Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub

Shortcut: Pub The Travellers' pub is the place to ask questions when you're confused, lost, afraid, tired, annoyed, thoughtful, or helpful. Please check the FAQ and Help page before asking a question though, since that may save your time and others'. Please add new questions at the bottom of the page and sign your post by appending four tildes (~~~~) to it, but otherwise plunge forward! If you have a question or suggestion about a particular article, use the article's talk page to keep the discussion associated with that article. If you are having a problem that you think has to do with the MediaWiki software, please post that on Bugzilla instead. If you want to celebrate a significant contribution to Wikivoyage by yourself or others, hold a party at Celebrate a contribution. Issues related to more than one language version of Wikivoyage are discussed in the Wikivoyage Lounge on Meta. Please sweep the pub Keeping the pub clean is a group effort. If we have too many conversations on this page, it gets too noisy and hard to read. If you see an old conversation (i.e. a month dormant) that could be moved to a talk page, please do so, and add "{{swept}}" there, to note that it has been swept in from the pub. Place it on the talk page roughly in chronological order. A question regarding a destination article should be swept to the article talk page. A discussion regarding a policy or the subject of an expedition can be swept to the policy or expedition talk page. A simple question asked by a user can be swept to that user's talk page, but consider if the documentation needs updating to make it clearer for the next user with the same question. A pointer to a discussion going on elsewhere, such as a notice of a star nomination or a request to comment on another talk page, can be removed when it is old. Any discussion that occurred in the pub can be swept to where the main discussion took place. Any discussions that do not fall into any of these categories, and are not of any special importance for posterity, should be archived to Travellers' pub/Archives and removed from here. If you are not sure where to put a discussion, let it be—better to spend your efforts on those that you do know where to place.

Suggestion for price listing and currency conversion

Moving this discussion from Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Suggestion for price listing and currency conversion since it covers multiple topics like Currency, Listings, & Using Mediawiki templates. The issue of up-to-date exchange rates keeps coming up in several small discussions, so why not put this in the pub to discuss & take action, before moving to some talk page where it gets no attention?

I am not sure if I am putting this in the right place, I ve been trying to figure out where suggestions for the entire site should go but anyway, I thought about when people list prices of services or products in a country that they use the local currency and there could be a feature where the user could have the currency converted to their own currency, so they can better understand what the price of things are. If someone tells me a ride on a bus in kazakhstan costs 40 KZT or whatever example I saw, I would like to have some feature that could tell me how much that is in dollars or euros, etc. I think it would really help the traveler's expectations of costs.--Elektroid (talk) 02:30, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

It's an excellent suggestion that's been discussed a little bit, but it would require some development work. LtPowers (talk) 15:23, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

This is a good suggestion & I don't know if this is the right place or not (other good locations would be Wikivoyage talk:Currency & Wikivoyage talk:Using Mediawiki templates). There are a few ways to go about doing this:

1. Current practice is that exchange rates should be quoted in the "Buy" section of a country page. Most pages have an exchange rate quoted for 1-2 major currencies in the last couple of years. On Kazakhstan#Buy: "As of June 2012, the exchange rates are the following: US$ 1 = KZT 149.01 € 1 = KZT 188.30". This leaves the burden on a reader to find the current exchange rate themselves & do the math. Doing the math is ok for most travelers, but finding the current exchange rate shouldn't be.
2. Using a template for each time a currency is mentioned. For example, the sentence displayed as "Admission is €10." would be written as "Admission is {{10|EUR}}.". The template would allow a user to select currencies to convert in a dropdown box. While this can be useful, the downsides (IMO) outweigh the benefit. First is the difficulty of inserting the template. New users would find that adding a template each time a currency/value is mentioned overwhelming and this would be a huge burden on experienced editors to go around and clean up (even with a bot, this would be difficult to keep up with). Another reason is that it might be easy to remember/quote a price in local currency "10 cedi for a bus ride" (not 5.23 USD), "Park admission is 8 cedi" (not 4.19 USD), and so forth.
3. Creating a template for the "Buy" section of country pages which lists the exchange rates for major currencies. The rates would be updated by users. The box would simply have "Exchange Rates for [Name of currency]" at the top and then 5 or so lines below listing exchange rates for each currency & the day/month updated.
4. Creating a template which links to exchange rate websites. A modified version of w:Template:Exchange rate, using/displaying rates from openexchangerates.org instead of using links to commercial sites. The rates included could be limited to fewer currencies (like just USD, EUR, AUD, CAD, GBP) or more relevant currencies to a particular country (eg. neighboring countries). When pages are exported for print/book versions, this template would convert into a box of exchange rates accurate to the time of printing or PDF creation (either listing major currencies or adding an option to the print screen or when creating books to select which currency(-ies) to include conversions for.
5. Creating a template (or just modifying on of the previous two suggestions) which basically functions as a calculator. It would have a box to enter a unit, then the nation's currency named, then a dropdown list of currencies to convert to, then a results box that displays the conversion. So the template would look like: "Convert [box to enter unit] tenge (KZT) to [dropdown list of currencies]. [Result]"

My preference is to combine the last two ideas: Have a template box to insert in the "Buy" section of country pages (and other regions with their own currency, like Hong Kong, Isle of Man, etc) with a list of current exchange rates and at the bottom include a conversion calculator. I don't have the software language knowledge to create a template, so it would be awesome if someone could create such a template. AHeneen (talk) 19:11, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Also see Wikivoyage:Cooperating_with_Wikioverland#Currency_conversion. Wikioverland's currency dropdown converter is pretty cool. --Peter ^Talk 19:26, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's cool, but how could we use it for our texts, with prices listed on every second line? --Alexander (talk) 19:47, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikioverland has a template which includes a dropdown box. The dropdown box could be placed at the top of the page (or in MediaWiki:Sitenotice), and the prices could be given using templates with currency codes and amounts. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:14, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I would like to see possible solutions, but I am not sure that this currency converter is of high importance for our purposes. Once you are in the country, you have to pay in local currency, and you have to develop a quick conversion scheme, so it is better that you develop this scheme in advance when preparing the travel. It is also important to have some real prices in mind, so that you are not cheated or overcharged. Displaying everything in US$ may be a disservice to the traveller. --Alexander (talk) 19:47, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

It would be great for country "costs" sections though. Using this to list gas prices along with a bundle of other basic goods (accommodation, price for fast food, street food, fancy restaurant, etc.) would be very helpful. --Peter ^Talk 20:01, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

The price of petrol/gas/fuel is likely more volatile than the fuel itself. Good luck trying to keep that up to date, short of launching a site like gasbuddy.com K7L (talk) 21:56, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

We could try to grab the information automatically from other sources, or just datestamp the prices. --Peter ^Talk 01:43, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that this would be a great idea. Recently, I came across the article Freighter travel (overland travel without a car) and found that the currency rates are awfully outdated. For example, it says that 75-100 US dollars $\approx$ 100-120 euros, which might have been the case about 10 years ago, but today Europeans would feel scammed if they were to get that rate when travelling to the United States. These currency rates were already out of date by several years when the prices were first included in the article, so maybe someone didn't understand the difference between multiplication and division. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:14, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

A template that takes the local price and gives updated conversions seems feasible and a great help to the readers. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 01:30, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

We need not have special extensions, merely a template that handles this (not impossible at all, might be worth contacting User:Varnent about this), displays the local price and has a tiny button (or maybe one can just click on the symbol/name of the local currency) and he can see the price in at least the couple of major standard currencies. The conversion rates would be updated manually or by a bot. It is feasible, it is worth doing, and it would be a great boost in usability to our users. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 01:33, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Over at Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikioverland There is talk about how WV can co-operating with WikiOverland. Once of WO's features is a real-time currency converter for prices and units. See Wikivoyage:Cooperating with Wikioverland#Currency conversion for an example and explanation of how it works and how to use it. WikiOverlanders are happy to share the custom MediaWiki plugin. -Dangrec (talk) 22:58, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Might, I first add, I am not very savvy with all of wiki technologies and which plugins are available to do what. As my suggestion originally was to help make the site more manageable for the traveler using this site to plan a trip. I think I am in the school of thought with using the WO plugin as currency rates sometimes are quite volatile but in some countries currencies are very static as they are pegged to another currency for stability purposes. My original concern and reason for the suggestion is that I travel a lot and using guidebooks for price indications even within a year or two of being printed are already obsolete in the foreign currency where the local currency is still about the same for prices.

However, when one prepares for a trip at least in my sake until I m there and familiar with the local currency a few days of buying things, I convert to my home currency. So my main reason was to better prepare travelers on how to budget. I think once in the country at least speaking for myself I become accustom to local currency and know how much things cost no longer needing a guide. I find a guide is most valuable in planning before the trip and maybe the first few days afterwards, it isn't so much an issue during the entire trip. I guess I advocate the drop down box with 5-10 main currencies as in Eastern Europe the USD along with the local currency is used, from my experience living in Ukraine and visiting Russia, Romania, etc. USD is carried and often used for wage payments and when travelers of this country go abroad they often convert to USD in order to more easily convert to another currency where ever they may be headed. Also, like in Ukraine in Russia, they are just as aware of the value of the USD as their local currencies and often cars, flats for sale are quoted in USD. Anyway, I am sorry for my long rambling as I just woke up but anyway, 5-10 currencies available to convert the local currency somehow would work great, imho. And now I shall shut up :)--Elektroid (talk) 20:10, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

That's exactly how I feel too. Especially when trying to plan a trip where you need to know the gasoline prices, reading that it's 1423 Quetzales per gallon doesn't mean anything. It's much more useful to convert it to your local currency and unit (i.e. 2.3 Euro per liter or whatever). In the planning stage, it's essential. -Dangrec (talk) 17:51, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest not putting conversation rates in an article. Inflation by itself makes it difficult to keep a current view on prices, and attempting to 'add value' by providing a conversion on some arbitrary date really doesn't help. An exception might be some locations that accept US Dollars or Euros for tourist attractions. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:33, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

AHeneen is spot on when he suggests above having a template box to insert in the "Buy" section of country pages (and other regions with their own currency, like Hong Kong, Isle of Man, etc) with a list of current exchange rates (including a conversion calculator at the bottom). What do the WMF staff think about extra server loading - minimal? - and would they create such a template? -- Alice^✉ 04:15, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Rationalise Policies?

I was just reading this interesting reaction to Wikivoyage's birth over on H2G2. One comment in particular highlighted the length of our policies page and I can (to some extent) understand their point - it is a long page and doesn't seem particular clear to the reader. Could we perhaps cut it down to a few key commandments and then reserve the rest for a 'reference page', to be used when resolving disputes or for people who are particularly interested in how a certain topic should be handled? Any thoughts? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 18:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

My impression is that the OP wanted to see the scope of the project change to look far more like a travel blog and less like a yellow-page style listing of attractions, food and lodging. Certainly travelogue would be a significant change that goes beyond the formatting of a few obscure policy documents. K7L (talk) 20:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, I think the OP does have rather the wrong end of the stick about Wikivoyage and perhaps I confused the issue by including the link. I have no desire to change Wikivoyage's aims or goals, but perhaps its policy page could be condensed into a version that could be absorbed quickly, with more detailed explanations reserved for a 'reference page' or the like? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 20:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The hitchhikers seem to think that travel guides without personal stories are dull and uninteresting, but I suppose that's the nature of the h2g2. I think Nicholas' point refers to one specific comment on that thread, which indicated that the author got only a quarter of the way through Wikivoyage:Policies before falling asleep. I have no idea what he or she expected to find there, or why he or she felt it should be among his or her first stops on our wiki, but so be it. To Nicholas, I would say that Wikivoyage:Policies is the reference page; if you want commandments, that's what Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals is for. LtPowers (talk) 20:13, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Brilliant, thanks for clarifying that for me - the commenter's immediate jump to that page just confused me a bit!--Nicholasjf21 (talk) 20:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Somewhat related, I did make a proposal to make that page a little easier to digest. Discussion here. Texugo (talk) 21:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I also think that the Policies directory is way too long and daunting. I would not urge people to go and modify it, because it is a very difficult and contentious process. I will only say that on Russian Wikivoyage we used the pre-launch period to clean up, and reorganize the policies. We ended up with about 20 articles that cover all policies and manual of style. Plus ~10 non-essential articles like "Welcome, Wikipedians" or "Short guide to wiki markup".

It is also true that hitchhikers, wikivoyagers, and wikipedians see travel content differently. Hitchhikers tend to have more freedom and less policies=) --Alexander (talk) 21:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Texugo's comment above points to a number of locations on talk pages on wikivoyage where issues are discussed: but there seems to be a collection of conversations that seem to go no-where - no resolution, no further discussion, sort of left hanging, sometimes for quite a length of time... perhaps there is a time-but-no-time issue, if a conversation of support/oppose hiatus, perhaps there is a need for a bureaucrat (or uninvolved party) to wander through the unresolved issues and review whether action is required, or filing away, or requesting further discussion. As it is, at times, it looks like someone has left the lights on, and the door open, and there is no one there... on other small wikis bureaucrats are active and excellent at the cleaning up process of something like this sats (talk) 06:19, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Not to derail this discussion, but can you provide any pointers to documentation of how this resolution process is done on other wikis? I'm also greatly dismayed at the lack of resolution to many discussions, but thus far haven't been able to come up with a proposal that significantly improve the situation here. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:27, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Apologies - I have literally just had lunch with a crat from another small wiki, and I cannot provide specific documentation at this stage, as his explanations were anecdotal personal experience from that wiki, and the way he conducts his tools. The advantage of letting things sit is there is always the possibility of extra comment coming 'down the line'. sats (talk) 06:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest more widespread use of the Requests for comment page, as a central location of things needing comment. You could also create a template and post it on a lot of places to publicize. --Rschen7754 06:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Another fairly major wiki I edited at turned their equivalent of our Pub into a forum layout, with each topic getting its own "Forum:" page that is linked to from the main list. When a new topic is added or a topic is edited, it is pushed to the top of the list. Topics therefore don't disappear into the abyss and there are less ideas that are wasted and forgotten. Before a topic can be archived, it must be officially closed by an admin with the consensus implemented. Topics should not be closed merely for inactivity, although there were occasions where there was no clear consensus and topics had to be closed. I will try and work on an example in my userspace. There are really no significant downsides of such a system, though many benefits. JamesA ^>talk 07:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

A Forum extension would need to be installed before it would work, but you can see a similar setup at Wikia here. I think it would be worth trialling, to see if our community can be more efficient in its decision making and implementation. JamesA ^>talk 08:20, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that what Rschen and JamesA are saying is good and close to what my friend the crat elsewhere was alluding to - I do think that crats here need to be seen to be active, and a regular activity which requires their actions would be good to include in the process sats (talk) 10:11, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I strongly oppose that idea. 'crats on Wikivoyage are nothing more than soulless functionaries; we have no greater authority to interpret consensus than any other administrator. We just have one or two extra buttons, purely as a technical measure. LtPowers (talk) 16:44, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I can't see an obvious solution to this issue, but I think some means of ensuring issues were resolved is very important. Having read through this page, lots of interesting ideas (Tourist Office etc) appear to have just stagnated and ground to a halt, which I think is a shame. Could we somehow integrate the 'Request for Comment' page within the Travellers' pub? At present it doesn't seem to be attracting much interest really, which is a shame. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 17:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

LtPowers - I'm not sure that assigning bureaucrats the job of "interpreting consensus" is necessarily the right solution, but having a group of users who have been given the specific responsibility of reading through a discussion and summarizing the apparent consensus (or lack thereof) when called upon to do so might be useful. As it stands now, unless there is a very, very clear consensus we tend to debate endlessly with no one willing to say "I think this is where we are", so giving some users the specific job of summarizing discussions to help move things along might be an idea worth pursuing. An alternative might be to change our discussion norms to insist that when discussions get long we add a "Summary" sub-header that should contain a short summary of the current discussion status along with proposed action items; that would eliminate the need for any new user roles. I'm just spitballing, but something along this line might be useful. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:17, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Ryan, that's just the sort of thankless task we would inflict on our crats. Rattle the cage occasionally to wake up the inmates. Seriously though, it would be good to have someone keep an eye on stagnant discussions and suggest a conclusion. At the least it would give interested parties an opportunity to agree or disagree with the suggested results. It doesn't have to be a crat though, the task could be rotated amongst volunteers or the whole janitorial staff. If we all take a turn on a rota it would spread the load. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:34, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea to me. In many cases a simple statement of where the discussion is at would, I think, lead to a consensus. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 17:48, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why it should be anyone's assigned responsibility to do this. I certainly have no interest in doing so. Anyone can find a stagnant discussion and attempt to clarify the consensus found there. In fact, people do it a lot. LtPowers (talk) 21:35, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I really don't like this recent trend towards assigning non-janitorial tasks to admins/crats. Agree totally with LtPowers --Inas (talk) 10:26, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, I don't think it's necessary for the 'Summariser' to be an Admin or a Bureaucrat, I just think we should encourage (perhaps the person who started the discussion?) to sum up where the topic's at, showing any consensus but also 'bumping' the topic at the same time. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 10:38, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:Articles needing Geo parameter

With IsPartOf, we have put the blank template call into the article models, and when an article is created without filling it in, it adds the page to Category:Articles needing IsPartOf parameter. Why don't we do the same thing for the Geo template? Texugo (talk) 11:26, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I thought this would be easy, but going wrong somewhere with the syntax. Experiment in Template:Geo/sandbox. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:25, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Weird. I couldn't figure out what the problem is either. Anyone else want to have a go? Texugo (talk) 12:55, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

User:K7L seems to have gotten your test page working now.Texugo (talk) 17:09, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Partially working... it doesn't turn off the globe icon if the co-ordinates are missing but it does populate the maintenance category properly. K7L (talk) 17:12, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Any template wizards around here? Texugo (talk) 20:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

It's been 2 months now and it's still only half-working. Does anyone know how to make it turn off the globe when the coordinates are missing? Texugo (talk) 14:36, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Icon links

I've proposed changing our "[17]" footnote style in-line external links to an icon. The current icon proposed is this: . We would also replace our current gray icon link in Template:Listing with the same blue globe, bringing our in-line and templated links into sync.

The blue globe is not necessarily the best symbol we could possibly use, but I'd like to get the Bugzilla request in, make the change, and then have a lengthier discussion about an ideal url symbol.

Please, pretty please, comment at Wikivoyage talk:External links#Icon links, even if only to say "Yes, let's make this change for now. ~~~~" or "@#$% off Peter. ~~~~

--Peter ^Talk 01:26, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Tourism Bureau Expedition Pilot Scheme

Hi there! Over on the Tourism Bureau Expedition we're currently trying to set up a pilot scheme to contact around 10 different tourism agencies and bring them into the fold. To do that we could with a number of people who are willing to contact the tourism bureaux of areas they are familiar with, but also people to have a look at and comment on the proposals that have been made on the discussion page so far. We'd be very grateful for any volunteers! --Nick (talk) 11:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Wrong images

As a result of the migration to Wikimedia and the use of files on Commons some articles use the wrong images. That happens if the old file was not copied to Commons. I think many of you know that but just to be sure.

For example this edit. The text under the image says Gullfoss in July 2006 but the image shown was probably from December 2008. So you either have to copy the old image to Commons or change the text under the photo. A few days ago I removed a photo from an article about a place in China because the image showed food from Delhi (India).

