User:Nicholasjf21/Pub

Welcome to the 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 Project:Celebrate a contribution. Issues related to more than one language version of Wikivoyage are discussed in the Wikivoyage Lounge on Meta. Pull up a chair and join in the conversation! Experienced users: 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. Try to place it on the discussion page roughly in chronological order. A question regarding a destination article should be swept to the article discussion page. A discussion regarding a policy or the subject of an expedition can be swept to the policy or expedition discussion page. A simple question asked by a user can be swept to that user's talk page, but consider if the documentation needs a quick update 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 Project: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.

WikiVoyage on mobile devices

Is there a page on how to use this site on mobile devices (Android, Blackberry, etc. )? Struggling to use the listing entries to call numbers directly.--Traveler100 (talk) 07:15, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

See also: http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Offline_reader_Expedition Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:22, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, if you're talking about editing the pages through official Wikivoyage website, I don't think so there is a way yet. --Saqib (talk) 10:28, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

In terms of making it mobile friendly so that you can tap on phone numbers and it calls the phone number, that functionality is not yet available. More features are on the way, along with apps I believe, but good things take time. :) It may be worth starting a brainstorm on features we would like to see. JamesA ^>talk 10:39, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes my question was related to making calls from listing, for example restaurants. The only way I have found so far is a rather long winded copy/paste process between browser and phone apps. Is there a page in existing to discuss or propose enhancements such as one click phone calls?--Traveler100 (talk) 11:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Not yet—I think it's time to create one.

There is an app called WikiSherpa which allows you to download content from WT (the author intends to switch over to WV content, hopefully soon) that does allow one clock phone calls. --Peter ^Talk 17:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Having a more functional mobile site would be great and a few ideas have been brought up over the last 6 months or so during the transition. I mentioned a few things at Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Links to Wikipedia#Different subject. That page is long (but mostly thought-out discussion), but if you scroll down in that section to a big block of text (that isn't indented) starting with "Footnotes might be a good idea...", I discussed adjusting the listing template to create images (phone, map, website, etc) that, when clicked on a mobile device, would work with your phone's OS to bring up phone, email, a map (default map on phone or OSM), and open links to websites in a new window. I don't feel like editing/re-writing this, so FYI, the context of this comment was allowing in-line links to Wikipedia (as opposed to links in the sidebar) and whether/how such links should be differentiated from a Wikivoyage link.

But my preferred method is part of changes to some of the templates we use, where listing templates would add the option to link to a Wikipedia page. This would mainly apply to the see/do sections. I think the templates for see/do/eat/sleep could get a makeover to make them look sleeker (if all the info is present, this could be a couple lines of text on a computer, much worse on a smartphone) by using images and hiding some of the information from being displayed. Let me give an example before explaining. For Westminster Abbey, the listing on WT Westminster begins ([6]=website):

• Westminster Abbey, (tube: Westminster), ☎ +44 20 7654 4900 (info@westminster-abbey.org [email envelope], fax: +44 20 7654 4894), [6]

My idea would be for a listing that would look like this:

• Westminster Abby ([tube] Westminster, [Bus] ?, [Wikipedia], [Website], [phone], [email envelope], address [Open Street Maps])

In this format, the brackets would all be small images: Tube logo, a bus symbol, Wikipedia's "W" logo, some sort of symbol that would be used for official websites(replacing the [1] arrow only in templated listings, not elsewhere in article), the (existing) phone symbol, the e-mail envelope, & OpenStreetMap logo. The only text that would show is the mass transit stop & address. When you click the phone or email images the phone #/email address would be displayed to the right of the image. The info would also be displayed by hovering the mouse over the image (on computers). It would be really great for our site's functionality if clicking on those images when using a device like a smartphone (either through the "mobile" site or an official app) would bring up a small overlaying window with the phone number (or email) and ask "Call [ph. #]?" or "Email [email address]". The Wikipedia logo would serve as a link to the corresponding WP page...opening in a new tab on a computer. On a smartphone/tablet, this would bring up a prompt (Visit [name] on Wikipedia? "Go" "Cancel") just in case it is pressed accidentally (due to charges/limits for data service on mobile networks...especially when roaming [internationally]!) and then bring it up in a new window. There would be different mass transit icons for bus, (light) rail, & metro/subway. In some locations, the icons would be changed to reflect those of the official mass transit lines...like for Westminster Abbey, in London, the Tube...but ONLY if those images are not protected by copyright or otherwise permitted to be used freely (I think this was done with some of the routebox navigation). The bracketed number followed by an arrow is rather dull and, for those who might not be used to wikis, not intuitive that this means a website. So, a new website icon could be created for use in listing templates (it wouldn't be used elsewhere on the page). Clicking this would open the website in a new window (smartphone/tablet users might be prompted "Visit [website url]?" "Go" "Cancel"...again, to prevent accidental clicks). Finally the address could be displayed a combination of description ("Corner of 1st Avenue and Main Street"), physical address (which could be hidden by an image [1234] or by "Address" and displayed by clicking or hovering over it), and coordinates (hidden under a logo...maybe use same as WP...and displayed when clicking/hovering on it, see WP WikiProject Geographical Coordinates for ideas on incorporating into WV). The address/coordinates can be used to link to a mapping service/website via an image/logo (OpenStreetMaps may be best, because of licensing, when compared to commercial services) on smartphones/tablets, clicking on the image would prompt the choice of service ("OpenStreetMaps" + what the device uses...handled on the phone OS side, like if you have two programs doing the same thing on an Android device, you click an address and a window pops up for you to choose which to use...this wouldn't be for WV to know/link to other services). If a part of information is not provided in the listing, then the icon is not displayed (eg. no phone #, no phone icon shown).

To put this in perspective, the current WT attractions listing template is:

• <see name="" alt="" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price=""></see>

A new template might look like this:

• * <see name="" alt="" bus="" metro="" lightrail="" Wikipedia="" url="" phone="" email="" address="" directions="" coordinates="" hours="" price=""></see>

For offline electronic use (which is a topic that needs to be brought up elsewhere), the information would be fully displayed except websites which can get messy when longer than http://website.com (could be "Link" underlined). Wikibooks & Wikisource allows pages to be downloaded as a PDF (to view on computer/tablet/phone or loaded on e-reader), which is something WV should get when we move to WMF, in which case websites would need to be displayed in case printed or needed to enter in an internet cafe. We could also see if WV could get an official phone/tablet app some developer could volunteer to create that could keep the same formatting as the online website, but allow downloads for offline use.

Outside of templated listings, there's only a couple other common places where inter-wiki links would be used/appropriate. Since regional/country-level pages don't use listing, but rather paragraphs of text, WP pages could be linked by adding a template after the name of an attraction/etc. So in the middle of a paragraph you would see "Westminster Abbey [W]" (where W is the Wikipedia "W" logo) which would be done by typing "Westminster Abbey {{Wikipedia:Westminster Abbey}}" a template that could be added to the toolbox you see when editing. Links to other WMF wikis could be done similarly. AHeneen 00:35, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

In addition to that suggestion, I would also like to see a template for just phone numbers to add in the middle of prose. For example, in the "Get around#By bus" section of Lake Wales: "Lake Wales is served by Winter Haven Area Transit (WHAT, [4], +1 863-534-5500). Adult/youth fare is $1.50/ride with no free transfers. Seniors (65+) and the disabled ride for $0.75, with proof and no free transfers." The phone number would look better with the phone image beside it and the template could work (on the mobile site) to bring up the phone app (is that what it's called?) to place calls. If you're using an Android phone, tapping a number will bring it up in the phone app. But it doesn't recognize the number in the format we use on WV. Tapping the number in that example text, it brings up "+1863534". To be honest, though, that functionality frequently brings up odd numbers in the phone app...for example, I'll unintentionally touch a number when scrolling and it will bring up "20-13" or "27395" (like a population). Not sure if that's been fixed in later versions like 4.x, but with the wide variety of phone operating systems and considering much of the developing world will have older OS versions, relying on the phone to recognize the number is not the way to go. AHeneen (talk) 06:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Could we perhaps start work on an open source app, possibly very similar to the Wikipedia app? Having a good mobile site is important, but I feel like allowing people to browse the site (or a section of the site) while offline would make Wikivoyage much more appealing to mobile users. WikiSherpa is doing a good job right now, but it's proprietary software (it's freemium, and not open source), which feels at odds with the WMF philosophy if we want to call it our official app.

I've got some iOS development experience. I'd love to Plunge Forward and fork the Wikipedia iOS project on github and start working on an equivalent for WikiVoyage (which would be open source). However, I want to make sure I don't end up putting in effort for nothing. How does WMF go about embracing "official" apps for their websites? KhwamRock (talk) 02:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Check this thread. It might be a good starting point. --Alexander (talk) 07:36, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. Jon Evans here, author of WikiSherpa, which I've recently switched from Wikitravel to Wikivoyage (as of the currently available Android version and the waiting-for-review iOS version.) I'd actually be happy to open-source it. There are, however, two points. One is that, well, WS was my first Android project and my first iOS project, and it shows in the code to an embarrassing degree. It's a lot kludgier and clunkier than I'd like. The other is that it doesn't just connect to Wikivoyage; it actually has its own App Engine server, which parses out Wikivoyage's data, geocodes addresses, gets associated Wikipedia pages, some Foursquare locations, etc, parses all that into a a somewhat byzantine XML format, and sends that to the apps. The App Engine server costs me a couple of hundred dollars a year to maintain, and I don't know if any open-source community is going to be willing to take that over... Anyway, I can be reached at wikisherpa@rezendi.com for further discussion.

Hallo, Jon! Thanks for taking the time to keep us up to date on your interesting developments. Please take the time to register an account so we know it's you posting in future. That way, if you configure your preferences appropriately, you'll also get an e-mail notification when pages you are "watching" are changed...-- Alice^✉ 04:23, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I've updated my listing parser with a bunch of heuristics, so that it now also eats unformatted listing entries and converts them into proper tags, which only have to be inserted back into the edit window. If you're editing and cleaning up a lot of listings, you might find that quite useful. Please let me know, what you think about it! ML31415 Mail Talk 06:31, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Nice work, Michael!

One thing you might like to consider, Michael, is a switch for the English language Wikivoyage which forces the insertion of null tags like tollfree="" (in line with the recommendation here: "...If you don't know some information, just leave that field empty, somebody else can add those details later. Please do not delete any unused listing fields..." ). Thanks for listening. -- Alice^✉ 07:11, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

It's generally inserting all tags now. ML31415 Mail Talk 01:20, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Sharing Options

Hey everyone. Could someone add sharing options (such as emailing and sharing to Facebook, Twitter, etc) to each travel page so people could easily email their travel info to themselves and other people? Sharing functions aren't really needed on Wikipedia, but are probably more important for a travel site, and most websites nowadays have some basic sharing options such as AddThis and etc. It would be great if we could have some sharing options here on Wikivoyage, and I hope the community will be able to introduce this feature in the future. Thanks. —The preceding comment was added by 38.106.172.254 (talk • contribs)

We've talked about it but haven't had time to take any action on it. It's a bit low-priority at the moment. LtPowers (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Similar proposals has been discussed at Wikipedia and generally rejected on the basis of privacy concerns and on the basis of the horrible politics that would arise in choosing which sites one would put on the list of sites to share to. (Not that Wikivoyage should blindly follow Wikipedia, but it's worth contemplating the reasons why we've rejected it over on 'pedia.) —Tom Morris (talk) 16:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

There has been some discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Listings about changes to business listings. That page is quite long, so you'll have to scan through all that to find the suggestions (sorry, I don't have time to do that). In addition to the "what sites to choose" issue, there's also the problem of fees and liscenses associated with incorporating those sites' features onto Wikivoyage. AHeneen (talk) 19:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia links

I added some Wikipedia links to an article earlier, and LtPower has removed them. I haven't got a problem with that: I'm learning the ways of the Wikivoyage.

But I've got a suggestion. Over on Wikinews, we have a template called 'w' which lets you easily link to pages, and if there is a page on the local wiki, it resolves there, and if not, it links to Wikipedia. What's the general view on linking to Wikipedia? I've started adding links back from Wikipedia to Wikivoyage using sister projects templates. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The discussion so far: Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Listings tags and links to Wikipedia. You may want to scroll down to the Summary section first though. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes. There has been a LOT of discussion about this and opinion seems divided. There are actually several sections on that page which discuss Wikipedia links. AHeneen (talk) 19:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Please see Wikivoyage:Links to Wikipedia. For the time being, the accepted way of linking back is to add a [[Wikipedia:Article title]] link at the bottom of the page, which will generate a sidebar link. --Peter ^Talk 19:55, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, the inline link style that you mention for Wikinews would likely not be OK on Wikipedia itself. WP groups interwiki links within WMF with the "external links" because there are many sites which have a mirror copy of the English-language Wikipedia but don't have Wikinews, Wikivoyage or any of the others. We don't have an "external links" section, so we use the sidebar link for now. K7L (talk) 00:38, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I also today had two links to Wikipedia from the Pakistan article hastily removed by this power lieutenant citing that inline Wikipedia links are against the rules and that's that. I say hasty because he had time to remove them but no time to improve the Pakistan article in a way he saw correct, or to join the Wikivoyage IRC channel to explain the reasoning when I invited him to join the discussion I began after the revert. ... Anyway ... my links were to terms casually dropped in the Pakistan article that I thought many people wouldn't know. One, "shalwar kameez", I did know the meaning of. The other, NOC / No Objection Certificate, I had never heard of before. I am at a complete loss why there's a rule against informative links to our well-known sister project. These links were not SPAM or any kind of clutter, just help on unusual terms. I understand there are many kinds of links to avoid. I understand that before coming to Wikimedia there might've been some reasons to discourage more links from Wikivoyage to WIkipedia. I cannot understand a blanket rule which had a clearly adverse affect in this case. I found this bureaucracy very discouraging and had to wonder if Wikivoyage is already chasing away well intentioned new contributors in the ways that Wikipedia has become sadly famous for. — Hippietrail (talk) 05:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. The reasoning and argument for what you externally link to and what not to externally link to has probably been discussed here more than any other single issue. Opinion is divided. You can join in the discussion, and address the argument specifically, and please convince everyone why we should change. You shouldn't have a go at one of our other contributors for making edits in line with policy. If you can't find the discussions, I'll provide pointers to them.

However, addressing your specific case, if you are using a term in an article that is unfamiliar to most, then you should make an effort to explain it inline in the article. We want our articles to be useful offline. Useful on the road, in a book, in a printout, in an phone offline. So it is no use to have the answer to the question in a link to WP, the info needs to be here. --Inas (talk) 10:15, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

To start with, I am strongly in favor of allowing in-line Wikipedia links. That said, current policy is that only a sidebar link to the WP page of the same (destination) or similar (topic/itinerary) name is allowed. The biggest reason for this is so that we get content added here and not 100 links to Wikipedia, forcing WV users to have to visit multiple pages to get the info they need. One reason we need content here is so that WV guides can be used offline (printed as a book or saved as a PDF/e-reader file for computers/tablets/e-readers/smartphones).

There has been a lot of discussion at Wikivoyage_talk:Listings#Listings_tags_and_links_to_Wikipedia. We do not have a formal voting process, instead relying on consensus. However an informal vote was made at the bottom of that section and it's 11-8 in favor of adding WP links. If there's no clear consensus, then we keep the status quo. Please voice your opinion there. Finally, I don't think many WV admins/bureaucrats use IRC and it's best to use user/guide talk pages to discuss issues. AHeneen (talk) 14:07, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Are we dual-licensing GFDL...?

The edit interface says, "By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license. "

Is that correct, or just an error in the MediaWiki: files? If it's an error, can someone fix it? If it's correct, can we update Wikivoyage:Copyleft? --EvanProdromou (talk) 17:42, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I think we agreed it was useful in case content was migrated to WP for any reason,that new contributions were dual licenced in this way. It doesn't change underlying licence of WV. --Inas (talk) 18:45, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Where wast that discussed? I'd like to know more about this. --Rogerhc (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we can retroactively dual-license the migrated content, though, without a lot of work. --EvanProdromou (talk) 19:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

That's correct. I think what happened is that the default licensing text got left in there, and when someone wondered if we should remove it, it was reasoned that it did little harm. Now if there was text that asserted that everything was available under GFDL, that would be a problem, but I don't think there is. LtPowers (talk) 20:03, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I think it should go. It may be necessary for WP, which started out with GFDL, but for us it is just an unnecessary complication.

I asked about this on the mailing list a few days back & someone said they'd check with the WMF legal dep't. Pashley (talk) 21:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The WMF's legal department is looking into it. I've asked one of our staff attorneys to weigh in. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:03, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

It's safer to take it out for now and consider putting it back later, if that's what people really really want. Me, I'd rather just stick to the BY-SA. -- MarkJaroski (talk) 22:05, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Philippe asked me to weigh in here. I agree that the GFDL should be removed from the edit interface, such as:

By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.

Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I've made the change.  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 00:06, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This is actually fairly tricky to do consistently, for the following reasons:

1) There's more than one Wikivoyage language edition, and we'll need to consistently update all of them.

2) Users can set a different UI language, in which case they'll see the default text again (which includes the GFDL licensing grant).

To do this correctly and consistently requires a small amount of code and the translation of a new user interface message that has all the required legalese but lacks the GFDL licensing grant. Unless legal thinks the dual-licensing actually does harm, I'm going to consider that relatively low priority, but have filed a bug here: bugzilla:44023 --Eloquence (talk) 05:53, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Since this also applies to other languages, and needs to be done in a manner independent of the configured user interface language, I've filed a bug to consistently

FYI, this page needs to be updated accordingly: Wikivoyage:Why Wikivoyage isn't GFDL. AHeneen (talk) 04:55, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Adding external images on userspaces?

Is this possible, and if so, how? I read somewhere that you could do it by using HTML, but the page didn't tell me how to, only to flag them. Daylon124 (talk) 18:47, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

No, sadly, mostly for privacy reasons actually (If you load an image from an external site they would get the IP and user agent info of everyone who visits the page which would go against our privacy policy). The template you linked to is designed to 'link' to external media when necessary but doesn't actually load it (you can obviously do that here as well). You can see an example with the External Video on this article at the top of the section. Jamesofur (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Search plugin

As it seems nobody else had done so yet, I have created a search plugin for this wiki. It uses https:// and &go and it can be found on mycroft. It should work fine on Firefox, Chrome and recent versions of Internet Explorer. Let me know if there are any issues :) Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 23:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Good work! —Tom Morris (talk) 15:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Now I have a way to search Wikipedia using https. =) LtPowers (talk) 19:27, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

HTTPS Everywhere works for Wikimedia projects too. Reedy submitted a patch to add Wikivoyage back in November. The next release should support Wikivoyage. I'd encourage all editors on all Wikimedia projects to use it especially if they are admins or bureaucrats (etc.) or use public wifi hotspots. It may be an idea for people to read the guidance pages on Wikipedia for User account security and Personal security practices. We may also want to have committed identities on Wikivoyage. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:28, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Why is <see> a tag and not a template?

