hi all! I would like to suggest that we add the following wiki as an external link:

Roller Coaster Wiki

As with many other topic-specific wikis, they are linked in the Wikipedia article of the same topic. (Examples: Star Wars, Mario, Minecraft)

Thanks for your consideration! KoopaTroop (talk) 04:20, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikia should not be used as an external link for Wikipedia. -- MST☆R ^{(Chat Me!)} 04:22, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Not trying to be rude, but starwars.wikia.com is Wikia, and it is linked by Wikipedia. KoopaTroop (talk) 04:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not surprised :) any article with an immense amount of fans, it would be expected that there would be a link to the fansite-original research-filled Wikia. Not saying everything Wikia has is unreliable; Just that WP has a more reliable approach. I used to edit Wikia. -- MST☆R ^{(Chat Me!)} 04:30, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I utterly disagree. Roller Coasters are very popular, and Roller Coaster Wiki is not inaccurate. Ruler of Coasters  Talk  17:41, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

After looking around on that Wikia, it looks like ~90% of the text is directly ripped from Wikipedia... so a link to it would be quite redundant. 22:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

You have to be kidding me... All the text is directly written from the users. We have had some people copy wikipedia text and use that, but we took it down and told them that there is no reason for readers to go to Coasterpedia, if its text from the big site. Now, on the other hand, if have gotten some information from Wikipedia, like the Roller Coaster page. We also have photo's from Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean 90% of the text is ripped. I would say about 5-10% is. Ruler of Coasters  Talk  19:55, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm another editor on Roller Coaster Wiki - It would be great if Wikipedia could link to it, like "Read more at Coasterpedia" etc, but give us time and Roller Coaster Wiki will become better than Wikipedia anyway :PLachlan5963 (talk) 21:54, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I love Roller Coaster Wiki!Roller Coaster Wiki (talk) 18:08, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Models

I would like to put all the models of roller coasters into this article but I'm not sure how we could do that because there's already lists of roller coaster types. Like Inverted Impulse roller coaster wouldn't fall into train type, track layout or mechanics but I would like to get the models into the article. There's models of coasters in Category:Types of roller coasters, but some of them wouldn't fall into the three categories currently in the article. Any suggestions on how to do that would be great.--Astros4477 (talk) 22:58, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Help request

Please replace 'SBNO' (there's only one occurence) with 'closed', in line with general consensus expressed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amusement Parks/Archive 3#Status fields in attraction articles & Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Standing but not operating. Thanks. 2001:E68:542E:805D:8C57:F442:F6F9:83E8 (talk) 05:51, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Done Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:47, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. 2001:E68:542E:805D:C0C7:FC4A:69D4:D487 (talk) 20:01, 25 October 2017 (UTC)