It will be impossible to check all articles from A to Z to see if the images are correct. But if everyone could check if they notice an article where the photo does not look right. I also think that all articles listed on the main page should be checked. --MGA73 (talk) 14:39, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Now I again remember when WV just had moved to commons, when I spotted a photo of a bottle of Swedish lemonade in a Paris article instead of a famous park (both bear the name Trocadero)... Ypsilon (talk) 10:30, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

That was fixed in January! LtPowers (talk) 13:19, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

But that was only fixed by the bot if the file was moved to Commons with a new name. If the file was not moved for some reason (for example no source, no license or no permission) then the local usage has to be fixed or checked manually. --MGA73 (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Would it be possible to automatically generate a list of candidate images and articles that need to be reviewed? E.g. by having a script compare the images on Commons with those on WV-old? —Ruud 18:06, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hm... That would indeed be nice. You could perhaps catch some of the files by looking in the deletion log for deleted file pages. And perhaps Stefan could help with files from WTS. I'll ask him. --MGA73 (talk) 09:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Unified Watchlists

I realise that this is way beyond our scope, but I believe it's something we should be campaigning for as part of our efforts to involve more people on Wikivoyage. Whilst discussing the Tourist Office's link on Wikipedia (here) this was raised as an issue that would prevent editors from working on a number of projects at once. Such an issue clearly has been floating around Wikimedia projects for a while (Exhibit A, your honour), but is seemingly yet to be implemented. As small wiki with much to gain (from users at our biggest brother in particular) is there anything we can do to try and nudge the entire Wikimedia community in this direction? --Nick (talk) 20:20, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I have an account on all publicly editable WMF wikis (over 700+)! What I generally do is check the primary 4 that I am involved in (English Wikipedia, Meta, Wikidata, and here) every few hours and have email on user talkpage message turned on for all the other projects. I also have a link to my home project on all my userpages. It's not an ideal system but it works enough for me. --Rschen7754 20:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Tagline

From the comments above it looks like we're going to need a new tagline. If possible, can we try and make it short and it would probably would help if it weren't idiomatic. Here's a couple of thoughts: 'Liberating travel'; 'Set travel free'; 'Travel Freedom'. Any more ideas? --Nick (talk) 18:25, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Travellers helping travellers. Texugo (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

My vote goes with the above. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:50, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There was some discussion earlier at meta:Talk:Wikivoyage/Logo#Tagline issue, but it didn't go anywhere. The other languages should probably have some input; maybe we can talk about it at meta:Wikivoyage/Lounge? LtPowers (talk) 18:43, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Good thinking - I've copied this across to meta:Wikivoyage/Lounge#Tagline - please continue there. :) --Nick (talk) 19:05, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Copied? What about Move instead? Trouble with copying discussion from one place to another without closing it at the one place is the another doesn't the one update and visa versa. Shall we Move this discussion to Meta then? --Rogerhc (talk♣) 23:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it's best to leave at least a pointer to it here. Many of us don't frequent Meta. Texugo (talk) 23:25, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I think Texugo's got it. What could be a better or more natural tagline than "travellers helping travellers"? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:45, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"Travellers helping travellers" sounds good. Ypsilon (talk) 10:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll echo my support for Texugo's tagline. PerryPlanet (talk) 13:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I too like 'Travellers helping travellers' - I think it's very clear and effective, but also gives as slight hint at this project's history. --Nick (talk) 14:07, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The only problem I have with the Travellers helping travellers is the british/american spelling thing. Personally, I don't care, but we've seen enough discussion and time consumed on this, that using traveller/traveler in such a high profile place is going to lead to futile discussions. --Inas (talk) 23:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

'Travellers helping travelers'? :) But seriously, you are right - could we perhaps say that, as it's already in use in the Pub 'travellers' is the WV standard? It's either that or changing an excellent tagline to something with consistent spelling across continents. --Nick (talk) 23:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

'Travellers Helping Travellers' is not a good tag line. We are not helping each other in general, we are specifically writing and maintaining a Free Travel Guide. So 'The Free Travel Guide' is the right tag line. It communicates what we are to those who don't know. That is essential. Tell me, what is 'Travellers Helping Travellers'? We forked for a good reason. We changed our name because Legal told us we must. No one has told us we must change our tag line. It says clearly to all what we are, and that has not changed. 'The Travel Guide' maybe, if we must change the tag line. But who says we must? --Rogerhc (talk♣) 03:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree Rogerhc. -- DerFussi (talk) 06:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

There is more than one free travel guide so "The Free Travel Guide" is not accurate. One problem with "Travellers Helping Travellers" is that it might be taken that one must be a traveller to edit WV, whereas any human can edit, even if they never leave their armchair. What about "A Free Travel Guide", which is entirely accurate. Nurg (talk) 07:39, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not entirely convinced of Rogerhc's argument that continuing to use the old WT slogan, "The Free Travel Guide", is permissible - and I suspect that the token modification that Nurg suggested, "A Free Travel Guide", might not be kosher either. I think perhaps WMF Legal should weigh in before we make any assumptions about what's legally defensible and what isn't. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 09:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

If some of you don't like "travellers helping travellers," can't we just go with "The travel guide anyone can edit" and call it a day, rather than bugging WMF Legal? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:24, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

As my initial comment on this thread stated, I actually like the slogan "Travellers Helping Travellers" a lot. However, if it's going to cause a problem for us legally (especially given that our opponent in that hypothetical scenario has already proven themselves to be about as lawsuit-happy as they come), it may very well be necessary to pursue a different option. It would be nice to hear from WMF Legal regarding this, but if not, I think it's better to be safe than sorry. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:48, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Andre, to clarify, it is not "travellers helping travellers" that has a potential legal problem - that one is A-OK. They were talking about keeping "the free travel guide" which WT still uses and has emblazoned into their logo which appears on their every page, and I think legal does frown on it, because during the discussion for logos, legal came in and removed "the free travel guide" from all the nominated logos. Texugo (talk) 11:25, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I personally dislike 'Travellers helping travellers', as it doesn't specify how they're helping each other. Through travel guides? Through free money/flights/accommodation? Through a forum with tips/questions/answers? Through finding travel buddies to go trekking with? etc. I like 'The Free Travel Guide', but IB will most certainly jump at any excuse to sue, and they may even have a case this time. Wikitravel was around first, so they got to choose the tagline first. They'll claim such a tagline is brand usurping. Is there another way we can rephrase it? Something like 'The travel guide written by travellers' (not a suggestion, more a prompt for ideas). JamesA ^>talk 12:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

@Texugo - You're right, of course. Working the graveyard shift can fry one's brain. Ugh. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 12:50, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

"The Free Travel Guide" is a blatant ripoff of WP's tagline "The Free Encyclopedia". IB really shouldn't be trying to get their tripe mistaken for a legit Wikimedia project with this sort of tag. K7L (talk) 13:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I would prefer something more original. I do prefer the succinctness of "travellers helping travellers", and its non-specificity doesn't bother me much, but just to toss a few more words around:

• something about "leading the way" or "showing the way"
• "guides by travellers"
• "free guides by travellers"
• "(guides) for and by travellers"

Incidentally, and this is not applicable to the slogan I think, but it's interesting that we have not coopted the phrase "bon voyage" for some kind of regular use here.Texugo (talk) 13:18, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I don't see any need at all for us to stress that it is "free". It just reminds of the WT slogan, and I don't think anyone these days would assume that they would be asked to pay for any kind of wiki.Texugo (talk) 13:22, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

"Travellers guiding travellers"? PerryPlanet (talk) 15:46, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm with K7L - Wikipedia's tagline is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", so Wikimedia clearly has an established right to that branding, and thus it seems that legally we would have as much (and probably more) right to the "the free worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit" tagline than any other site would. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

That is good, but it's also quite long... perhaps not suitable for the portal. On WP's portal they just use 'The Free Encyclopedia'. --Nick (talk) 16:11, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

'Open travel guide'? --Danapit (talk) 16:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Free as in speech, Texugo, not free as in beer. "Open" is also problematic because non-techies don't know what "open" means. LtPowers (talk) 17:14, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Who cares about free or open anyway ;-) It's a tagline. I say we're "The best online travel guide"! And since we're not WP, we don't even need a source to prove it. :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 17:28, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Nick - while legal advice is needed, my understanding is that given Wikipedia's taglines, Wikimedia should have a strong legal case for using "The free travel guide" (akin to "The free encyclopedia") as well as the longer version that appears on the Main Page of "the free worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit" (akin to "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"). I don't think we should have to change anything. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

"Wikivoyage, the free travel guide that doesn't suck corporate ass". Texugo (talk) 17:46, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I changed it to Travel Guide on the www.wikivoyage.org sky prototype. It is not a portal anymore I hope! It is now a _travel guide search box_ (on which you can select the language you want); I'm trying to make it so at least. The key is I think to simplify it and emphasize the Search box, like Google.com does. The short identifier "Wikivoyage: Travel Guide" is I think working better to that end than the longer "Wikivoyage: The Free Travel Guide" which multiplied by 11 languages feels too cluttered there. Am I making progress? --Rogerhc (talk♣) 19:12, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

That's looking great Roger! Perhaps we have 'Travel Guide' (or maybe "The Travel Guide) as our tagline and have 'Travellers helping travellers' as our slogan - to be used elsewhere? --Nick (talk) 21:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Nick. Look, www.wikivoyage.org is not just an English Wikivoyage page. To take this to the next level, we must move this discussion to Meta. So...

A few extra suggestions carried across from Meta as the discussion there is fairly... mute. :) 1 - 'The Open Travel Guide'. 2- 'The Traveller's Travel Guide'. --Nick (talk) 17:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Please discuss www.wikivoyage.org changes at m:Wikivoyage/Lounge, concerns all WV language versions. Thx --Rogerhc (talk♣) 23:29, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Help with price bands

My apologies, as this is the kind of question that I am sure must have come up, what are the price bands for-budget-mid range and splurge? I've tried looking and searching for a guideline myself with no success.--KTo288 (talk) 14:31, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Depends on the place, though they could stand to be more clearly defined in a lot of articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

As Ikan noted, since prices vary so greatly from location to location the bands vary by article. You can use Template:Eatpricerange or Template:Sleeppricerange to denote the range being used on an article you edit - see San Francisco/Fisherman's Wharf#Eat for a usage example. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:22, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay thanks, not really the anwser I was anticipating, will check through other articles to work out appropriate bands. Thanks for everybody'ss time.--KTo288 (talk) 15:56, 22 March 2013 (UTC)15:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Amsterdam MediaWiki Hackathon

From May 24th to 26th there will be a MediaWiki hackathon in Amsterdam. You might want to drop by if you happen to be in the neighbourhood. I'll certainly be there. —Ruud 10:41, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage articles on a map

I've been browsing wikivoyage trying to decide where to go next. I ended up making a side project out of putting articles on a map: http://www.cheriot.com Cheriot (talk) 14:30, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

That's very nice! --Nick (talk) 18:27, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

That's very cool, and an interesting way to see what kind of geographic coverage we've got. What are your plans for this? Is it something that could potentially be integrated here? -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:21, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! The first direction is adding more data. I find the most useful resources when I'm looking for a place to travel are wikivoyage, wikipedia, and google's image search. One down :) Then I want to make it easier to collaborate with the people I'll be traveling with. Still figuring out how that will work. I hadn't thought about actually integrating it into wikivoyage.org, but I'm interested in anything I can do to work with the community. I'm a big fan of this place. --Cheriot (talk) 19:39, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

This map is essential! Planning a trip without it is like walking through a labyrinth of wikilinks... This tool gives a broader vision of where interesting stuff is, what route makes sense, and what spots are on the way. I would argue this kind of map could be on the main page, if light enough. Nick, are you willing to share the overlay, so that others can build around it? Hotels/restaurants/items that have GPS coordinates could be shown as well. Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you've found it useful:) I suspect the bigest hurdle of getting something like this on wikivoyage is hosting. If the wikimedia foundation set up an openstreetmap server, I bet it would be easy to find volunteers to do the integration with wikivoyage. --Cheriot (talk) 02:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Joachim (Mey2008) has developed such a map, as well as POI maps and a lot more (see his user page). Can we join these map-making efforts, instead of doing same job again and again? --Alexander (talk) 21:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't seen those. Very well done! It would be great to get any of these included on wikivoyage.org itself. --Cheriot (talk) 02:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Both are nice indeed! I feel Joachim's map could be improved by showing the region's name when hovering. Cheriot, is your source code available somewhere like Github? Nicolas1981 (talk) 10:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Let's create an Interactive Maps Expedition! It would the most recent experiments, with links to source code if available. It would be a place where users can suggest cool mashup ideas, and implementors check out the existing maps, and share OSM/Google Maps/overlays/integration tips. What do you think about it? Can I proceed and create the expedition? Nicolas1981 (talk) 10:17, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that makes perfect sense. Wikivoyage:Roadmap/Dynamic maps should be merged & redirected there. --Peter ^Talk 17:03, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition created! Listing the current projects already made the current situation much clearer in my mind. Waiting for your corrections and additions! Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:03, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

How often is the map updated once articles gain the Geo template? This will be useful in the ongoing task of choosing of sub-districts for Punjab!Travelpleb (talk) 20:06, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation updates the data dumps once each month.96.241.26.218 16:26, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

How to choose sub-regions/districts for Punjab?

The Punjab (Pakistan) province article could really use some sub-regions. It has 36 official districts, but I imagine we'd prefer a somewhat shorter and more practical list of sub-regions. User Saqib re-started the discussion for map-making, and I suppose the outcome should be used also for sub-region articles. However, I have no experience making or choosing sub-region articles. Any comments at Talk:Punjab (Pakistan) or at least some pointers to how sub-regions are chosen would be appreciated. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

New script : Semi-automatic merging of recent changes from WT to Wikivoyage

WT still gets good edits, mostly by Wikivoyage-unaware IPs. We should merge these good edits into WikiVoyage. I wrote a Linux script that makes it semi-automatic:

https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/MergeFromWt

For each article recently modified on WT, it shows the differences between WT&WV in a diff editor, and give you a link to easily upload the merged wikicode if there are edits worth taking. You can easily choose what changes to take/skip in the diff editor.

Please use it :-) Waiting for your feedback! Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Is this compatible with copyleft? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:00, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

WT articles are Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 and WV articles are Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. They are compatible, the only thing might be about listing the authors... ideally, recent authors (visible at the top of the WT history page) should be cited in the change summary. Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:13, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Solved! The script now also outputs the list of recent contributors, to be pasted into the edit summary. So the use of this script is perfectly legal. Nicolas1981 (talk) 10:22, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

How to deal with diseases?

Is there an example of how we'd like health risks like malaria etc. explained in country articles? Peru#Stay_healthy addresses each disease separately, while e.g. Brazil#Stay_healthy is just a short overview. Is there an agreed upon preference, or is it just a case to case thing? JuliasTravels (talk) 00:09, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

We also have Tropical diseases and a number of articles on specific diseases, including malaria. It seems worth asking where we should be drawing a line. What should be covered in a travel guide, versus what should be left to encyclopedias or government-run health advice sites? Pashley (talk) 01:48, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I would expect basic information about something like malaria on Wikivoyage, but I imaging in every particular articles, the explanation should be short, with a link to more info. That would however mean that it's not there when printed. I'm not sure how much of a problem that is. JuliasTravels (talk) 10:02, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

The really useful stuff to have for individual country stay healthy sections deals with particulars of treatment, geographic spread of infection, and language. So for malaria: Where can you expect high-standards of treatment for malaria and about how much would it cost? What parts of the country are malaria-free? How do you ask for x number of pills of doxycycline at 100mg in the local language? For that matter, what is the local term for pharmacy? (I didn't think to ask for an "apothecary" in rural Ghana.) You could go through those first three questions for each important infectious disease in the country, and it would all be helpful, and not duplicate what's at Tropical diseases. --Peter ^Talk 22:29, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

What I am interested is for Health Tourism and mental health abroad. For example travelers with Asperger's syndrome and Schizophrenia. My Aborted attempt at the Southmead travel guide should be seen as a specimen for wikidoctors. Normsdale (talk) 16:22, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

tag templates

Can someone who understands mediawiki template syntax take a look at the cleanup tags? For example {{Ifd}} page is in the category Vfd even though that part of the code is in includeonly. Also {{Vfd}}, and others, are including the page Wikivoyage:Template index in category even though there is an ifeq for non main space. --Traveler100 (talk) 09:19, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

state names

Can we get a bot to go ahead and add redirect pages for City, ST and City, State for the US city pages currently as City and City (State)? Users will be searching for places with a variety of conventions, and we should have them all available (Wikipedia has redirects for different ways of writing for most US cities). Nicole Sharp (talk) 12:51, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I know nothing about bots, but this sounds like a pretty good idea. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:13, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

"traveller" vs. "traveler"

I keep seeing "traveler" spelled with two L's and as an American English writer it's grinding my nerves. I saw on the policy page that American English should always be the preferred spelling unless the page is based in a location using another dialect. Can we change all the Wikivoyage pages to "traveler" or is there a reason for this? It looks like it's just a holdover from the Wikitravel page titles. Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:22, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh god. We've discussed things like this a bajillion times and have been driven insane, to only come to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't make any difference to our primary goal which is to provide travel information to the world. For the record, 'traveler' gets 83mil hits on Google, while 'traveller' has 729mil. I think it's clear which is more used and better accepted. JamesA ^>talk 13:27, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

That is because there are more speakers of British English than American English (India has a billion people, plus Canada, Nigeria, UK, Australia, etc. vs. just the US alone). "Traveller" is more common in British English, whereas "traveler" is more common in American English, as confirmed on Wiktionary. If your policy is to use American English spellings (since Wikimedia is founded in the United States) then you should be consistent and use "traveler." I know I get a double-take every time I see the unusual (for me as a US American) spelling of "traveller." Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:31, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

From Wikivoyage:Spelling: "If the destination has no history of using English and no clear preference for the variety to use, we prefer US English spelling. This isn't because US English is somehow better or to stomp on the rights, heritage, and cultures of other English-speaking countries. We just have decided to pick one default spelling style for consistency." According to that policy statement, "traveller" should be changed to "traveler" and I saw somewhere "organisation" which should be "organization." I am fairly certain that pages using British English are from Wikitravel and just haven't been altered for Wikivoyage's policy of American English spellings. Nicole Sharp (talk) 13:38, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

No, the preference for American English is an old WT policy that WV inherited. It was controversial on WT (see Wikivoyage_talk:Spelling) and, in my view, should be corrected on the new site. A suggestion I made years ago was:

• writers: use either American or Commonwealth English, whatever you are comfortable with.
• editors: do not "fix" dialect differences; there are far better uses of your time than changing "center" to "centre" or "traveller" to "traveler, or vice versa.

I think the whole notion that we need a "standard" here is misguided. Pashley (talk) 13:57, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

So whoever makes the page first then uses their own spelling variant (British vs. American)? You should change the policy statement though. Nicole Sharp (talk) 14:01, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I would still like the opinion of another US American English native speaker though on the policy, Canada and Australia both use British English spellings. Maybe it is just a USA thing but British spellings give me headaches, American English spells words more like how they sound in my opinion, the British spellings seem like holdovers from Norman French. Nicole Sharp (talk) 14:07, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Traveller with 2 l's was made standard when we had to use wikitraveller all the time. Now that we have wikivoyagers instead, I don't see any reason why the word shouldn't be treated like any other word, using just one l in articles which otherwise use American English. Texugo (talk) 14:22, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Well if you're an admin you can create a move/redirect, it's not like the British spelling will be deleted, not sure about the side menu though. My personal opinion is the silent L is more confusing, especially perhaps for non-native English speakers, but if it isn't changed you should change the Wikivoyage spelling policy to reflect that. Nicole Sharp (talk) 14:53, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not sure this is a critical issue and one that appears to have been discussed many times before. Wikivoyage is always going to find itself home to a number of different regional spellings and as long as they are clear to people more familiar with other variants, I can't see that there's a huge problem. Whether it's spelt 'traveler' or 'traveller' I can't imagine that anyone could misunderstand what is written. Part of the attraction of a project such as this is that people from across the world participate and, as a result, it's possible that one may see different spellings of common words ('colour' and 'color' spring to mind). I think that unless it causes a severe issue with interpretation (which in this case it does not), there is no need to define a 'right' way of using English. As a Briton, I don't seek to inflict 'Norman French' upon the world, but rather spell things as I always have done and was taught to do so and I respect the right of others worldwide to do the same. I think that such variation brings a nice international flavour (or flavor) to this project which surely, in a travel guide, is not undesirable. As long as it is intelligible, it's alright with me! --Nick (talk) 15:00, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree it is mutually intelligible of course. However flexibility of spelling should be indicated in the official Wikivoyage spelling policy, indicated above. Perhaps the admins can take a vote (with the same number of US and non-US voters). Wikimedia Foundation however is based in the United States and subject to United States law, so that does give some credence to the US spelling (since that is what is used for any legal documentation for Wikimedia). Additionally, if people are looking for new experiences, then statistically more people use British spellings, so would be more likely to find the US spelling as interesting and new, not the British one. Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:16, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. What's confusing and what's preferred just depends on how you're educated. As there's millions of Americans, surely many people will share your headaches, Nicole. As people in India and most of Europe are educated in British English however, it'll be the other way around for them. The general idea of just making sure an article consistently uses one kind of English makes sense to me. Which one isn't all that important. Edit: actually, I don't even think the policy is all that far off. Yes, it says if there's not reason to go on or the other way, Wikivoyage prefers US English, but it also clearly states that it's all no big deal and people should just use whatever version they're comfortable with. I don't mind changing it, but I don't see a major problem, really. JuliasTravels (talk) 15:05, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes consistency is what is important, that is why I suggested a vote to change the user policy. As of right now the official user policy is to use US American English spelling conventions for any pages that are not about a region which uses another spelling convention. However, this is a wikisite, not a website, it is very easy to keep both spellings, but only one would show up in the menu/title, the other would have to be a redirect. A much easier solution is to just call everyone (wiki)voyagers though? Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:16, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm a bit of a stickler for spelling unfortunately, so maybe it is just me. I'm sure a lot of people could care less when a word is mispeled :-/. I'm the sort of person who always apostrophizes their elisions when writing slang. Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:20, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I too like spelling to be correct, but I think that, when using the web at all today, we have to realise that it is an international phenomenon and versions of English won't necessarily correlate. Whilst consistency within articles is important, there are far larger issues on this site than the use of 'traveller' that need to be dealt with first, but I admire your determination! :) --Nick (talk) 15:34, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I am a native U.S. English speaker who edits largely Thailand. In Thailand, despite the massive U.S. presence during the Vietnam War, British English appears to be the de facto standard. Perhaps due to Malaysia and Burma being former British colonies. Hence, I use British English for the country and those bordering it. FWIW. No problem. I can read Dickins or Vonnegut and still understand what is being communicated. Seligne (talk) 07:00, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree. british english is the norm here. —The preceding comment was added by MyThailandOrg (talk • contribs)

Pub sweeping instructions

The instructions say "Any discussions that do not fall into any of these categories, and are not of any special importance for posterity, should be archived ...." Does that mean that discussions that are not in the preceding categories, and are of special importance for posterity should stay in the pub for ever? Nurg (talk) 21:50, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/Archives. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:09, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

If they are of special importance, they shouldn't be swept to the archives. Which discussions were you thinking of that aren't covered in those categories? --Peter ^Talk 01:41, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Does this one fall into any of those categories or is it of special importance for posterity - #Bugzilla coordination? Nurg (talk) 11:08, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

How to handle empty articles?