Tags like <br> don't usually convey information in the sense that <see> does here. I'm geninuely curious as to why <see> is being maintained when it seems more appropriate to use a template. (For the record, I've created an experimental template). --Member (talk) 02:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Custom code was used before. Users could click on an "add listing" link next to the "edit" link, and a pop-up would come up, in which they could fill in a name, address, pricing info, description, etc of a particular listing. Then they could press OK and the listing was added to the wiki. However, that function is not available anymore, and I think in the near future these will be converted to regular templates. See Wikivoyage talk:Listings for the discussion. Globe-trotter (talk) 02:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is a proposal for a template {{listing}} and a proposed patch bugzilla:43220 which would redirect mw:extension:listings output to a template. I believe these were originally tags as there used to be an "add a listing" button which used this; the German Wikivoyage has gone to a template vorlage:vCard but replacing these now would require a 'bot edit every page. K7L (talk) 02:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

A switch over to templates is probably necessary to be compatible with the visual editor that is under development at the Foundation. (I'll pester someone on the VisualEditor team to weigh in.) —Tom Morris (talk) 02:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

A move to templates is probably inevitable. Just need the right code, and the right timing. --Inas (talk) 03:12, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

The VE doesn't require moving to templates, but it will probably mean you get to use it for these items sooner - see my comments on MediaWiki.org for a little more (as this is a general question not specific to Wikivoyage). Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Naming of this page

Also, although I was ignored previously when objecting to Wiktionary having an alcohol-related community page (though I no longer see it there now), could a community page here at Wikivoyage be named such that is not associated with a drug that costs billions of dollars a year in economic costs[1] not to mention its more important psychological and moral costs? Community Forum or Traveler's Lounge or something which is actually inviting to all people as it is presumably meant to be--rather than putting off teetotalers who are put off by it, whether for the very common religious beliefs against it, or for purely practical reasons? Thank you. Brettz9 (talk) 06:05, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Please see this discussion on the talk page; specifically the latter comments. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:07, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm a bit of a teetotaller myself but I'm not offended. There is plenty to ingest at a pub that doesn't contain alcohol. LtPowers (talk) 19:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Wiktionary still has and uses that page: wikt:Wiktionary:Beer parlour. –sumone10154^(talk) 22:37, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

If we were to change names I'd advocate 'Departure Lounge', but I'm perfectly happy with Travellers' Pub - I think it has a pleasingly rustic feel! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 19:24, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Contents boxes

Quick question, but why are the contents boxes different here than on other WMF projects? It's kind of annoying not having numbers there, and furthermore, section titles frequently span several lines, so without numbers they appear to be different things. -mattbuck (Talk) 09:16, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Table of Contents (TOC) item numbers are cruft that we intentionally leave out. However, long section names do look a little odd in the resulting TOC. Some CSS formatting such as out-denting initial line could solve this. Our TOC has other issues (see #Coding error, above) that also might be solved with some expert CSS formatting. Thanks for pointing this out. --Rogerhc (talk) 19:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We had a discussion about this somewhere recently, but I can't remember the page. The problem with the numbers is that they add to the width of the box, which is a factor because we wrap text around the box. When we had numbers, a lot of articles were ending up with small ribbons of text between TOC boxes on the left and lead images on the right. Also, on our content pages, section headings should rarely be long enough to wrap, so it's never been seen as a big problem. Some way to distinguish wrapped lines from individual headings in the TOC would likely be welcome; perhaps it can be done with CSS? LtPowers (talk) 19:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Travellers forum

Congratulations on this new page. We do need more travel forums with travellers input. We also need more forums for travel partners search, especially for countries like Tibet- where there are restrictive policies for solo travel.

Please explain what you have in mind that can't be dealt with, for example, at Talk:Tibet. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Tibet is for discussions relevant to the Tibet article.

What are you proposing? I do not see any obvious need for forums here, but considerable danger of touting. Pashley (talk) 09:45, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of local file pages

Hi!

There is a lot of files showing up on Special:UncategorizedFiles. In most cases it is probably just a text page where the actual file is located on Commons.

I think that all relevant information should be copied to Commons and the local file page deleted. That will make it much easier to maintain the local files.

It would also be a good idea if some local users checked Special:ListFiles often and checked if everything is ok. If the file is free it should be copied to Commons. If there is no source and license then uploader should be told as soon as possible.

--MGA73 (talk) 18:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

special:newfiles and special:newpages might be more suitable than listing absolutely everything? K7L (talk) 02:43, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

ListFiles also have a description but feel free to use whatever tool or list you (or anyone else like) as long as someone checks new files I'm happy :-D --MGA73 (talk) 08:47, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Sister project link templates

Does Wikivoyage have any of the sister project link templates? Like the ones shown here I can't find any. 86.45.191.101 21:24, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

We put our sister project links in the left-hand sidebar, using wikilink syntax (like [[Wikipedia:Kinsale]]). Thus, no need for boxes on the articles themselves. LtPowers (talk) 21:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh. Would the boxes not look better and easier to find for readers? And also help with cross wiki consistency, as the other wikis have similar boxes (although the ones on Wikibooks do look different). 86.45.191.101 21:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Both would work - the boxes you expect at the bottom, but the links are going to be near the top. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Also might be a good idea to check if the other projects have templates for Wikivoyage. Wikipedia has but I don't know about the others. 86.45.191.101 21:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Earlier I suggested on Wikinews that we ought to add Wikivoyage links. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Even in Wikipedia itself, many languages still need to be changed to use Wikivoyage templates and links. #Links from Wikipedia in other languages. K7L (talk) 22:02, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikisource links to Wikivoyage through its headers (it doesn't use the Wikipedia-style templates either). Currently all of the country-specific portals should contain links (eg. Australia, Mexico, etc.). I've left some ideas on Wikivoyage talk:Sister project links about some circumstances where links from Wikivoyage to Wikisource might be appropriate but there is currently no support for them. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:43, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Good news: Wikinews now supports links to Wikivoyage from category pages, and I've started adding a few. See n:Category:London and n:Category:Manchester for instance. Do feel free to pop over and start adding them, although they won't appear immediately because we use pending changes. Is there any chance we could get reciprocation for Wikinews links, just like there are sidebar links for Wikipedia and Commons? —Tom Morris (talk) 12:50, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Where would this link fit into the project? Individual news articles usually wouldn't be of use in a travel guide to a city, unless they provide background for a specific travel warning (for instance, the big red box listing Somalia as a war zone). If you have a page describing the city itself, that might fit (much like a commons: category with pictures of a city is included now). The list of which links go into RelatedSites is in a configuration file on the server (like LocalSettings.php in the default MediaWiki install) so adding a prefix to the sidebar would require asking through bugzilla: that the system administrator edit the config files. Even with some sort of consensus, our local admins and bureaucrats don't have control of the servers to do this. K7L (talk) 18:57, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I absolutely think we should have sidebar links back to Wikinews categories—being able to click through to news on any particular destination you are considering visiting would be really cool! --Peter ^Talk 20:47, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

• Peter, I'm delighted to see you keen to try and make use of Wikinews, the discussion Tom mentioned is one you're most-welcome to give input on.

But, Wikinews is still a fairly small project. So soon after Wikivoyage joining the WMF family, it may not be all-that-obvious how we can help Wikivoyage with cross-project links. I do not know enough about Wikivoyage to know how you handle things like "travel warnings" issued by governments, and so on, but the most-logical place for those is as news articles. I know we can't ask Wikivoyagers (is this the correct term?) to dive into Wikinews and write the articles for such, but we'd certainly do the best we could to help get people on the right track were they interested in doing that. Equally, you have a wide range of news events that might raise interest in travel to some places (a new stable government and cessation of hostilities, major drop in crime, etc). I think the argument in the linked-to Wikinews discussion regarding Wikivoyage's lack of NPOV is irrelevant.

Looks like (at a guess) some of the attempts to link over here are 'a bit broken', but from my own contributions to Wikinews, our category on Southern Thailand's insurgency problems is one Wikivoyage would want to link to, and one where we would want to link to Wikivoyage. We'd want people to be able to reassure themselves the rest of the country is perfectly safe, much as Wikivoyage would want to link to news from higher-risk areas and give their readers an opportunity to be far better-informed when choosing travel locations. --Brian McNeil (talk) 10:34, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

We generally link to sister projects with interwiki links appearing in the sidebar, and that would be great to see on any pages that have a corresponding category on Wikinews. Realistically, that will require a bot.

I would be thrilled to see a way for us to put a "feed" of sorts on the Main Page. Wikinews could tag articles as being "travel warnings," or "travel news," and we could then feed that into a box showing the most recent items. This may require some feature development to make it work well, but we could do this manually at first. The work would at first be more on Wikinews' end, but I think it would be a great way to feature the work Wikinews does, while also adding some great content to our Main Page. --Peter ^Talk 18:50, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree this would be great to get our travel news from Wikinews. I'd be happy to contribute travel news now and then to the site, and have it appear here. I think this would be a much higher profile feature than the sidebar stuff, that with the current content may not be that relevant. --Inas (talk) 00:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

What are mainspace article pages for?

Obviously places, but what else? Is there any formal policy in place for this?

• If a town holds a regular festival or similar event, can we write an article on that festival specifically?

• If there's a particular castle / theme park, can we write an article on that attraction specifically?

• If a term, like "funicular" is uncommon, but important for explaining the joys of a particular town, how do we link to an explanation for those unfamiliar to it? Wikipedia probably has a suitable page, but AIUI, inline off-wikivoyage links aren't permitted in such a case. Should we create a precis page for funicular here?

Andy Dingley (talk) 23:17, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Attractions are usually included in the geographical article - i.e. where you would go to visit them. This includes festivals, theme parks, castles, etc. We don't usually link to nouns. It may be that in some cases for particular modes of transport a travel topic is in order. In the case of funiculars, I don't think we want a definitional page, but some people do enjoy seeking out and riding them - so perhaps a travel topic to that effect may work. --Inas (talk) 23:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

[edit-conflict]The page to look at is Wikivoyage:What is an article?. The mainspace is used for everything except (most) project-related pages. We don't write articles about specific destinations, except when they are particularly large like Walt Disney World (which actually meets the "Can you sleep there?" test). Only a few festivals/events have earned their own article, like the Olympics, in which case they were written as a travel topic. This would be a good idea, though, but we'd need to create a policy first. A term can be explained in prose in the appropriate section. Right now we don't allow in-line links to Wikipedia, but if you look at Wikivoyage talk:Listings there is a LOT of discussion about this and opinion is equally divided. AHeneen (talk) 23:28, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

(That discussion is about icon links to wp in listings, not in-line wp links.) --Peter ^Talk 23:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Themed itineraries

Hi. I thought about contributing to the site before really looking at it and I had the idea of starting something like "George Orwell's Barcelona", which would basically be an itinerary for a walking tour of the city going past key locations in Orwell's book Homage to Catalonia, with context info and photos. Looking at the policies, though, I'm not sure if this is a type of article that would be OK. Would it? FormerIP (talk) 23:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Not only do I think it would be okay per our policies, I'd actually be eager to read it (I'm an Orwell fan). Plunge forward. If other editors have a problem with the article, they'll make it known and you can hammer out a consensus as to its future direction. But speaking from my own experiences, I doubt very much that will be the case. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds fantastic! Some good itineraries you might want to look to as models include Yaowarat and Phahurat Tour, Loop Art Tour, and The Wire Tour—if you've already watched the show, that is. --Peter ^Talk 01:02, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

We have a stub Literary travel where you might add a link, and articles like Literary London and Marco Polo which might serve as examples as well. Pashley (talk) 01:15, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Reading Wikivoyage:Itineraries before, I was also inclined to believe such an itinerary isn't allowed. We need to change the wording of it. Globe-trotter (talk) 01:41, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

What in the article gives you that impression? I mean, The Wire Tour is the most prominent example there, and it's a tour of filming locations. --Peter ^Talk 02:10, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Some old discussion: Wikivoyage talk:Other ways of seeing travel#City Theme Pages Pashley (talk) 02:13, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

The usual pitfall with local itinerary is to write A day in Dullsville in such a way as to merely create a duplicate of the main Dullsville article, listing all of the same attractions. Certainly, an itinerary can give more flexibility as a means for a journey to follow a theme (we have many itineraries like Across Canada by rail / Across the US by rail, as well as themes retracing US Route 66 or the Titanic maiden voyage). These can work well if there are clear criteria for what is included and some sort of natural sequence to the trip, instead of merely repeating what's in the city article. If w:The Grapes of Wrath were an itinerary, for instance, it would start in Oklahoma and head westward to California with brief stops in every town mentioned in the book. K7L (talk) 02:32, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I will start on a userpage draft soon-ish. FormerIP (talk) 13:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Adding a Hookah Bar to a city's Food section?

The city I live in has a Hookah Bar, which I understand to not be a terribly common thing. Is including that within the Food section within the scope of the project? It is the only Hookah Bar in town. Zellfaze (talk) 04:03, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Bars and nightlife usually go into "drink", as the "eat" section is for food and restaurants. K7L (talk) 04:07, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to that (it is not listed at wtsi). Do they serve any food/alcohol? We stick bars and comedy clubs in the "Drink" section and if the hookah bar serves any alcohol, that would be the place for it. I don't think a "smoke" section with one listing would be necessary. AHeneen (talk) 04:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Even if they don't serve alcohol, they should go in Drink. It's a problematic heading, but it covers "non-eatery places where you go hang out and talk while paying the owner." --Peter ^Talk 05:04, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I was wondering this myself, actually. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:21, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

They serve both food and drink. Most people come, smoke a bowl or two, eat some food, have a drink and leave. I love their hummus and pita bread. They have alright Pizza too. Thursdays are 50 cent beer night. I'll go ahead and add it to the Drinks section. If later on it becomes an issue, I'm sure that it will be taken care of (Plunging Forward/Being Bold and all that). Zellfaze (talk) 23:31, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Turns out that Hookah Bar is within scope and listed on Wikivoyage:Where_you_can_stick_it#H. Fantastic. Thank you for your help guys. Zellfaze (talk) 00:24, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

IMO, the "Drink" section should be renamed "Nightlife" to take focus off alcohol. /Yvwv (talk) 03:33, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

It's also for daytime coffeehouses and cafés. Globe-trotter (talk) 05:18, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree entirely. Drink is such a limiting name. - Cardboardbird (talk) 05:21, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

"Drink" was used to match the pattern of using short imperatives as section names (see, do, buy, eat, sleep). It looks even more awkward on fr: where it was translated as "Sortir/Boire une verre" ("Go out/Drink a glass"). I've also noticed that in the smallest villages "Eat/Drink" should be a single section as the only places selling drink also sell food ("licenced restaurant", "bar and grill", "English pub" and the like). Then there's the Starbucks-like cafés which don't serve full meals. Drink? K7L (talk) 06:11, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

We do sometimes combine the two sections—here's a star that does. I think the various stuff we put in there does go together. I'll hang out and chat/socialize after dining out at a bar, a club, a lounge, a cigar bar, a hookah bar, a coffeeshop, a teahouse, etc. They all serve that function. --Peter ^Talk 06:27, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we can think about this section heading after the current Connect one. Meanwhile, I think Peter's description of what the Drink section means is about the best I've seen. --Inas (talk) 04:06, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Userpage boxes

I can't seem to find any templates like commons:Template:User Wikipedia admin or Template:User alternative account name. Am I just looking in the wrong places, do they have yet to be created, or have they already been created and destroyed? Ks0stm ^(T•C•E) 11:53, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

The extensive use of userboxes is not one of our traditions. We don't, as far as I remember, have a rule preventing their use, and provided they are used for usefully informative purposes, they may be acceptable. We do use a few, so there is precedent. I would suggest you create the ones you feel would be useful in a sandbox, and request comment. The two that you list above would have my support. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:05, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

The only ones I know of are Babel templates, and at some point they'll be replaced with the Babel extension. I wouldn't go starting a bunch of userspace templates; we have enough trouble keeping track of the templates we have. LtPowers (talk) 12:19, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing userboxes, but it would probably be best to discuss policy regarding their use and creating a page to keep track of them (without flooding Template index). There has been discussion split between those who want to see more templates and those who don't in the last few sections at Using Mediawiki templates (although it is about other templates, not userboxes, which are a bit different regarding use). AHeneen (talk) 14:01, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

User pages aren't mainspace articles and don't have to follow the fixed format (see/do, buy, eat/drink, sleep) of a city or region listing. One possiblility might be to create userboxes in subpages of your user space instead of in template: space (much like Wikipedia uses a placeholder w:user:UBX to store userbox template code in that user's subpage). WV has been restrictive on new template creation in the past, but that's to keep articles in a similar format across multiple cities and regions. Do we care about something entirely in userspace if it's doing no harm? K7L (talk) 22:28, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Userboxes have been abused on the English Wikipedia, to be frank; I don't think some of the frivolous ones should make their way over here ("Template:Userbox pizza", anyone?) Babel templates or the babel extension are pretty universal, and global users generally expect them, and the userrights ones might be helpful too. --Rschen7754 22:41, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Just about all the user boxes at w:User:UBX/Userboxes/Food are a bit ridiculous, like w:User:UBX/fishy, w:Template:User loser, [[:w:{User:UBX/jalapeño]], & w:User:UBX/McDonald's. However, I think some userboxes related to travel can be appropriate, like boxes for hometown ("This user is a native New Yorker."), nationality ("This user is a proud Canadian."), interests ("This user is interested in Japan."), and maybe a few reasonable fun ones. The category w:Wikipedia:Userboxes/Travel is full of great userboxes that would be relevant to this Wiki. AHeneen (talk) 23:01, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

w:user:UBX is intended to be a dumping ground for templates which aren't core to the Wikipedia project; as such, it will be missing some of the more useful items like individual Wikiproject (expedition) activity. "This user is helping Wikipedia get its kicks on Route 66" is a different beast from "I like cheese pizza". K7L (talk) 23:21, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

There is a good reason why userboxes aren't part of the tradition here—we cover fewer topics. While the fact that you like to play Shostakovich arranged for xylophone might actually have some relevance to your editing on Wikipedia, it clearly does not here. I'd really like to see us develop a small set of userboxes, above all one that lists where you are located (and then generate a list of Wikivoyagers by location through that) and one for docent designations. --Peter ^Talk 23:38, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I am not a huge fan of userboxes as they tend to get overused, but when used in moderation they do convey important information about the user clearly and easily.

Being in the process of returning to editing Wikivoyage again I have just set up my user page. There are two userboxes that I did missed while doing so: 1) a box to indicate that I have admin status. This is very useful information to wikivoyagers that visit one's userpage. This was easy to create under my userspace as template {{userbox}} does exist here. 2) {{User since}} to indicate how long one has been a contributor would have been nice to add, but this is a complex template and not easily duplicated under one's own userspace.

I think userboxes in the following categories will be beneficial: Babel (already there), User status on the wiki (admin/docent etc), User current location, User current disposition (working or traveling) --NJR ZA (talk) 13:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking it could be helpful to have userboxes for familiarity with SVG/Inkscape (for maps) and photo editing/Gimp/Photoshop (might be handy if we move to the proposed new main page layout). -Shaundd (talk) 06:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Better information for new users...

I think it would be a good idea to create a tutorial for new users as WV can be a little confusing at first go's etc. —The preceding comment was added by ButlinsRedcoatJake (talk • contribs)

What you're looking for is Welcome and Tips for new contributors. Where you can stick it is also a useful page. AHeneen (talk) 17:11, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd come here from WP in October 2012, made quite a few of the common n00b mistakes (such as an attempt to create w:Ontario Highway 401 and some unnecessary template imports from WP), then started listing what I'd "learned" at the existing page Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians in November so that all these differences between WP and WV would be documented somewhere. A travel guide is less free-form than an encyclopaedia as most entries are destination cities and regions, with basically the same sections appearing in every article (get in, see/do, buy, eat/drink, sleep, go next...) Are there any mistakes I'd forgot to make which really should be on the list? :) K7L (talk) 19:20, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

We have had several mentions of a video tutorial, which would be great—if someone is willing to make one ;) --Peter ^Talk 20:54, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Going off on a tangent, I had tried to start an expedition to create guides to routes themselves, but (I was new & didn't understand the policies) I didn't start it properly with community consent in the Pub and in the end, consensus was that such pages won't be acceptable. You can view Wikivoyage:Routes Expedition (and its talk page) for more details. I started a sample/guide article to go with the proposal at [2] (it got deleted on WV). It did spark the Routebox navigation concept, though. I still think such guides can be useful for long trips by road. AHeneen (talk) 22:50, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

~Hi Is there any place i can ask question as new user, and i joined from Wikipedia to Wikivoyage but it is not same for Wikitravel, can any one Please create or merge me with Wikitravel and is WikiTravel allowing Advertisement ? --Somesh.kanti (talk) 13:09, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

General Travel Information?

I just discovered this website and it looks very promising. However, most of the topics I found in my quick survey seemed to be regarding the format of the site itself. Maybe I am missing the important pages. Is there going to be a forum for travelers on the go, some sort of on-line Lonely Planet? I'd be looking for hints for things to do, places to stay, and things to avoid advised by fellow travelers.

