The Panther Page

Wikipedia (and similar)

The Panther Page set out to serve many purposes. It aimed to be the focal point of Panther information on the Web, providing detailed information on the various models and history of P&M together with collecting technical knowledge and links to other information sources.

The Panther Page, launched around 1994, significantly predates Wikipedia and most forum style sites, which are becoming valuable repositories of some of this sort of information.

Up until ~2006, I had intended to steadily develop the Panther Page to include an encyclopaedic coverage of every model and every year. It is now clear that Wikipedia is a better place for this sort of detailed factual information. It is better for several reasons:
  1. It has become the #1 repository of information on the internet
  2. The software and hardware infrastructure is maintained and developed as part of a vastly bigger exercise
  3. It permits everyone to contribute
I have thus started putting detailed model information on the P&M section in Wikipedia - see particularly the links from the list of models. For now, I am also duplicating this on the Panther Page.

I encourage anyone with knowledge of a model to contribute. If the Wikipedia editing interface is an obstacle to you, please feel free to send me information and I will happily enter it. Note though the following:
  1. Wikipedia is keen on references. If the contribution has no references (preferably to books) then it will probably not remain.
  2. Wikipedia is very fussy about copyright - especially on photographs. You essentially have to own the copyright and release it to the public domain.
In terms of repositories for technical tips etc, I do not believe that Wikipedia is the appropriate place. This information is largely opinion or experience, not historical, factual, referencable material. The Yahoo! email group archives is now a repository of ten years worth of technical discussions. There is some very useful information there, although it is not structured or indexed and the searching is rather rudimentary. To address this I established a Wiki for technical information at http://panthermotorcycles.wik.is/ however there has not been a great deal of enthusiasm ato date. Any comments would be appreciated.

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