As part of the ongoing discussion about assigning sub-regions to Punjab (Pakistan), it has come to light that the region contains a great many empty articles (e.g. X is in Punjab (Pakistan). - then that's it). These articles are part of the reason why the sub-regions are being created in the first place. However, it seems somewhat odd to create a region structure for these empty, useless articles.

I don't think it would be helpful to have a plethora of sub-regions, with many of them only containing these dud pages.

Is there a policy or a precedent concerning this? Do we ignore the dud pages and create a hierarchy based on the articles that stand some chance of being used or do we incorporate them into the structure, giving them equal regard to their more fledged peers in the probably misplaced hope that they'll grow?

Also more opinions are always welcome on the Talk:Punjab (Pakistan) itself.Travelpleb (talk) 19:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

There has been some overzealous article creation for that part of the world in the past, potentially done for political reasons, so if an effort is being made to clean things up then redirecting any stub articles should be fine. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:10, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

That would also involve trammeling the er... hard work of one of the interlocutors in the regions discussion, something which I'd not feel comfortable doing without more than a little support. Travelpleb (talk) 19:21, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

On a related note, there was a discussion about deleting and possibly recreating our content-less outlines to get a fresh, Wikimedia-only history. If the articles in question were created pre-migration, let me know, as I'd like to do that. On a more related note, I don't think it's always worth subdividing regions, even if they have more than 9 cities in the list. If another subdivision would make things more convoluted/not help the traveler, then it's better to just subdivide the list itself (example). --Peter ^Talk 20:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Especially if there are no unique things to say about each of the proposed subregions. Then you just get stuck with additional blank region articles, or people duplicating the same information in each of them, which is generally a no-no. Texugo (talk) 20:21, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Peter, please let your opinions on sub-divisions be known at Talk:Punjab (Pakistan). As for the empty articles, most were created post-migration but I think there will be some for you.Travelpleb (talk) 20:15, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

All very well in cases where there's nothing to add or expect. However, I don't see the point of deleting here, and I don't really see any political motivation: most are just created in an enthusiastic effort to cover the Punjab region. For good reason: it's home to half of the population of Pakistan, has a rich history and plenty of potential, even when current situations might not make it the most popular of destinations :-) It's too early to claim that these articles will not be developed, as many have been created very recently and most are large cities. I've gone ahead and added some basic info to some of those articles, User:Saqib is actively working on this region too. To be honest, I think it would be far more helpful if more people (with more experience in creating sub-regions) would join that discussion there, instead of such general negative remarks and hints to mass deletion here in the pub. In any case, if anyone feels these big Pakistani city articles should be deleted, I'd say follow the normal procedures for that :-( JuliasTravels (talk) 20:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Just to clarify my comments, in the past there were a huge number of articles created covering areas disputed by India and Pakistan, and we finally began deleting them on sight as it was clear that the only point in their creation had been for the purpose of saying "X is in Pakistan" (as opposed to India) - that comment was not meant to apply to any recent efforts, although many of those articles are still around. Similarly, in the past when large numbers of region articles have been created that didn't improve the utility of our guides, such as creating stubs for every county in a region or every political subdivision in an area, we have generally redirected those articles rather than trying to rearrange or sub-divide existing hierarchies to fit these newly-created stubs - again, that may or may not be relevant in the current situation. Beyond pointing out how such discussions have been resolved in the past I don't have any local knowledge that would be of much relevance to a discussion of organizing the Punjab region. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:48, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I also don't feel that I know enough about Punjab to comment on the particulars of subdividing, beyond that I know it's one of the most touristic regions of the country, and I presume it could have a significant amount of content some day, if not yet. --Peter ^Talk 21:26, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

How about cases where all those empty articles could only be expanded to have 3 listings or so, as that is all that physically exists? I've had that issue at Bangladesh, which is why I created smaller sub-districts that cover sections of the countryside, and encompass all of those tiny villages that might have one attraction or one guesthouse and that's about it. Pakistan could be a similar situation, but I'm no expert. JamesA ^>talk 01:54, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, that's a fine solution for rural areas with villages, and I guess it applies to many countries, rural Pakistan too. We're not by far at that point yet though, what we're talking about and creating is only the list of major towns (>40.000 people, most >100.000). And there are a lot of those in Punjab. Listings are hard to create for non-locals because information in English online is limited, but it's not at all as if these articles can't be expanded. The question of how to subdivide remains very hard though, as none of us except User:Saqib know the region. I don't feel for many empty region articles either, so perhaps it would make sense (for now) to stick with just a rough north-south-east division or something, and just have longer city lists in those. That's the more general (non-expert) discussion we're trying to have, so even your non-expert opinions are welcome there ;-) JuliasTravels (talk) 06:55, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I've no knowledge on creating sub-regions so I wouldn't comment whether Punjab should be sub-divided or not. However, I've divided the Punjab region according to [1]. And I strongly agree with JuliasTravels, major cities of Punjab shouldn't be deleted. Many of them hold good potential to at-least become guide article one day. --Saqib (talk) 08:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm all for creating articles for less obvious places, I've made a few myself, but I always try to add something useful to each one in an attempt to plant a meaningful seed for future growth. These one-sentence wonders don't really seem to going in that direction - many are only days old, but also many are months and even years old. Anyone with the internet can gather more information than X is here. For example, not only have I sourced coordinates for each and every one of these probably-but-possibly-not no-hopers, I've made sure that the coordinates are correct and updated the relevant Wikipedia pages in the all too often cases of error.

In the course of gathering all that information I've browsed each town's Wikipedia page, and for the most part our larger and more established sister does not have much to say about these places. I don't want to be too much of a wet blanket, but we're not going to get a remotely useful guide for off the beaten track Pakistani Punjab any time soon.

But importantly, we don't want to stifle the possibility of growth in this area however remote it seems. It's this conflict of useless stubs clogging up a hierarchy in the hope of growth that is causing the problem.

I'm inclined to agree with JuliasTravels - the Punjab question is a general discussion about the guide's structure rather than one that requires expert field knowledge. I say: yes, keep the stub articles but only consider the handful of more substantial articles when deciding on sub-regions. Therefore each sub-region will be a usable nucleus with the potential for growth intact. If these sub-regions have longs list of mainly stubs, then no big deal.Travelpleb (talk) 08:14, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

When I see 27 empty articles, and nobody can even say what they are about (e.g., write a single paragraph explaining why to go and what to see), I argue for an immediate deletion, because tons of stub articles make Wikivoyage look like a collection of stubs. It is a dark spot on the reputation. Same applies to unnecessary or excessive sub-regions. --Alexander (talk) 09:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Advertising

Should Wikivoyage be a place for this? I think not. That is just pure advertising, 'cause most of the listed are wildly unknown to Novi Sad inhabitants. I myself live there, and, after seeing your article, I did a poll on pizza in "Dottore per la pizza", and, well, I got only 31/111 people actually liking the pizza there. Later, I also did a poll on Amigos Chicken and Konoba. In Amigos Chicken, I actually saw two foreigners, but the result, anyway, was 26/95 marked it as good. Konoba was, again, with no surprise whatsoever, marked as 8/123, and that, my dear colleagues, completely destroys the sentences: "Delicious fast-food experts (especially this one, which has a quite different meaning in English :D)... Awesome staff, very tasty food."... (if you are wondering, what the hell was I doing, asking people about their meals, don't, I do that for a living) - Stefan ^(Parolu!) 15:43, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Please plunge forward, feel free to trim down the entries there and list only those listings that is of interest to the travellers. --Saqib (talk) 16:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Also, see Wikivoyage:Don't tout for some relevant information about dealing with promotional language or potential advertising in articles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I strongly agree with both comments above, but I'll add something.

A complication is that a poll of local residents may not tell you much about pizza that travellers might want. e.g. at Zhuhai#Pizza we have listings for a dozen places then "Pizza can also be found in other local restaurants, including a local chain called Pizza Coffee, but the pizza is not very appealing to Western tastes." For China, the difference in taste is sometimes huge; my guess is that it would be far smaller for Novi Sad, but still perhaps not zero. Pashley (talk) 17:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

You polled 95, 111 or 123 citizens and asked them their opinion of various restaurants and the general feeling among them was that the food wasn't any good. Does that make them right and the original author wrong?

In point of fact, there is no such thing as an objectively good or an objectively bad restaurant. In many cases, and particularly in listing blurbs, what our site deals in is opinion. That's why many principles and procedures that are near and dear to the heart of Wikipedia, such as citing sources and original research being off limits, can't apply here at Wikivoyage.

I read the reviews in question. Usually it's obvious when the author is a tout, but I saw no evidence of that in those listings. If you, or even many people you know, don't like the restaurant, perhaps you should insert a caveat into the blurb listing some of the place's weaknesses (while maintaining a balance between positive and negative comments, thus avoiding making it a negative review). But my personal policy is to never delete a listing outright unless the place has closed. Because in the end, what do I know? I'm just one guy, and who am I to say that the original author is wrong?

The thing to remember is that no one, and no group, is the be-all-and-end-all authority as to whether a restaurant is good or bad. Obviously if an editor who wasn't a tout bothered to come to Wikivoyage and add a positive review of a restaurant, there's someone out there who thinks the restaurant is good. What makes his opinion inferior? Numbers? I don't buy that.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't object if you'd just tone down those listings a bit, as per your experiences there, and add a few others that you think are great :-) Indeed, listings often reflect a personal experience at a specific moment. Some humble considerations of another's view are good, but listings are subject to change. That's fine. However, the main point is not to criticize current ones, but to focus on finding ever better places. So please, as a Novi Sad guy, point us to the hotspots where all the locals go! ;-) JuliasTravels (talk) 19:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Stefan, since you and most of the rest of the people you polled in Novi Sad think this place sucks, please delete the listing. Subjectivity of opinion is not the issue here. To be "objective," we'd have to list everything indiscriminately, and one of Wikivoyage's non-goals is to be an undifferentiated listing service (traditionally called "Yellow Pages" in many places). This is an avowedly subjective guide and should not list non-notable restaurants or pizzerias that not only suck, but suck according to a consensus of locals. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:54, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek - to quote from Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews:

"If a destination has only a few reviews (or a few accommodation options), and some are negative, do not delete them — some information is better than none."

If we regard the people Stefan questioned as analogous to "reviewers", which I think is fair, the above clause would apply. 32 out of 112 people "reviewed" Dottore per la Pizza positively; 26 out of 96 "reviewed" Amigos Chicken positively (in both cases, including the original author among the totals). Those are not majorities, but they're not unanimous condemnation either.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:08, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Novi Sad has a long list of restaurants. It's not in the interest of travelers for this guide to list any which most locals who were polled dislike. If we listed every business that a few people liked, this guide would become a Yellow Pages. Someone likes every place that's in business, right? Or at least they're OK enough with it to patronize it. I really couldn't more strongly disagree with your reasoning here, on the basis that the interest of the traveler and non-goals guidelines trump the argument that if most locals think a place is mediocre or worse in a large city with lots of listings, it should remain listed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:20, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Map features and location database

Hello travellers and contributors, I've got some news here. We have some small features on our association's server running.

• The Map with an overview of all articles. I think you know it already.
  • http://maps.wikivoyage-ev.org/w/artmap.php?lang=en
• The Points of interest
  • Now you can click on the colourd numbers in the articles and see it on a map (including the other points of interest) see here. IN the map you can click on the point to see a picture of it (try the church number 1 (light blue)
  • You can also include a link to the map (example: Ko Samui click on the map symbol on the right side in the district section)

• I have setup a kind of location database. It can provide an overview over our articles. To every destination it provides some information about the other language versions. So you can see what language version provides the biggest article to a destination, including whether it is a star article or was a destination of the month or whatever. On the second tab you will find all subsidiary places (declared by the IsPartOf tmeplate). It can handle multiple hierarchies, that we use in Germany. The position map is provided in German and Italian version only, because we use an additional map-code in our templates. It's the first draft of the feature. Next steps are: 1. making the tables sortable. 2. providing a distance search aroud your article (What articles are around my place up to 50 miles? or sth.) 3. Saving the VCards (for a later usage at WikiData) and 4. Saving the categories and providing intersections of categories (e.g. What articles are in category Brazil AND Destination of the month ). These are some of the ideas. But my free time is limited. It will take a while. Some information are not stated yet, because I do not know all the template names... how is the dotm template called at the Polish language version? and so on... I will aske around all language versions and add these information....If you see any bugs and have some other ideas just let me know. We have included the LocDB to our sidebar. So everybody has an easy access to the information site of an article. Here are some examples.
  • Sabah on de: ... here you can see multiple hierarchies
  • Washington, D.C. on en: ... DotM and a star
  • and it's quarters
  • Kota Kinabalu on de:

If you want to add some of the map features and need some help with the templates just let us know. -- DerFussi 11:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Great work! Two questions: 1) Is it possible to see the POIs in artmap.php? That would be great, especially in big cities, where borders between districts can be very artificial. 2) Is there a way to embed a small poimap2.php map inside an article, like SlippyMap? It would be extremely useful in all destination articles. Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Nice indeed :) I would like to add some map features if there's access to the server. Particularly a push towards a standard GeoJSON layer which should be a lot cleaner. -- Torty3 (talk) 10:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

New kind of map, feedback welcome

Please have a look at the map at Tokyo/Roppongi :-) I just copied what is being done by Joachim at the German Wikivoyage. What do you think about it?

It is not perfect, but it strikes me as much more maintainable than hand-drawn maps. If we want to use this at a large scale, we should integrate this with the listings system, to avoid the current redundancies (see wikicode). Then, the next steps could be embedded slippy maps, and showing points of interest from neighbouring articles when scrolling... for more info see the Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition. Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I like the concept. Would be good to integrate with listings so we can have an interactive map that shows eactly where points of interest are.Traveler100 (talk) 07:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

It's definitely more maintainable than hand-drawn maps, a map I made barely two months ago is now out of date (kinda my fault though). I think there should still be a static map present in the articles, say if some old computers have no Javascript enabled (maybe detect such settings), or if the coverage in OSM isn't the best. Working together with OSM will bring up some really interesting possibilities, like what Google is trying to do with Google Local. -- Torty3 (talk) 08:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Easier to maintain, yes, but I'm a little concerned about the printability of such maps, and the fact that they really aren't helpful at all until you click on them and load another page.Texugo (talk) 12:57, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Those maps are definitely cool and I've always found the slippy map feature on other sites useful. But I also share Texugo's concerns, particularly about printability. One of our goals is to be to print out guides and having an icon that links to another map breaks that. Hopefully we can find a way to bridge the two. -Shaundd (talk) 13:11, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Plus, even without printing them, to make use of the reference numbers, you have to flip back and forth between our page and the map page.Texugo (talk) 13:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

No, you don't. Just click on the number, and you will see the name. --Alexander (talk) 13:21, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Dynamic maps are fine in print, even in black and white. The only problem is that you can't select the area of interest, export to *.png, etc. I hope that one day Joachim will solve this problem. But the decision to start using the dynamic maps on ru.wv was very simple: dynamic map is better than no map. That's more or less all about it. --Alexander (talk) 13:21, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The map thumbnail in the article doesn't show the same area that the large map does, and that's a problem for print. The map in the article is virtually useless due to its size, its exclusion of several POIs, and the giant Rappongi Crossing popup in the middle of it. Even the large map is framed to exclude one of the Buy listings; I had to scroll or zoom out the map to see Buy #3. Also, using plain colored squares in the article is unacceptable from an accessibility standpoint; color should never be the only distinguishing factor. LtPowers (talk) 13:44, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree with all your points. The minimap is useless because it's so cluttered with buildings and colors, and the big map is not much better. It would be great if we could get a new rendering of the OSM maps in greyscale that emphasizes major features and obscures or omits most other things (knowing their architecture, it's doable, but we might have to host our own rendering and tile servers; it could be a big undertaking). Markers for the POIs could be done with icons (See, Do, Eat, Drink, Sleep all have somewhat obvious choices, and maybe the template could allow it to be overridden to select from additional icons). Overall, though, I like the concept and would love to see if it can be improved. Bigpeteb (talk) 13:57, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I really like where this is going, and think it is a future feature of our project, but there are still many kinks that must be ironed out. The map would have to be embedded within the article before it is much use. I assume if we could embed the map and display it so that all the listings are shown, then it should print fine. Though there should be an option for users to click that would expand the map fully, and allow users to print the map over a full A4 piece of paper.

Regarding the map thumbnail, it's meant to simply be a reminder to users that a map exists, so click here. It's not meant to help users find their way around the city, show where listings are, nor be appropriate for print. Nicolas has already said that embeddable full maps are in the pipeline.

Following on from LtPowers' concern about colour, I think it may work better if every listing had its own, independent number. That way, it doesn't matter if people print in B&W; number 1 will always mean number 1 on the map. That's how Lonely Planet does their maps, and that seems to be working well for them. I really don't like the icons that the map itself uses for each listing type. The rounded square looks retro, and the shopping bag is barely distinguishable and looks awful. Let's just go for colour-coded squares with independent numbering. JamesA ^>talk 14:02, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Believe me, re-numbering 20 listings is a headache. Re-numbering 100 listings is simply not an option. Regarding the icons, I would really like if someone comes up with a better proposal. Joachim simply used the standard icons from our old hand-drawn maps, because nobody has ever complained about them. --Alexander (talk) 14:44, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That still hides useful information behind colors -- namely the patterns of where restaurants or bars or shopping areas are clustered. If we have to we can choose different geometric shapes for each icon color. LtPowers (talk) 14:48, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

If we can make the numbering automatic, that would be preferable. Actually, it is more of a necessity. Or else we are just adding extra work for users which should be able to be easily solved automatically. Geometric shapes could be an option, but I don't think determining clusters and patterns of particular listing types is that important. If we are able to implement independent numbering, then it shouldn't be that difficult to determine type-clusters anyhow, as all the listings from a particular section will be the same group of numbers (ie, restaurants may all be around 21-35, so a traveller simply has to look for clusters of numbers in that range). I don't think there's a need to overcomplicate things. JamesA ^>talk 15:03, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I should think it obvious that the numbers "21-35" hardly stand out upon quick perusal of a map. LtPowers (talk) 16:52, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Powers that identifying venue type clusters is very useful to travelers and facilitating it should be a map goal. A good map is a picture that clearly and visually communicates the relevant information. --Rogerhc (talk) 18:10, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, okay. Well the only other idea I can think of is geometric shapes, so how about:

• squares for See
• circles for Do
• triangles for Buy
• diamonds for Eat
• hexagons for Drink
• trapeziums for Sleep
• pentagons for Contact

I thought about using stars, but that may come across as being something special or "recommended", which is not a message we want to send. We would also need to decide on colours; the colours we've used in the past for our maps are fine I'd think. Thoughts? JamesA ^>talk 03:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you should try to draw them and put them on the map. A big advantage of our present icons is their self-explanatory nature (house for Sleep, dish for Eat, bag for Buy, etc.) Maybe we could try to keep this idea and simply improve shapes and colors? --Alexander (talk) 04:38, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Some comments by the programmer. Embedding: Simply hold the shift key when you click on the map thumbnail. The map opens in a new window. That you can reduce to a desired size. Then you have both. Scrollable article text and a fully controllable map in a separate window. Icons: The colors and shapes of the map icons were used for years for the maps in WT. I think they are ok. Of course we can change them. Layers: The existing "transport" layer shows routes of public transport, including bus stops. Moreover, it is made in pale colors. More layers are not a problem. Zooming: If you click on a marker in the text then the map is enlarged and centered to this marker. This is by design. All markers are displayed when you select the button "Show me all markers". Printing: I'm experimenting with PDF ouput. But I still have no idea how I insert the markers in it. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 05:53, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I know I'm a little late to the party on this—but speaking as someone with no experience in Wikivoyage mapmaking who is, to put it mildly, not relishing the prospect of creating no fewer than seven maps for Buffalo's upcoming district articles, I welcome this innovation excitedly. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:12, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the icons, I feel the old ones we had that looked like the category of listing were ugly and not appropriate. I'm happy to have another look at them, with the option of possibly streamlining them so they look a little nicer. Does anyone know where a file of those icons actually exists? I can't seem to find one. Thanks, JamesA ^>talk 06:21, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

All icons are only once per shape. The numbers are embedded by css. New icons should therefore also offer areas of single color for the numbers. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 07:20, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

If we are to use the icons found in this map, we should request that their author User:MarkJaroski release them to the Public Domain to avoid tricky attribution issues.