The mission of Wikivoyage is to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable worldwide travel guide, not a travel forum (See our Goals and non-goals). By on-line Lonely Planet are you referring to the Thorn Tree forum? Then no. However, just have a look at the guides themselves for advice on things to do & places to stay. After all, this is the travel guide that anyone can edit...users should Plunge forward and add interesting places and restaurants/accommodations to the destination pages for everyone to find...you don't need to search dozens of threads with useful info buried among several pages of posts. While travel forums are useful, they don't fall into the scope of Wikivoyage and actually detract from our goals (again, content being added in a thread rather than on proper destination page). AHeneen (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Most of the content is actually travel topics. Click Random page to get an idea of what you can find here. By the way, welcome to Wikivoyage! :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 17:51, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Type the name of any country, province or city you please into the search box at top right of page. Tada! Or if you prefer to browse by region, start with one of the little bulleted links at top of Main Page to find your way. Happy trails! --98.207.156.126 18:45, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't predict that we'll have a forum a la Thorntree, but new ways of sharing tips should definitely be in our future, about listings in particular. We had such an experiment in development back around 2007, but it failed for lack of tech support/development. This is still a bit over the horizon, but it almost certainly will become possible. --Peter ^Talk 20:57, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Formatting of links in listing templates

When using the listing templates (for restaurants, attractions etc) there's an error with links; they don't not appear the way they should (i.e as [3]) but instead as the listing name becomes a link. It's a small bug but a bit annoying. Would be great if somebody could have a look into it! --Jonte-- (talk) 17:46, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Link doesn't work. However, in listings, the name is supposed to become the link. Example:

• <see name="Legoland Florida" alt="" address="1 Legoland Way" directions="Located off Cypress Gardens Blv. just east of Winter Haven" phone="" email="" fax="" url="http://florida.legoland.com/" hours="Hours vary throughout year." price="$65 (Ages 13-59), $55 (Ages 3-12, 60+)">The second Legoland park in the US in addition to Legoland in California. yada...yada </see>

Is that what you're referring to? AHeneen (talk) 18:14, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, a small typo in the link I provided. But it was the format that I wanted to point at. Since the introduction of listing templates the formatting have been:

• Legoland Florida 1 Legoland Way (Located off Cypress Gardens Blv. just east of Winter Haven) [4]. Hours vary throughout year.. $65 (Ages 13-59), $55 (Ages 3-12, 60+). The second Legoland park in the US in addition to Legoland in California. yada...yada

See example on WT here: [5]. This is in line on how all other links are displayed. --Jonte-- (talk) 18:26, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

That is a known bug, bugzilla:43220, for which a fix has been proposed but not yet deployed. That fix, once enabled, will give:

• Legoland Florida, 1 Legoland Way (Located off Cypress Gardens Blv. just east of Winter Haven). Hours vary throughout year. The second Legoland park in the US in addition to Legoland in California. yada...yada $65 (Ages 13-59), $55 (Ages 3-12, 60+). 

It might be a good idea to look at {{listing}} to verify it matches the desired format while it's still an unprotected experimental template which can be changed without affecting much of anything. I presume the globe icon for the URL should change to either the old '[1]' style external link or to an icon without any distracting colo(u)rs. K7L (talk) 20:47, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Cooperating with WikiOverland

Discussion moved to Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikioverland

On Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikioverland many people support using interwiki links to WikiOverland.
Does anyone know how or where I can request WikiOverland be added to the list of related sites so interwiki links can be added in places that make sense (Country and "drive.." pages, I think)?
Thanks very much. -Dangrec (talk) 22:45, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Promising launch

Alexa traffic statistics show an immense spike in activity for Wikivoyage in the past four days, overtaking Wikitravel around Friday. While this can largely be put down to the promotional banner on Wikipedia, it's also good to see that WV has been ahead in amount users spend on the website for some time.

Just something I felt like sharing. --SU FC 12:14, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

It's probably worth waiting a week or so before we start drawing conclusions about traffic. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

One idea is to take a selection of popular articles and see how much they have changed between both sites. 86.45.191.101 22:21, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The average time spent on site actually declined markedly around the launch, maybe due to the changing mix of editors and readers. We're still a little higher than WT.[6] --Avenue (talk) 22:58, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that's to be expected with tons of people checking the site out for the first time, rather than it being more or less just dedicated users slaving away in preparation for the launch! --Peter ^Talk 23:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:Infobox

I see this template being used in a number of places and I think it looks damn ugly. Any chance it could be spruced up a little? I'm thinking, a nicer colored border, or no border. Slightly rounded corners, maybe slightly small font size to the rest of the text in the article. 86.45.191.101 19:46, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Could you add a mockup of your proposal to Template talk:Infobox so that people can see what the proposed changes would look like? We've done some recent UI cleanups to other templates, but I don't think anyone has (yet) proposed changes to the infobox. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:03, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I think a border is needed but could have rounded edges and maybe lighter color. Slightly smaller text maybe but not too much. How about this Template:Infobox/sandbox

I lightened the border and gave it a non-gray color. I think it looks better. 86.45.191.101 20:42, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of updating the infobox style. I added a slightly lighter version to consider. See Template_talk:Infobox#Style. --Rogerhc (talk) 02:19, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Import issue

It seems to me that the import bot is putting words in people's mouths, and altering email addresses to the point where they won't work, here: [7] I'm guessing this is a special case of a regex rule that works well in a lot of other situations. It seems ill advised to apply rules like this to user pages or talk pages, without careful review. Thoughts? -Pete F (talk) 03:26, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Heh, too late!

We just have to fix these things as we see them. I'll handle that page now. --Peter ^Talk 03:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Is it really too late? As I see it, this is a global problem where a bot got it horribly wrong, and it needs a bot to fix it. There are (at least) two ways that a bot could tell what needs reversion, any comment whose date tag shows it is older than the date we took our copy or any comment that exists on WT with identical wording except for WT/WV substitution.

Those substitutions should all be reverted and there are too many to do it without a bot. Pashley (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that the substitutions should all be reverted. We're the same project, just now with a different name, and all applicable versions with "Wikivoyage" should stay. I only think we should be reverting when things don't make sense, like mentions of Wikitravel Press, or the examples from Maj's userpage linked above. --Peter ^Talk 21:15, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that a basic notion in wiki-etiquette is not to change talk page discussion text, other than reverting obvious vandalism and archiving parts of overly long pages. The WT->WV substitution should never have been made on talk pages. We cannot just do a global revert because now there is newer discussion, but all changes to imported text should be reverted.

To me, this seems so obvious that I am amazed it even requires discussion; the only question is how it should be done. Pashley (talk) 21:26, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Again, I'm in full agree with Pashley (there's been times I really want to indent an improperly-indented comment (this one doesn't count, since I'm primarily responding to Peter), but even that's seemed like crossing the Rubicon. Peter, your logic doesn't really work, since they aren't the same project. They start with the same data and policies and have many of the same users, but pre-fork Wikitravel was a very different climate, which is why I never joined up. The fact that many Wikimedians have joined up (and plenty of Wikitravelers haven't) also means that despite the status-quo bias in written policy, you can expect unwritten assumptions to be different as well. Wikietiquette aside, many if not most discussions don't make sense in Wikivoyage. —Quintucket (talk) 21:36, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

(Note, I wrote this in response to Pashley at the same time as Peter's edit, and won't try to adjust it at risk of another edit conflict.) I agree. If possible, I think that pre-fork userpage edits on non-merged account and pre-fork talk page edits Import-bot edits should all be reverted, as changing Wikitravel to Wikivoyage only makes sense in the context of post-fork Wikivoyage.

In that note: Peter reverted me here for restoring pre-fork references to Wikitravel, claiming it doesn't apply here since it's still the same project. I strongly disagree. These discussions took place in a pre-fork context, and the changes are confusing. I made the edit after reading the discussion about discouraging forks and the unhappy climate at Wikivoyage, a non-thriving project, and was thoroughly confused until I remember this discussion. Other readers likely will be too, reading these substitutions not only out of context, but with context actually obscured by a bot, "putting words in people's mouths" as Pete F put it.

That said, while I'd like Peter to agree to re-revert his own edit (I follow a principle of not making the same revert twice with two different users, unless said users are obvious vandals) we really need a bot to do this globally. However there are plenty of people at Wikimedia who would be able and willing to do this. —Quintucket (talk) 21:28, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

There are legal reasons for the replacement. --Peter ^Talk 21:43, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Wherever there are legal reasons, they should be the exception, though, not the rule. In which situations are there no legal reasons for Wikitravel to have been substituted with Wikivoyage? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

There is ongoing litigation related to the use of the name Wikitravel in ways that could confuse readers into thinking that this site is endorsed or part of or whatever regarding Wikitravel. If this is something people want to take up (and I don't see any compelling reason to do so), please get in contact with WMF General Counsel. If you just have questions about this, please email me. For similar reasons, it is best for us not to discuss the ongoing litigation on wiki. --Peter ^Talk 21:50, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I will contact the WMF general counsel, but if they say that there's no issue, would you agree that refactoring user/talk pages is a bad idea in principle, and support efforts to fix the problem? —Quintucket (talk) 21:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I understand why we can't use the WT logo, nor refer to Wikitravel on policy pages (except the one about the fork), even if we wanted to, which we don't. But are there actual legal reasons for refactoring user comments, and if so, could you point me to the relevant discussion on MetaWiki? —Quintucket (talk) 21:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I assure you, there are, and would be happy to explain in greater detail by email. We should not, and I will not discuss this on-wiki. I'd be happy to explain why that is the case by email as well. --Peter ^Talk 21:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

As a general issue, separate from the legalities and specifics, I don't see a problem with minor refactoring of user comments, including fixing indentation levels. It's routine to do things like sweep discussions to more appropriate pages, move new comments on a talk page to the bottom of the page, and adjust the threading of comments made on a talk page. LtPowers (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

This is obviously a far less important facet of the issue than the foregoing, but for what it's worth: in many cases, the WT->WV substitution was also done in a rather artless manner. I've seen several cases where "Wikitraveller" (the non-US spelling, with two "L"'s) was converted to "Wikivoyageler". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Wait—are you saying we're not Wikivoyagelers? --Peter ^Talk 22:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Editing wrong section in San Jose (California)

In the San Jose (California) article, if I click the edit button at Eat or any of its subsections, an edit window is opened for part or all of the Get in section. Is this a MediaWiki problem or something local? Peter Chastain (talk) 12:57, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I have dealt with this problem myself. Most likely, one of the listings in the "Eat" section doesn't have </eat> at the end of it. It screws up the formatting. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! It was actually a missing </do> in an entry that I added (whoops!) Thanks also to the "IP address" user who fixed it for me. Peter Chastain (talk) 20:27, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Pages needing images

Following a request on IRC, I did a query on Wikimedia's Toolserver and retrieved a list of pages that do not have images. I've plunged forward and put it up at Wikivoyage:Pages needing images. If you feel like doing some wikignome-type work, do feel free to find images from Commons and add them to the articles. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:22, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Some of these are redirects, such as Chatham (Ontario) → Chatham-Kent. I'd also think that category:pages with broken file links would be more important to fix than adding new images to travel topics like bargaining or renting motorcars in New Zealand. There's also a huge number of '''X''' is in [[region name]]. {{subst:smallcity}} outlines with no other content; I have no idea why we keep these but illustrating them really isn't top priority. K7L (talk) 15:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Still, K7L, it was a good impulse on Tom's part, don't you think? The other problem is that the list doesn't catch articles like Geneseo, where the only image is in the routebox. Still, false positives and negatives aside, it's a good starting point for wikignomes (though I agree that Category:Pages with broken file links should be a higher priority). LtPowers (talk) 15:20, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

True. On initially generating new lists, possible refinements to the criteria (such as including only destination articles, excluding redirects, or separating stubs and outlines from the main list) often become apparent. All part of the process. K7L (talk) 15:43, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, sadly doing that kind of thing is hard. If it was for 7,000 articles, I'd do it. But for 700, I figure throwing some humans at it should remove the ones that don't need any work. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:53, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

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)

San Juan de Los Lagos, Mexico

HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really really want to help here - I have lived in and loved Mexico for 44 years and this is the first time I have time for myself ( just retired ! ) - reporting on Mexico sounds like a very good way to give back all that She has given me.

BUT I am having problems understanding the simple instructions ( sorry ).

I started a page ( I think ) titled San Juan de Los Lagos, Mexico and would like to go back and fix the title to include the state it is in but when I looked for it it does not have the edit button. Many small towns in Mexico are enchanting - but are really only good for day trips from larger cities as they do not have hotels ( do we have the back up of a spell checker ? ) decent enough for American or European tourists. There arre always small local restaurants that serve very good homecooked local cusine - the markets are perfect examples - at rock bottom prices - "most" are perfectly safe and clean. but even when my family vists from the US the "girls" resist eating in a local setting and want a white tablecloth and decent cutlery.

The best of Mexico is found in the small towns and cities - the REAL Mexico. Let me introduce you to them.

Sheila in Mexico

Hi. The article title has been fixed for you. Just go to San Juan de los Lagos and edit away. The edit button at the top, or at the article headers is good to change the content. --Inas (talk) 03:39, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Sheila, you did a great job starting that article, and I look forward to more content from you. Please do put in entries for restaurants and markets you like, and feel free to include hotels or hostals with simple accommodations, as this is a worldwide guide, and anyway, people from the US and Europe are not all looking for luxury accommodations. There's a bit of a learning curve in terms of how to best use Wiki language, templates, and the like, but don't worry to much about that; it's much more important for you to put the content up. I posted to your user talk page with a couple more specifics. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Patrolling problem

Tracked in Bugzilla
Bug 43977

Hi, everyone. I have set my preferences so that if there are several recent edits of an article, it shows up on "Recent changes" as having, say 4 edits. However, I don't seem to be able to mark several edits at once as having been patrolled. Is anyone else having the same problem, and if so, I hope something can be done about it. Patrolling edits individually when there may be, say, 12 recent edits of an article is really untenable, as traffic increases here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:15, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

No one can do that, and it's really frustrating to say the least. I think this feature request was filed at Bugzilla somewhere, but I can't find where. Patrolling would be a lot easier if we got that feature back. Globe-trotter (talk) 04:54, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia has the patrol system that you describe, so it is possible. I'm a bit annoyed by it too - that's how Wikidata is set up as well for some reason (the third project I'm a part of). --Rschen7754 05:00, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

If English Wikipedia has that setup, what's the issue in getting it here? We used to have that on Wikitravel, and it's desperately needed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

It's a huge problem, and has crippled our ability to effectively patrol. Please see Bugzilla:43977, and vote for its importance, if you think this deserves more attention. --Peter ^Talk 09:09, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, enwiki only does this for entirely new pages, so it's not exactly like that (sorry for the false alarm! trying to keep all these projects straight :/) But yes this would be quite useful. --Rschen7754 09:31, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there any way to hide my email address on Bugzilla? I'm not at all comfortable with having my email address be public. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:58, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately not that I'm aware. I use a separate email for all my WMF accounts and mailing list subscriptions to guard against outing, and it's possible to change the email on your Bugzilla account. --Rschen7754 10:18, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

You can change the email address on https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=account and the email address is only shown to users that are logged in. Related bug report: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=148 - --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Importing edit history from Wikitravel

Having edited Wikitravel in the past, will our edit history be imported here?--Jusjih (talk) 10:42, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Were you also called "Jusjih" on Wikitravel? If so, then your Wikitravel edits are the ones shown at Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Jusjih. Edits up until early August have been imported. If you wish to have the contributions listed under your Wikivoyage account, then please follow the procedure at Wikivoyage:User account migration. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:22, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, just be sure to provide evidence that you are the same person, as explained on that page. --Peter ^Talk 21:17, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Skin Synagonism

A year ago I created the mediawiki skin "synagonism-mw" at SourceForge which improves READING of big files like the wikivoyage's articles. I don't know if it works with current version!! and the code needs improvements. I created to show its functionality and wikivoyage I think needs it. -- Synagonism (talk) 14:59, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Voyage/Travel stats for January 21

Stats for 20130121
Number of entries in recent changes edits (including deletions/blocks):
WV: 2652
WT: 525
Number of article edits:
WV: 2492
WT: 349

By https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/VoyageVsTravel Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:09, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

And have you seen those 349 article edits? I would wager that at least 95% of them are spam.

Good for us.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:23, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

(EC) The problem with these stats is that wikitravel has major problems with spambots at the moment, so I wounder how many wikitravel edits are legit. 86.45.191.101 05:25, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, one should keep this in mind when using these raw statistics. By the way, other interesting stats can be found here: WV WT (same warning applies). In particular, Users who have performed an action in the last 30 days: WV=2,136 WT=606 Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

With respect to article count they have also switch over to using totals that include talk pages and now are saying they have more. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:14, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Lists of Bus Routes

Hey Wikivoyagers, I'm a long time Wikpedia editor this is my first Wikivoyage edit but with a big ask. On English Wikipedia we have numerous lists of Bus Routes which are never going to be encyclopaedia articles but they could be expanded into tour guide articles in the manner that Bus travel in Israel has been. On WP these articles are highly controversial and have been the subject of substantial fighting regarding creation/deletion - they don't generally fit our policies and guideline (they're not notable in an encyclopaedia sense, wikipedia is not a directory of routes, Wikipedia is not a travel guide.) However they appear to fit with some of your policies and aims such as your aim to be useful for online access by travellers on the road. Ideally I would like to know what level of objection there would be to moving these articles from Wikipedia to Wikivoyage with the aim that those searching for such information would be better served having it amongst the other travel information they might also be looking for? Your thoughts are welcomed either here or at [Wikipedia] Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:32, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the idea in part, but looking at the Wikipedia discussion I'd like to suggest that it makes most sense to import them only in two cases:

1. If we're going to expand them into an article on popular tourist routes. (For example, an article explaining exactly which bus numbers, stops, and transfers to use to get to Wicked Awesome Tourist Site from Well-Known and Easily Accessible Landmark.)
2. If the information is difficult to find, spread out over many pages, confusing, or not available in English on the bus operator site.

In cases where the information is easily accessible on the operator sites (for example from the operator in my home region, the PVTA), we risk having information fall out of date. For example, I'll note that the train schedule information on Selçuk was at least two years out of date when I corrected it, and bus schedules tend to change far more often than those of trains. —Quintucket (talk) 21:18, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Quintucket, I'd agree entirely, The usual arguments to these are that. The bus enthusiasts promise to keep it up to date and that as they aren't schedules but only route lists they change far less frequently. I would however say on part 1- it may have been the case on wikitravel that only Wicked Awesome Tourist Site or Well-Known and Easily Accessible Landmark should be navigated from but now you're on wikimedia there are a lot less limits. Wikimedia's purpose is to "to collect and develop the world's knowledge and to make it available to everyone for free, for any purpose." If sleepy rural village is a potential tourist site even if it's not Wicked Awesome then there are no technical limits to allowing that - it's perhaps a point for wider consideration on what wikivoyage can cover as long as it's covering minor things in a travel-centric voice as opposed to wikipedia's encyclopaedic voice.Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:09, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Yellow, Stuart. Would you please provide a link to the article in question (not just the talk page) so that we can have a look at it? Without having seen it, my reaction would be that a mere list of bus routes would not constitute a Wikivoyage article under Wikivoyage:What is an article?, but it is possible that a particular route or series of routes could be so interesting that an article about them could work as a travel topic or itinerary, as Quintucket suggests: See Travel topics for a list of existing travel topics and some guidelines. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:22, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Ikan, there are 600 (either routes themselves which could do with being condensed to a list or lists themselves) or so contained within Category:bus_routes the problem isn't with a specific one or two of these but the majority that aren't encyclopaedic (as in carefully researched subjects) - many are simple databases containing village or points of interest and the routes that get there. A example currently looking to be deleted (although it's survived twice before) is List_of_bus_routes_in_Central_Suffolk. 13:09, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I have had a quick look at the project and found two lists of lists, one covering England and one covering New York New Youk - I Don't know if I missed others. I have some experience of using buses in England, and looked at a few of the lists, of which this one forKent seemed typical. From a traveller's point of view the list in numeric order of route number is not very useful, but England has an excellent public transport planner, which will give precise directions and times for buses between any two postcodes, complete with directions to the bus stop. However if members of the project can spare some time, there are many destination articles that could usefully have bus details (routes, frequency and prices) added to get in and get around. There are also a few city bus routes which could usefully be written up as an itinerary, describing the sites on the route and giving an alternative to taking a coach tour, e.g. the 24 in Paris. AlasdairW (talk) 23:14, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Inline wikipedia links

Since {{unsigned|Sertmann}} gives this result: - what do we use instead these days?

