Talk:BUR Barbell Company

Comments

This company hasn't existed in 44 years (so we are not talking any advertising here). Companies - most anyway - were a lot smaller back then. The BUR Barbell company was a major player in the development of the American fitness industry. At one point it was the second largest in the country. However, its existence has long been neglected since history is written by the victors (in this case Weider and York). I believe that it should get it's own page. Thank You.

I have removed the speedy since I think there may be enough coverage out there in offline sources, and being one of the early companies is a claim to notability. You need to locate secondary source material to cite for this article, or it will be deleted anyway eventually. Gigs (talk) 21:19, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I should clarify, you need to be more specific with your citations using inline citations to specific pages. This may help you format them. Gigs (talk) 21:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I am the primary contributor to this article so far. I do not have any connection with the former BUR Barbell Company. (I wasn't even around when they were.) The purpose of this piece is to provide some background information on a significant business that some people remember but most have not heard of. I have attempted to be as objective as possible in my writing. Please let me know where any apparent bias exists and I will amend ASAP. Thank You. RMallacct (talk) 13:09, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The work you have done with adding inline citations is good. Mainly, we have to know that the information is out there and not just something you made up. I would continue adding any more inline citations you have in order to improve the verifiability of the article. Gigs (talk) 20:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I have pretty much reached the upper limit of what I can do with citations. I have traceable sources for all biographical and company information. I also have traceable sources for some product advertisements. The problem is, for many of the product lines, all I have are undated brochures (often multiple ones). I have been able to establish a relative timeline for these items based on consumer prices. However, due to the lack of concrete dates, I am never going to get 100%. I can definately prove that something was offered, just not always exactly when. Is this acceptable? If it isn't, I may have the "reliable references" box on the article page forever. I don't see any precedent for dealing with this particular situation in the user guides. Thank You. RMallacct (talk) 19:51, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I think you have done a pretty good job. It would be best to break up some of the "various brochure" citations. You can reference the same citation more than once by using <ref name="nameoftheref">Reference Text here</ref> and after that you can simply do <ref name="nameoftheref" /> to refer to the same one again. I'll do one to show you. Gigs (talk) 19:57, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks like you already did some of them that way. A few images would be good for the article. If you want to keep improving the article, you could upload some images. Images from the corporate material are probably still copyrighted, but if you check out Wikipedia:Non-free_use_rationale_guideline you should be able to write a fair-use rationale to get one in, since they are not replaceable and the company is out of business so there is no possible damage to them for us to use the images. Gigs (talk) 20:03, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. I will make the recommended edits to references and upload some copyright safe images within the next few days. Thank You. RMallacct (talk) 20:47, 10 November 2010 (UTC) I have reviewed and made changes to the BUR Barbell page based on the Links&Wikify comments. I have added links FROM other articles where possible (it was not often possible - we are talking about a long gone company here). Links have been added - often by others - and corrected by myself. I believe this means the article is now Wikified. Thank You. RMallacct (talk) 16:18, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Pictures

Check out how I did the code for the picture in the lede. That style usually works better than gallery, which disrupts the article flow. You may want to reduce the number of images and make more of them inline like that. Gigs (talk) 02:39, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Much appreciated. Believe it or not, over the past week, I was thinking about putting the factory photo exactly where you did. Looks great. RMallacct (talk) 02:52, 24 November 2010 (UTC)