Also, Joachim, I understand that you don't particularly like the idea of embedded maps, but embedded maps are a core goal of the English Wikivoyage mapmaking expedition, and I don't think we will be ready to start using them until it is possible to have them placed directly into articles (with a link above them to open in full screen for mobile devices). --Peter ^Talk 03:33, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Icons are from [2], [3], [4], and so on so forth. No idea if there's a base svg. Any news about permission to access the server? -- Torty3 (talk) 04:41, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

OSM and CloudMade styles (sorry bout the jaggies)

I had a play-around with CloudMade's very nice style editor, and in very little time, came up with some Wikivoyage-looking maps [5] as an example of what could be done. The licensing is still a little iffy since the map data is CC-by-SA but CloudMade has their own legal jargon. It's a nice goal to work towards, as the cherry on top. -- Torty3 (talk) 04:07, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Good work, Torty; I like the Wikivoyage-style. LtPowers (talk) 16:22, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

A new style for maps must be created in all 18 zoom levels. This is a hard work. Therefore, I have added a similar simplified style. A 'tourism' layer with some special icons and brighter colors. Example (please choose layer 'tourism') -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 17:52, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

The 'tourism' layer is very nice! Joachim, would you mind sharing the settings of the 'tourism' layer? Torty (and others) could then spend time fine-tuning them. Thanks! Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

If there're no issues in using CloudMade, then could you please change this/ add another layer:

var touriUrl = 'http://{s}.tile.cloudmade.com/912ff59aa0994ac989dd3ee085b02236/997/256/{z}/{x}/{y}.png'; to this:

var touriUrl = 'http://{s}.tile.cloudmade.com/912ff59aa0994ac989dd3ee085b02236/92751/256/{z}/{x}/{y}.png';

The "Fresh" style (id: 997) is not really suited because it still has restaurant listings that appear nowhere in our guides, resulting in additional icons, so "Wikivoyage2" style (id:92751) strips it down even more. I suppose showing buildings or not is a stylistic choice. -- Torty3 (talk) 04:10, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I have added the Wikivoyage2 style. With a little revision that could perhaps give a nice solution. Example (please choose layer 'Wikivoyage') - Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 05:03, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

As you say, some users may want to see buildings and others may not. The nice thing about using OSM is that we could (in theory) set it up so users have a choice... we can provide 2 or 3 Wikivoyage styles, as well as the default OSM styles. I think for the sake of readability and printability, the WV styles should be mostly greyscale and very muted. The traveller comes first, and although buildings are mildly helpful for getting around cities, getting your bearings by identifying main roads is more important. Perhaps it would be helpful to compare with some printed travel guides and see what style choices they made in their maps? Bigpeteb (talk) 14:03, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

An embedded map is very impractical for the user. Scroll down in a long article to the "Sleep" section. The embedded map is no longer visible. It is above the visible portion of your monitor. Will you now look for a hotel in the map? Then you mightily to scroll up. Another hotel has a beautiful location in the map? Scroll down to the appropriate text. Too expensive? Scroll up. Happy scrolling. - A floating window for the map like in my suggestion above [6] is much more practical. You always have the map next to the text you are reading. - Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 05:24, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. The only advantage of embedded maps is showing that Wikivoyage has its own, dynamic map. Otherwise, the map in the separate window is way more convenient. --Alexander (talk) 12:45, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Neither Joachim nor Alexander are wrong. I do understand though, that we need to square the best interests of the on-line user with those that want a printed guide. -- Alice^✉ 13:01, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

If embeded maps are not possible/desirable, then how about at least having a WimediaLabs-hosted script that generates miniature images? That would free WikiVoyage editors from having to do this complicated&time-consuming screenshot+crop+upload+link step after every article modification. Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

My earlier proposal with the pop-up should be a symbol. Not Mini-Map for dwarfs with thick magnifying glasses. Some German authors therefore take an existing icon image of commons. I think it's not so nice. But perhaps a nicer symbol image would be the simplest solution. I am thinking in a symbolic map with some markers and a Wikivoyage logo. Perhaps an unknown artist produce something like that. - Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 05:25, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

While I understand your concerns about usability of an embedded map, it's still critical to have it. Having an embedded map does not prevent a user from opening the map in a separate window, as we will provide a prominent link. But without the embedded map (as Alexander notes), it's very possible that most users will not realize that we have dynamic maps at all. And it would be extremely useful to have an embedded dynamic map placed next to the get in/get around sections. So I ask the same question... is it possible? What do we need to do to make it possible? --Peter ^Talk 19:56, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

By the way, the new Wikivoyage layer looks great ;) --Peter ^Talk 19:58, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Embedded dynamic maps are possible to implement, but that requires some development effort, and I don't think the foundation considers it a priority, so WE have to experiment, and maybe develop our own Wikimedia extension, which we would then propose for deployment on Wikivoyage. The good thing is that we don't need to wait: we can start standardizing the Poi/listing format, then enter lat/long coordinates data everywhere, that will not be lost work. Switching from the current external-window maps to embedded maps will be easy in terms of wikicode modification. For now, could anyone investigate how {{Poi}} may be integrated into the listing templates? (see below) Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

To embed the interactive "PoiMap" in a mediawiki is very simple. But on this wiki is missing the widget: Iframe. This example I created in another mediawiki. I'm not a wiki expert. But installation of the widget is seemingly simple. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 07:31, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Very cool! Your demo is perfect for desktop users, and the map even gets printed (with minor width and logo problems). I see two things that still require a bit of development: 1) Support for Android 2.2 browser (and potentially others, I have only tested this one) 2) Prevent editors from using the Iframe widget to anything else than http://maps.wikivoyage-ev.org/w/poimap2.php URLs (because this could be used for spam/etc). Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Printers and mobile devices could not test now. Security is not a problem. Including a external page will not let that page steal the data on your site, hack into your user accounts and so on because it is protected by an iframe. Widgets have their own namespace. Access can be restricted to administrators (+ me ;-). Web addresses can be fixed entered in the widget. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 11:40, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

To get the widget installed, I assume we need to file a Bugzilla request? If yes, then should the request specify that we want access to the function limited to admins? Is there anything else to include in the request? --Peter ^Talk 17:56, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Be it embedded or external window, an attacker could replace the map URL with the URL of a malicious website that exploit a browser vulnerability. The German Wikivoyage already uses this (making users click on external links as part of the normal Wikivoyage experience), and would probably revert malicious URLs quickly; but still, it is more dangerous than spam, so the baseurl improvement would be very welcome.

Peter, where is the Bugzilla for Widget:Iframe?

On Android 2.2 the IFrame map is misplaced like this. I isolated the problem further: An image in an IFrame loads fine, but a map in an IFrame is misplaced. Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:38, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Some Android browsers have massive problems with iframes. Firefox for Android can show very well iframes without any errors. Even Windows Phone 6.5 and 7 have no problems. I will test other devices. I try to provide the Android browsers with the necessary information for a correct representation. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 08:55, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I haven't filed a bugzilla request, since I still don't quite understand what to ask for and how, and what we would need to do to manage security issues. Would there be a way to limit its use to links pointing to wikivoyage-ev.org? --Peter ^Talk 16:03, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I understand it like this: Just this extension must be installed. This creates a new namespace: Widget. This namespace can edit only by members of the new group "widgeteditor". The admins of Wikivoyage determine the members of this group. The widget "iframe" can created later (copy and paste from mediawikiwidgets.org), even in this namespace. Similar to a template. Inside the widget URLs can be checked for validity. - Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 17:31, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘

Proposal

OK, so that would also allow us to do the tech request first, and then work out the details of implementing iframe (and potentially other widgets) afterwards. That sounds desirable and immediately actionable to me. Would anyone object to this bugzilla proposal:

1. install Extension:Widgets, creating namespace "Widget"
2. create a new usergroup "widgeteditor", assignable by admins
3. restrict editing of the Widget namespace to widgeteditors

--Peter ^Talk 17:43, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Support - could the editing powers be spread to autoconfirmed users rather than just 'widgeteditors' or would we rather keep this on a smaller scale? --Nick (talk) 18:07, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I basically anticipate giving them to anyone without process who wants them, provided the user is in good standing. So it should just be a matter of asking any admin. Autoconfirmed status is acquired after simply having an account for 4 days, so it doesn't necessarily convey a lot of trust. --Peter ^Talk 18:24, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh right- I hadn't realised! Ignore that then; my support is unconditional! --Nick (talk) 18:27, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Support - it is a necessary step. --Alexander (talk) 19:37, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Support and question. If they do so, would it be applicable to all language versions or just here? Pt: has been skipped over on several technical updates (such as the listing xml>template redirection), and the community there is so small it would be hard to mobilize to make this happen there. Texugo (talk) 19:52, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

We are generally a lot less coordinated after having joined the WMF. It would be great to try and revive our liaison team, and that would probably be easiest to do via an email list. Texugo and Alexander would be natural candidates for pt and ru. Liaisons could just email the list any time their language version is submitting a bugzilla request to check whether the other versions would like to be included in the change. --Peter ^Talk 20:18, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

As far as I understand, WMF technical staff will not do any changes for a given language version without seeing consensus reached by people in this particular language version. Therefore, we can only follow discussions here, start discussions in our language, and file independent bugzilla requests. The listings-->template redirect was, however, something different, because it was an extension deployed for all language versions simultaneously. I am wondering why :pt can't use it in the way we did: just create your own {{listing}} template and let it go. --Alexander (talk) 20:31, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

We can do that, but there is no easy way to track down the xml listings already out there to change them. Incidentally, I don't expect to be able to get much of any consensus on anything there anytime soon. The only other vocal, daily user at the moment is basically a troll who will likely oppose anything I propose on principle, preferring instead to fight to throw out our basic guidelines on just about everything: first person pronouns, random secondary external links, consistency of formatting - he has vfd'd such pages as Avoid HTML and the entire image policy and even the VfD page itself. He rails on with ad hominem personal attacks and does not appear to support any existing policy, criticizes any proposal that resembles something from en:, and seems to do his best to turn every thread into this kind of mess. In that environment, and without more people around to join in a rational discussion about potential changes, I don't think we can get any kind of change to happen. Man, I wish that guy would go away. </cry for help>. Texugo (talk) 02:26, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Sad to hear this. We also had this threat right after joining the WMF, but fortunately, none of such people stayed long, or we even put some effort into expelling them. --Alexander (talk) 05:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Support - Very few people would need to modify widgets, so I would also agree if the proposal was "install Extension:Widgets, creating namespace Widget; restrict editing of the Widget namespace to admins" (removes one step, maybe augmenting the chances to get it done fast?). This proposal does not mean sudden adoption of map embedding for all articles: We would first work on a prototype article, and make sure it is browser-friendly, before making a decision. Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:25, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Support - This looks like a key piece to introducing dynamic maps (once the quirks are worked out as noted above). -Shaundd (talk) 04:38, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Support - If you believe this is an integral step towards Dynamic Maps, you have my support. If we are to allow trusted users to have the editwidget rights, I agree that admins should be able to simply grant them based on their own interpretation. I wouldn't like to see another bureaucratic process. JamesA ^>talk 05:06, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

After consulting Peter I sent the request: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47400 Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:52, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

How do we poke the bugzilla people about this? -- torty3 (talk) 16:49, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I've found the Bugzilla process pretty confusing and a little frustrating (although I realize everyone is a volunteer). I suggested a while back that we start a Bugzilla project page here, where we could coordinate efforts in work on Bugzilla, and keep track of open requests. Does anyone else think that would be worth doing? --Peter ^Talk 20:42, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I do. It would also allow us to keep track (archive) of past bugs for future reference, something which would have helped me out more than once recently... Texugo (talk) 20:53, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

A Wikivoyage:Bugzilla Expedition, then? Anyone else? --Peter ^Talk 02:13, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Tags to templates

The listings are integrated in [7] and [8], but I think ru.wv is using the listing template rather than the listings tags that en.wv uses. There might need to be a change from tags to those type of templates directly? -- Torty3 (talk) 08:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, we simply discussed with Joachim and talked him into writing a script that can handle the listings template. You can try to go further and suggest writing a parser for the listings tags, but I personally prefer to stick to the template. First, the template gives us more fields and more options (that was the primary reason for introducing templates at ru.wv). Second, most of the listings lack geographical coordinates. It is necessary to add them by hand, as well as check other fields, and this activity naturally combines with converting tags in templates. --Alexander (talk) 12:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

To make it clearer,

en.wv uses {{Poi|map|type|lat|long|name}}<see name="" alt="" address="" directions="" lat="" long="" phone="" tollfree="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price=""></see>

ru.wv uses {{listing|map|type|lat|long|name|alt|address|directions|url|phone}}

I would prefer the template too, but the massive problem here is the number of tags that would need to be changed. Or is there something I'm overlooking? -- Torty3 (talk) 14:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, most tags lack geographical coordinates, so they have to be changed anyway. I think it is a good reason to clean things up and replace tags with templates. --Alexander (talk) 14:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

(double edit conflict) The tags here on en are just a wrapper for Template:Listing. Does that help? LtPowers (talk) 14:48, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

It's just a matter of sending a bot through and converting all the text. Not much of a hassle, apart from everyone getting used to it. JamesA ^>talk 15:05, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

No, it does not. Joachim's script reads the page, and it looks for specific things on the page, not in the template. --Alexander (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, Alexander kinda cleared up some things about the listings script, but it still doesn't seem feasible to change them all by hand, and as James said, a bot could probably do the work. Which means this could be carried out separately from dynamic maps (lat lngs themselves must be added later by hand or semi-aided in case of mismatches), as long as everybody can accept such a change towards a listing template. -- Torty3 (talk) 13:36, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

In fact, the POI number ('map' field) should be also added by hand, or set up automatically (e.g., automatic numbering). --Alexander (talk) 19:01, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I did not understand everything. But in the German WV we use this converter [9] . Perhaps the author adds <listing> to the output. For a good bottle of wine. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 05:48, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

After auto-numbering is implemented, the only PoiMap2-specific parameter would be the mini-picture. So I suggest adding the mini-picture field in our listing specification. Once PoiMap2 is well-tested and open-sourced, we can set the listing template to automatically generate a PoiMap2 POI for every listing that has lat/long. Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

VoyageMap widget

I just created the VoyageMap widget, which we can use on Wikivoyage once the Widget extension is installed. It works well on my local Mediawiki test server, but does not seem to work on mediawikiwidgets.org for some reason I don't understand yet. There are still things to do: 1) For mobile browsers, show only a link 2) Validate parameters to prevent any XSS. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:12, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I discovered that the Widget extension is inactive, and misses OS/browser identification. Last time he was seen, the developer said "This extension is not very actively developed right now, I myself don't even have repository access anymore". Also, I wanted to replace the embedded map with a link, for mobile browsers, but there is no OS/browser identification feature, so articles with an embedded map will become useless for many mobile users (those whose phone has IFrame bugs, not sure what proportion that means), which is very sad. The WidgetsFramework extension is more active, but I am not sure it can do OS/browser identification, and it requires a bit of PHP writing. Having the WMF install the Widget extension is a very good thing to continue experimentations and try different tricks, but eventually if these tricks don't work out, we might have no choice but to write our own extension. Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:27, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I just got a new idea: we could do the mobile/identification in poimap2.php rather than on the Mediawiki server. In case of mobile, poimap2.php would return a link to the fullscreen map. That solves the IFrame compatibility problem :-) Joachim, could you please open the poimap2.php source code, or try to implement this mobile detection? Thanks a lot! Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:20, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Working now: VoyageMap widget Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:00, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Passport Stamps

Slightly odd question:

I made these in a (very!) idle moment - any ideas as to what I could do with them? --Nick (talk) 19:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Get the WMF to sell baggage stickers/something else using these images (m:Merchandise)? Or just put it on your userpage. ;) PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

That's a great idea, but I've already suggested it on the talk page there. It's definitely a missed opportunity if they don't do it, but I don't think anyone's really bothering with expanding the merchandise business at the current time. JamesA ^>talk 03:04, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Merchandise would be a great way to go - it seems a wasted opportunity not to create some travel-oriented things people can buy! --Nick (talk) 10:06, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I think I might add the EN WV stamp to my user and talk page. Curtaintoad (user · talk · contribs) 10:15, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

You can use the template {{stamp}} for that. :) --Nick (talk) 10:27, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I will do that instead. Curtaintoad (user · talk · contribs) 10:29, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Nicholasjf21; I think it looks better with the template. By the way, are there '''{{stamp}}''' templates on other wikis (or maybe I can search it.)? Curtaintoad (user · talk · contribs) 10:36, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Happy to help! I'm not sure to be honest, as I created the one here, but it might be worth a search! --Nick (talk) 10:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I did search "Template:Stamp" on other WM Foundation sites, but I don't think I can see any templates similar. Maybe you can create other {{stamp}} templates for other stamp projects on other WM Projects -- upload images on WM Commons [10] and then maybe you can discuss this more on MetaWiki [11]. Curtaintoad (user · talk · contribs) 11:15, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Very late response :) But we're definitely looking at expanding the merch options (though you're right we're going slow for many reasons as we figure out the right direction) and actually have a bunch of new ones that will be looking for the next 3-4 weeks. One of those will almost certainly be a Wikivoyage luggage tag though I really like the stamps! I'll look into the options :) Jalexander (talk) 10:04, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Can we make image defaults bigger now?

This was discussed at length but not followed through on. I'd like to submit a bug request to have larger en.WV image defaults implemented. I see lots of support at Wikivoyage_talk:Image_policy#Proposal_to_change_default_thumbnail_size, but no one mentioned submitting a bug request. Any comments before I submit it? (Comment at end of above linked talk page section please; your fresh support there, however redundant, will help get this done.) Thanks, --Rogerhc (talk) 00:13, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I think we agreed on 270px, right? If so, go ahead. --Peter ^Talk 19:33, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Bugzilla: 47332  filed April 17, 2013. --Rogerhc (talk) 19:41, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Bugzilla: 47332  rejected April 17 for server load and storage reasons:

(Tomasz W. Kozlowski quoting Antoine "hashar" Musso)-- [we don't configure] different thumbnail sizes per wiki for the following reasons:

• we keep thumbnails forever currently, the more we have the more disk space it takes
• different sizes lower the cache hit rate which in turns cause...
• ... a CPU cost on the cluster to generate a thumbnail, varying the sizes cause more and more thumbnails generations
• whenever a file is updated, we have to purge each thumbnails ever generated.