And also, what is the policy with inline wikipedia article links since the merge? Sertmann (talk) 05:41, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

OK so fund the answer to the first question by going to the actual template, still not sure about the other questionSertmann (talk) 05:43, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

It's the same: Wikivoyage:Links to Wikipedia. I revert their additions with a gentle plea to write about stuff here too ;) --Peter ^Talk 06:29, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The correct template is {{subst:unsigned|username/IP}}. AHeneen (talk) 21:46, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Reviews of establishments

What do people think about the concept of allowing our readers to provide reviews of restaurants and hotels? Started discussion here [8] Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:15, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback tool

Wonder what people think about using the article feedback tool to allow our readers to provide advice on articles? Details here [9]. If we like it it might be possible for use to get it in April of 2013. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:01, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. As I said at the other discussion, a lot of travellers who use our guides will notice out-of-date info and errors while away but not bother to update it when they return. Having a space where they can make a comment is so much simpler for them, and will mean our guides can stay more up-to-date and organised. It is also more inclusive of the community and encourages new editors. No harm in running it for a few weeks as a trial. JamesA ^>talk 15:10, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

English has applied it to 10% of articles as a trial. We could look at doing the same. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:34, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a good compromise. Would we need to wait until April to start that sort of trial? However, we would need to make it very, very clear that users are providing feedback on the article itself, not the destination or listings. I foresee a lot of misinformed responses. JamesA ^>talk 15:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes as that is the earliest the tech side would be able to get it to us. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:24, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The earliest version 5 (the link) could be implemented because that is the latest version currently under development and is scheduled (subject to change) for a full release on March 26.AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I would not like this to be a substitute for people plunging forward and eliminating inaccuracies in articles, and that's what I fear would happen. It's counter-intuitive to quite a few new users that they can edit articles, as shown by the number of complaints I've read on talk pages of problems the complainer is best able to fix, him-/herself. There could be a positive aspect, though: There's a degree of arbitrariness to which restaurants (e.g.) are listed, and perhaps a spate of bad reviews could get a mediocre restaurant like Gandhi on 6th St. de-listed (which I'd love to do but won't take individual responsibility for). Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:14, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

We have the issue of people not plunging forwards on Wikipedia which is why they have started this initiative. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:24, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Can't we get the [add listing] button back? I think that would lower the bar significantly for newcomers to add their favorite listings. Globe-trotter (talk) 20:56, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I would echo G-t's plea for the return of the [add listing] button, but perhaps this time with the filip that the new listing is automatically placed in the correct alphabetical order rather than at the bottom of the listings. -- Alice^✉ 03:18, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

This could be a potentially useful feature, but this may be something worth shelving for a while. We still haven't put together all the documentation for creating books, which should be fixed before moving on to another extension. For article feedback, I think there are a few issues that, while possible to work out, will take time to fix because we will need a customized version.

Current version (v4) of Article Feedback on Wikipedia. I think we'd need to change the metrics & questions...relevant for an encyclopedia, less so for a travel guide.

1. The four metrics—trustworthiness, objectivity, completeness and writing quality—are great for an encyclopedia, but less useful for a travel guide. We need metrics like: completeness, writing quality (easy to understand), quality of listings (number/variety of eat/sleep/buy/etc listings), quality of attractions (see/do), Quality of background information (understand/stay safe/cope), Up to date? (is content up to date), and there are probably some more good ones that I can't think of right this second. Of course, we would not use all of those...only 2-5 (reasonable?)...but the list is to give an idea of the direction we should be heading in when it comes to metrics for our travel guides. Also, would we need...or rather, would we want...to have separate metrics or questions (more on that below) for travel topics, phrasebooks, & itineraries than we do for destinations?
2. The questions/statements would need to be changed to reflect our needs...like "How knowledgeable are you about this locations?", "Have you lived in this city/country/region?", "Have you visited this destination? If so, how long have you spent here?", "Do you travel often?", "Do you travel often to destinations such as this one?", "Have you used this Wikivoyage guide while traveling to this destination? If so, did you use any other guides concurrently with the Wikivoyage guide?" and so forth. We should probably have more detailed feedback options for individual sections, like questions for eat/sleep regarding number/quality of listings (quality meaning not closed locations or franchise locations of major hotel chains with just name/address/phone, but price and description...the question would have to include a note that it's not just a rating of hotels themselves, but our content) and whether stay safe is comprehensive/accurate, whether get in/around is comprehensive/accurate, and (once again) there are many more questions that I haven't thought of/included.
3. Another important aspect to look at is the collective data gathered from these ratings! Questions/metrics can be worded/chosen to gather quantitative feedback from editors & readers about the quality of our guides & project. Sure there are some big issues with this, we don't know people's expectations, whether they're telling truth, if people are giving inaccurate feedback (misread something, missed a section or important sentence, etc), but when you take a holistic view, soliciting user feedback can be immensely useful for improving our site. We can learn where our sites weaknesses are (even analyze data per country/region) and use this feedback to track progress/improvement to the quality of our site over time (compare user confidence in quality of listings over 2 years' time). See Article feedback/Data and metrics on Meta to get an idea of how focused use of questions is used to gather data that is interpreted in many ways to—ultimately—encourage users to contribute & improve the site and its pages.

Having said all that, adding article feedback will be a BIG project for our site and sorting out the above issues (because, above all, we will need a customized version) will take a lot of discussion and also a lot of work on the software/development side. Given all the work needed in the past week surrounding the launch, working with/guiding new contributors, and fixing unresolved issues (as mentioned...working to improve create documentation for the Book extension should be a high priority before moving on to a project like this) this is something that should be set aside to work out later (6 months? A year?). (Note:I wrote the OP of "Peer Review" at the same time as this...just splitting one long remark in two to keep relevant replies in order.) AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

You'll probably need a way to hide feedback that isn't useful or that needs to be removed. For example, someone writing "pen1s" or something inappropriate, etc. --Rschen7754 07:43, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

You are looking at the old version (version 4) please look at version 5. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:39, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Version 5 is what is used on enwp. Perhaps I should clarify that I mean a policy on removing feedback. --Rschen7754 20:57, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I find this system ridiculous. Everyone can tick the box "I am highly knowledgeable", and we have absolutely no way to check this. In my opinion, the present feedback style is highly offensive to editors, because unknown people put some grades based on unknown criteria. Moreover, they do this strange stuff instead of editing and improving the article, which is contrary to the main idea of a wiki. I would like to have the feedback feature, but it should be unobtrusive: no grades, no alleged "experts"... just comments. --Alexander (talk) 20:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, how is decided which articles get the tool? Or is it a random 10% test now? For Wikivoyage, it would be most useful for guide articles, in order to identify what's missing and get an idea of how readers react to articles we think are pretty good. For the enormous number of outlines and usable articles however, I imagine it would create a huge database of information we already have. We know those are incomplete, need more listings, are sometimes poorly written. We also know that some parts of the world are substantially underrepresented in terms of information available. Analyzing thát feedback information will cost energy I would say is better spent on improving those articles. In short: if we test it, I would say let's start with our more or less complete articles. And then, sure, let's talk about the exact how, and wordings. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:32, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

We are completely free to ignore the self-proclaimed expert status. However, a tick-box like "I have visited this destination recently", may offer some insight useful when applying corrections. But I agree that comments are the most useful. --Inas (talk) 21:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I mostly agree with Inas' ideas. The tick-box should be about visiting the destination, and the Feedback tool should be the comments version, so that viewers can comment on things they find to be incorrect or outdated. Maybe ratings are useful on star-rating guides that we think are worthy of assessment, not improvement. Is there a way only star guides can get the rating version? JamesA ^>talk 06:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes so both version 4 and 5 are used on EN wp. Version 4 has the rating scale while version 5 have written comments. I much prefer the written comments but one could potentially use a combination of the two I suppose. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be good to test the feedback tool on some of our guide-status articles. It would be better if readers jumped in and edited the pages directly, but that isn't always the case so if this helps provide more feedback that's cool. I assume if it goes ahead, we'd use version 5 over version 4? (since comments can provide specific points on how to improve the guide) -Shaundd (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes version 5. Should we have a RfC here to determine if there is sufficient support for me to put in a request for this being added in April / May so that we can trial it.Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:44, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

• The feedback gadget is potentially useful, but only if the users know what kind of feedback will be useful to us. How will they know this?
• Feedback that is not read is a waste of effort for the provider. I recommend that we only deploy the gadget on articles where someone is willing to read the input and do something with it. That said, as long as there is at least one editor who wants feedback for an article, it should be switched on. The person who activates the gadget should automatically get notification of new feedback, and other editors should only get it if they opt in, otherwise if one gets it for every article on one's watchlist we will be inundated with it, and it will mostly be useless. If my experience on WP is anything to go by, less than 10% will be useful, and the amount of extra reading to sift the wheat from the chaff will soon be overwhelming. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:07, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• Another feature that might be useful: If the display for the feedback states who requests the feedback (the person who activates the gadget for the page, it will give the reader the assurance that a specific person will be checking their comments. This may result in better quality feedback.
• A major downside is that there is unlikely to be any dialogue between the editors and the feedback providers. It is not easy to go back to them and ask what they meant, as IP editors are unlikely to look at their talk pages. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• That's always going to be a problem; we are building in a reply feature, however. Having it in an opt-in form is perfectly fine from our end. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd say we should implement this as a trial from the planned date of deployment. If we find after a month that it just isn't working, then we can scrap it (but I do think it will be very useful!). As research has shown, it only increases editing, so even if it is implemented and barely used, there is no real damage done. Is there anyone who would oppose a trial of the new, comment-only version? JamesA ^>talk 11:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Peer review

On a related note, we could relatively easily add a Peer Review feature (a modified version of Wikipedia:Peer review). While this could be handled by just adding a new section to a talk page, we could have a procedure for feedback on articles where editors can visit a page and write a paragraph or two about ways to improve a page. This would be a way of drawing attention to articles where a user wants to solicit feedback. Like WP, this would involve a template added to a page which maintains an automated list of requests. It would also only be used for pages with a good level of content (star, guide, & maybe some usable pages, as suggestions for improvement would be quite long/unnecessary for outline pages). There could also be a checklist when doing a review (not intended for every one to be answered, but to give the reviewer an idea of what to look for). AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Version 5 of the feedback tool dose this but without people needing to figure out how to use templates or learn media wiki markup. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:42, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

WMF comment

Hey all; thanks for your comments here (and sorry for my failure to respond so far - I only became aware of this thread last night). Obviously we're really happy to see talk of deploying/considering deploying AFT5, since we've put a lot of effort into it: I'm just making myself known so you can ask any questions you may have :).

A couple of points that have been brought up so far involve the old version, AFT4. For reference: we totally agree that meaningless star-ratings is not the way to go (readers think our page is only 60 percent readable? That's great, but how do we up that percentage? It doesn't say): for that reason we're no longer deploying AFT4 anywhere - it's simply not a useful way to spend time. Any deployment would have to be of version 5, with the comments field. I note one concern from Ikan Kekek that it might 'cannibalise' users; people who would otherwise edit instead go through and leave feedback. This worried us too, so we did some research on enwiki when we first deployed; not only did cannibalisation not happen, edits do the articles went up, because as soon as someone has left feedback they are prompted to edit.

Other than that: if you guys have any other questions, I am available to answer them whenever. Just drop a note here or on my talkpage :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment! One question from my side: where can I see an example of AFT5 deployed on a real wiki-page? --Alexander (talk) 15:12, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

At the moment you can see a (slightly outdated) version on enwiki. We are preparing our latest release, however, which while buggy is a better representation of what would be deployed here. That can be viewed [10] here, and if you create an account this page has the feedback evaluation/monitoring page (you need some permissions to use most of the functions, but if you let me know your account name I am happy to give you the relevant userrights). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

No, thank you. I think that this page at wmflabs, together with the very good Wikipedia manual, address all my questions. The feedback tool looks really good! I look forward to having it here at Wikivoyage. I wonder how much extra janitorial work it will require, but we should try and see. --Alexander (talk) 16:36, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we could try a test deployment? Put it on N number of pages, or N percent of pages, and see what happens? If people are interested I'd love to see a formal vote open on a test or on a full deployment: we try to make sure projects want software before deploying it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

My 2009 European Travelogue

I wasn't sure if I should share this here, but what the heck!

I usually take a major trip every 2 years. I tweeted my my trip in 2011 and in 2009 I took my notes and created a book. called Stacey's 2009 European Takeover Tour it includes pictures and links to what I saw and did.

Written to be fun with good information, I knew couldn't include it in Wikivoyage articles.

[Stacey's 2009 European Takeover Tour] (PDF 1.6 mb)

Have a look and Let me know what you think.

Thanks for indulging me -- S.Bryan  00:00, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I've just glanced at it. Good stuff. Parts of it could be useful here. Not the whole thing, beyond a link on your user page, but various bits could be used in articles and many of the photos might go on Commons. Pashley (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Putting a Wikitravel: namespace in the search box actually takes you to WT

I don´t know if this has already been addressed somewhere, but.. I accidentally typed "Wikitravel:Plunge forward" instead of "Wikivoyage:Plunge forward", and to my surprise, it actually took me to the page on Wikitravel. Then I discovered that not only does it work for other WT namespace article, but if you preface anything with "Wikitravel:", it takes you to the page on WT. (Try searching "Wikitravel:France" for example) What gives? Surely this is not the way it's supposed to be. I don´t want to search for policy pages and accidentally end up over there due to overly active muscle memory...Texugo (talk) 15:13, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, it appears to be global too. It does the same on pt: Texugo (talk) 15:14, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

In fact, it does that even from Wikipedia.Texugo (talk) 15:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Er, yes, that's because it's an interwiki prefix. It was quite valuable to us when we were there. See m:Talk:Interwiki map#Wikitravel. LtPowers (talk) 15:19, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Some of us are trying to get this fixed, but to do so requires being able to claim that the wikitravel: prefix is not in active use on other Wikimedia projects. On en.WP any WT-related templates have been voted for deletion and replaced by 'bots in late 2012, the templates are also gone from fr: nl: and simple:, but there are many smaller-language Wikipedias (places like Finland or Indonesia come to mind) where the WT links still need to be removed before a new request can be made on m:talk:interwiki map to get rid of the prefix. This is an important step as MediaWiki handles interwiki links differently from true external links, allowing their use to be a means to circumvent a rel="nofollow" tag that normally tells search engines to ignore (potentially spam) external links on Wikipedia articles. See #Links from Wikipedia in other languages. I realise other tasks (such as missing images on pages, bug reporting and special:newpages patrol) were being given priority but we do need editors to take a look at all those Wikipedia languages, create the wikivoyage templates if they're missing and replace WT templates or links with WV templates. Only once that is done can the request to remove the wikitravel: prefix (which now is spam, as it points to an abandoned fork of this project with multiple ads on every page). K7L (talk) 20:01, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I was going to work on this and got sidetracked. Could we set up the list in a sandbox so that it's easier to edit? --Rschen7754 20:28, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

(undent) Per the interwiki link list for w:fi:Template:Wikitravel, the following languages still have it: af, bg, ca, ceb, ka, ko, hr, ml, pl, pt, ro, sv, ur, zh. (And fi, but I've gotten the ball rolling on nuking it.) Jpatokal (talk) 01:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there are more - id: and fa: are among those which need the template replaced on every page. K7L (talk) 18:31, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I've set up a page at User:Rschen7754/wikitravel as a checklist. --Rschen7754 06:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The wikitravel: interwiki is now red... such a pretty colo(u)r. There's still plenty of WT spam to clean up on foreign Wikipedia languages, though. K7L (talk) 01:10, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki messages

Could an admin please change MediaWiki:Talkpagelinktext from "Talk" to "talk" to match "contribs"? Also, could MediaWiki:Histlast and MediaWiki:Histfirst be changed to lowercase as well? All the other links on the history page are lowercase. Thanks, David1217 (talk) 03:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Done. We use "latest" and "earliest", Wikipedia uses "newest" and "oldest". Maybe that could be changed as well? Globe-trotter (talk) 12:06, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Ghost Languages

Will language versions that were previously offered be offered here soon? (Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) They all show up on the sidebar for destinations that had articles in those languages but if you click them now, they take you nowhere. Also, articles like Osaka have the "Better in Japanese, please translate" tag. If the languages are expected to be added soon, I won't delete it, but if not, these should probably be dealt away with. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian and Chinese will be added, the others will be placed in the Incubator. Globe-trotter (talk) 18:40, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed that many WP.ja user pages [11] have links to WT user pages and that wiki did appear viable; no idea why this wasn't moved initially. There were a few language projects which appeared to be inactive, dead or mostly empty but it looks like viable languages (es and pt being the most recently created) are being imported piecemeal right now. K7L (talk) 19:07, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed links to some languages that are still in the Incubator being added. I think one was Latin ("la") and when clicked led to the page on the WM Incubator. AHeneen (talk) 22:40, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

The Japanese Wikitravel was highly developed with an active community. I supported its migration at the time, but am unsure why it wasn't moved. I do remember that some of the notable members of the Japanese community such as Shoestring were not interested in moving and liked things just the way they were. JamesA ^>talk 05:16, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

That's a shame. To me, Shoestring was the pillar of the Japanese version (I mean that as a compliment to him, no disrespect to the other contributors), but the other language versions and their members seemed less affected and certainly less active in the discussions about the rift, so I'm not surprised. Good to know more languages are on the way. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:00, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

In any event, if things at the old site under IB continue as they are, eventually the hands of the Japanese community will be forced. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:43, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Current status according to m:Requests for new languages#Wikivoyage: Spanish, Portuguese were created; Romanian and Polish are awaiting creation (per bugzilla); there has been some discussion of Finnish and Chinese (mostly around how to translate the name/logo). WMF is willing to create Hungarian and Japanese but so far no one has opened discussion for either language.

There are many Japanese user pages (not WP articles, just WP userpages) which mention WT; hopefully this doesn't become an obstacle to getting the WT interwiki prefix removed from the table. In any case, it would be best if they were to move sooner rather than later as IB will try to break functionality (such as api.php) used to export any new edits to the old wiki. If there are no new edits on WT, there's nothing left for them to break. K7L (talk) 17:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Can't the user pages just be changed to real links instead of interwiki links, if you're trying to orphan the interwiki prefix? I don't think that you can change links on user pages in any other way.

