Talk:9ff

I got it

Dear fellow members of wikiproject automobiles, I think I can try to expand this article, as a good start for me. I will try the best I can, but I can't make it perfect, I will just expand it and add references. Also, if someone wants to help me finish it, he is welcome. Best regards,Enivak (talk) 14:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC) Finally, done.Enivak (talk) 19:27, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Self-serving and extraordinary claims citing company website

RE: discussion of the tags I added at User_talk:AnomieBOT#9ff:

Enivak, you did not use the company website "just for information", by which I assume you mean facts that are not self-serving or extraordinary. You cited the company alone numerous times for a number of superlatives, firsts, and claims of world records. The automotive industry routinely exaggerates or equivocates when it comes to horsepower, torque, vehicle weight, economy, and class records. Most of their published data is true "from a certain point of view". It has gotten better compared with the past, but there is still a consistent difference between what car, truck and motorcycle makers claim and what independent sources discover via testing, and that difference consistently overstates the performance.

The Verifiability policy says it plainly: "the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim". See WP:ABOUTSELF.

Obviously, claims of world records are extraordinary and touting a company's products is self-serving.

As far as the various newsblogs sometimes cited along with the self-published sources, they are often simply parroting what 9ff claimed in their press releases. They didn't send a reporter to the site to observe anything or do any actual journalism. They just got an email from 9ff and posted a gloss. I see the word "officially" used in some of the cited sources, but they make no mention of who these officials are or what official record they were officiating at. It appears that a lot of the Autoblog (website)-type sources are breathlessly using "officially" in a hyperbolic way. Guinness Records are verifiable because they're published by Guinness. Records officiated by FIM or FIA are published by FIM and FIA, not Autoblog.

I don't think these claims are outright false; I just think they're exaggerated and they need better sourcing, and it is possible to find such sourcing. If I thought that wasn't the case, I'd delete the claims altogether rather than tag it {{Citation needed}}.

I tagged one as {{dubious}} because the cited sourced clearly mentioned another car that had a faster speed than the 9ff car. The source didn't mention at all that the faster car wasn't street legal. Wherever that information was coming from, it wasn't in the citations.

What I think you should to is seek out better sources, and cite them. Generally older print media is a little more reliable than news blogs. Not always. Many news blogs are quite good. Cite Guinness or FIA or whomever directly if they are the ulimate source. Remember offline sources are not only just as good as online, often they're better.

You should be very clear as to what is an "official" record, and what is someone's opinion. For example, I don't see any evidence that "fastest van" is a recognized category. If someone tested a van and published their opinion that it was the fastest, we should attribute in text whose opinion that is. Several of the superlatives claimed by 9ff are loaded with qualifiers to narrow the class their record or first is in. Who invented the class? If it was 9ff themselves, it's basically marketing and PR. If an independent source published "World's Fastest Yellow And Green Car Tested On A Thursday Driven By A Belgian Who Was Slightly Hung Over", then attribute that class to whomever made it up.

These problems are reasonably easy to fix and I think this article can be made quite good with a little more research and citations. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:02, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Dear user @Dennis Bratland:, Thanks for tagging these with the templates, and thanks for advising me! I will try to fix them imedietly! To say the truth, I did only a minor research on what sources were given by previous edits, not my research after all. If you want to help me, advice me or revert me if needed, feel free to do it!

Best regards, Enivak (talk) 08:23, 3 July 2019 (UTC) By the way, I want to ask one more question: How much time I have to find reliable sources before content is deleted? Enivak (talk) 08:43, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

There’s no time limits. If the information was misleading and harmful, most editors would want to remove it right away. If not, and it’s more a matter of formal consistency and appearances, it could be years. I would guess if it’s not done in a couple months, somebody will come along and do it themselves, or rewrite it, or substantially redact it. —Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:34, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Tomorrow I will hurry to find reliable sources! Best regards, Enivak (talk) 18:41, 3 July 2019 (UTC)