User:DenisYurkin/VFD:Paper travel guides

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  • Delete. We're writing open source travel guides here. They're intended for both on-line and paper distribution; see goals and non-goals. A travel topic about proprietary paper travel guides doesn't belong here, any more than external links to proprietary Web site guides do. --(WT-en) Evan 11:07, 30 November 2006 (EST)
  • Delete. -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 11:24, 30 November 2006 (EST)
  • Delete. I don't think a list of titles is really a goal -- (WT-en) Maj 11:50, 30 November 2006 (EST)
  • Delete. Keeping track of which guides are useful does not help us accomplish our main goal of actually writing a guide. Leave that for other websites to. -- (WT-en) Colin 16:01, 30 November 2006 (EST)
  • Keep for the following reasons: --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 16:08, 30 November 2006 (EST)
    • Not a list of titles, the aim is to reflect opinion and recommendations of the community on every major guide.
    • Paper guides and Wikivoyage are not competitors for most destinations: only few countries (US? UK?) can be planned and visited seriously with Wikivoyage alone. For the rest of the world, travellers use Wikivoyage together with some paper guide--and they complement each other. Better we help them than ignore the fact.
    • Where we're complete enough to compete with commercial paper guides, keeping silent about them is not a best strategy to keep readers with us.
    • We already have contributions like "recommended by LP, but proved bad place". This is the place to put aggregate opinions like "X's recommendations on restaurants are outdated more frequently than in Y".
    • Plans to distribute paper copies do not contradict to help people to share opinions on other guides even when we're close to implementing that plans (but have we started yet?) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 16:08, 30 November 2006 (EST)
    • I don't see how having opinions on paper guides can divert people from contributing to Wikivoyage. Also, if they reached the opinions on paper guide, before that they'll definitely read on their next planned destination.
    • I don't propose to link to or criticize on guides to specific destinations--only series.
  • Here is the VFD discussion for Travel guides, which was deleted on November 23, 2005. It doesn't add a lot to the current discussion, but since we've already deleted an article that was basically the same as Paper travel guides I think it sets the bar a bit higher for making a case that the new article should be kept. My personal opinion is that a guide to other travel guides is a slippery slope, and that it would be best to avoid such articles. Regarding the point that the new article should provide opinions on other travel guides, I'm not sure that's our job - we don't provide opinions on other travel web sites, and I don't see why something should be treated differently because it's printed in book form. --(WT-en) Wrh2
(WT-en) Wrh2, do you mean the same previous attempt as User:(WT-en) Sapphire is writing about in Talk:Paper travel guides? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 19:11, 1 December 2006 (EST)
  • > I don't think we need to write a guide AND be the arbiter of which other guides are recommendable
I would put it bit different way: while writing a guide (and travelling for that writing) we frequenly use the book guides. And we find from experience that overall this series is good in this, and that series is bad in that. Of course we still contribute to Wikivoyage (motivation hardly decrease after using a book)--but while we add some bits, we can help others to choose a guide that we found useful in addition to Wikivoyage. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:39, 30 November 2006 (EST)
  • To summarize my point:
    • Community feedback on travel guides can be useful for travellers
    • Having such page won't affect negatively number of readers or contributions to Wikivoyage
    • Wikivoyage is the best online community I can think of where such opinion would be most balanced and up-to-date.