As far as I can tell, the functionality for importing old edits is already broken. Those who backed up Wikitravel had to stop doing this back in August last year because api.php and Special:Export were disabled. Thus, any edits made to Wikitravel since August can be considered as lost. It's probably possible to get a backup by screenscraping, but that's going to take an awful lot of time to get all revisions of all pages, and it would take considerable time to write a script which would download everything. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Latin

Why in the world would we be interested in creating up-to-date printable travel guides in Latin?? Texugo (talk) 13:12, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

We cannot exclude the avid travellers of the Latin-speaking Vatican City now, can we? </joke> JamesA ^>talk 13:26, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

==See== will be replaced with ==Veni==, ==Vedi==, ==Vici== K7L (talk) 16:36, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

It may be the polyglot in me talking, but I was excited when I read on this page that there would be a Latin version. I'm actually looking forward to its launch. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:14, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:FactCheck

I just introduced Template:FactCheck and used it in Ekerö. Comments are welcome. /Yvwv (talk) 20:26, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, too bad. Has the time of sticking templates instead of fixing problems begun at last? If we are to develop such templates, which in my opinion are severely over-used on en-wp, we should try to come up with some kind of policy on how and when to add. You seem to know something about this Birka place, and it's just a couple of lines of text. The layout of the template is fine, in principle. But is there any way we can convince you to fix the problem instead of sticking that template on it? :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with JuliasTravels. Oftentimes, adding a template can serve as an "easy out" in favor of making the required changes oneself. That may fly at a place like Wikipedia, which has a much larger population of committed editors, and where it can therefore be assumed that someone else will come along quickly and make the changes rather than the template staying on the page indefinitely. But for all our recent growth, Wikivoyage is still a small fry compared to Wikipedia. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:59, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Julias and Andre. I think such a banner may itself be cruft. Simply deleting whatever specific details of an entry one finds to be out of date, assuming one finds it impractical to update them, may be better. If one lacks the info or confidence to do that, leaving a note about the matter here in the Pub may be more helpful than a banner template. Thank you Yvwv for bringing this up here. :-) Rogerhc (talk) 23:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I see a huge box on the page but am still uncertain as to what of the info is presumably outdated or what the original poster wanted done to fix this. Perhaps something small and less obtrusive like ^{(dated info)} or ^(disputed) or ^{(see talk)} should link to a section of the article's talk page, where something more descriptive than "fix this" could be provided without displaying as part of the article. And no, ^{(citation needed)} shouldn't be one of these unless we ever start using Wikipedia-style cited secondary sources for info. K7L (talk) 01:05, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree with K7L. Big boxes claiming generic problems are not very helpful. They are a cmplete pain on WP, as they often leave you in nearly complete ignorance of what to do about the problem. I accept that it is not always possible to fix the information oneself, but the inline markers are far more useful as they more accurately identify the problem text. Such notices should always be dated. On WP that is usually done by a bot. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:03, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest that the problem text should be exactly identified, possibly by highlighting the text in some way, so it is clear where it starts and where it stops. Maybe underlining?

Suggestions for policy for inline templates. (formalising K7L suggestions)

• If information is wrong, correct it if you can, delete it if you can't correct it
• If information is contentious, tag as (disputed|date)
• If information is out of date tag as (dated|date)
• If there is another problem tag as (see talk page|date) and discuss on talk page. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:20, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

A much better solution indeed! I would say such inline remarks, exactly identified, have all the advantages (making people aware that the information is flawed and can't be relied on blindly) without the dreaded boxes. It's probably the next best thing to fixing. Is there a way to list those inline-tags on a separate page, somewhere? I wouldn't mind digging into information, when it is available on other sites, to update a spotted problem now and then. On other wiki's there are always people who prefer fixing small problems over writing content. It might help to keep the number of such tags somewhat in check? JuliasTravels (talk) 09:30, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree most templates on EN wiki are silly and should be deleted. I deleted certain types (like the expert needed one) on sight. The last thing we want to promote is a mentally of people tagging rather than fixing. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know a template can add a category to a page which will allow all pages with that template to be listed as a category. The category can be hidden if you don't want it to show on the page. Removing the template after the problem has been fixed should automatically remove the category.

I agree with Doc James that we only want a small number of useful templates. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

How to not display the page title at the top

Hi guys. I'm trying to get a quick answer to this: On the Main Page, it doesn't automatically display the page title ("Main Page") at the top like it does for all other pages. How was this accomplished? I'd like to get rid of that page title on our pt: main page too. Thanks in advance. Texugo (talk) 18:49, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

It appears to have been done with CSS. See [12], although on Wikivoyage it looks like MediaWiki:Vector.css was modified instead of MediaWiki:Common.css:

   /* Hide title on the main page */
   .page-Main_Page .firstHeading, .page-Main_Page #contentSub {
     display: none;
   }

-- Ryan • (talk) • 19:26, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Ryan, but MediaWiki>Vector.css on pt: is identical to the one here. What could be the problem? Texugo (talk) 19:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Never mind. I did get it to work using the other method from the FAQ. Don't know why the CSS didn't work though... Thanks a lot! Texugo (talk) 19:54, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it wants .page-Paginà_principal or something similar em portugês? K7L (talk) 19:58, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

What K7L said. The class on the body tag is apparently "page-" + name of page, so for pt:Página principal it would be "page-Página_principal" instead of "page-Main_Page". -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:02, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Retry, wait or forget it?

I've encountered a weird problem in a Wikivoyage edit I've never experienced in all the edits I've made in Wikipedia. (This may be more appropriate for Bugzilla, but I don't have a Bugzilla account and fortunately the help area says if you're not sure where the problem belongs, post it here first.)

Yesterday morning I booted up my laptop, launched Opera and went into the Wikivoyage entry on West Jefferson (North Carolina) to list the places to stay there under "Sleep." One thing led to another, and it was late afternoon before I signed out of Wikivoyage, but at least I had the satisfaction of knowing it had been a Saturday well spent. That is, until about an hour later when I launched Safari on the iPad to review my work.

When I went to the West Jefferson Wikivoyage page in Safari, none of the three entries I'd made in the "Sleep" section showed up. According to "View History," I hadn't made any edits in that entry for over a week. Luckily, all the other work I did yesterday showed up in Safari - the new entry on Mountain City (Tennessee), information in an almost blank existing entry on Damascus (Virginia), adding a restaurant and the Best Western to Jefferson (North Carolina), adding the two hotels I stay at in Boone and some restaurant information.

I know Wikimedia is migrating from servers in Tampa to a server farm outside Washington, so I thought it might be a replication problem. Perhaps the server I used to do the edits on the West Jefferson page hadn't yet replicated the new data to other Wiki servers. Yet, since all the other edits I made yesterday were showing up in Safari, I feared it was more likely a mysterious glitch and I'd need to retrace my steps to find the phone numbers, addresses, etc., for the three lodging establishments in West Jefferson.

Late last night I launched IE 10 on the laptop to listen to ZRadio, and when I checked Wikivoyage in Internet Explorer it was the same experience as Safari - nothing under "Sleep" on the WJ page, but all my other edits showed up.

Today I opened Opera, went back to the West Jefferson page in Wikivoyage, and the info I added under "Sleep" showed up. I hurriedly copied and saved it to WordPad so I wouldn't have to recompose the text if it should be necessary. I refreshed the page in Opera to make sure it wasn't pulling from the cache, and the updated "Sleep" section was still there. Then I launched Safari on the iPad, and ... no entries under "Sleep" on the West Jefferson page.

So I don't know whether the lodging entries I made are in Wikivoyage or aren't in Wikivoyage. Should I use the "old version" of the page in Internet Explorer to re-add the info I entered yesterday? Or would that cause a bigger problem if the edited version is floating around the Wiki servers? Dlewis77 (talk) 20:43, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm seeing Hampton Inn, Nations Inn, and Buffalo Tavern B&B under "Sleep". For the record, I've never accessed the West Jefferson, NC article before in my life, so it's not an issue with my file cache.

I experienced the same problem from time to time when we were migrating content onto the WMF servers for the first time. In my decidedly non-expert opinion, I'd say there's a good chance it has to do with the server migration from Tampa to Washington.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:41, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I have the same issues on Wikimedia Commons. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the migration. Globe-trotter (talk) 01:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Like everyone suggests, it probably has something to do with the migration. A couple days ago, I added a couple "Other destinations" to the Sudan page and uploaded a new version of the Sudan map to Commons. Even when I refreshed the page in my browser, the "Other destinations" page remained blank and the old version of the map was displayed. However, when I clicked edit, the ODs were displayed in the edit box. AHeneen (talk) 02:47, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

We had (have?) problems with purging image caches after the data center migration. This is currently being handled in bugzilla:41130; bugzilla:44391 might be related and got fixed a few hours ago after the operations team spent the weekend investigating the (very low-level) server problem. I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused by this. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Mixed HTTP and HTTPS content on Wikivoyage

Every time I go to the pub, I get a security warning telling that the page contains both HTTP and HTTPS content (meaning that the page is insecure). Looking at page information, I see that the page loads images like http://b.www.toolserver.org/tiles/osm/12/1169/1566.png which are downloaded through an insecure connection, and this seems to be the source of the error message. Would it be possible to do something about this? --Stefan2 (talk) 20:56, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

This isn't really an error. If you access WV via https, then if anybody incorporates an image from an insecure source, it is going to produce this error. When the relevant discussion is archived the error will go away, only to reappear if someone incorporates another image from an insecure source in a future discussion. --Inas (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Improving our Template:Regionlist

This is long overdue from six years ago when Ryan perspicaciously said at Template talk:Regionlist:

The current map placement, which puts the map after the table of regions, is obviously not ideal. However, trying to modify the template so that the map appears next to the region key causes clashes with quickbars, the TOC, and other page elements. If anyone out there has the time and ability to re-work this template to use divs instead of a table it might go a long way towards improving the usability and look of the template... -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:54, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

Now the map is alongside the table of regions and often (especially with the small screen widths that are found on laptops and smart phones) the list is squeezed into a worm or under-runs the map. -- Alice^✉ 23:21, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

How to see editors ranked by number of edits?

I know I can see the number of edits of individual editors in the last 30 days at a special page eg: here, but is there any page or tool I can view that ranks WV editors by decreasing number of edits, please? -- Alice^✉ 00:46, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I am not aware of any local list that does what you want. On Wikipedia, developers make pages off-site where you can analyse edit counts. Also, let's remember that the number of edits someone has doesn't mean they are a better contributor than anyone else. Some people only edit every now and again but make huge content additions. JamesA ^>talk 01:04, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick (if somewhat disappointing) answer, James.

Your subsidiary point is so true (and I would also add that some editors — I'm a prime example of this — have to make sequential edits correcting their own spelling and syntax, etc rather than getting things spot on with their first edit, and this also boosts their count). -- Alice^✉ 01:25, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

You're also completely right. We need a mix of all editors. Those who make many small, quick edits that revert vandalism or correct spelling/phrasing mistakes, and those who make large edits. So good on ya for all your help! :) By the way, if you really wanted to find such a list, try looking at w:Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters. One of those external tools might have been modified to also work with Wikivoyage. JamesA ^>talk 01:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I remember that ClausHansen did on WT a quarterly statistic on how may edits user patrolled. I was quite good as it moved quite strong from quarter to quarter. The main target is different today but i guess that the statistic fun can be done. Currently it will be senseless as several bots and human are on the run and do major changes. It's the long run that count. jan (talk) 13:19, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Upload

It is confusing to have the sidebar linking to a page called "Non-free files". I strongly suggest that MediaWiki:Upload be changed back to "Upload file", since we have to assume users will (a) not know to go to Commons in order to upload free files, and (b) not recognise the term "non-free". There is a link on Special:Upload to Commons' upload wizard, and a notice warning users about what to upload here. This, that and the other (talk) 06:37, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

→ #Upload file --Peter ^Talk 08:18, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Auto welcoming

Hello, I am one of the bot operators on this wiki and while always thinking of a way to help through bot work, I noticed that a lot of experienced users are welcoming new users. While this is great, it is also time consuming. What do you guys think about a bot that welcomes any user who has made 1 edit (can be anywhere from 0-50 edits). What do you guys think? -- Cheers, Riley 08:12, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage culture has frowned on auto-welcoming. Mostly because an at least slightly personalized note shows that a real human is out there, caring about your work and involvement in the project. But in part also because a blue talk link is pretty informative—it let's you know that any given user has had interactions with other contributors. --Peter ^Talk 08:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

While I don't really agree with your first note about personalization (mainly because it makes me wonder if a bot welcoming is an different that how users are being welcomed right now; semi-automatically), you are right that it is informational. I don't know how users are currently welcomed (well I do but I don't know if users are checking contributions), users manually welcoming allows new user contributions to be checked. :) -- Cheers, Riley 08:55, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

As a manual operator of a few welcomes in the last week or so, and patrolling recent changes, I agree with Peter that the human touch exists with the adding the welcome manually, and also the capacity on recent changes to see what other behaviour is occurring is useful. The prospect of a bot generated welcome has some merits, but I am very curious why I havent seen such an item at wp en or commons...

As for methods - I am aware of a large number of wp en users are responding to the banner that was up for a while - and they are having difficulty appreciating the differences between wp en and wikivoyage - so I have been welcoming totally red ie edit free new registrations, as well as user who have started editing... on the basis that better a welcome than a new editor not having had the opportunity to be forewarned... sats (talk) 09:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

When I notice a new user in the Recent Changes, I will usually let them edit an article a few times then welcome them, specifically thanking them for their edits to that article. I don't usually use the template either. JamesA ^>talk 11:59, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Neither do I. All things being equal, I like to direct them to mos and the links on it, as a good way to start, and of course to the pub. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:10, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Well from a sample of three we have different ways of approaching new users - I think it would be good to see the opinions of others - as so many other policies and practices are being worked out at the moment - it would be good to see whether there is a particular trend that is seen as better for wikivoyage in the long run - or not... Having been offered a bot welcome, we have not using the template editors offering comment. Having used the template I am interested to see if others have ideas on this. cheers sats (talk) 12:41, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I sort of like welcomes. One has no idea how things work when they first arrive and a bit of advice is nice. Especially since we can provide a link in the welcome to how WV is different from WP. Yes yes I know some people will say that not having this template welcome messages is one of the way WV is different but... Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:13, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to automate this. Sometimes a new user will be on the right track from the very first edit. Sometimes a user will attempt to use encyclopaedia style (categories, secondary sources, footnotes, enough info about the history of one landmark to fill a page) in good faith, only to be told that duplicating Wikipedia here isn't what we need. Sometimes the first edits will be self-serving or promotional or be full of fluff about the "perfect family getaway" with "relaxing, beautiful sunsets" and "cool, refreshing breezes" that could be blindly applied by marketers to every destination on the globe. Sometimes an edit will be botspam or vandalism. Each needs a different response. Welcoming users manually is an opportunity to point out mistakes made in good faith by new users who might be familiar with Wikipedia but have no experience with Wikivoyage. K7L (talk) 16:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I always write personal welcomes to people who edit articles on my watchlist (who haven't been welcomed). I know that some just subst welcome across multiple users, and that's okay too. I'd be in favour of a bot that picked up the pieces, i.e. if you haven't been welcomed personally within 7 days of editing your first article? --Inas (talk) 00:12, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Great idea, Inas! If their talk page link is still red after 10 days, then even a robotic welcome with helpful links is probably better than no welcome at all. -- Alice^✉ 01:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

'Contact' section

I propose that we rename the destination "Contact" sections as "Stay connected". The purpose of this section is frequently misunderstood by new users, who drop the address of the local CVB here instead of handy information on post offices, carrier pigeons, copy/fax centres, Internet cafés, wi-fi hotspots or other means of staying in contact while on the road. The corresponding header already exists in fr: as "rester en contact". K7L (talk) 16:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, or they post some promotional info to contact them or a hotel or something. I support your idea. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:40, 28 January 2013 (UTC

I like the proposed new heading name, but it's always seemed odd to me that we have a separate section in city articles that is basically just for listing internet cafes, particularly as internet access becomes so common in hotels, coffee shops, and public areas around the world. If we're proposing changing the heading on all city articles it might be worth discussing whether it's worthwhile to combine "Contact" into "Cope" and update the templates. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:00, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I find that "Contact" is a good place to list post offices, as well. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Clarification: I support renaming "Contact", oppose conflating it with "Cope". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:08, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support - very good idea. --SU FC 19:40, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I agree that Stay connected seems to match our style, and is better in meaning. The section includes Internet (not only WiFi but rules on getting a local SIM for your phone), Telephony, Postal systems, etc. I don't support merging Cope, but agree that we need more discussion on that section. Can we keep that separate? --Inas (talk) 23:16, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - good idea. I think combining it with Cope would tend to get messy though, so I also support keeping them separate. Texugo (talk) 23:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support the name change from "Contact" to "Stay connected" if this section is not subsumed into "Cope" -- Alice^✉ 23:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose; this seems like change for change's sake, and it makes the section heading too long. "Connect" might be acceptable if "Contact" is really thought to be too ambiguous, but I don't think it is. "Stay connected" is just 'blah' and doesn't fit our style at all (Stay safe and Stay healthy notwithstanding). LtPowers (talk) 02:42, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Really? I've lost count of how many Contact sections I've edited over the years to remove tourist info, and numerous other details. Object for stylistic reasons, by all means, but this section heading is confusing thousands of our editors. --Inas (talk) 05:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree strongly with Inas. My experience is that this section is generally used by new editors for listing the CVB, tourist offices, random extlinks, and other ways to "contact" the destination for more information. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever seen that happen. But I'll take your word for it that it's not uncommon. I suspect the truth is somewhere between "it happens constantly" and "it never happens". LtPowers (talk) 19:04, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, so you can see it just once, this is today's [13] :-) --Inas (talk) 00:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

And this is today's [[14]] --Inas (talk) 22:04, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

And today's [[15]] --Inas (talk) 23:30, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Support getting rid of contact, but not combining it with cope. Also, I do not think "stay connected" is a good choice.

How about making it "Communicate"? Pashley (talk) 07:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

• Neutral - I've never seen an issue with a Contact section, but can certainly see how users could get confused. Stay connected just doesn't sound right. It sounds like something you'd hear in a telco commercial advertising their newest mobile plan. Then again, I may be biased considering there's a telco in Australia with a very similar name. Communicate could be confused with Talk. Like LtPowers said, just Connect could be a better solution, though that too isn't perfect. I also oppose merging with Cope. JamesA ^>talk 13:25, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support renaming "Contact" to "Stay connected". I do not support combining Contact & Cope nor calling the section "Communicate". AHeneen (talk) 20:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Would you support Connect? --Inas (talk) 22:03, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Renaming this to connect (snappy) or communicate makes all sorts of sense. Stay connected is unnecessarily clunky (why not just connect?). It's also my experience that editors routinely and understandably mistake "contact" as a place to put "contact details" for the destination.

And what's with all the support oppose stuff lately? --Peter ^Talk 00:33, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know; I thought maybe it was just me noticing it. LtPowers (talk) 15:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it's all the new users coming from Wikipedia where that kind of thing happens a lot more often; maybe it's me, who has caught myself doing it even before the launch. At any rate, I support ;) continuing with it. It's an easy way to get the gist of the subsequent comment, and to tally consensus quickly without wading through a lot of text. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The issue with supporting/opposing is that new ideas may emerge later in the discussion, and it just gets messy tracking what editors are actually supporting and opposing in the end. Like in this discussion, the first half-dozen votes didn't even consider Connect although that may be the most accepted option. If it was a discussion over alternatives and necessity, rather than a straw poll, things could've run a little more smoothly. I support supporting/opposing once all ideas have been exhausted. JamesA ^>talk 01:10, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Connect I can live with, communicate is likely to be mistaken for "talk" (which already exists), "contact" doesn't make clear that this is not somewhere for vendors to solicit sales enquiries so is problematic. K7L (talk) 15:38, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Connect or stay connected is both okay for me, not included in Cope but for all internet, postal and telephone stuff. JuliasTravels (talk) 20:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point regarding communicate—it's too ambiguous. I think there is a lot of support for a change, with "Connect" being the most-liked (stay connected is also popular, but just a little less so because it's longer and less "snappy). Does that sound right? --Peter ^Talk 01:20, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I still think "stay connected" sounds better, but I'd be fine with "connect." Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:15, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

If others are concerned about confusion, I'm willing to accept a change to Connect. But "Stay connected" sounds too much like marketing speak. LtPowers (talk) 02:34, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Rename Contact to Connect?