So I changed my own user preferences from the default, 220, to the maximum, 300, to see how that looks. I think we can have the default upped from 220 to either 250 or 300, because these are already available user preference options, but we would need to decide that as a community. Maybe developing a horizontal Table of Contents (discussion at Wikivoyage:TOC#New TOC) would allow us to use 300 as the default without page crowding. --Rogerhc (talk) 03:05, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Emergencies and Disasters

As a result of the ongoing emergency in Boston, I put a very basic warning box to travellers at the top, advising people to 'follow the instructions of local law-enforcement agents and refer to local news organisations for updates'. I couldn't find any WV policy for events like this, so any thoughts as to whether or not this is the right thing to do would be welcome. Please also feel free to remove the banner from that page. --Nick (talk) 22:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Good call. I don't know of a specific policy regarding usage of the banner, I think it depends more on a case-by-case basis. I'd say in this event usage of the banner is perfectly justified. PerryPlanet (talk) 22:49, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there are any specific guidelines beyond what's on Template:Warningbox, but I don't like updating our articles for events like this one since the impact from the event is limited to a day or less. If there's an earthquake or a natural disaster that will affect the area for weeks or months then a warning box provides a way of noting where and what is impacted, but for a general news event someone in the location will be getting more information than our guides provide, and someone visiting the location at a later date won't be affected by today's news. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:53, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with Ryan. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:02, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you're right Ryan - it is a bit optimistic/foolhardy to think that WV would be people first source of information at a time like this. I also meant as a sort of disclaimer I suppose for the article's content, but as stated above, I'm more than happy to remove it. --Nick (talk) 23:04, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

If the explosions occurred in a major tourist area (I'm not familiar with the marathon route), then the disruption may be ongoing for a week or two. Otherwise, I agree that a temporal event like this, however tragic, is probably not worth the warningbox. LtPowers (talk) 23:18, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, Boylston Street is definitely a tourist area (Fenway Park and Boston Common are each a stone's throw away), and according to news reports, 15 blocks surrounding the blast site have been cordoned off and will be closed until further notice. Methinks LtPowers' caveat may indeed apply to this situation. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

If the warning box is for something specific ("15 blocks around the area including Fenway and Boston Commons are cordoned off") and is put into the relevant district article or sub-section then that's information that may be of some value if the disruption is going to last for a while. However, a warning that simply states "The area described in this article is the location of an ongoing emergency" is Obvious, is irrelevant to the vast majority of the city, and doesn't sit well with me since it seems to be there solely for the sake of making our guides seem in some way relevant to a very sad event. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I've removed it. If anyone wishes to put it back or to replace it with a more nuanced version please feel free to do so. --Nick (talk) 00:04, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Ryan that it doesn't make sense for a travel guide to issue warnings about short term safety issues (aside from our travel news section, which is dormant now). All the more reason, of course, to start linking to Wikinews categories in the sidebar from individual articles! --Peter ^Talk 02:59, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I would largely have to agree with Ryan - a more specific note at the appropriate section may be helpful, but a generic message at the top makes it sound like the city is under martial law or something. --Rschen7754 04:22, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

It's usually best not to overuse these boxes. If Somalia is lawless chaos and Afghanistan has been turned into a war zone, say so, but we tend to get info like "Joplin was hit by a tornado in 2011" still left on articles years later even after it's no longer particularly useful to the traveller. A note on one section which contains listings for venues temporarily closed because of a disaster is reasonable if it's removed as soon as the venue either re-opens or the listing is removed. K7L (talk) 23:51, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I am indifferent on the use of the box in this particular case, but it would be super easy to have the box template add the article to a hidden category so it is easier for us to keep tabs on the ones that need to be removed after some time has passed. Texugo (talk) 19:47, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

For another example where a box was probably around far too long, see Talk:Karakoram Highway. I think the potential problem is worse for less-visited places and less-edited articles. Pashley (talk) 20:01, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I proposed adding "review dates" to the warningbox template here with the issue of outdated warningboxes on less-edited articles. However, often times a warningbox for an event or disaster should be converted to a cautionbox or disclaimerbox rather than completely removed from the article. If a large earthquake causes a lot of damage in a town, a warningbox about the earthquake (stating things like water/power services are not working, businesses are closed, etc) may not be needed a couple months later, but consequences of the event may still be relevant to travelers and may need to be highlighted. For the earthquake example, this may entail converting to a cautionbox, moving to the "Stay safe" section, and saying something like "Many structures in the town have been damaged by a Jan 2013 earthquake. Water has not been restored to the entire city. Shelters for those displaced in the earthquake are concentrated in the northeast and after dusk are rife with pickpockets. Businesses, attractions, and activities listed in this guide may be temporarily closed for repairs or may even have been destroyed." AHeneen (talk) 05:43, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

Just wanted to let my fellow Wikivoyagers know that I've been hired as a concierge at the Hilton Garden Inn in Cheektowaga, and my work on Buffalo and the corresponding district articles was the deciding factor. Thanks to everyone who's helped me justify putting that bullet point on my résumé.

And to head off a possible follow-up comment: yes, I do plan on heeding Wikivoyage:Welcome, business owners to a tee.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:40, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Bravo! L. Challenger (talk) 03:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations! You're obviously a superb pick for that job. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:28, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Grats! I'm sure you'll be pushing our top-notch Buffalo article to any lost guests from now on ;) JamesA ^>talk 10:12, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Congrats! That's great to hear! :) --Nick (talk) 13:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations! I wish that hotel business employed more people like you! --Alexander (talk) 19:36, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Very cool. Congratulations! -Shaundd (talk) 04:52, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again, friends. Onward and upward. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:56, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Photo linking help

Hi, everyone. Please have a look at Latina. Two of the photos I just tried to link are showing up as red links. That's because they are in it.wikipedia.org, not Commons, as I detail in Talk:Latina. I suppose the solution is to move the photos to Commons, but I don't know how to do that and also don't know whether that could be a problem in regard to Italy's law (if any) on photos of architecture from the 1930s. I feel like showing a bit of fascist architecture is the right thing to do in the Latina guide, since the city was inaugurated in 1932 and probably is still chock-full of fascist architecture as it was in 1991, when I had occasion to be there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:43, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

They are both in the Public Domain and you can transfer the photos yourself (the images are: 1 & 2). They have both been tagged for transfer to Commons. I don't understand why some images uploaded to Wikipedia remained tagged for transfer for years and don't get moved by the transfer bot. AHeneen (talk) 09:01, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming that they are in the public domain. Is there someplace I can read easy instructions on how to transfer the photos? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:21, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe take a look at [12]. Or else I could do it for you if you want :) JamesA ^>talk 10:05, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I took care of it, but boy did those file transfers take a long time! Do they usually take several minutes apiece with a DSL connection? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:29, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not your connection that's important, I think... unless you downloaded and re-uploaded the files manually. By the way, the images on the Italian Wikipedia now need to be marked with their equivalent of w:Template:NowCommons so that they can be deleted. LtPowers (talk) 15:03, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I took care of it. It turns out to be the same template on it.wikipedia.org. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:57, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

₹ symbol

Anyone know how to make this on a mac (mountain lion)? --RegentsPark (talk) 19:28, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I no longer have a Mac to verify this, but have a look at these links:

• Apple Support Discussion - 2 queries: Indian Rupee font and direct typing of Indic fonts Easiest way is probably to activate the Unicode Hex keyboard layout (can't remember if this is something that needs to be done in the OS settings or in your browser's settings) and hold the Option/alt key while typing 20B9.
• YouTube-rupee symbol video In 10.7 Lion (but should probably be similar if not the same).

While less convenient and probably not what you're looking for, the rupee symbol can be found in the "special characters" at the top of the Mediawiki edit box and in the symbols below the edit box (third from right on the "currency" symbols line). AHeneen (talk) 19:57, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Mac don't have key for this symbol yet. --Saqib (talk) 20:00, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The alt 20b9 works and is relatively straightforward. (I must be missing some setting because my special characters dosen't include a separate currency symbols line and I see no ₹ under "symbols".) --RegentsPark (talk) 20:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

"Currency" is right under "Wiki markup" and before "Info templates" in MediaWiki:Edittools. Sadly, five of the currency symbols, including Rupees, don't display for me. LtPowers (talk) 22:42, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Found it. Thanks and it ₹ works! --RegentsPark (talk) 22:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I was looking for the same "₹" --MyThailandOrg (talk) 14:42, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Listing: Add Wikipedia article field?

What to do when a listing (museum, theatre, temple, etc) has a Wikipedia page? How about a new optional listing field? For instance, wikipedia="Manneken Pis" would result in a small icon that would lead the reader to the sum of human knowledge about this listing. What do you think about it? Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:22, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

This has been debated extensively and so far has been nixed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:56, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

FYI: Wikivoyage_talk:Links_to_Wikipedia#Wikipedia_parameter_in_special_tags. I think someone just needs to go through that and make a new proposal, with clear rules/guidelines. The opposers don't seem to oppose outright the linking to Wikipedia, but don't want to see a million WP links scattered across articles (nor do I). So we just need a clear, strict, but useful policy. JamesA ^>talk 09:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I was not aware about that! Here is the most recent discussion: Wikivoyage_talk:Listings#Listings_tags_and_links_to_Wikipedia. Looks like the debate has consumed a lot of editor's time already, so I don't think it is worth redebating it that soon, let's concentrate on filling latitude/longitude for all listings, for instance :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:44, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, there are just as many editors for this as against this. There is plenty of good info on Wikipedia which we actually don't want to duplicate here - individual articles for museums, historic landmarks, roads and airports are a few common examples. We just need to ensure enough info is still here, so a printed copy of a WV city guide is a self-contained reference if printed alone without bothering to print all of the WP articles for the individual museums and landmarks in the town. K7L (talk) 18:29, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

From what I can gather, most of the users who "are against this" are just hesitant about the idea until we can make it very clear where WP links are allowed and where they are not. I don't think they are unreservedly opposed to any WP links whatsoever. Someone just needs to gather the ideas and collate them into a draft policy for discussion. JamesA ^>talk 09:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment on Rome minicabs

I duly posted this under Wikivoyage:Requests for comment#Articles on April 8, and it's gotten no comments whatsoever, so I am now trying to solicit comments by posting here. The direct link is Talk:Rome#Minicabs. We are trying to resolve an important question on listings, and so far, it is just the owner and me. The owner has a very positive and cooperative attitude, and I would like to accommodate him/her within the external links and don't tout guidelines but have some reservations and could also really use some more participation. I don't think two people in an article as visible as Rome constitutes a consensus, and I would prefer not to see the two of us come to a consensus-by-default and then have one person come along and unilaterally revert whatever we may come up with. Thanks, everyone. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:55, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

m:Requests for comment/Activity levels of advanced administrative rights holders

Thought I'd mention this here (I think EdwardsBot will send this out in a few days). It should not affect the English Wikivoyage that much as there's already an inactivity policy here, but I know there's a lot of you who hold rights on other Wikivoyages and who may be affected by this. --Rschen7754 10:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

What is the inactivity policy here? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:55, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

According to Wikivoyage:Administrators, you get desysopped if you are gone for 2 years. --Rschen7754 11:05, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if this policy has ever really been enforced. It seems like there are a number of former WT admins whose rights have been transferred when they began editing here (even if it has just been a handful of edits). For example, WT founder Evan (also a bureaucrat). I don't think it's a bad policy to have. AHeneen (talk) 03:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

AHeneen, so far no elected admin/bureaucrat has violated our policies, so there was no need to enforce such policies. I agree that might be useful to implement the two year policy. jan (talk) 20:21, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Emphasis on elected, eh? -- Alice^✉ 07:19, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Air Travel Articles

As the Airport Expedition (quick plug) gets under way, I was taking a quick look at our coverage of air travel in general and it seems to be a bit eclectic. We maintain 5 airline articles (American Airlines, US Airways, Philippine Airlines, Singapore Airlines and United Airlines) which aren't (as far as I can tell) sanctioned by policy we have on here and (from what I gather), we've deleted several already. Oughtn't we decide either to welcome airlines as a genre and extend our coverage using the existing and seemingly fairly resilient template already in use, or decide that they're not for us and merge/delete them.

We also seem to have a lot of overlap with some of our travel topics. For example: Tips for flying and Fundamentals of flying which share the same opening sentence at present. I've stuck a 'merge' tag on the former, but it's not the only the article that could exist happily within 'Fundamentals'. I think we should either merge a lot of articles into 'Fundamentals' or 'districtify' (so to speak) that article, so it's not quite so massive.

Any thoughts on either point? --Nick (talk) 14:32, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

On the first point, I have never thought it a good idea for us to have airline articles, as they are articles about specific companies and transport systems, both of which we have specific policies against. The key airport sections are marginally useful, but the fleet information with specific airplane model info is a little encyclopedic for most travellers I think (besides a couple of Boeing models, it's mostly only airplane afficionados who would know anything about the others), and the frequent flyer program information strikes me a being slightly touty and a lot difficult to ensure we keep it updated. That kind of information is always bound to be given in more definitive and updated form on the company's website anyway. Route information is similarly subject to change at anytime, which is why we generally also do not give detailed bus/train/ferry schedules. If we make a blanket exception to the no-articles-for-companies rule here, I also think this would represent a step toward allowing articles for hotel chains, bus companies, etc., as there is analogous information for all such companies.

On the second point, yes I think those two should definitely be merged and if necessary "districtified" as you said. Texugo (talk) 15:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Texugo on both points. Pashley (talk) 16:47, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

If I remember correctly (and I may very well be wrong), at least one of the articles Nick mentioned survived a VfD nomination in the past. For the life of me, I cannot understand why; as Texugo said, they are very clearly against our policy. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:02, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually Qantas has its own article too. I can't really understand the purpose of separate articles about airlines either. Numerical information relevant to travelers such as baggage limits and perhaps seat pitch could be put in a list. Encyclopaedic details about the fleet, lounges, destination lists etc. are interesting indeed, but everything is already on WikiPedia. Frequent flyer info and phone numbers and such - um... seriously? I mean, of course Wikivoyage should cover all possible aspects of travel, but I think it's sufficient to give the reader names of airlines flying to X and maybe a link to their homepage where they can check prices and schedules, book etc. This isn't a travel agency or the yellow pages. Concerning the second part. I think the articles should be merged, and so should At the airport. Some intelligent districtification could be useful because the current fundamentals of flying is fairly unwieldy already. Ypsilon (talk) 17:45, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

See Wikivoyage talk:What is an article?#Airlines, Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion/January 2013#US Airways, United Airlines, & Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion/January 2013#American Airlines. AHeneen (talk) 03:32, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

What the results for the Vfd discussions show is that there is no consistent policy on articles about airlines, and for some reason, some of them get kept but articles about cruise lines are automatically deleted. As I said in my comment about [[Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion/January 2013#Carnival Cruise Line|the deletion of Carnival Cruise Line]]:

"I don't get it. Why are we deleting an article about a cruise line and some articles about airlines and keeping other articles about airlines? Where should we be discussing the reasoning behind these decisions?" Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

(indent)In reading the discussions, it seems there are two overriding reasons for the willy-nilly keep/delete 'policy' we have regarding cruises and airlines.

• The first is whether or not someone has spent a lot of time writing it. It's an argument often brought up even when an article is clearly against policy. Basically, deleting such articles could anger/upset the user (maybe enough to make them leave) and there is a feeling of guilt associated with deleting someone's hard work. While this shouldn't be a valid reason to keep an article, we're all human and have feelings (except the bots...)
• The second was only mentioned once, but I know it's something on many people's minds which is deleting high-content articles here means that another site probably still has the content, so we automatically forfeit that user traffic. I'd like for this to not be a valid concern however, I'm not sure we've reached a place for it to be dismissed yet. We still don't appear on most Google searches.

There are, of course, a lot of other reasons given in the discussions. With the airlines, it seems to be that some users want information to be consolidated and convenient, which may or may not be the case on the official website. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 07:43, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that all articles about airlines and cruise lines should be deleted; I just think we need to have a coherent policy that we can follow. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:02, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

On the topic of airlines. What I think is useful to travelers is which airports are their hubs, useful to know when planning for alternative connections; and which frequent flyer program alliances they are part of, useful for consolidating points. Both of these facts are covered at Airline alliances. As for plane details, although I look up which plane type for a specific flight so I can decide on what seat to book, I think fleet data is something for Wikipedia. Lounge information should be on airport pages, or airport sections of the city article. The details on the frequent flyer points collection and redeeming is interesting and often not well summarised on the official site. There are however often unofficial sites for these programs. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:37, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

As for the airlines I do agree that they're not particularly useful at present, so we should do away with them. Would some sort of 'Not yet bin' be useful for when people have plainly spent a long length of time on an article that doesn't yet fit with our remit? That way, they're moved out of the mainspace, but could be re-inserted into other articles or as a standalone piece later on. --Nick (talk) 11:04, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I separated this paragraph from one below that seemed to change the topic of the discussion (and thus I created a new subhead). I hope you don't mind, Nick. I wonder if merging airline articles into broader travel topics (such as Airlines in the United States or some such) would alleviate concerns. I agree that articles on individual airlines seems a bit much. LtPowers (talk) 14:17, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't mind at all - I think that makes good sense! Merging airlines together sounds like a good idea too as we have a lot of information on airlines and it would be a shame to delete all of it. --Nick (talk) 08:46, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Flying travel topics

I've had a look at our flying travel topics and redistributed the information in Flying, Fundamentals of flying, Tips for flying and At the airport into 5 new articles. User:Nicholasjf21/Flying is a portal into our flight topics, whilst User:Nicholasjf21/Planning_your_flight, User:Nicholasjf21/At_the_airport, User:Nicholasjf21/On_the_plane and User:Nicholasjf21/Arriving_by_plane form a series of articles, providing information on every step of a flight to the traveller. These articles are still very much a work in progress, but I'd be interested to know what you thought of the broad divisions. Thanks! --Nick (talk) 11:04, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes this is a much better method of organising the articles. --Traveler100 (talk) 11:24, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Interesting that Fundamentals of flying will represent the first time in Wikitravel/Wikivoyage history that a former Featured Article ended up as a redirect. Where will we put the FTT icon, I wonder? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 12:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I suppose either on the User:Nicholasjf21/Flying page, or perhaps remove it altogether and let this new arrangement earn its own plaudits? The thing is, Fundamentals of flying is an excellent article, I just think that the rest of our air travel coverage needs tweaking and rearranging. --Nick (talk) 13:49, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I say remove it, and leave it unlinked in the FTT archive. A footnote may be necessary to explain. LtPowers (talk) 14:17, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you're right there - some sort of footnote saying where relevant info could now be found would be appropriate I think. I've had a little play with all the above articles now - are they looking any better? --Nick (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Please feel free to have a play yourselves too if you don't agree with any of the moves I've made. It's still a little sloppy in places... --Nick (talk) 19:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

As no one has objected, am I ok to implement this now? --Nick (talk) 22:40, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

The deed is done. You can now peruse the newly divided articles from Flying onwards. I have made Fundamentals and Tips redirects, however, for ease of comparison I've copied versions to my name-space so you don't have to go rooting through the revision history:

• Fundamentals of flying
• Tips for flying

All comments, suggestions and feedback would be very welcome. If anyone is distraught at this change, reverting my alterations should be very easy. --Nick (talk) 20:39, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Is everyone happy with the changes I've made? If so, is it worth starting work on Airlines in the US, as suggested above? --Nick (talk) 21:23, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I love it! Very intuitive layout, and it's nice to have all the air travel articles in one place. I say plunge forward on that Airlines in the United States article! PerryPlanet (talk) 16:55, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much! :) I'll get going with the Airlines in the United States article now! --Nick (talk) 21:22, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

"On the trail of ..." itineraries

Some years back, I did On the trail of Marco Polo and I have just finished On the trail of Kipling's Kim. These are great fun to write and, while they are not precisely itineraries in the sense of ready-to-follow routes, they may be useful to someone planning a trip.

Would anyone care to improve those? Or to tackle other similar topics? Or to offer criticism? Pashley (talk) 19:43, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment on inactive administrators

(Please consider translating this message for the benefit of your fellow Wikimedians. Please also consider translating the proposal.)

Read this message in English / Lleer esti mensaxe n'asturianu / বাংলায় এই বার্তাটি পড়ুন / Llegiu aquest missatge en català / Læs denne besked på dansk / Lies diese Nachricht auf Deutsch / Leś cal mesag' chè in Emiliàn / Leer este mensaje en español / Lue tämä viesti suomeksi / Lire ce message en français / Ler esta mensaxe en galego / हिन्दी / Pročitajte ovu poruku na hrvatskom / Baca pesan ini dalam Bahasa Indonesia / Leggi questo messaggio in italiano / ಈ ಸಂದೇಶವನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಓದಿ / Aqra dan il-messaġġ bil-Malti / norsk (bokmål) / Lees dit bericht in het Nederlands / Przeczytaj tę wiadomość po polsku / Citiți acest mesaj în română / Прочитать это сообщение на русском / Farriintaan ku aqri Af-Soomaali / Pročitaj ovu poruku na srpskom (Прочитај ову поруку на српском) / อ่านข้อความนี้ในภาษาไทย / Прочитати це повідомлення українською мовою / Đọc thông báo bằng tiếng Việt / 使用中文阅读本信息。

Hello!