    --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:48, 30 November 2006 (EST)
  • Keep - under the auspices of the traveler come first policy, I'm inclined to say keep. Of course, it is hoped that Wikivoyage can supply enough info that travelers won't feel the need to cough up bucks for a printed guide, but that's up to them. It is a free market. In addition, from my personal prospective, I feel that the travelers safety and happiness are a priority. And, if I can help them achieve these goals by pointing out some useful material, then I believe that I/we have made a great contribution to their journey, and in this way the traveler comes first goals have been achieved. Of course, all useful info should finally be absorbed into Wikivoyage and specific info should not refer to other guides (such as, for example, 'see Rough Guide P? for more info on cafes') but be written in Wititravel itself, but I still contend that finally it is up to the traveler to make their own choice regarding what kind of guide they prefer, and rather than censor other possibilities, I'd prefer to display them openly. And, if Wikivoyage is the best option, then travelers will obviously choose that. Anyway, my main point is that I feel that travelers' well being and safety should be the guiding principle of our efforts rather than protecting a specific source of information.....just throwing out some random ideas for thought here. The consensus is for delete, and so obviously I'll go along with that. (WT-en) WindHorse 22:02, 30 November 2006 (EST)
  • Keep, for reasons as (WT-en) WindHorse gives above, and with his caveat; I'll go along too if deletion's the consensus. I tell friends about Wikivoyage and encourage them to use it and/or contribute; several have. But I'd also tell anyone planning a trip to China to consider picking up Lonely Planet or Rough Guide too. Since the traveller comes first, maybe we should tell them what we'd tell friends. (WT-en) Pashley 20:03, 4 December 2006 (EST)
    • I agree that TTCF calls for having this information available, because it is useful to the traveler and difficult to obtain elsewhere in a tout-free way. But hoo boy, does this article ever create possibilities for abuse. How about this as an idea? Move the content to some user's sandbox page -- User:(WT-en) DenisYurkin, you seem like the strongest advocate for the article, so maybe make it yours -- and then use the discussion page to work through, EXTREMELY carefully, the caveats and restrictions that should be placed at the beginning of the article, as to what content is appropriate and what should be avoided. Would that satisfy the competing viewpoints? -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 22:01, 12 December 2006 (EST)
    • Sounds better than nothing for me :-) I already copied the content to User:(WT-en) DenisYurkin/Paper_travel_guides subpage, so we can continue there. I have two considerations having non-official page as a user subpage:
  1. we'll hardly have a single contributor except those participated in the above discussion, plus those few whom I catch in Travel Pub or future VFDs :-)
  2. more importantly, we can speculate for months on what can happen in theory, what conflicts appear and how we should prepare for them--but no single real conflict arise as long as 1.
Can we leave the page as officially allowed, but saying that it can be possibly deleted if it provokes too much conflicts? At least we'll know from experience rather than having purely theorethical speculations.
--(WT-en) DenisYurkin 09:14, 14 December 2006 (EST)
  • I'd say delete this one and use your own for debugging them. Those few folks you "catch in Travel Pub" are exactly the ones who can help resolve the issues, using your sandbox. Then, when it's ready and a discussion has occurred, re-create this page if appropriate. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 18:34, 16 December 2006 (EST)
  • What is still unclear for me is what exactly are the issues we have to resolve. In other words, how can we now that it's already time to move the page from user sandbox to the public namespace? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 15:10, 17 December 2006 (EST)
I'm going to jump in here: Denis, there is never going to be a time where I'm going to be OK with putting this article into Wikivoyage. There is never going to be a time when I accept your premise: that Wikivoyage isn't good enough, so we're doing travellers a disservice if we don't tell them about "real" travel guides. Even our stubbiest, emptiest guide is better than a proprietary equivalent because it is Free -- free to add to, free to copy and share, free to improve upon. And I think that the public agrees: according to Alexa, we're the #2 travel guide site on the Web after lonelyplanet.com -- and we're closing in fast. I don't think we have to apologize for the work thousands of Wikivoyagers have put into this project, and I think we insult those volunteers if we do. So, to get to the point: the goal of your article is incompatible with the goals of this project, and I for one will never accept it. --(WT-en) Evan 21:16, 17 December 2006 (EST)
  • By the guilty-until-proven-innocent principle, it looks like time for this one to go. One last call for votes to the contrary; lacking any, I'll delete it later today. Denis, your voice has been heard, but you're in a minority on this one. Please go ahead and use your sandbox page to try to sway opinions, if you wish; I for one will be watching it to see if a satisfactory article results. Your enthusiasm for this idea is sincerely appreciated, but Evan's right, the case for the article meeting our goals has simply not been made to most people's satisfaction. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 09:54, 19 December 2006 (EST)
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