• Support. We really don't need the contact info of the local CVB in these sections. K7L (talk) 17:51, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Per my and other statements above. JamesA ^>talk 01:35, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support. A change in the name is needed, and "connect" is fine. People will associate that with being online and other forms of communication and be less confused about what it means. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:38, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support -Shaundd (talk) 04:51, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support -- Pashley (talk) 11:37, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I read a pretty clear consensus for a change, and that connect is the favorite option. Does anyone disagree (i.e., want to derail this ;) )? --Peter ^Talk 06:32, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Let's proceed. LtPowers is our nominated section renamer? --Inas (talk) 22:28, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Who me? I'm afraid that won't be possible. Primarily, we don't have the Text Replace extension here, which is what I used to replace Get Out with Go Next. We'll need a bot. LtPowers (talk) 00:20, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

We've moved so many times, I lose track of which servers I'm on :-) --Inas (talk) 05:55, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

'Cope' section

I see one problem with moving "stay safe", "stay healthy", "stay connected" or anything else to be subsections of "Cope"... the only one of the blank outline templates to include "Cope" is {{bigcity}}. It simply doesn't exist in the blank {{country}}, {{region}}, {{smallcity}}, {{hugecity}} or {{district}} outlines. (I haven't checked to see whether this matches the documentation for each of these page types). K7L (talk) 23:46, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Cope is sometimes where religious services are listed, such as in places where there are not many members of a religion or denomination. We can discuss whether such listings are very helpful to travelers or not (I think they can be), but they certainly wouldn't fit in any of the other sections you mention. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:50, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Cope doesn't work so well in big cities with well developed tourist facilities, where all of the things you'd expect to see there exist multiple times over and are relatively easy to find. And we're not really a directory service. --Inas (talk) 00:10, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Huge city article template indicates "Cope" is a valid section, even though it is missing from {{hugecity}}. It's useful for lists of consulates, high commissions and other embassy-like entities (such as Taiwan Economic & Cultural Offices). K7L (talk) 00:43, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose the deprecation of "Cope". I'm in the process of districting Buffalo, and as can be seen from the two district articles I've completed so far (#1 and #2), both of them make heavy use of the "Cope" section for information on hospitals, places of worship, district-specific print media, and other necessities. If this section were eliminated, I would, frankly, be hard-pressed either to find another appropriate section for most of this information or to justify omitting it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:23, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Any reason for pushing consulates into district articles? They usually serve the whole city or region, not just the one district in which they are located. Also, Buffalo aren't 'districted' they're 'herded'. :) K7L (talk) 18:12, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

At the moment the small city article template is our most heavily used template and it includes a "Contact" section, which is supposed to contain listings for staying in touch (phone, internet, postal). "Cope" is supposed to be the dumping ground for travel-relevant listings that don't fit into other headings, and tends to be where everything from embassies to laundromats to religious services end up; adding internet cafes and post offices to that section wouldn't be much of a stretch. It has always struck me as odd that "Contact" became a separate, and standard, heading when we live in a world where phone and internet services are fairly common in all but the most remote villages.

In the cases where a town is small enough to warrant having individual listings in a "Contact" section then it would probably also warrant a "Cope" section. IMHO, combining the two in such a case helps keep the article more focused while still presenting a traveler with needed information. To the argument that this section could become a yellow pages listing, if we apply a similar rule to this section as we do with car rental agencies (if a business type is common, don't add individual listings) it would help keep this manageable.

To be clear, I'm not strongly married to the idea of having one combined section, but I think it would be a good way to capture information that is sometimes under-represented ("Cope") while de-emphasizing a section that isn't as important as it was back in 2007 ("Contact"). -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Spot on! -- Alice^✉ 05:12, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

The reason "Cope" is underrepresented is because it's unimportant information. It's basically a category to stack a lot of unrelated things, like laundromats, religious services and local newspapers. I don't think it needs to be emphasized. Globe-trotter (talk) 18:10, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Just because "Cope" is something of a catch-all category does not mean that the information is unimportant. Travelers who are religious, and there are a lot of them, will obviously want to know where they can find a religious service of their denomination. Travelers who want to avail themselves of local news or event listings, and there are a lot of them, will obviously want to know the name of the local paper and the URL of their website. Travelers who prefer clean clothes to dirty clothes, and that covers virtually everyone, will obviously want to know where they can do their laundry. If the result is that the "Cope" section ends up looking like a directory, so be it. I don't see the harm in that; the paramount question ought to be whether the information is useful to the traveler, and I think it's safe to say that it is.

When in doubt, I think it would behoove Wikivoyage editors to err in favor of including information, rather than withholding it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:29, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Well said! (Especially now that the "Book Creator" option in the left hand panel offers the ability to select or de-select individual sections of articles...) -- Alice^✉ 07:38, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure, some people do laundry and visit religious services while traveling, but it's not crucial for a travel guide. Not at all even. It's daily life fluff that could easily be left out. To add Contact to Cope wouldn't make sense, because then every article on Wikivoyage would need a "Cope" section, and a lot of relatively unimportant information would be added to the articles. Globe-trotter (talk) 15:51, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage is not a telephone directory. K7L (talk) 16:07, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

If someone could direct me to the specific, written policy stating that Wikivoyage is to avoid looking like a telephone directory at all costs, I'd be grateful. Certainly Non-goal #7 applies in many cases, but where it comes into conflict with Wikivoyage:The traveller comes first I think the latter policy ought to take precedence (if the traveller "comes first", that means he comes before our other policies). The nature of travel guides is that they bear a certain degree of similarity to telephone directories. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:15, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The reason consulates should be placed in city pages, instead of regional pages, is that the regions they serve do not match up with Wikivoyage regions. So either 1)we'd need to list which consulates serve each region (state/province level) or 2)just list the consulate in the region (state/province level) it's located in. Even then, a state/province might be served by multiple consulates for a particular nation. Listing consulates in a city article seems like the easiest option. Doing anything other than to not list consulates at all would necessitate the creation of a policy (with a few different criteria) to determine where a consulate should be listed. AHeneen (talk) 20:35, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

City pages I can live with... but the proposal was to push a consulate into an individual district Buffalo/Downtown#Consulates. That's overcategorisation. K7L (talk) 23:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Everyone agrees with placing them in the City article I think. Globe-trotter (talk) 15:51, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I quickly placed the information regarding the German consulate into Buffalo/Downtown based on a misreading of User:K7L's comments dated 29 January, 00:43 and 18:12. I agree with the overcategorization remark and will revert that edit now. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:30, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Help PediaPress build printable Wikivoyage guides

Interested in helping PediaPress, the creators of the Special:Book extension, curate printed travel guides made from Wikivoyage content? Please contact Heiko Hees at heiko dot hees at brainbot dot com. They're open to sharing the royalty, and a part of every book's proceeds goes to support the Wikimedia Foundation and thus Wikivoyage as well. Jpatokal (talk) 22:22, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Breadcrumbs for mobile

I think we should have our breadcrumbs in our mobile site version. I believe this could be done by adding class="mf-breadcrumbs" to the <div id="contentSub"> like so:

<div id="contentSub" class="mf-breadcrumbs"> (I believe that is only for mobile Main Page. Not sure really if there is anything like it for regular pages. --Rogerhc (talk) 21:52, 5 February 2013 (UTC))

I may be mistaken but I think this would be done by us coming to a consensus that it should be done here, and then someone posting a request in Bugzilla with a reference to that consensus. I think mw:Extension:GeoCrumbs is what makes the breadcrumbs and the PHP code for it in the extensions dir of Wikivoyage on the server would need an edit. Yes? --Rogerhc (talk) 22:39, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

In MediaWiki, the "contentSub" line normally contains a tagline slogan like "From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia" or "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". GeoCrumbs just replaces that text with the breadcrumb trail. The code which generates 'div id="contentSub" ' is likely part of MediaWiki or a MediaWiki skin (and not the extension), so I have no idea whether this is something easily changed. K7L (talk) 15:16, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe that "From Wikivoyage..." tag line is in "siteSub" not "contentSub". See page source and mw:Manual:Skinning/Tutorial#Subtitles . --Rogerhc (talk) 18:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem with breadcrumbs on mobile is that they can get REALLY long. Take Walt Disney World/Magic Kingdom for instance. LtPowers (talk) 15:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Powers, I see breadcrumbs can get too long. Maybe not do this on mobile, unless breadcrumbs could be converted into a workable pop-up list. --Rogerhc (talk) 18:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Could we possibly just have the previous 3 items in the breadcrumb hierarchy? That would prevent it getting long, but still allow users to go up the hierarchy, even if slowly. JamesA ^>talk 01:37, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Might just work. I haven't a clue how to make it happen though. --Rogerhc (talk) 21:56, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Help with New Main Page Idea

Hi there! Sorry to those those of you who've already seen this, but I was just wondering if anyone on here could help with this new idea for Wikivoyage's main page. We've been talking about it over on the Main Page Discussion and the main problem with it (at present) seems to be that the images don't scale with the user's screen resolution. I'd be very grateful if anyone would be kind enough to find a way of doing this; unfortunately, I'm not adept enough at CSS to do this myself, so I'd really appreciate it. Thanks! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:42, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Removing edits by specific editors from appearing in one's watchlist

Is this technically possible and, if so, how would one achieve this exactly, please? -- Alice^✉ 08:13, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible outside of installing a client-side filter in your web-browser. LtPowers (talk) 15:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that - it's very useful sometimes to have a firm negative - it saves time looking for something that might not even exist. Looking on the bright side, it may not be necessary now that an "draped-amphibian"-free future is looking more likely here... -- Alice^✉ 07:53, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Wkimania in Hong Kong, August

Two things to be aware of, Call for participation and scholarships to fund travel. Pashley (talk) 19:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I've put it at Wikivoyage:Get-together if any wikivoyagers are interested in meeting up there. --Inas (talk) 11:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Help turn ideas into grants in the new IdeaLab

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

• Do you have an idea for a project to improve this community or website?
• Do you think you could complete your idea if only you had some funding?
• Do you want to help other people turn their ideas into project plans or grant proposals?

Please join us in the IdeaLab, an incubator for project ideas and Individual Engagement Grant proposals.

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking new ideas and proposals for Individual Engagement Grants. These grants fund individuals or small groups to complete projects that help improve this community. If interested, please submit a completed proposal by February 15, 2013. Please visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG for more information.

Thanks! --Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants, Wikimedia Foundation 20:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Correct it here.)

We've got a whole lot of ideas floating around here. But I think expertise is what we need; not money. JamesA ^>talk 01:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Expertise is for sale. --Inas (talk) 07:51, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe it would be worth collating our top 3 ideas and formally submitting them. Off the top of my head, a separate Wikivoyage Reviews site, OpenStreetMap listing collaboration and a full-blown listing editor could be high priority projects. JamesA ^>talk 08:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, let's work on this. Discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Roadmap might be the place for it, and let's make sure to publicize the discussion so that other language versions are aware. Regarding reviews, I don't think we should frame this as a separate site, but rather as an extended feature separate from the guides—and not part of the universally-editable wiki. --Peter ^Talk 16:26, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I find it very coincidental, Peter, that the three long term goals on the Roadmap are the same as the three ideas I mentioned above! We could call for more ideas, but considering there is only 2 weeks until applications close, maybe we should just stick with those three. One issue is that there needs to be a clear plan of what the money will be used for, and the application needs to define the requested amount. What we have are just feature requests, and if we had our way, we'd just throw the money back at the WMF to hire experienced staff to develop the features. What else could we possibly use the money for? Maybe it would be worth starting the discussion in the structured IdeaLab format anyway, and even if we do not end up applying for a grant, we could use our discussion to liaise with the WMF about new features. JamesA ^>talk 06:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

We need a clear plan of what the feature requests entail, and I think I could mock up some visualizations. Give me a day, then a weekend to have other eyes look at this, and let's then hoist the sails on our maiden voyage to IdeaLab. --Peter ^Talk 08:11, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I have now created a couple mock ups, and am working on more. While I do that, though, feedback would be great. See the links from Wikivoyage:Roadmap#Long term goals. --Peter ^Talk 20:42, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Agree I wish that the WMF would hire staff and than allow people to apply for their time. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:31, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, not quite as much comment as I'd hoped, but probably enough to start moving forward. We'll probably get things better defined and critiqued once we get started on IdeaLab. Jameses, can you help? --Peter ^Talk 23:09, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Throwing an idea out there

Is everything on Wikitravel going to be bounded by location? I could see having articles on something like Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives locations or an article on Ecotourism in the United States, even US national monuments-arranging some things by topic.Ryan Vesey (talk) 21:26, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. Wikivoyage has many travel topics that are not bounded by location, and I'd love to see articles on any of the three topics you mentioned (if, indeed, they don't already exist!) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:29, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

There are also Itineraries which are related to locations but take a different approach, concentrating more on the route and less on individual destinations, though of course they link to those.. Pashley (talk) 11:43, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Tourist Office

As some contributors here are aware, Wikipedia has a Reference Desk,

Would it be possible for Wikivoyage to have a 'travel reference desk'(aka Tourist Office) that would be able to answer travel related enquiries and as well as directing contributors to relevant articles, could answer specific enquires in regard to things that had not yet made it into articles..

Such as :

- Do you know where to get paracetamol in London at 3.am?
- Is it reasonable to bring my pet dog into the UK, as I'm on an extended visit?
- Do you round off the fare (to the nearest note) when taking a taxi in the UK?
- How do you move a cello from London Airpot to the Albert Hall?

amongst others.

In time answers from the 'tourist office' could (and probably should) be then integrated back into the relevant topic articles.

Thoughts? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 22:57, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Not to address your question directly, but we have Docents for questions. --Inas (talk) 23:24, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Inas is correct; per Wikivoyage:What is a docent?, the entire raison d'être of Docents are to answer questions of the above-described type. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:08, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

And half a decade later, it dawns upon me that we should be calling docents concierges. A much clearer name! --Peter ^Talk 03:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Although the others are right regarding docents, we all know that the docent system hasn't been utilised much and most of our readers don't know what it is about. I think a central forum where you can ask questions about anything and anywhere would be much more simple for travellers. However, I don't think at this point it is something we would want to launch. We still don't really have enough dedicated, long-term editors who would be able to answer the barrage of questions we are sure to get. It could look really bad if a question goes unanswered. I could only support this if we were to make it extremely clear that there is no guarantee you would get an answer, and we take no liability for incorrect information. JamesA ^>talk 05:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we should, instead, better utilize and publicize the system we already have in place. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:13, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

That'd be great, but the question is how? Not only do few users utilise docents, there are also few users who put their hands up to become one. One of the most-visited and most-recognisable places on Earth, New York City, currently sits at a grand total of zero docents. Another issue with docents is the hierarchy. If I am an expert on the whole of Australia, am I meant to add my name to every Australian state, district and town? If we simply had a "Tourist Office" forum, knowledgeable users could observe for questions that they know they are an expert on, rather than having to point out everything they know to everyone else. The more I think about it, the more I'd like to see this idea run for a month as a trial. JamesA ^>talk 06:44, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I think your idea is excellent. Quite a number of times, visitors to this site (or the previous ones) posted travel questions in the main space or sometimes in talk pages. If there were a visible forum to exchange information, I think that would serve the goal of spreading knowledge about travel and keep such questions in a good place. Actually, I like this better than the review forums idea, though I'm not necessarily opposed to that, if it's well-managed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:52, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, I wouldn't volunteer to be a docent for New York and get private emails, but I'd be happy to reply to travel questions about New York when I could help. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:53, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot too. I share the worry that we won't have people to answer the questions, though, and that unanswered responses would make the forum look useless. How would we get from point A to point B? Do we wait until our site has grown to add this? Or do we add it, hoping that it will help grow our site? --Peter ^Talk 08:05, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we should go ahead and do it, but not worry if it takes a while to get to an implement, so kind of a compromise between the two positions you lay out. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:37, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think an implement is that difficult. We could certainly do it ourselves, without a bugzilla request. See User:JamesA/Tourist Office as an example. JamesA ^>talk 03:07, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh cool! Well I say, why not put this into effect? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:42, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

If we're going to do this, it would be nice if our answers could all be links to our articles. That way we're still focussed on improving the guide, rather than being a Q&A service for those who can't be bothered to read them. --Inas (talk) 03:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

[unindent] A lot of answers might not relate to things already in guides, although the answers may stimulate edits to the guides. I doubt every restaurant that's worthwhile and which I might recommend for someone is listed in New York City guides. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:19, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Good suggestion, where appropriate. There may be questions where the answer does not fit into the article structure. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:53, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

It's a good guideline for answering. The Wikipedia Reference Desk not only had guidelines for asking, for guidelines for answering. I haven't added them yet, as they were irrelevant to our wiki (things like fact-checking, references, etc). Maybe we should add it, but be more general in our guidelines. Also, we should probably move my example to the Project: space so we can ready this for a small-scale launch, and trial it for a few weeks before making a final decision. JamesA ^>talk 12:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Go ahead. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

(Re-indent) A caveat: our project has generally avoided using the word "tourist" in favor of "traveler". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:46, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

What about "departure gate" for the information page? K7L (talk) 16:20, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

A few name ideas:

• Travellers' Check
• Check-in Desk
• Consulate/Embassy
• The Outpost

Sorry for the dodgy puns in the first two! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 16:53, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Some more:

• Concierge Floor (favorite)
• Trip Planner
• Travel Agency

--Peter ^Talk 16:59, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Tourist Office works for me. It has a note of comedy that appeals to me. But I'd like to make this into a game: Puzzler might be a fun name (unless Car Talk Radio has a trademark on that which I doubt but we could ask legal; I love that we can ask legal and know they are batting for us, we never had that before). I'd like to see us have some fun with this. It might succeed on a note of challenge: "Dare you answer me this: ..." The oldest unanswered questions could be at top, new questions added at bottom, normal talk order. Answered questions get a bold A at beginning of answer, to be written under question, and archive after some time. A star, or light bulb, or rainbow, or some scale of comical icons, could be added to a question for each week it goes unanswered. Thus challenging questions would gain recognition and extra status would be earned by answering them. Easy questions would be encouraged as well, so that all would understand we are trying to crowd source our knowledge, help each other and have fun. This we could play right now → Wikivoyage:Puzzler (prototype to play with and rename at whim). --Rogerhc (talk) 04:31, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

That does sound like a good idea, though I'm not completely sure about the name - I'm a bit concerned it won't make its purpose clear to first-time users. It would be nice to get something similar to this up and running as the whole idea and discussion appears to have stalled a bit. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 11:45, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Right, I've had a play with Rogerhc's great design and come up with this. As you can see, it's going through a bit of an identity crisis - the page is named 'Tourist Office', but the title says 'Travel Bureau'. Feel free to change it if you like or suggest other names - we need a consensus on this issue! Thoughts, feelings, opinions, abuse are very welcome! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 14:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Driving in the UK

I split this out of the UK article, but would appreicate some assistance from active UK drivers. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 23:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Looking good. I have added a few extra points that non UK drivers may not be aware of. Suggest you link to this from the UK article so more people will find it. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:33, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Massively expanded now, and I would really appreciate some help on the added sections. I'm also considering if there should be a distance, routing table for major destinations. I asked over on the english Wikipedia Desk concerning a possible initial list for this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#Top_20_Destinations_by_Road_in_the_UK, I initally thought 20 items would cover it, but a figure around 40-50 seems more likely. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 21:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Attribution at the bottom of the page

I would like to know how the Wikitravel attribution message at the bottom of imported pages was set up. Over at pt:, import seems to have been done incorrectly, and we don´t have enough knowledgable users to know what to do. First of all, it seems pt: was imported not directly from Wikitravel, but from JAMGuides, though in the history of the pages imported, the only indication of this is an entry from "JAMBot" with the summary of "Imported by JAMBot", which to my knowledge is insufficient attribution. So, a few questions:

• Does our attribution message for such pages need to mention users of both JAMGuides and Wikitravel in our case, or is attribution to the last place imported from sufficient?
• Does the history need to contain a link to the specific page from which it was imported (as it does here), or is a message specifying "users of" sufficient?
• How is the attribution message at the bottom of imported pages here displayed only for those specific imported pages? It does not appear to be from inside the work itself.
• How were the WT prefixes added to user names in the history of such pages?
• Will it be possible to use a bot/script to retroactively add the page footer message and history username prefixes to only the relevant imported pages on pt:

Sorry to bring up such a pt-specific topic here, but I´d like to use en:'s solution if possible, and there are plenty of knowledgable folk here. If there is a better place for us to get answers, please point me there. Thanks! Texugo (talk) 10:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you have an example of a page with a "JAMBot" entry in its history? When data was imported on the original Wikivoyage I gave Hans raw XML exports from Wikitravel, so I'm not sure how any mention of "JAMGuides" would have appeared unless I screwed something up. As to any credit to "JAMGuides", that site was just a read-only mirror of Wikitravel, so there is no need to mention it for attribution purposes. Regarding your other questions, someone else will need to address those for reasons outlined at the top of my user page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:02, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The Portuguese and Spanish versions were taken from JAMguides, because Wikivoyage e.V. never bothered to hand over the pure exports from Wikitravel to the Wikimedia Foundation. Globe-trotter (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Have a look here for instance. That´s all the extent of the attribution we have on most of our pages there at this time. Texugo (talk) 16:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

They imported it without any attribution? Wow that's totally against the spirit of the license. Someone should contact the legal department of Wikimedia I think. Globe-trotter (talk) 18:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Full history XML dumps of all Wikitravel content (through August 2012) are available and should be used where possible since they show every contribution and the individual who made it - Hans should be able to provide access. Hopefully that is enough info to help resolve any issues as I need to bow out of this discussion for reasons already mentioned. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, who is Hans? How do I get in touch?Texugo (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I presume this is (from whois) Hans Musil, Wikivoyage e.V.. Taunusstr. 39 Boeblingen DE 71032. DE +49.7031281729 hans.musil (at) gmx.de? K7L (talk) 18:55, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

User:Hansm here, and at the German Wikivoyage. However, the Wikimedia Foundation hasn't been able to get the dumps from him yet (and supposedly has tried to get them for some months). Globe-trotter (talk) 18:57, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

ArchiveTeam [16] has 2011 dumps in a dozen languages [17] but newer data would be preferable. We also still need Japan? K7L (talk) 19:06, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Also see Incubator:Incubator:Wikivoyage import. Globe-trotter (talk) 15:49, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

/me stands up, waves. Hi. Legal now knows.  :) I'll see if we can't nudge Hans. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Bizarre import problem

Sit back, I've got to give some background on this. Follow me back to the WT days.