There is a new request for comment on Meta-Wiki concerning the removal of administrative rights from long-term inactive Wikimedians. Generally, this proposal from stewards would apply to wikis without an administrators' review process.

We are also compiling a list of projects with procedures for removing inactive administrators on the talk page of the request for comment. Feel free to add your project(s) to the list if you have a policy on administrator inactivity.

All input is appreciated. The discussion may close as soon as 21 May 2013 (2013-05-21), but this will be extended if needed.

Thanks, Billinghurst (thanks to all the translators!) 04:33, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery (Wrong page? You can fix it.)

Add an element in a list

Hi, from the french wikivoyage, we wondered if a tool to add an element as hotel, attractions... in a list and generate the tags exist somewhere. Thanks--Adehertogh (talk) 17:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

This listing parser/tag converter might help. -- torty3 (talk) 08:10, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Travelling distances

From my resources of non-online material I have uncovered a 'distance book' produced by the western australian main roads department. I cannot find any earlier discussion (and if it is somewhere - please alert me so that this thread here does not become space or time consuming here) as to whether there ever have been - at a country or large region - any usage or perceived need for charts / tables of distances within a country or region? I can understand for some it might be anathema and run against the general scope of the project - in which case I will probably keep my sub-page and use it for informing the various articles the information is useful in. Thanks to anyone who might feel it is worth discussing. sats (talk) 07:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Some articles contain a few distances to neighbouring cities in their "Go next" section, but apart from that I don't think complete table are really needed? Someone may know better, though. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 14:54, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know of a central discussion to point you to, but in practice it has always been considered that this type of information is much better provided by a good map, so lists and tables of distances have generally been discouraged.Texugo (talk) 14:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Sub-expedition: Fill all the latitudes!

Dynamic maps are only great if all attractions/hotels/etc have latitude/longitude... and everybody can help with that :-)

There are mostly 4 methods to get latitudes/longitudes, please use one and start improving your favorite articles! Nicolas1981 (talk) 10:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

New Interlingual Portal implemented

I just wanted to take this opportunity to draw the community's attention to all the the great work done by Rogerhc on WV's new interlingual portal - it really does look great. Thanks Roger! :) --Nick (talk) 10:51, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Where have the links to the other wmf projects gone? I'm just seeing an empty blue rectangle at the bottom. Texugo (talk) 11:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

They're at the top in a black bar, which does seem a bit counter-intuitive. And I also see the empty blue rectangle. LtPowers (talk) 13:05, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, they're almost invisible up there - if the links are to be kept there they should be colored red/orange or something. Otherwise the page looks great. I'm using Safari and I don't see any empty blue rectangle. Ypsilon (talk) 16:16, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

A mobile version of the interlingual portal is needed. AHeneen (talk) 11:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Actually, I like the black bar a lot, but I wish it were at the bottom of the page. Texugo (talk) 14:38, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The html source code contains about 270 errors (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.wikivoyage.org). The code should be cleaned. --RolandUnger (talk) 07:47, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Roland. I cleaned up the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikivoyage.org_template/temp just now. It is up to a Mata admin to push that clean up live. --Rogerhc (talk) 00:40, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Synched with temp. If you ever need something on Meta, feel free to ask. It's not as scary as it looks. ;) PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

The first letter of the Ukrainian translation for "Travel Guide", "туристичний путівник", isn't capitalized like the rest of the translations are. Should be "Туристичний путівник" in both the hovertext and the <em/>. Bigpeteb (talk) 18:06, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Bigpeteb, Done on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikivoyage.org_template/temp just now. It is now up to a Mata admin to push that live. --Rogerhc (talk) 00:40, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

This edit should fix all but 3 of the errors in the HTML. Shall I sync the live version? PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes please - that would be great! :) --Nick (talk) 20:40, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Are you sure? Looks like the hovertext was changed but not the bodytext of the link Bigpeteb (talk) 21:35, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

(sorry, can I edit it myself? wasn't sure) Bigpeteb (talk) 21:36, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Synched. See if it fixed the HTML stuff (it might take a while for it to go live). PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:24, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Bigpeteb is right. I had fixed the hover texts but forgot the link texts. I have corrected that now and asked PiRSquared to re-sync. And yes, anyone can edit m:Www.wikivoyage.org_template/temp but only Meta admin can sync it to the live m:Www.wikivoyage.org_template. --Rogerhc (talk) 23:41, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Invalid interwiki

There are a lot of invalid interwiki from incubator in articles (like here). They link to pages that don't exist. Maybe it'll be better to remove them. The same operation was carried out on uk, ru and it wikivoyages. My bot can remove ar, ca, eo, fi, hi, hu, ja, ko, zh interwiki, but I'd like to ask for permission to make these changes. What do you think about it? --SteveR (talk) 16:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage in the news

Patos Island sunset San Juan Islands

Recent article on the San Juan Islands used my photo which has only been used on Wikivoyage to date. I've noticed a few unusual wordings cropping up in main stream press from wikivoyage articles. I'm not sure but I think that wikivoyage is starting to have more of a cultural influence at least in the Pacific Northwest. —The preceding comment was added by Lumpytrout (talk • contribs)

I've seen my restaurant reviews in Buffalo#Eat copied lock, stock and barrel on various websites (with attribution). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Help test the new account creation and login

Hi all,

After many weeks of testing, We (the editor engagement experiments team) are is getting close to enabling redesigns of the account creation and login pages. (There's more background about how we got here and why ‎our blog post.)

Right now are trying to identify any final bugs before we enable new defaults. This is where we really need your help: for now, we don't want to disrupt these critical functions if there are outstanding bugs or mistranslated interface messages. So for about a week, the new designs are opt-in only for testing purposes, and it would be wonderful if you could give them a try. Here's how:

• Go to account creation and add &useNew=1 to the URL, or just use this link
• Go to login and add &useNew=1 to the URL, or just use this link

If you have questions about how to test this or why something might be the way it is, I'd definitely check out our step-by-step testing guide and the general documentation.

Many thanks, Steven (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Which is the most appropriate place for feedback? I think "contributors this month" is misleading in an ugly Internet-Brands sort of way, since it sounds like it's trying to imply there were that many unique editors during this month... Texugo (talk) 20:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Here works for feedback. :) On this: it's supposed to use the {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} magic word, which shows all users who took an action in the last 30 days. Right now it mistakenly includes just {{NUMBEROFUSERS}}. If folks still think that's unacceptable, let's talk about alternatives. (You can of course customize the local MediaWiki message for the statistic and its description.) Steven (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

If it will show number of active users, it would be fine with me... Texugo (talk) 20:44, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Help:Logging in doesn't exist; in fact, we don't have a Help namespace. Is that customizable? LtPowers (talk) 02:11, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Customizable in MediaWiki:Helplogin-url. Let's remove that link, maybe for now by placing something else, maybe even just "&nbsp;" in MediaWiki:Helplogin-url (blanking it would not work as that just reverts to the default link). Putting a "help" link there is an unnecessary invitation to excess. The corresponding Wikipedia page w:Help:Logging_in is an example of excess that does not help the traveler nor probably anyone else. Could an admin do this please? The MediaWiki:Helplogin-url page is protected. --Rogerhc (talk) 00:10, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I think a simple help link is not an invitation to excess. It's pretty standard user interface design to not dump help content on to the login page, but put it somewhere else so that it doesn't distract or annoy people who don't need help. I would highly encourage Wikivoyage to have a basic help page about login. Since Wikivoyage doesn't have a help namespace, which is slightly unusual, where do you keep help guides? In the project namespace? Perhaps Wikivoyage:How to create a user account is the appropriate interim link. Let me know and I can help customize any MediaWiki namespace messages if an admin hasn't beat me to it. :) Steven (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Taking someone to a page that is not the "create an account" page makes it quiet a bit harder, not easier, for him to complete that "create an account" page. A more helpful way to offer help where it might be needed there on that very simple page is to put it in hove boxes that pop up when a user lingers over or clicks a "help" link there, so that the user is still on the "create an account" page while he is reading that brief, to the point at hand, help. Paragraphs of explanatory text on an entirely different page simply are not helpful nor relevant to the simple process of filling out the "create an account" form. Certainly lets not take someone away from the "create an account" page while he is trying to fill it out. Rogerhc (talk) 06:00, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

'Get in' and 'Get around' questions

I'm sure that this has been covered somewhere before, but I've looked through the manual of style etc and can't find a definitive answer and there seems to be a wide variety in different regional articles.

What is the best order for means of transport? Alphabetical seems silly so I've been trying to put things in order of the most commonly used type of transport, but this seems somewhat subjective. For example most travelers might arrive in the Kitsap Peninsula by ferry, but maybe not. Is there a guide to this I'm missing?

Google directions default to different modes of transport in different regions. For example in Japan they default to train and bus schedules. Lumpytrout (talk) 13:50, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Most common comes first, with wide latitude given for determining that. For large regions within the U.S., By Plane will come first for Get In, followed by By Car, By Train, and By Bus. In Get Around, it'll usually be By Car, By Bus, By Plane, and By Train. But each region is somewhat different. LtPowers (talk) 15:55, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

okay, thanks. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. Lumpytrout (talk) 17:12, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Just wanted to put in my 2c and say that within city centres, By Train/Metro and By Foot would most likely be higher in the list, seeing as they are the most useful and relevant to travellers and tourists. JamesA ^>talk 13:24, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

To "Buy" or to "Eat", that is the question...

Parkside Candy is a chocolate and candy shop that's very famous in Buffalo. It also has a small counter where ice cream, coffee etc. are served. However, by far the primary business there is retail sales - I doubt whether many Buffalonians even know about the eat-in option. Does this belong in "buy" or "eat"? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:55, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Buy. LtPowers (talk) 18:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with LtPowers. If it's overwhelmingly a place to buy these things to take out, I think it should go in "Buy." If you put it in "Eat," I wouldn't move it, however. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:41, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

That settles it, then. Thanks. I haven't added it yet but when I do, it will be under "buy". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Being an admin on competing wikis

I'm not talking about sister sites here (e.g., Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary). Is there a conflict of interest when someone is an admin on two travel wikis, one of which was involved in hostile legal action with the other? Or is that OK? I hope it's not inappropriate for me to bring this up; I thought it merited airing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:42, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It has also concerned me lately; I'm starting to wonder the particular motivations of those admins. Although slightly different, and probably none of our business, there are also quite a few users who are regular "active" members of both communities and contribute to both (if it can be said that the competing travel wiki in question even has a community). JamesA ^>talk 13:22, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

If we are genuine about

1. our philosophy and whole raison d'être that the traveller comes first
2. that an admin's task is primarily janitorial in cleaning up a mess

then I don't see a conflict of interest here for any person who is an admin on both.

Many of us hope that Wikitravel will quickly diminish in search engine popularity but stupid deletions like those made by Ryan in his (unwitting?) religious zeal to stamp out heterodoxy only postpone the otherwise inevitable decline of Wikitravel in SEO rankings and make it almost essential for ordinary editors to be active on both if a wide audience is sought for their current contributions.

Notwithstanding what I write above, the list of admins at Wikitravel is not necessarily up-to-date. -- Alice^✉ 15:11, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

In regard to "the traveller comes first" the WT articles are causing issues for some travellers in that they still see the articles as being reliable and authoritative, yet in many cases they are not. Some people have inadvertently become involved with inappropriate travel services suppliers due to poor control of the listings. I am referring in particular to organised and guided ascents upon an Indonesian mountain. This is disturbing and likely not an isolated incident. Really WT should be voluntarily locked down by IB as in some circumstances the interests and possibly the physical welfare of travellers can potentially come into harms way when article content is not managed vigorously. -- Felix (talk) 18:54, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The point of being an admin is indeed primarily janitorial, but the tools at our disposal could be used to cause damage (albeit temporary damage), if an admin so chose. Of course, damaging actions would become evident very quickly and could then be counteracted in short order, but nevertheless, I think that if there are people who are currently active as admins on these two competing sites, maybe they should explain their motivations for thus dividing their admin work. Where would be the best place to have that discussion? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:52, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

If we take the WMF's statement at their word, then adminship on both sites is completely compatible. --Rschen7754 20:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I didn't realize there was a WMF statement about this. Very well, then. Does the other site feel the same way? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The WMF statement can be found at the top of Wikivoyage:Policies#Cooperating with other websites. With regards to the original question about "competing" wikis, I'd prefer that we not consider Wikitravel relevant to any decision-making here unless absolutely necessary. So long as contributors to Wikitravel aren't disrupting things here, and issues aren't being created here as a result of Wikitravel, then that site should be irrelevant to the operation of Wikivoyage. There will obviously be some instances where we need to consider past actions by Internet Brands and act accordingly (example: Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage and Wikitravel#Can I copy content between Wikivoyage and Wikitravel?), but otherwise let's just move on. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:37, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, fair enough, but I will reiterate that I find the idea of being an active admin on both sites kind of weird and troubling. However, everyone should take that as a personal view only, and I won't mention it again. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:54, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, and it's easy enough to flag down a steward on IRC should we need an emergency desysop for some reason. --Rschen7754 21:42, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I am probably more active on WT than any of the other admins here, unless someone is active there under a different alias. All I do there, though, is delete utterly obvious spam (sometimes over 20 pages a day; they really have a problem!) and keep a dozen or so pages watchlisted so I can track what they are up to. Roughly once a month I get irritated enough to block a persistent spammer, generally after they have created at least half a dozen spam pages over several days and no-one else has banned them.

Everything I see there indicates a dying site. There are not many actual contributors and nearly all admins are IB staff. I see huge numbers of semi-obvious spam pages — typically a user page with a formulaic self-introduction in appalling English (computer generated?) followed by some irrelevant link — and a fair number of marketer edits. I don't touch either of those; basically, I won't do anything there that needs any thought or judgement. These problems are occasionally fixed by IB admins, but nothing like regularly enough to keep the site healthy. Pashley (talk) 22:01, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Being semi-active on both sites, I can personally vouch for the truth in what Pashley writes above.

It is precisely because of the sort of dangers described by Felix during (what will probably turn out to be, if some of the "Old Guard" don't "wise-up" to SEO sins of omission and commission,) a very prolonged and ugly death struggle that admins and ordinary editors who conscientiously contribute to both sites should not be seen as traitors or turncoats.

For the sake of completeness, IB never bothered to timeously make the statement legally required of them - although, being fair, that may be because a relevant statement was inserted with this edit that was not reverted or changed by IBobi.

Lastly, I discern a subtle difference between the actual advice given at http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage_and_Wikitravel&oldid=2201210#Can_I_copy_content_between_Wikivoyage_and_Wikitravel.3F of "However, as Internet Brands and the WMF have engaged in litigation, please discuss before moving content from Wikitravel to Wikivoyage." (ie a copy to WV followed by a delete from WT) and the more likely scenario - just copying relevant material with an URL of a diff in the WV edit summary for attribution purposes. Whether this was intentional though, I doubt. -- Alice^✉ 22:50, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The stewards are very proactive at dealing with spambots and open proxies (even shutting down entire ranges with misbehaving ISPs), so I think that's a large factor too. --Rschen7754 00:21, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Alice, while I understand the desire not to publicize exact methods being used for SEO, it might behoove you to contact users privately about said activity, rather than referring to it obliquely and insultingly here at the Pub. LtPowers (talk) 00:33, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I had noticed this particular issue myself, though I'm not sure it's a problem. I think it would be wrong to exclude anyone from any role here on WV just as a result of 'fraternising with the 'enemy" - that's the sort of thing that another Wiki-based travel site would do and we don't want to go down that path: we're the traveller's travel guide. Unless there's a major conflict of interest or a history of vandalism, I don't think we need to be concerned, though it is good that this discussion is taking place. However, as has been raised above, perhaps we need to give our SEO and Wikivoyage:Search Expedition a nudge, just to help us rise through the ranks further - we still have much to do. --Nick (talk) 00:51, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I also don't think it's a major issue, and many of the admins who edit on both sites don't seem to have a "loyalty" problem. If anything, it keeps parts of our community up-to-date on what the happenings are in the "travel wiki world" and important tidbits for our Search Expedition. Speaking of which, I do think we need to inject some new life into that, possibly in a private, request-only sphere of communication. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time lately to put into my brainchild, but hopefully we can implement some new techniques and ideas soon. JamesA ^>talk 13:00, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I was motivated to edit there recently to the mitigate potential for someone to suffer significant grief or catastrophe on a mountain ascent, so don't anyone go thinking that I am sanctioning, supporting or wish to participate in any lifelines being sent out to WT, that would involve a deep misunderstanding of my motives and actions. The destination concerned includes Indonesia's 2nd highest volcano and 39th highest mountain in the world (by prominence). It must be made clear this was not just about filtering or managing commercial listings on both WT and WV articles concerned, people do occasionally die on that mountain. The tracks are often slippery and dangerous and people have fallen to their death. Others have been poorly equipped and died of exposure, some others have become disoriented, got lost and then perished. It is a 3,726 metre high mountain, things can go wrong, and sometimes they go very wrong.

Editing across the two projects in parallel is potentially unsettling as it raises concerns of newly edited content on WV looking similar to that on WT if similar edits might be required to parallel Wiki articles. I considered that openly and clearly using my established identity on both articles made it difficult for anyone to claim the content had been 'copied' and in any case most of the activity involved deletion of invalid content that would have been misleading travellers, both in that article and a couple of associated articles at the same destination. Also as my activities involved 'managing' the listings of mountain ascent provider listings it was of benefit for it to be clear who was doing it. Personally I would not encourage working in both domains due to issues of clarifying authorship and originality, and in any case there is plenty enough for a committed contributor or admin to do on WV without wandering off to make hospital visits to terminally ill Wiki relatives.

It is unlikely that IB will read any message of support for their project from my own actions and the very constrained scope in which I have recently participated there would be fairly apparent to them if they are at all perceptive. I truly hope that the outcome of my recent efforts in remediating the mountain ascent listings concerned will provide them with sufficient impetus to manage that articles listings of providers on their own from now on.

My own views on IB and WT have been expressed rather comprehensively in the past and I doubt iBobi has entirely forgotten my parting words, or the commentary that preceded it.
When we sought remedy the bunch of misfits that comprise IB sought to sue some of us, threatened others including myself with legal action and in quite bizarre circumstances also blocked a good number of us from participation in the WT project. Other antics included changing policy on the fly, removal of content, including policy and project discussions, playing around with admin status and blocking user accounts.

If I visit WT and see the article/s are full of spam, vandalised or blanked they will be receiving no remedy from me. Their previous quite mischievous blocking my user account, suing people and IBs appallingly game playing took care of any future opportunities for that to occur. I would never do it myself but if someone blanked any of those articles or filled them full of complete jibberish or chock-a-block full of spam it would provide me with considerable relief. At least then a visiting reader would know to just entirely ignore the article content and would wander off to seek information elsewhere. If the IB staff resource was turned to the far more productive task of updating articles in a non-public Wiki environment rather then mopping up spam they might have some limited potential to continue as a travel guide themed website. Currently their site is somewhat messy and a regurgitated dog's breakfast likely has more appeal.

Anyone from this project who is 'helping out' by sweeping out spam, patrolling, editing content, or in general mopping up this canine emesis is really only keeping the ailing diseased and possibly insane patient alive. Just let that project fill with spam, clutter and junk. At least then the travellers who go there can really identify there is a problem and look elsewhere for travel advice and the sooner IB might realise the best solution is to take it down and put it in a box. That site long ago lost credibility and content integrity. -- Felix (talk) 14:23, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

1) Unlike IB, we should keep a "fair play" attitude towards competition. That's why we should assume good faith and accept anyone regardless of their external activities. 2) It would be a shame to undermine the nice convivial atmosphere here with any witch-hunting. 3) I don't wish WT gets spam, because it is not a good thing for us, as it makes Internet users wary of tourism-related wikis general. Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:17, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I would ask that anything I've written here *not* be copied to WT. I realise that the free license allows commercial re-use if proper attribution is provided but blocking all mention of WV with this "Salem's Lot" nonsense means that attribution is not being provided and cannot be provided. Unattributed copying of WV content does violate copyright and is theft. I hate to be blunt about this, but as long as search engines are heavily penalising duplicate content it is an issue which needs to be taken moderately seriously. K7L (talk) 14:37, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, well, well: [13]. AHeneen (talk) 01:20, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

[14] Demoted, too. I tried to save some articles i cared about but that was ridiculed, so i stopped. I'm happy that i never used my real life identity at WT. It's a sad decline but IB seems to be happy otherwise they would be more restrictive. jan (talk) 13:34, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I do not have any issues if people wish to edit over there. When I first posted at WT it was an offer to work together. I did not expect what happened to follow. Personally I would not feel comfortable editing their due to the litigious environment. And lots to improve here... Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:18, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Consulates and Embassies

After a list of consulates was added to Pacific Northwest, User:Lumpytrout pointed to Florida as an example of consulates being listed in Region articles. I thought we only put consulates and embassies in City articles. Which is correct? LtPowers (talk) 20:33, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I thought we only put them in city articles too. Wouldn't it be rather redundant to put them in a city and a state article? PerryPlanet (talk) 20:46, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, redundant I think. Usually an area will only have one city with any consulates or embassies at all anyway. I wouldn't mind a note in the region article saying "Various consulates/embassies can be found in City X" or something short to that effect, but I don't see any need to reproduce the whole list. Texugo (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

specifically I was thinking of a time I stepped off a train in Japan to stretch my legs (I was young and dumb) only to have the train leave without me. My backpack, passport, money etc was all on the train (did I mention I was young and dumb at the time?) anyway, long story short I really needed an English speaker and fast and obviously I was not familiar with the area. If I had a resource like wikivoyage available to me at the time, where would I look for a consulate? I wouldn't want to spend my time looking through individual city listings trying to find the right one. Lumpytrout (talk) 21:04, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, in that kind of situation you'd be stuck in one city. So I would imagine you'd start by looking at the article for the city you're in, right? PerryPlanet (talk) 21:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

It's also nothing for which my suggested one-liner wouldn't point you in the right direction. Texugo (talk) 22:03, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I will work out a better one-liner strategy for that section, some of the local consulates are off the beaten track for some reason so I do think that some direction at a higher level would be helpful. Florida was probably a bad example to be tracking as it is both a state and its own United States region. Lumpytrout (talk) 01:58, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

[en] Change to wiki account system and account renaming

Some accounts will soon be renamed due to a technical change that the developer team at Wikimedia are making. More details on Meta.

(Distributed via global message delivery 03:31, 30 April 2013 (UTC). Wrong page? Correct it here.)

The notice says that bureaucrat's rights to rename users will be removed. Will that affect our little system we've got going here of renaming and merging old WT users? If so, maybe it's not such an issue, as users have had plenty of time to be renamed and merged if that's what they wanted. JamesA ^>talk 03:44, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

That is a good question. But in the meantime, if you have not merged your en.wikivoyage account with your other WMF accounts using Special:MergeAccount you probably should before May 27, or otherwise things might become a huge mess after that. --Rschen7754 04:25, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Response from Jdforrester: [15] --Rschen7754 05:52, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for following up. Hopefully there is a way to maintain that functionality since we still get a trickle of users wanting their contributions imported here from the other site merged into their Wikivoyage account contribution history. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:22, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Not a problem. Might be helpful to have a crat or two say something at m:Rename practices besides my generic comment. --Rschen7754 06:41, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Help with an article

Anyone who is so inclined could help with Routes to Santiago de Compostela from France, which was a travel topic until I just turned it into an itinerary and inserted a (slightly modified) itinerary template. On Talk:Routes to Santiago de Compostela from France, I outline some of the most urgent tasks. This could be a really good article, but it will take a lot of work. I'd love it if someday it could be a feature. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:35, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Isn't this the same subject as French Way? It might be best to turn Way of St.James into a travel topic, discussing the pilgrimage and branching out detailed routes into separate articles as itineraries. AHeneen (talk) 00:58, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Same subject? Kind of, given that these are all routes of pilgrimage to Santiago. But it's not the same route. Three of the routes covered in Routes to Santiago de Compostela from France connect to the French Way, while the other connects to the Aragonese Way, but if you look at the French Way article, you'll see that that route begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port near the border with Spain, whereas the routes covered in Routes to Santiago de Compostela from France start in Paris/Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy-en-Velay and Arles - considerable distances into France. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:14, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

WT loses 150,000 incoming links per month

Quality backlinks is an important factor for search ranking. According to ahrefs.com, WT is losing about 150,000 backlinks per month:

March 1st: 3,974,000
April 1st: 3,775,000
May 1st: 3,667,000

I tried to access the stats for Wikivoyage, but was asked to register so I give up for now, if anyone has time I would be interested in the stats too, hoping we get tons of quality incoming links :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:43, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Our backlinks went way up in March, from 494k on 1 March to 683k on 1 April. But we were essentially flat for April due to a decreased number of new backlinks and a slightly increased number of lost backlinks. We're at 695k now. It'd be really nice if Google stopped hiding us. LtPowers (talk) 14:58, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

[en] Change to section edit links

The default position of the "edit" link in page section headers is going to change soon. The "edit" link will be positioned adjacent to the page header text rather than floating opposite it.

Section edit links will be to the immediate right of section titles, instead of on the far right. If you're an editor of one of the wikis which already implemented this change, nothing will substantially change for you; however, scripts and gadgets depending on the previous implementation of section edit links will have to be adjusted to continue working; however, nothing else should break even if they are not updated in time.

Detailed information and a timeline is available on meta.

Ideas to do this all the way to 2009 at least. It is often difficult to track which of several potential section edit links on the far right is associated with the correct section, and many readers and anonymous or new editors may even be failing to notice section edit links at all, since they read section titles, which are far away from the links.

(Distributed via global message delivery 18:21, 30 April 2013 (UTC). Wrong page? Correct it here.)

Main page shift

Any ideas why the titles on the map banner of the main page seem to have shifted up? I can't see any edit in the Main page itself, the template that controls that banner, or the CSS that would cause this. Any thoughts? (Also posted to Talk:Main Page) --Nick (talk) 22:58, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about what you mean by "titles have shifted up"? I don't look at the main page enough to know exactly what it should look like, but "Rotterdam", "South Pole", etc all seem to be properly positioned to me, although "the free worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit" looks a bit crammed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:03, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry - trying to do too many things at once! Yeah, I mean the top titles on the map (the 'Welcome' bit), but I really can't see why it would have moved. I'm just curious as to what's changed. --Nick (talk) 23:08, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

If I had to guess I'd say it might be the div#bodyContent { line-height: 1.5em; } style - resizing the page resets that value on the banner box and fixes the issue. Is there some Javascript or something similar that is setting that CSS property on a resize? -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:39, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I would assume so, but I'm not honestly sure - Mark covered the technical side really. It's interesting that it does reset itself upon re-size, I just wonder why it's chosen to break now! --Nick (talk) 00:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

This edit may fix the issue - let me know if you continue seeing the problem. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorted! Thanks very much! :) --Nick (talk) 01:32, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Image migration

Is there a Dummy's Guide to migrating files? I've had a look and can't find one. I never really understood the procedure, but I've found a file that looks adequately licensed and should be moved to Commons:

• [16]

Actually, it seems that there are several files that still need to be moved.Travelpleb (talk) 08:10, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

In theory, if you tag it with the Move template (as I've just done), a bot will take care of the move. But I don't know if the bots are still running or not. LtPowers (talk) 14:59, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

It looks like User:MGA73 last performed some migrations on April 7. That said, many of the remaining images, including the one you've referenced, are images that may or may not have been properly licensed. There is no explicit indication on [17] (for example) that the uploader is actually the photographer, aside from a license tag that was automatically added based on a droplist selection, so in such cases I'm not sure that we should risk putting the file into Commons. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

If the image isn't available elsewhere on the web (aside from WT of course), given the resolution of the image and the presence of full EXIF data (which is the same for all three of the user's uploads), I think we're safe assuming own work. Whether certain parties at Commons would agree or not, I don't know. LtPowers (talk) 15:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but since the uploader will be legally liable for any copyright violations, I think User:MGA73 was only migrating files that were very explicit in their sourcing and licensing, and the bot used was ignoring images tagged "move" without an explicit source. As a result, I'm not sure that a "move" tag will be sufficient if the bot is re-enabled. Also, as you've pointed out, parties at Commons may be similarly cautious if the file is moved there. I'm probably more gun-shy than most given recent experience, but personally I don't think the reward of moving remaining images to Commons outweighs the risk of accidentally pulling in copyvios given the incomplete info for most remaining images. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:47, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. The same user's other shots have already been transferred to Commons, so it seems strange that this one was left behind. The photographs were all taken on the same day, in the same place, with the same camera model; but perhaps there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll.Travelpleb (talk) 08:08, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

The process for moving images that you have already checked and tagged is to poke one of the filemovers who participated in the process. See example. --Peter ^Talk 16:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I copied the file mentioned above and some of the other files to Commons. Unless someone find a huge load of good files I think we are down to moving the files one by one as we find some good files to move.

There is an old post on http://wts.wikivoyage-old.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Pub_%28temporary_refuge%29#What_to_do_with_files_not_yet_om_Commons about what to do with the rest of the files. Perhaps someone knows if all non-free files are copied to the relevant wikivoyage projects?

And right above the post mentioned above there is a request from Magog if some admins could help check and delete the files Copied to Commons. You do not have to delete 100 files. Any help is welcome. --MGA73 (talk) 19:01, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks MGA73. That's a great help.Travelpleb (talk) 09:25, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Request for comments - tags to templates

Making a formal proposal to change from tags to templates in Wikivoyage_talk:Listings#Tags_to_templates. Looking for comments from the wider community on whether the change is acceptable. -- torty3 (talk) 06:21, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Looking for bot

Hi, I'm from the french wikivoyage and I wonder if exist a bot to copy the Geo template paste it on the equivalent page in the other language versions? I would help us and all language version of wikivoyage. --Adehertogh (talk) 11:39, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Have a look here Wikivoyage:Script_nominations#The_Anomebot2. Pashley (talk) 14:00, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip--Adehertogh (talk) 17:10, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Travel topics

I would like to add a new travel topic for Sea kayaking, anyone want to offer any tips before I start?--Lumpytrout (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you start the article with an "Understand"-section: a description of sea kayaking, popular sea kayaking destinations, suitable time of year and such. Then a "Prepare" section with things like equipment, courses for beginners etc. and after that a "Do"/"Stay safe" section with practical tips, in other words what you should and shouldn't do in order to stay safe. Ypsilon (talk) 08:47, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

What to do about contributions with extremely bad grammar

Lately, we've had a bunch of content contributed on pages about China (such as Fuyang‎‎, Hangzhou, and previously, Wenzhou, but I did a lot of editing in that article and it's now better). That's the good news, and don't get me wrong: I'm glad the content is being added.

However, the bad news is that the new content is written in extremely poor ESL English and often also poorly formatted. I've edited some entries, "Understand" sections and the like to make them acceptable, but I can't keep pace with the volume of the edits. I feel like we really need more contributors who are fully bilingual in Chinese and English (and more contributors who are reasonably proficient in English, period), who will be able to easily make sense of Chinese English contributions and "translate" them into good English. Meanwhile, whoever would like to join me in trying to fix a lot of poorly-phrased listings and the like would be doing a good job for the reader. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

comment re this - an example The base of volplane in Yongan mountain: There have a big base of glide, you can rental the glider in here. There is a best place to glide because there have best weather, landing area, slope of hill, terrain, wind direction, and condition of traffic and vegetation. Few years ago, there have the international glide competition, the sportsman from Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, and 20 cities from China, and the international sportsman from France and Germany. Whatever, there is the best place to glide!!!!! = Yongan mountain is a gliding location.

One very big problem is for the non-bilingual - how are we to know it is not copyvio? sats (talk) 07:37, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Are paraphrases considered copyvio here? If not, is a translation a form of paraphrasing? In a way, it is, almost necessarily. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I am sure in the end translation and or paraphrasing is not really a copyvio issue - on thinking the issue through my question is redundant. sats (talk) 12:22, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

For paraphrasing, isn't part of the point of paraphrasing because it avoids copyvios? In terms of translations, I don't know the legalities of copyvios from translations however, because we try to be concise and avoid lengthy explanations, I think it forces us to paraphrase after translating.

In the case above, though, the 'translation' is from English that is difficult to understand/incomprehensible to English that is natural. That's not a copyvio. If the added info seems both touty and difficult to read, it can just be reverted. In this case, it may be a hassle, but a little research on gliding in that city might be enough to smooth it out, but I think the above example is understandable enough to be fleshed out without research (at least enough to make it acceptable until someone with more knowledge edits). ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

There are at least two principles in copyright law that appear to apply here:

• Copyright does cover "derivative works", so a paraphrase can be a copyvio and a translation almost certainly is.
• Copyright does not cover ideas, only the expression of them, so taking information but not text from anywhere is OK.

For how these apply in a particular case, and what other complications come into it, only a lawyer can give a plausible answer and only a judge can give one that is definitive for a particular jurisdiction. I'm not certain a full answer is even possible on the Net; probably the WMF legal dep't could give a fine approximation. Pashley (talk) 14:42, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Both translating and paraphrasing someone else's writing without permission is a copyright violation. If the "paraphrasing" is sufficiently different, then it would be fine, but then it wouldn't really be paraphrasing. Spotting such copyvios is can be pretty hard, though. With paraphrasing, some original bits usually get thrown in that you can catch and then match the original to the derivative. With translations, you can occasionally guess where the info is coming from and check (if you can understand the language with or without a translator).

If you find a good source of information, don't rewrite it using the same structure. Instead, read it, copy some facts, and then write something fresh without looking at what you read while you write it. --Peter ^Talk 19:02, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the responses - even after I disqualified my own comment - it is very useful to have such information regularly explained and put up - I think all wiki project users need to be reminded of the issues. sats (talk) 08:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia en 'Travel and Tourism Project'

I do not know if there are any editors who would be in any way enthusiastic/interested about wikipedia en editing in the almost dormant Travel and Tourism project ( a very different approach to issues, but potenatially useful nonetheless )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Travel_and_Tourism

I could see that there are some potentially extraordinarily useful synergies between the almost inactive project - and the project here.

However I do not wish to over-burden this initial query here apart from seeing if there is any interest first. I will wait for a while as I realise that some editors here might need a close look first... sats (talk) 08:19, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

As there has been zilch response to this - I will pursue the points of common interest/ points of disjuncture quietly and resurface the idea later when I have more of a handle on some of the ideas. If anyone is interested in the idea at this stage please contact. sats (talk) 02:56, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I'd love to see more cross-project collaboration, but at the moment I don't have time available to commit to any additional endeavors. Others may be similarly time-constrained given all that is going on here, but it would be great if you or someone else could continue to investigate and spearhead options for further collaboration, perhaps as a expedition that might slowly attract more attention here. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Time is indeed a serious issue for me as well. The interesting thing about the fate of the Travel and Tourism project (and probably the hotels project as well) on wp en - is that although the articles and content of the project inside wp en may be at odds to the general aim of this project - I feel that where there have been 'exclusions' here - due to the keeping to the scope and aims of this project - there maybe points where a clearer understanding of what the wp en Travel and Tourism project was going - there might just be material/crossovers of benefit to both... I will endevour to make a sub page of the category tree of the wp en project sometime soon and see what might come from that - at the same time being very aware of the boundaries limited by scope and policy... sats (talk) 03:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

New Header Design?

I was just looking at Glacier National Park and noticed the new header design. Is that being implemented everywhere? Lumpytrout (talk) 19:41, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

See Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition for details. Banners have been implemented for all destinations in Austria and a handful of other locations, with the plan being to announce plans to deploy it site-wide once the remaining bugs are worked out. Wikivoyage talk:Banner Expedition has the latest discussions. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:48, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

It looks pretty good, I was just surprised. I'm looking forward to learning more. Lumpytrout (talk) 02:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Trapani

Appears to be two parallel articles both with longish history, Trapani Province and Trapani (province). Which should be merged into the other? --Traveler100 (talk) 04:42, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The convention seems to be X (province), and Trapani Province had nothing requiring attribution, so I redirected to the latter. "X Province" is generally a better form, but it's not worth it to me to make the full switch ;) --Peter ^Talk 04:51, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Tokyo/Roppongi for star?

I proposed for star nomination the article Tokyo/Roppongi. Could someone please check my English grammar there? Of course, any other kind of feedback (or even help!) is much welcome :-) In particular, don't hesitate to make it sound more humourous/fun. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:24, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Retrieve deleted airline articles

Hi! As we've recently had a slight softening on our airline article policy (they're now grouped together - see Airlines in the United States), is there any chance that we could recover some of the articles that were recently deleted? I note that both Lufthansa and Delta Airlines (although the latter is being very nicely recreated by PerryPlanet) were removed in January; could we get them (and any other quality deleted articles) back somehow? --Nick (talk) 15:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The deleted Delta page had nothing salvageable—just weird first person commentary. I moved the Lufthansa page to your userspace. --Peter ^Talk 16:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I'll see what can be salvaged! --Nick (talk) 17:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

New Table of Contents

After a good deal of hard work, particularly on Shaundd's part, the new table of contents design is ready to be rolled out. For a better understanding of how this will look, browse through the Austria articles, which all have the banners in place, and which all now use custom banners. The default banner (another cool design from Shaundd) looks like what you see at the top of the Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition. For more background on the endeavor, the expedition's talk page may be instructive.

The next step will be to simply have a bot add {{Pagebanner}} to every mainspace page (we will keep the old ToC for talk and project pages). From that point, I'd invite everyone to join in the spirit of the Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition and help create custom banners like those seen on the Austria pages!

First, though, is there any reason for us to wait and work on the template further? There are a couple things still being worked on (like getting {{geo}} to produce the icon inside the banner's top-right corner), but I think it's ready. It will be fabulous to lose all the formatting problems that our current floating ToC causes. --Peter ^Talk 17:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I am against this proposal. Today in the morning I tried to open Austria page in Opera. Now I tried several pages using Google Chrome. I always see white letters on (nearly) white background. Sorry, I don't have time to read through all discussions, so I will simply ask here. Invisible TOC: is it a bug or a new cool feature? I think that it leaves very bad impression from our articles. Additionally, I was trying to read pages using not-too-slow mobile internet connections, and I have to say that the banners require at least 15 sec to load. Sometime the loading stops, and I see only half of the banner. This is not good.

Sorry for criticizing without providing solutions-) I hope that someone can fix these problems. --Alexander (talk) 18:06, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Any way you can provide a screenshot to show the display problems you indicate? I don't know if this was tested in Opera or Chrome. As for loading speed, the technology used to make the banner image dynamically scalable means that the loaded banner is always the 1800px thumbnail, even if it's only going to display at, say, 1000px. In the case of Austria, the current banner is over 100KB, which could take several seconds to load on a slow connection. LtPowers (talk) 18:22, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I've just had a look in Chrome (I don't have Opera) and the banners seem to be appearing without issue there. As for loading time, it is unfortunate, but 100kb is not a huge file size, so loading times should be tolerable if not lightning quick. Personally, I'm in favour of this change, but if there are any issues, let's try and iron them out. --Nick (talk) 18:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I just tested with all four of the browsers I have installed. System is current Xubuntu Linux.

• Firefox -- works fine
• Chrome -- works fine for me
• Dillo (a tiny browser, http://www.dillo.org/) -- horrendous, neither the WV main page nor Austria look decent
• Amaya (a browser/editor from W3C, http://www.w3.org/Amaya/) -- awful; picture is OK, but title not visible & menu is a mess

To me, this needs more testing. In particular, since W3C are the standards body for the web I'd say anything that does not work in their Amaya browser should be considered broken; this currently includes both our main page and the Austria test pages. Also, I think testing with a text-only browser is essential since we care about SEO and Google has [18]

"Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site."

I did not test with a text-only browser such as Lynx. Nor did I install Opera just for testing. I can do both if required, but would prefer others do that work. Pashley (talk) 19:06, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Tried Lynx. There are some oddities, but nothing major. Within the limits of a text-only format, it all works. Adding alt="" text in various places would improve it. Pashley (talk) 19:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I've just tried Amaya myself. Whilst it doesn't display either the main page or the pagebanners properly, I don't think we should be too concerned - having tested that browser with lots of different webpages it doesn't seem to be able to display any webpage particularly well, including Google and the BBC homepage. Even Wikipedia suffers when viewed with that browser, so I'm not sure it should be the benchmark here. --Nick (talk) 19:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Austria: only half of the banner is loaded

Styria: the banner is loaded, but the background behind the TOC is missing

Here come the screenshots. Both are from Google Chrome on Android. I can't provide Opera now, because I don't have my laptop with me. Sorry. --Alexander (talk) 19:19, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The way the TOC appears in those screenshots is the same way it appears for me in Firefox while it's loading. At some point during the loading, it snaps into the proper format. LtPowers (talk) 20:05, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I should also point out that the banner on the Austria screenshot didn't fail to fully load; it's there, but hidden by the wonky TOC. LtPowers (talk) 20:15, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Does anything here help? Any browser site They have extensive info on how to make things that work with any browser. Pashley (talk) 20:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

For me it works totally fine with both Opera (12.12) and Chrome (newest I guess). I've got Windows 7. Jjtk (talk) 21:23, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to do here. I've tested the pages on Opera on Mac (12.10), Opera for Android and Chrome for Android, and can't replicate the issue Alexander is having. They've all worked fine, and Opera might actually be the smoothest rendering I've seen. As LtPowers noted, the issue in the screenshots is the TOC, not the picture part of the banner. The TOC is usually rendered last (due to the specificity of the CSS) and that's what it looks like before the last bit of styling is completed. Usually it moves through that stage quickly, although I did find there was a noticeable pause when the Chrome for Android rendered the TOC (moreso than other browsers).