In 2005, an article was created at the title "Eden". This article was about the fishing town in New South Wales. In 2008, an article was created called "Eden (New York)", and it was about the suburb of Buffalo. In 2011, Globe-trotter moved the NSW Eden's article to "Eden (New South Wales)", and moved the disambiguation page (which I had created back in 2008) to the base name "Eden". This all works fine to this day on WT.

But here on Wikivoyage, something went wrong. The move of Eden (disambiguation) to Eden is still recorded in the edit history of the former title... but Eden is the NSW article, not the disambiguation page! Even more bizarrely, Eden (New South Wales) is also a (different) copy of the NSW article, with its own edit history, and it does record the move. On the other hand, I can't find the history of the disambiguation page anywhere.

Now, this is reparable (not without some effort, but any admin can do it... though I don't think there's any way to retrieve the disambiguation page as I created it in 2008). But it points to a potential problem with the import, and so I wanted to bring it to light, in case a similar problem exists elsewhere in the wiki. Alternatively, I may be missing something here, in which case it'd be nice to have that pointed out. =)

-- LtPowers (talk) 20:59, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

It's bizarre indeed, the Dutch Wikivoyage had at least 100 of such cases. I had to redirect all of them to the newly created page. I hadn't encountered it yet on this wiki though. Globe-trotter (talk) 21:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The scripts I used to create XML backups had some issues with page moves - it wasn't feasible to repeatedly run a full backup of all pages (doing so took weeks or months given the 30 second limit applied to spiders), so my scripts instead tried to track recently changed articles. Unfortunately, page moves proved problematic as the change wasn't recorded as a normal "change", so if the articles weren't subsequently edited then the page was sometimes not updated. I had thought this issue was resolved by forcing a re-spider of most of the articles in the page move logs, but apparently there were still issues. I apologize for the problem, but at this point I think the only solution will be to manually correct problem articles as they are found. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Facebook page

Facebook is a major marketing tool, and I think we need to sort out how we are going to utilise it. When we were at WT, the admins there did a good job of making regular posts. But now things seem to have dropped off. These are the most prominent FB pages we have:

• wikivoyage [18], 293 fans, occasional posts (would be interested to know who runs this)
• Wikivoyage [19], 434 fans, no posts, created automatically using Wikipedia article
• Wikivoyage - deutsch [20], 271 fans, regular German posts, has the main fb.com/Wikivoyage domain

Firstly, we should merge the first two pages to increase the number of fans and not have an identity crisis. The process appears to be explained here. Then a few admins/trusted users who are interested should be assigned page admin rights, and allowed to make posts on relevant items. I would call relevant items new DotMs, OtbPs and FTTs, new Star articles, huge new features (listing editor, reviews site, OSM maps, book creator, etc) and possibly travel warnings. Page admins should never comment on other pages or status updates to keep neutrality. After that, we could request that the German page hand over the main URL, and give fb.com/wikivoyage.de in return. Other WMF pages keep the main URL for English. It may be worth creating a new policy page outlining the rules.

Thoughts on this plan? JamesA ^>talk 05:29, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

It has my full support. And, I was under the impression that the WMF operated the first of the three fanpages, though I don't know that for sure. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:35, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I highly doubt that the WMF operate it. They would've gave it direct to the community as they don't like getting involved in that sort of stuff. Also, the soccer posts when the page was first opened and the patchy English in response to some fans' wall posts again make me think it can't be someone official at the WMF. If I remember correctly, it may have been User:Saqib, actually. JamesA ^>talk 05:47, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Support - A central Facebook page sounds like a great idea and one that would really help attract new editors and users. Perhaps it could also be used for 'travel games' - e.g. where is this photo or where can we find X? If we asked users to post the URL of the article that referenced it we'd see greater footfall and keep people interested. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 19:15, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

To address User:JamesA's comment: if it wasn't operated by, on behalf of, or with the blessing of the WMF, whoever did run it had an awful lot of nerve naming the page "Wikivoyage.official". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:30, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

The Wikitravel Page on Facebook was established and run by me. I did my best to post new DoTMs, OtBPs, and Star articles as they happened, and we got up over 1,000 likes. LtPowers (talk) 19:05, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

It would certainly be great to have an official Facebook page in English. However, with regards to users keeping it updated, how about creating a specific policy for social media altogether. There is also twitter.com/Wikivoyage & Wikivoyage page on Google+ which appear to be operated by German WV. How about creating Wikivoyage:Social media, where we can create a policy regarding use of such accounts (appropriate posts, frequency of posts, who can have access to it, etc) and also the possibility of integrating social media into Wikivoyage content. A couple notes about creating official WV social media accounts: use of the WV logo is governed by WMF wmf:Trademark policy and in order to create a page on sites, the person creating the page would need authority/authorization to do so...part of Wikivoyage:Social media would need to address who can create an account on behalf of WV, transfer of ownership (once created, what Wikivoyager will keep track of login info to all accounts), & who can contact social media companies on behalf of WV in the event of any dispute over ownership of an account (since it seems like WMF leaves these kinds of things to the communities). Remember that as a wiki, such accounts should be as open as possible (ie. we need explicit policies regarding use). WMF has m:Social media, which is worth looking at, but there's no set policies regarding accounts for different projects (other than WMF & Wikipedia). AHeneen (talk) 00:51, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I very much like your ideas. I've gone ahead and created Wikivoyage:Social media so we have something to go by as the discussion continues. It can be deleted later if decided against. I guess something we would want to consider is whether we want strict rules regarding frequency of posts, content of posts, etc? I've co-managed a Facebook page for another wiki before, and we had few rules, other than sign your posts and use common sense. That page was created 3 years ago and now has over a thousand fans too. We can always have guidelines regarding how many posts per week, and some things that users may find interesting.

As you've said, we would need to contact the WMF to get a one-time authorisation. The Wikidata community already runs a few social media pages, including Facebook, so it shouldn't be that difficult. We should probably assign one long-time administrator or 'crat to a role of leadership for the first month, while we sort out logo/TM issues, who will be a page admin and the merging of the various pages/URLs. JamesA ^>talk 02:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage featured in a New York Times travel blog

I just stumbled upon this: http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/where-to-go-wiki-it/ Pretty awesome, right? We'll hopefully get some new readers and contributors :) Ypsilon (talk) 15:40, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Not just in a blog. The content is featured on page 3 of the print Travel section dated tomorrow.--RegentsPark (talk) 00:47, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Nice! Our coverage in print has been underwhelming. --Peter ^Talk 01:01, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

That is good! The only mention in the British press appears to be this: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/travel-welcome-to-wikiholidays-8456489.html --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 01:14, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

News from the German WV guys

Hi everybody. I have some news from de:

• The guy with the POI maps has created a world wide map feature with all WV articles. here.... Nice. Isn't it? We considering to have it run on our own association's server. I am going to ask him how to adapt it to the other language versions. Are you interested?
• We started a project with a town government in Lower Saxony to create a kind of template article. A perfect article that we can show to our new contributors. "Look! This is how a perfect article can look like" Our manual of style can benefit from these experiences. During this process we want to improve our VCard. It should provide different styles (inline and block style as well as a print style and a style for small screen resolutions). We picked your old layout suggestions from Texugo as well. We think about creating icons to be placed at the hotels, sight's descriptions. Icons for WiFi, Bed&Bike, offers for disabled people, pets allowed, gay friendly..... Do you have a discussion about it running already? Do you want to participate? Then we move this part to Meta.
• We just established a Paypal account. If you want to support the association and/or becoming a member, just take a look at our associations wiki. It's renewed and some parts have to be translated. Everybody is invited to participate. here... Please tell me, if there are some errors or missing information. I've just moved it from the old server. But I did not find out how to make the wiki interface multilingual and what settings are to be changed. If anybody knows, just give me a hint. -- DerFussi (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

We were working on an hCard as {{listing}} which was to handle all data from the <listing> tags once the bugzilla:43220 fix is deployed in mid-February. There was a long discussion at Project talk:Listings but no clear consensus for or against using icons in listings, on linking to Wikipedia or on how to display geographic co-ordinates for individual listings. A locator map showing each listing in a city would be valuable but currently WikiSherpa, a third-party mobile application, is the only one doing this as we have almost no co-ordinates on our individual listings within a city. Many listings here are not tagged or templated at all. K7L (talk) 18:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

That world-wide map is really cool. I can think of a lot of uses for it beyond the basic navigation it offers right now too. We could filter by article status, for one. We recently have added geocoordinates to almost all of our destination guides, so we're ready for it. Adding lat long info to our city district articles might be a good thing to get working on... --Peter ^Talk 19:25, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I love the world wide map. Ours is going to get really crowded, though, as en has a lot of articles! Could we possibly link to this from the Main Page under a Interactive map header? I also like what you've done with the town council. I've always thought that collaborating with local governments and tourism boards is a great way to improve our articles, as they will certainly provide resources to those who wish to boost tourism for free! JamesA ^>talk 02:15, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I think Mey2008 can change the feature and process the guide/star/stub information. Will ask him. The city council of Wennigsen has invited other local tourism boards and the local ADFC team (German cycling association) as well. So we can improve the affected town, region and cycling route articles and provide a set of featured articles and improve our manual of style as well. Besides we want to create a guide for tourism bords as well to avoid advertising style in our articles. Our articles are for travellers and not a competition about what town the most beautiful sky has. -- DerFussi (talk) 08:53, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

bplaced says: "Sorry, access forbidden, error 403" Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:00, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Here are the English articles -- DerFussi (talk) 15:14, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

That is really, really cool! How will it be updated? For instance, I added geo tags to Washington, D.C.'s district articles, but those are not appearing. --Peter ^Talk 15:40, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to add this to the Destinations page, with a BETA notice. Can we put it in the article directly, like this? Or can we only link to it for now? --Peter ^Talk 17:00, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

For reasons regarding publicity, I'd really like to put this directly in the article today, if it's possible. --Peter ^Talk 17:01, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Is there any means to make corrections to http://maps.wikivoyage-ev.org/w/artmap.php?lang=en — it appears to have moved Brockville southward into foreign territory, even though the co-ordinates look valid on the article. K7L (talk) 00:11, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The coordinate in the article was inaccurate. I have corrected it. The map will be updated in the next time. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 10:01, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

We are going to move this to the Wikivoyage association's server next weekend. Then you can use it. We'll let you know when it's online. -- DerFussi (talk) 10:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

It's great that the association is able to have these sort of innovations. Well done to you both!! Once on WV.eV servers, will it be possible to embed the map into Wikivoyage, keeping its interactivity? JamesA ^>talk 10:34, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Dutch Wikipedia has pages like w:nl:Thousand Islands with a link (Kaart) at the upper-right which drops down an embedded map with a marker for each WP article with co-ordinates. That's not the same as a city-level locator map (which would need to pull co-ordinates from individual {{listing}}s within the one article being viewed, so likely WV-specific) but still impressive. K7L (talk) 20:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Looks like this is live for :en now [21]! --Peter ^Talk 01:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Wow! Imagine how useful that will be for maintaining routeboxes. =) LtPowers (talk) 02:38, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

That is just fantastic! How can we promote this wonderful clickable world map? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Let me update the url, since it is now on WV-ev servers: [22]. I'm still not sure how to add the map to a wiki page, but I think DerFussi is working on that. We need to get our articles better geocoded now! --Peter ^Talk 18:50, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

This new version of article map works for all eleven language versions (?lang=nn). The map search field also, even with Cyrillic letters and international names (eg. Wien, Vienna, Bécs or Вена for Vienna). Actuality of data is the last dump date. - You only can add the interactive map to a wiki page until now, by click on a thumbnail picture. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 06:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible to add it to an article using the Slippy Map MediaWiki Extension [23] as it is used on :it? Here is an example of its use. --Peter ^Talk 07:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

No, it is not possible to using Slippy Map. The Slippy Map and the Wikipedia map application are not compatible with most mobile devices I know. My solution is compatible with WV mobile mode on most mobile devices. The Map is automatic in full screen mode on those small screens. The button "Show me where I am" (left top) is compatible with modern gps devices. Application will use wlan spot and mobile net triangulation also (for devices without gps eg. your notebook with wlan). So you can find out all WV articles around your location with a single tap the location button and a little zooming out. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 10:43, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I think you mean that you think it is not desirable. But is it possible? We have some mobile-specific and desktop-specific pages, so we can use this in the latter. Or have a mobile users link above a slippy map. Having slippy maps in our articles is a clear goal that we have set, and it would be good to use this map as a test case. --Peter ^Talk 22:46, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Bugzilla coordination

I've noticed in two Bugzilla threads yesterday that our methods of consensus are a little opaque to the tech folks—compared to obvious lists of support. To me, the discussion above that we need to change $wgUploadNavigationUrl to Wikivoyage:Upload file demonstrates a clear consensus, given high visibility, the build to that decision, and the fact that no one raised any objections. But in Bugzilla:44572, TTO was asked why the discussion involved just one other person.

Maybe a Bugzilla or Wikivoyage:Tech requests page would make sense here? We could make an effort to add support lists to discussions, after reaching consensus? That would allow everyone to keep better tabs on developments on Bugzilla, and to be involved in that process. It's extra red tape, but it might help things get done more quickly. --Peter ^Talk 18:34, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

If I understand what you're getting at here, I think I agree. I think that in principle, the consensus model we've always had is the best way to address issues. But I also concur that we should definitely explore ways to make it more obvious to the casual reader where the community (and each individual member) stands on any given issue, without having to wade through reams of text. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:33, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

To be sure, the decisions should be made by consensus as always. The support lists would be "for show." --Peter ^Talk 20:01, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion? Perhaps, rather than going that route, you could just "close" discussions with a note at the top saying "This discussion is closed and the request has been submitted to engineering. The result of the discussion was...." That would probably satisfy their need for an "at a glance" without going through a support list that's just for show. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:19, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds easier. --Peter ^Talk 06:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The difference, I think, is that discussions are almost never closed here. They're usually dormant for a couple of years before being moved into an archive. Globe-trotter (talk) 09:34, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

We could just put a disclaimerbox at the top of the discussion with the message "We have reached a consensus for this change, and a request has been submitted to engineering." --Peter ^Talk 18:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds good. I don't really see the need to "close" discussions, but I understand why the engineering folk wish to see that their actions are reflecting the community consensus. --Inas (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't even think a disclaimerbox/template is necessary. Most wikis usually just end it with an admin posting something like "Closed - The consensus was found to be... . The following action will be taken... . A request has been submitted to engineering here. JamesA ^>talk 11:01, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, but it is the "Closed" part that is the problem. We don't close and archive discussions, and often revisit discussions years later when we realise we could have made a better decision. --Inas (talk) 00:23, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Geographic location

Why don't we make a template similar to Template:Geographic location, at least for countries? -- Ypnypn (talk) 16:50, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Funny you should ask! I think the answer in that discussion is that it probably doesn't work for our purposes. --Peter ^Talk 22:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Google Search Results

Hi! I was just wondering if there's any way we could improve Wikivoyage's standing in Google page rankings. At present, if I search for 'travel guide', 'free travel guide', 'wiki travel guide', 'london travel guide' and 'new york travel guide'. The site didn't appear on the first page for any of these queries nor on the second, despite the fact that another Wiki-based travel site does appear in these places. Is there any way we could improve our exposure? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I guess the best way to increase a site’s exposure is by implementing SEO methods. Even Google has a number of tools that can help. Adwords will also increase traffic to this site. --Saqib (talk) 18:04, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Most likely we're incurring a duplicate content penalty as a long list of articles written by users now here are still sitting on another Wiki-based travel site. That issue will go away once inbound links which were pointing at the other site are updated to point here. Links from Wikipedia are still being fixed in many obscure languages, see #Links from Wikipedia in other languages, #Putting a Wikitravel: namespace in the search box actually takes you to WT and #Sister project link templates above. One particularly annoying link to the other site was in the disclaimer at the bottom of imported pages on this wiki, bugzilla:41983. The new MediaWiki version (1.21wmf9) which fixed this bug and one other (bugzilla:43220, the ability to change the {{listing}} format) was deployed today - which should slowly but surely make a big difference to search engines mistaking an abandoned, ad-infested copy of this content on another Wiki-based travel site as somehow being the "main version".

We should be doing more to verify that (usable, guide, star) articles here which link to Wikipedia have a {{wikivoyage}} sibling project box linking back to us from the /* External links */ section. WP is the sixth-largest site on the Internet and not to be underestimated; if our content is relevant and useful to Wikipedians for a particular destination, we should say so. Certainly any templates on en.Wikipedia which used to point to another Wiki-based travel site now point to us (about three thousand were cleaned up using a robot script on WP) but other languages still have many outdated links which need to be changed to "Wikivoyage". Let's get our own house in order across WMF projects before sinking money (from where?) into AdWords-style programmes. K7L (talk) 20:53, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

If we make this site substantially better this will attract readers, press and Google. But yes currently our Google rating is bad. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:26, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Could we get a bot running to sync interwiki links between WV and WP articles. Our articles already have the WP links, so it would be easy to find the appropriate WP articles to stick links into. I was pretty shocked the other day [24] to realize there was no interwiki link to our Chicago guide! --Peter ^Talk 21:57, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

For that matter, could WP get {{sister project links}} fixed so that it actually links directly to the intended destination page if given a parameter (like every individual template for siblings) instead of launching a pointless Special:Search enquiry? It's not a huge issue as most links are using {{wikivoyage-inline}}, but if wp.fr can create a viable {{autres projets}} which isn't kludgeware, why can't en:? K7L (talk) 22:47, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand it will take time to build up the links direct to us to increase our google rank. However, in the interim, we could try to play and build up the word voyage. If I search Japan Travel Guide, we aren't in the running. However, Japan Voyage Guide, has us as a first hit, and Japan Voyage has us on the first page. We could update Travel guides at Wikivoyage to Voyage guides at Wikivoyage. In our PR, we could then mention Just google voyage. --Inas (talk) 22:56, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the way Wikipedia has handled us in w:Template:Sister project links is unfair. Only 3 sister sites are automatically omitted unless manually added: Wikidata, Wikispecies and us. Wikidata is omitted because an automatic link would never work; the item number must be entered manually (I also believe that Wikipedia is not sure whether it wants to link directly to Wikidata yet). Wikispecies isn't auto-linked for a similar reason: because they're articles have species under their scientific names while Wikipedia articles take vernacular names. Scientific names must be entered manually. But us? There's really no valid reason.