I'll review the CSS to see if there's any code changes that can be made to speed it up. The only other thing I can think of is have any of the default preferences in your browser been changed? -Shaundd (talk) 04:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Now I know. My user preferences are the problem. When I log out, the banner looks fine. Do you have an idea which particular setting could be the reason? I don't want to try them all... --Alexander (talk) 07:57, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Are you running any custom CSS or JavaScript in your profile? When we were testing and implementing the Main Page I had a few issues with things conflicting. If so, it might be worth clearing it. --Nick (talk) 08:42, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

On the topic of mobile browsers, I don't think we should be trying too hard to make the banners work there. Let's just see if we can hide them and leave things as they are. The banners display horribly on my Windows Phone 7.8 with Internet Explorer 9, as they don't scale properly. Overall, I support the change, but would like to see larger testing and community consultation. I've had no issues on Chrome, IE9 (and 8) and Firefox on Windows 7. JamesA ^>talk 10:31, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

On my iPhone 4S, when viewing the mobile site, the banners are very compressed and there is no separate TOC, although a separate title does appear. If I view the desktop site on the phone, it displays pretty much as it should. --Nick (talk) 10:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

James, testing and community consultation is exactly what we're doing by bringing the subject here. LtPowers (talk) 14:53, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I like the new design! Tested on Win7/Firefox (no problem), Linux/Firefox (no problem), mobile Android on Samsung smartfone /default browser (here in full version looks good, but my fingers aren't fine enough to choose from the TOC; in mobile site version it looks mess). Although I can't help with this, I have a feeling the mobile version still needs attention. And I also think the mobile version is quite important, because nowadays many travellers have internet connection and need information on last minute while travelling. Danapit (talk) 17:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

What Alexander has been seeing is a partially loaded ToC (which is weird, since the ToC loads before the banner image). I can't reproduce it in any of the dozen or so browsers I've tried across Ubuntu, Windows 7, or Android OS. I don't know why there are occasional complaints about the Main Page or ToC banners in mobile, since the desktop mode on my mobile browsers shows them scaled in a way that is absolutely gorgeous.

I don't think we should avoid any design that doesn't work in every single exotic browser. I use several of them myself (love Midori), but I think anyone using them understands that they may not display sites correctly, and has a more standard browser on hand in case there is an issue.

The banner ToC, though, does not show up correctly in mobile mode (m.wikivoyage) in multiple browsers, because a) the ToC does not load, and b) the banner does not scale—it just shows the leftmost part of the banner, making for a pretty weird aesthetic. (a) doesn't affect usability, since the headers are collapsed anyway, but (b) would be nice to fix. I don't think that's a big enough issue, though, to hold things up. --Peter ^Talk 19:02, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I think you're right Peter. As James A says above, we might be best hiding them on the mobile site (at least for the moment). Lots of the banners that have now been implemented already look fantastic on the desktop site. --Nick (talk) 19:14, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

and do not forget the banners are fixing most of the #Text overlapping on map problems seen in IE and Firefox, which are the browsers used by most people. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I would invite anyone who is leery of this change to look at the difference between the old D.C. page [19] and the new one [20]. The new look is just so much more striking, and finally resolves that awful problem where the old ToC kicked the districts map down below a bunch of white space (in order to avoid text flowing into the map, and crushing the districts descriptions between the ToC and map). --Peter ^Talk 20:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The feedback seems to be entirely positive, but I would still appreciate if someone helps me to solve my problem with banners. I don't think that I have any custom CSS (or at least I am not aware of it). It means that any user may ruin the appearance of the page by accidentally switching some setting in the user preferences... --Alexander (talk) 16:25, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, would you please post what your Preference settings are in Misc and Appearance. --Peter ^Talk 17:06, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know how to copy-paste it. Basically, I use Vector skin, with "Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings)", "Enable "jump to" accessibility links", and "Enable collapsing of items in the sidebar in Vector skin" activated. All options in the "Misc" page are deactivated. --Alexander (talk) 18:44, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Here's your issue: you need to tick the bottom box on the 'Misc' tab -'Floated table of contents' - which, as far as I'm aware, is ticked by default. You should then be able to enjoy the beautiful new TOCs!

Unfortunately, it's not the only button people can press that will ruin the appearance of a page, but hopefully, once the new TOC is fully implemented, people will recognise their problem as soon as they deselect that option and be able to rectify the situation accordingly. --Nick (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

It worked! Thanks! --Alexander (talk) 20:05, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there a way for us to tweak the pagebanner to avoid that problem? Or do we just accept that some of the non-default preferences options are just problematic no matter what we do? Or can we get rid of that tick box altogether? --Peter ^Talk 21:08, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The "Floated table of contents" Misc option is from mw:Extension:TocTree by Roland Unger and Matthias Mullie. We could delete that extension from Wikivoyage now that we have this gorgeous wowW! um, excuse me, now that we have a replacement for it. That would remove the "Floated table of contents" option. We don't need floating TOC (mw:Extension:TocTree) now that we have this banner TOC, right? Banner TOC is meant to replace the problem riddled floating TOC. So let's remove mw:Extension:TocTree, which is the source of our floating TOC and it's issues. It will be best if the banner TOC handles its own floating independent of mw:Extension:TocTree, which should be removed at this point as no longer needed complexity. --Rogerhc (talk) 21:38, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The only thing is, we won't be getting rid of all the old style TOCs (for project pages and the like) - would the removal of this extension cause problems on that front? --Nick (talk) 22:07, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a problem there. The default non-floated TOC would still appear by default. Anywhere a floated TOC is desired, it could be implemented with a div tag, eg <div style="float:left;">__TOC__</div>, which could even be kept in a template, eg {{toc-left}}. Rogerhc (talk) 23:15, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The floated TOC actually is the default right now, and without that option checked (it's checked by default) the new TOC doesn't display correctly. Would removing the extension break our new TOC? --Peter ^Talk 23:22, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but my best guess is removing the TocTree extension shouldn't break the new ToC. The horizontal ToC is based on code from en:wp, which doesn't use TocTree, and it works fine there. I actually had to find a work-around at one point because TocTree was interfering with implementing the horizontal ToC. One impact of removing TocTree though is the ToC on non-banner pages will no longer be collapsible -- so the Pub's ToC would get longer. -Shaundd (talk) 04:18, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Only five lines longer (Pub has only five sub-headings currently), so no problem there.

I'm in favor of removing TocTree to simplify our equation, but I wish we had a test instance of en.Wikivoyage to try that on. I created a test wiki at http://voy-en.instance-proxy.wmflabs.org but it's anemic, doesn't even have parcer functions. To be useful as a test wiki it needs to be a clone of en.Wikivoyage. If anyone with server administration clue wants to help me make that test wiki into a clone of en.Wikivoyage, please let me know. I don't know how to do it. Rogerhc (talk) 05:22, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Special:Nearby on Wikivoyage?

Hi en Wikivoyagers!

The WMF mobile team recently built a new feature for Wikimedia mobile sites (and soon the regular desktop sites, too): Nearby, which shows you a list of all the places and things near you that have Wikipedia articles. We're populating this list by harvesting the geo-coordinate data from articles that include the Coord template. It seems like Nearby could be a great feature for Wikivoyage, too, especially on mobile. However, I notice that you don't currently use the coord template to mark geo-coordinates in Wikivoyage articles, and instead rely on {{geo}} to supply this information.

My question is, would you be interested in a Nearby feature on Wikivoyage? If so, the technical framework is all built; all that's missing is the coord template. So, if you go to en.m.wikivoyage right now and navigate to Special:Nearby, you'll see that the feature exists, but no articles show up. If you'd like to see some Wikivoyage articles there, please consider switching out your geo-coordinates templates :) If not, let us know and we'll disable the Nearby link from the Wikivoyage mobile view so the empty feed doesn't confuse people.

One last thing: it would be good to get the other language Wikivoyage communities in on the conversation, too, since they'd also have to switch their templates to get Nearby to work for their projects. Is there an International travellers' pub or some cross-Wikivoyage noticeboard where I can post this to let them know? Cheers, Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Meta:Wikivoyage/Lounge is where we coordinate. But I'm a little confused. Is this Nearby feature really entirely dependent on the presence of a particular template, with a specific hard-coded name? Must the template have some sort of specific functionality that {{geo}} doesn't, or need it merely exist? Would it work to redirect {{coord}} to {{geo}}? LtPowers (talk) 20:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I would definitely like to see this feature implemented here. But I'm also confused about the difference between using {{coord}} and {{geo}}—just the name? --Peter ^Talk 20:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

It looks like (on EN at least) we're going to have to do something sooner rather than later with the co-ordinates for our articles in order to make them fit with the new TOC (see above) anyway, so perhaps we could do both at once? Either way, this does sound like a really nice feature, although like LtPowers and Peter before me, I'm a little confused about the difference between the 'coord' and 'geo' templates. --Nick (talk) 20:42, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

My understanding is that it's not so much the specific template that matters, but the invocation of the parser function which stores the geo-coordinates and exposes them through the API. That parser function, {{#coordinates:}}, is available on this wiki as well, and documented at mw:Extension:GeoData. It should be possible to make that work with any template. If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone from the mobile team will correct me. :-)--Eloquence (talk) 00:42, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

This is also something I'd really like to see. If it means we have to change our Geo template, so be it. I do think we need to change the way that is used, anyway. Wikipedia's solution of having a popup map works well, or even the dynamic maps that are currently under experimentation. But the separate Mapsources page is just tedious.

Also, I'm presuming the feature just lists nearby articles at this stage. It would be great if we could also list nearby listings. It might be much more helpful if a user knew there were cafes or hotels nearby, rather than entire cities. We could have two separate "Nearby" lists: Destinations, and Listings (or even subdivide further into Attractions, Eateries, Accomodation, etc). It could then be integrated to bring up the listing text and display the dynamic maps. The possibilities are endless! JamesA ^>talk 01:46, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is an important point. I started drafting the needed functionality here. Also, we need to decide upon new types of points: I can think of food, museum, transportation, hotel - thoughts on the full list? My vision is that every destination page should have a primary coordinate for the city itself and a bunch of coordinates for different POIs e.g. {{#coordinates:10|20|type=food|name=Joe's Pizza}}. If the number of WV-related point types will be short enough (but sufficient), we can whip up a nice UI to switch search between them. Also, we could track every POI's location on page and allow people to go directly to it from search results, e.g. <span id="Joe's_Pizza">{{#coordinates:10|20|type=food|name=Joe's Pizza|anchor=Joe's Pizza}} Joe's Pizza is the most kick-ass eatery in Villageville - what else did you want for a town with a population of 168?</span> Thoughts? MaxSem (talk) 17:26, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Keep in mind, that functionality would need to be pulled from each instance of {{listing}} on a page (or the corresponding xml redirects), which already have coordinate attributes.Texugo (talk) 18:43, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good, Max. In the short-term, if the WMF wants to implement Nearby just for destinations, that'd be great. About listings/POIs, we have categories/headers that are set in stone, which may come in handy to categorise nearby POIs. Check any article and you'll see them: See, Do, Eat, Drink, Sleep, Contact, etc. That functionality will be built into our new listing template solution which is due to be deployed by a bot in the next week or so. JamesA ^>talk 11:40, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Android: wikivoyage.org redirects to www.m.wikivoyage.org which does not exist

On Android 2.2, I searched "wikivoyage austria" on Google, click the first result, and got an error "Web page not available" at http://www.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Austria. Is there currently a known problem? Apparently on my device www.wikivoyage.org redirects to www.m.wikivoyage.org which does not exist. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:18, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

It needs the language version instead of "www". Try: http://EN.m.wikivoyage.org/Austria . When I tried this with the desktop website http://www.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Austria, it is a redirect to en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Austria. On a related note there is no inter-lingual homepage for mobile. Neither http://www.m.wikivoyage.org nor http://m.wikivoyage.org exist and the page looks odd on mobile with the new sunrise-photo portal. These are bugs that should be reported. AHeneen (talk) 09:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Ewww, that's ugly, I'll open up a bug and post the link here for anyone who has more info. It looks like the old wikivoyage.org redirects did not take the mobile redirects into account. It's likely relatively easy for them to fix just that no one realized it. Thank you!! Jalexander (talk) 23:47, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Added as bugzilla:48394 not sure how prevalent it is (a couple random wikivoyage searches did not come up with it) but it's clearly consistent on "Wikivoyage austria" and If it happens there I'm SURE it happens elsewhere and that's not acceptable. Jalexander (talk) 00:10, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Test wiki

I created a test wiki—http://voy-en.instance-proxy.wmflabs.org in Wikimedia Foundation Labs[21] Wikivoyage project[22]—but it's anemic, doesn't even have parcer functions. To be useful as a test wiki it needs to be a clone of en.Wikivoyage, database and extensions and all, but I don't know how to set that up. If anyone with server administration clue wants to help me make that test wiki into a clone of en.Wikivoyage I'd be extatic, please let me know. :-) Rogerhc (talk) 05:40, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Try asking around in #wikimedia-labs? (Maybe during the day in the US?) --Rschen7754 05:55, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Health info and links to Wikipedia

Wikivoyage has a fair bit of health info. Some of it is of questionable correctness. Wondering about providing links to Wikipedia / adding references to some of it? Wikipedia as I am sure most are aware is now linking to Wikivoyage in many places. Also with respect to some of the medications. Should we link to Wikipedia for those? Use something like a sister site template maybe? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:50, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Have created an example of such linking here http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Travellers%27_diarrhea#Medicate Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:53, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

That would violate our external links policy. But the allowed sister link (which is already there) that links to w:Traveler's diarrhea certainly makes sense. --Peter ^Talk 00:50, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Travel Doc, if you see any health info that's incorrect or questionable, please edit it.

Allowing other-subject links to Wikipedia is a controversial subject, and opinion has divided about 50/50 on whether to allow more links or not. I'm having trouble locating the latest long discussion thread on whether to allow more links to Wikipedia. It's not in the intuitive places, like Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikipedia or Wikivoyage talk:External links. I'd like for someone to provide the link for you, in case you have more suggestions for ways to go forward that might achieve a consensus, however unlikely that is. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:08, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

It's at Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Listings tags and links to Wikipedia, but yes, it really should be at Wikivoyage talk:External links or Wikivoyage talk:Links to Wikipedia. --Peter ^Talk 01:54, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I believe that the most exhaustive discussion on the subject is the enormous thread that precedes (and is summarized at) Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Ongoing feedback. That discussion applied specifically to Wikipedia links in listing tags, but that usage was opposed primarily due to a general opposition to adding more Wikipedia links to articles. Wikivoyage talk:Links to Wikipedia#Secondary sources is a related discussion. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:57, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

'Not yet' page

Hi! Having looked at the vfd page recently, I was wondering whether it might be worth creating a 'Not yet' page for all the articles that don't at present fit with our remit, but may one day find a use. As we continue to sort our house out we're going to keep finding long, interesting articles that don't quite fit our needs, but we're also going to perhaps look at expanding the topics we cover. Is it therefore worth creating a central archive where we can store these articles until they're wanted and perhaps even improve them in the meantime? Any thoughts welcome! --Nick (talk) 21:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Nick, if I'm getting you, do you mean we should create "Not yet" page for all the localities that don't have an article yet? --Saqib (talk) 21:27, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

No - as an example, take some of the airline articles that were recently up for deletion. We didn't really want to keep them, but didn't want to delete them either as we could see a use for them in future. I'm not suggesting creating hundreds of stub articles by any means; on the contrary, I'm thinking of articles with lots of content that don't quite fit within the WV remit. If people would be interested in creating some sort of 'incubator' as you describe then maybe that's another, different avenue that could be explored. --Nick (talk) 21:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Userspace is often used for this purpose. LtPowers (talk) 02:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Nick, your idea reminds me of the exact same idea we produced in this discussion, but forgot about ;) I'm all for creating a Wikivoyage:Limbo, where things could be slushed for the time being. Moving things to userspace is pretty effective, but a little too confusing for some of the types of new editors that create articles that wind up on the vfd page. --Peter ^Talk 04:20, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

'Limbo' sounds like a good name for such a page! Userspaces are useful (I'm the proud adoptive father of M5 motorway), but once there, articles are out of the public domain. It would be nice to have somewhere between deletion and the mainspace. :) --Nick (talk) 16:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Spelling trolls

This is probably partly because I'm irritable from a nasty cold I'm struggling to get over, but right now, I feel like there's nothing more annoying than a spelling troll, especially when they're (or if you prefer, "he or she is") wrong. Changing articles about Uzbekistan and Ethiopia from one form of English to another without providing a good reason for doing so is dumb, and changing articles about a place like Taiwan, that has a long and close connection with the U.S., to British spelling, is downright wrong (similarly, I reverted a change of an article about a place in Belgium from British to American English). I think some people are actually ignorant of forms of English other than the one they speak, which is pitiful because it shows how little good literature they've ever read in their life or/and how little they know or care about the rest of the English-speaking world, but most people who do this are on some level trolls, and if they edit war, they can be blocked for that reason. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:33, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it trolling, but it's certainly not ideal behavior (behaviour?), that's for sure. It seems like something that can be dealt with the same way as other low-level vandalism. I'd be hard-pressed to recommend anything beyond a friendly reminder on the user's talk page for a first offender. But I see no reason why a full-fledged edit war would not subject the offender to a block, etc. as deemed appropriate by an admin. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Remove unneeded features from the edit toolbar

I understand that we can somehow edit the toolbar above the edit window. Since we don't use <ref> and we don't encourage <gallery>, could we remove the reference button from the main bar, the reference section from the help tab, and the insert gallery button from the advanced tab? (Could someone please show me where admins can edit the toolbar?)

And incidentally, if anyone know hows to get that far, maybe we could take care of this while we're at it? Texugo (talk) 20:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

See this. --Saqib (talk) 00:28, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually much progress has been made since I posted that, and I found that page you mentioned. We now have working listing buttons, but the remove script given in that documentation only seems to work for encapsulation buttons on the main bar, and we haven't got it working for the three things I mentioned above. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Details here. Texugo (talk) 01:03, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Portal pages

Hi! I'm still trying to give Flying (and associated articles) a bit of an overhaul, but that page really serves only as a portal - it's not an article. Despite this, it is classified as such, but fits none of the criteria. Is there any way to put 'portal' as a page category or is it better just to leave it as it is? --Nick (talk) 23:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I personally don't like to see portals on Wikivoyage. Lets keep things simple here Nick. --Saqib (talk) 00:15, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

No, I know that it isn't usual on here and I'm certainly not trying to create some Wikipedian multi-tiered article structure, but I think Flying needs a page of this sort (the name 'portal' is purely academic). There is no other way to really sort this information (as it's been split into 4), so in the interests of the traveller, I fear a portal here is necessary. --Nick (talk) 00:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

That's an attractive and helpful page the way you have it organised now, Nick. Is this query just about the appropriate (hidden) classification of this unique page? -- Alice^✉ 09:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Alice; yeah that's basically it. I wasn't planning on changing that page at all, I was just concerned about its classification. --Nick (talk) 19:24, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

List of bus routes in (Kalamazoo)

A batch of pages which consisted of lists of bus routes in cities were recently deleted from English Wikipedia. Are those appropriate for adding to articles here? The list of routes might be significantly longer than the current article on the city, depending. Are they appropriate for creating a new article with if it doesn't exist?  :) Sj (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

One was moved here and, after considerable discussion, the resulting article was deleted.

We have also deleted transit maps on occasion. e.g. Talk:Shanghai#Metro_pic Pashley (talk) 13:43, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This was discussed here back in January, but I can't find it in the archive. For somewhere like Kalamazoo, the information is readily available online from the bus operator or local authority, so a separate article is not appropriate. If the information is not online in English, then there might be a case for an article, but this would have to be written to be useful to a traveller, not a bus spotter. AlasdairW (talk) 22:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Previous discussion archived at Wikivoyage_talk:What_is_an_article?#Lists_of_Bus_Routes. Nurg (talk) 10:25, 17 May 2013 (UTC)