It could be said that they don't want to automatically add links to a travel guide from an article on say, a person. But then there's an inconsistent approach. You don't "define" people in a dictionary. You can't have "quotations" by a building. You can't have up-to-date "news" on an event that took place 100 years ago. There shouldn't be a double standard that is biased against us. I think we should start a discussion on the talk page of that template, arguing for Wikivoyage's automatic inclusion. That would bring thousands more links and also save us having to go through every location article adding voy=location to it. Thoughts? JamesA ^>talk 07:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

As a Wikipedia editor/admin, I would support it. Wikidata is in its own category entirely as it's a database and has all sorts of different software because of that. --Rschen7754 08:33, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Can Google be contacted and the situation explained? Seriously...would it be reasonable to contact Google & let them know that this site is the legitimate heir to WT content. I tried finding an appropriate contact email, but they probably receive so many emails that it would be highly unlikely a real person would read an email and take any action. However, anyone tech-savvy enough might be able to find the right topic on Google's website to get this site higher in the results. It also might be worth posting a question on the Webmaster forums, where an employee might pick up the discussion and get our site bumped up. Links: Contact, Webmaster forums, Webmaster tools & help, Site not doing well in search.

It might also be worth bringing up on a relevant inter-wiki forum, like some place on Meta. AHeneen (talk) 09:40, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Knowing how large and evil Google is, they're probably already well aware of the situation and how it came about. While it is possible someone higher up in the WMF could contact their Google contacts (which I'm sure they have considering Wikipedia is on nearly every Google results page), I don't think much will come of it. There's no harm in trying, as Google apparently supports the open, free community. Another thing: Google purchased Frommers recently, so may be working on a competitor, in which case, we're in serious trouble. JamesA ^>talk 10:26, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I strongly suggest that everyone puts more effort into developing and implementing new features related to maps, listings, mobile version, offline version, etc: anything that makes WV different from (and better than) WT. The content has been copied, the links have been redirected — that's all fine, but it only makes us a good copy (fork, sibling, whatever...) of WT. I think it's time to go further and intensively work on new features and ideas instead of discussing how to persuade Google. --Alexander (talk) 14:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

• Question. Is anyone working on doing something about "links" to Wikitravel like the one on the bottom on Poipet#Go_next? If there are many like this a bot should be able to do the task. In fact a template would be better. --MGA73 (talk) 16:41, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

These links are using rel="nofollow". I don't know whether it matters or not=) --Alexander (talk) 16:59, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The rel="nofollow" was only added yesterday; it could take months for the full effect of such a change to be reflected by Google as it must index every page on the site, one by one. K7L (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I mean is it not better to change the link to Wikivoyage instead? --MGA73 (talk) 10:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

• Notice - I've started a discussion here on Wikipedia, regarding auto-inclusion. It's successful passing could mean thousands of extra links for us. I'd appreciate some supportive comments. Thanks, JamesA ^>talk 07:35, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

High resolution screenshots

Does anyone here have a good way to take high res screenshots of Wikivoyage? It would be nice to have some of our main page and some particularly spiffy articles (featuring maps, high quality pictures, especially creative turns of phrase, etc.) to give out to press inquiries (ASAP). --Peter ^Talk 22:04, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Difficulty is getting higher resolution images. I can get my browser up to 3600 pixels wide using dual-screen and can print a pdf to any dpi resolution you want. The text will scale up as you zoom in but the images have a limited resolution. Is the anything that can be done server side on the print or export to pdf with different style sheet? --Traveler100 (talk) 23:15, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually the download to PDF function on the left menu does a reasonable job. --Traveler100 (talk) 23:17, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

The output doesn't really look too much like our site, though. Tech2's really good (2 page) article provides an illustration [25] of the need--they have a screenshot of the main page, which is very useful, but printed journals would not publish such a low-res image. --Peter ^Talk 04:27, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know how to do this without a high-resolution display. If you have a wide, high-res screen and Firefox, you can use FireShot to capture the length (top-to-bottom) of the page in high resolution. "Snipping tool" in Windows can only capture what's displayed on your screen...not the entire webpage, which is what FireShot can do (and create a .png or .jpg file). I tried to zoom in on the webpage and while the text/images grew and the sidebar became half the webpage, the text wrapped to fit the narrower page and so it didn't look very good. With a wide, high-res display like, say, 3600x1080, you can use FireShot to take an image of the entire length of the webpage (and end up with a jpeg pic that's 3600x10000) where Snipping tool (Windows) couldn't take a pic larger than 3600x1080. AHeneen (talk) 09:14, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

FireShot is a nice tool, works across dual screens, thanks for the tip. This is what I can achieve with my system File:FireShot Screen Capture -002 - 'Bali – Travel guides at Wikivoyage' - en wikivoyage org wiki Bali.jpg. Is this resolution good enough. If not I think you are going to have to compose something out of a mix of screenshots and direct copies of the images. Unless someone has a large screen. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:22, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible to take the screenshot in PNG format, not JPG? JPG is meant for photos, so decreases the quality of computer-generated images dramatically. JamesA ^>talk 12:41, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, example File:FireShot Screen Capture -004 - 'Bali – Travel guides at Wikivoyage' - en wikivoyage org wiki Bali.png but for some reason thumbnail was not generated, so you need to click on the date at bottom of image page. Traveler100 (talk) 13:44, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Zoomed in before taking the screenshot

Now that looks good! Could I commission a few more? A Main Page shot would be great, and maybe these: La Macarena, Baltimore/Fell's Point, Bangkok/Khao San Road, Yaowarat and Phahurat Tour, San Francisco, Copenhagen/Frederiksberg, Sheki, Staraya Russa, Kununurra, Yakutsk, and Washington, D.C./Shaw.

Could you also take them after zooming really far in? That would allow us to show text and images in a more square format, like . Journals/newspapers could then publish them and have them be readable. Thanks! --Peter ^Talk 16:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Strange thing is when I zoom in then save the pixel number goes down. So can do with standard width and 3000 pixel or zoom in to get around 1200 pixels wide. Need to do some more experiments but not sure about meeting your deadline, with my current position I am guessing my today is your tomorrow.--Traveler100 (talk) 19:23, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

That's OK—it looks like Monday is the latest I can submit the screenshots currently requested, so hopefully this will still work. --Peter ^Talk 19:40, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

A possible way of getting round screen resolution limits is to use a virtual PC. I occasionally use Vmware Player to run XP on a Windows 7 machine at work, and I can set this to resolutions greater than the monitor supports - the "XP PC" then appears with scroll bars on the Windows 7 desktop. Creating something like this at home is likely to take all day (the player is free) so I am not offering to try, but maybe somebody else can expand on this. AlasdairW (talk) 11:59, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

With a WmWare installation it will allow a screen width of 2048, with scrolling as you describe, but the web page grabber does not like it. All the screenshot software I have tried only takes what is currently in the graphics window. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:00, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

With the software that captures a whole web page it reverts back to no zoom. So although I can get a wide image (over 3000 pixels) it is not zoomed in, far too much text. Best I can do with zooming in is a screen capture on the largest screen I have which is 1,920 × 1,080 pixels. Problem then is you need to specific what part of the article page you want copying. Doing all would be far to much work. Here are a couple of examples. File:Mainpage.png, File:Fellspoint01.png. How do you want to proceed with this? --Traveler100 (talk) 16:25, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

If I upload some low-res screenshots, could you then replace them with high res ones? Like that Staraya Russa screenshot above? --Peter ^Talk 16:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

That would work as long as not too many. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:20, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

For the Tourist Office

Does anyone know if there are any 'free' lectures in Oxford, England on a Thursday Afternoon?Sfan00 IMG (talk) 23:20, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Copied to Wikivoyage:Tourist Office. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 18:11, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Listing template

It would appear, with today's upgrade to MediaWiki 1.21wmf9, that we should be able to change the manner in which the individual listings are displayed by directing mw:extension:listings to a template like {{listing}}. That could get rid of the front-linking of external URL's in our individual listings, something which has been an annoyance for a few months now.

MediaWiki:listings-template needs to be created and set to the base name of a template (ie: "listing" for the {{listing}} template). See bugzilla:43220. K7L (talk) 00:01, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I tried this on Russian Wikivoyage, and it worked quite well. Have you tested the new {{listing}} template here on :en? I can create the MediaWiki page, but I may not have time to resolve bugs and problems... at least not until today's evening (European time). --Alexander (talk) 07:08, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Now I did it, and it seems to work quite well. What next? --Alexander (talk) 14:10, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Partnership with Local Tourism Boards

Hi! Having seen the update from the Wikivoyage DE team and the arrival of the City of London Visitor Development Team on the City of London article, I was wondering whether it would be worth creating some sort of scheme whereby Wikivoyage could partner with local tourism boards. Perhaps a page could be created on which articles could be jointly adopted by an editor and a tourist board together, benefiting both parties in the long-run. The tourist boards would provide content and information about an area (giving them free publicity for their area), whilst the editor (preferably someone with a knowledge of the area in question) would ensure that the article was balanced and help to induct the board into the ways of Wikivoyage. I don't know whether something like this already exists (I'm quite new here), or whether individual editors would have to invite tourist boards or whether it could be done centrally, but hopefully this would provide a way of creating large volumes of accurate content and spreading the word about this great project. I'm sure mentioning that Wikivoyage is part of the same organisation as Wikipedia would be enough to get many authorities interested and the free publicity element would be lapped up. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 00:36, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Would be nice... so far, most of what I've been seeing from CVB's is their working against us (by packing entire articles with fluff) when they could be well-positioned to work with us. I'd be inclined not to utter the words "free publicity" and instead explain that we're looking for listings of things to see and do in their area for inclusion in a travel guide. Typically, they do have a relatively-complete list of points of interest (for instance, Cobourg had their entire city-level booklet on their website as a seventy-page .PDF) but we'd need to search online for specific info like pricing, hours and descriptions to properly fill a {{listing}} for each place mentioned. There are also provincial/state or regional-level entities which provide tourism info. K7L (talk) 01:44, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I echo, and amplify, User:K7L's concerns. I think it's important to emphasize that Wikivoyage's goal is to provide readers with a fair overview of what a particular place has to offer visitors as well as what travellers should avoid, whereas local CVBs' goals are purely promotional. Simply put, although we welcome contributions from local CVB's, I would feel quite leery (to put it mildly) about a full-scale "partnership" with entities whose goals are fundamentally different from, and sometimes completely opposed to, our own. IMO, that's asking for trouble. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:07, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I think local tourism boards are the best source of travel info, sometimes even better than going there yourself! While they can be touty, if you make it clear that the info will be removed, they will play it safe. I've contacted a few CVBs in Australia, and offered to do the editing myself while they provide information and resources. Another slightly-related idea is that after a CVB's town/city article on WV has been improved to a high standard, we could make agreements for CVBs to link back to us from their website. That means more links from a larger variety of sources, so a higher Google ranking, plus, exposure to those tourists who use CVB websites. We could create a button/banner sort of thing. "Discover more on Wikivoyage" JamesA ^>talk 13:01, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I've added a section Wikivoyage:Welcome, tourism professionals#What to put in, what to leave out in an attempt to explain what we're looking for. We do want to know if there are interesting things to see or do that are missing from our guides, we do want to identify outdated info and fix incomplete listings, but we likely don't want vendors' opinions on whether a destination is "a true vacation getaway" or "a paradise on Earth with cool breezes and beautiful sunsets" as those meaningless clichés have already been applied to every destination on the planet. K7L (talk) 20:10, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I've just seen this - it looks like such an idea already exists, but it appears to be dormant. Perhaps we could reawaken it? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 20:07, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Main Page Proposal - Please Comment

Sorry to have two topics created by me in a row, but I was just hoping some of you would be so kind as to take a look at the proposed new main page for Wikivoyage, here. I've already put it in the 'Request for Comment' section, but it's not garnered many responses thus far. If you have any ideas, opinions or problems with the new page, please let me know by posting in its discussion. Thanks!--Nicholasjf21 (talk) 00:41, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Travel writer

I'm brand new to wikivoyages but have been a travel writer for almost twenty years, publishing all over the world and living in 150+ countries with over a hundred published articles and thousands of photos. I can post all the stories on wikivoyages with photos but don't know exactly what you need. I've written stories on the usual countries but also on remote and seldom visited countries including Turkmenistan, North Korea, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, remote China and Tibet, Mali, Ethiopia and most every country in Africa, Asia and South America. Here's my journal pages: http://www.mytripjournal.com/RichWorld and here's a description of me as a writer by one of my editors along with a listing of stories published by Gonomad: http://www.gonomad.com/corp/davidrich.html

Any suggestions and how do I post all this, assuming it's something wikivoyages could us? Thanks, David Rich ((((

An easy way to start is by adding photos. The photos are stored on Wikimedia commons here [26] And you will see an upload link to the left. Let us know if you run into problems and welcome. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:30, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Welcome, indeed. You should create an account; there is a link for that somewhere, but I don't see it because I am already logged in. This lets contributions be credited to the account rather than just an anonymous IP address. It will also create a user page for you, which would be a good place for the links above (but see dt for limits on promoting yourself here). Finally, it will create a user talk page where people can contact you.

There may be issues with copyright either if you want to control usage of some material or if an employer or publisher, rather than you, holds copyright on some. An introduction to our policies on that is at Wikivoyage:Copyleft. Pashley (talk) 18:46, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I hold all the copyrights. Travel stories are sold with single use permissions. —The preceding comment was added by Grendelll (talk • contribs)

It sounds like our projects may be complementary, but unaligned. You can't upload material here unless you are willing to release them in line with our copyleft. A single use licence won't comply. Similarly, we can't make use of the material in your guides, unless it is released with a similar licence. --Inas (talk) 02:07, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Grendelll will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that's the import of what s/he's saying. The point is, those who published her/his stories bought only single-use rights for them - not that Grendelll is expecting us to pay for rights to use whatever s/he contributes here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:42, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see! Nevertheless, probably worthwhile giving our Copyleft a read, and making sure s/he is comfortable with it. --Inas (talk) 05:56, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I was just going to give wikivoyage all the stories and have no interest in promoting myself; I don't wish to allow the photos to be copied but the text can be. I'll check your copyleft thingie! Regards, Grendelll

A little help?

There's a strange bug - I am guessing it's got something to do with the new URL icon we placed in the listings, but I'm not 100% sure - that is messing up the formatting of the first listing in User:AndreCarrotflower/Elmwood Village#Jewelry. I know it's not anything I myself typed in there, because I haven't edited the listing since I wrote it, and it was fine at that time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to fix it.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

It should be OK now - it looks like the code was confused by the apostrophes around ''Artvoice'''s (two open, three closed, even though the close was supposed to appear in the text). -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:51, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Problems with new XML listings format

It's great to see that the "lat" and "long" (for WGS84 coordinates) for latitude and longitude are finally working after all these years but some things are not quite right. Is there a place I can correct them?

A trivial bug is the addition of an extraneous opening quote mark when check-in times are displayed eg: the only formatted entry in the "Sleep" section of our Wanaka article displays as:

• Montrose Bed & Breakfast, 120 Mount Iron Drive, ☎ +64 3 443-2289. "Check-in: 14:00, check-out: 10:00. NZ$ 80-130. Home stay

instead of:

• Montrose Bed & Breakfast, 120 Mount Iron Drive, ☎ +64 3 443-2289. Check-in: 14:00, check-out: 10:00. NZ$ 80-130. Home stay

Much more serious is that the e-mail format is possibly the worst imaginable. Not only is the full e-mail address displayed in blue lettering (useful for people that want to copy and paste to the e-mail programme of their choice or carry around the printed version to an internet cafe) but the redundant word "e-mail:" is there plus an envelope symbol. Talk about prolix overkill! The real fuck-up though is that both the latter two are hotlinked to the "mailto:" call which was strongly deprecated in this discussion:Wikivoyage_talk:Listings#Mailto:. -- Alice^✉ 02:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It looks pretty straightforward to fix. What do we want it to look like? Is there a conclusion somewhere? --Inas (talk) 02:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to just display the e-mail address which is self evident to anyone that uses it because of the @ symbol. No word "e-mail:", no envelope symbol and certainly no hotlink to the mailto: call (which sets off the blue colour). This is inevitably ugly but shorter than the current cock-up.

Is this format directly editable somewhere or is it protected code?

You saw what I meant about the extraneous quote mark just before the capital charlie in "Check-in:", did you? -- Alice^✉ 02:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Russia is using code which looks like . That hides the address behind the envelope icon. I'm not sure I agree with the envelope appearing in the printed version (as there's no way to use it there) but otherwise it might be an option if a consensus can be formed. K7L (talk) 02:40, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi! Unfortunately, anything labeled as "noprint" also disappears in the mobile version. Therefore, I had to keep all web-links and the e-mail address in print. If you know how to make things invisible in the print version but still available in the mobile version, please, tell me. Thanks! --Alexander (talk) 06:46, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

There are always two tensions here. Those who want the listings pretty and as compact as possible (especially for the print version) and those who see the listings as inevitably ugly but a real service to the traveller (and especially those with on-line access). In this case my suggestion is that, like telephone, fax numbers, GPS co-ordinates and street addresses, e-mail addresses should not be hidden behind cute envelope symbols since otherwise it's difficult to phone, fax, find and visit if one is carrying just the printed version until one gets on-line later. I therefore intend to remove the horrendous computer buggering (unless you're a micksoft afficiando) mailto: hotlink and the extranous verbiage. -- Alice^✉ 03:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It is directly editable at Template:Listing. --Inas (talk) 02:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. And I see the extraneous quote mark has now been removed -- Alice^✉ 02:56, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Can we use a Wikipedia link in listings yet or is that still being discussed? Is there any agreed format to use in listings yet, if the decision has not been made yet so as to add a bit of future-proofing? -- Alice^✉ 03:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, Wikivoyage talk:Listings#Listings tags and links to Wikipedia is still deadlocked, basically a 50:50 split for:against linking to WP if a listing here has an article there, even though discussion has been open since the beginning of the year on this. K7L (talk) 03:32, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

That was my impression too. However, I'm going to be adding a lot of see listings to articles shortly, many of which have long and detailed articles about their history on WP and I would much prefer to add the appropriate XML tags now rather than go back later and do tedious addendums. If the consensus is to switch them on, they would then display correctly if I get the formatting right and (if I don't format them correctly or) if the decision is not to turn them on, then they simply won't be seen and less of my time is wasted... -- Alice^✉ 03:39, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't look like the proponents of linking to WP have been able to build a consensus to me. Therefore, for now, we won't be linking to WP. We don't close discussions here, so that position may continue to evolve. And Alice, we all know that secretly you just love those addendums! :-) --Inas (talk) 03:51, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

As users from WP find us and wander over here, it won't be so much "may continue to evolve" as "is guaranteed to be a moving target". :) K7L (talk) 03:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Good job it's a wiki! :-) I look forward our new contributors joining the fray. --Inas (talk) 04:08, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I must say, I feel such a peace come over me, seeing the numbered blue xl links all disappear. --Peter ^Talk 04:40, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

But those annoying blue, incrementally increasing numbers haven't all disappeared. We have hundreds of thousands of listings that have not been listingified. And now with the silly little grey globes you have created a perverse incentive for business owners not to use XML listings! -- Alice^✉ 04:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

That's assuming both that business owners actually can be bothered to learn how everything works here (good luck...) and that they like [32] after their name for some reason. K7L (talk) 05:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Why remove the blue text link which is intuitive and web standard for a link to a subject and replace with an ugly grey dot that is much more difficult to select than a whole word?--Traveler100 (talk) 05:27, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Can we consolidate any such discussion. Currently there are discussions happening in Wikivoyage talk:External links, Wikivoyage talk:Listings, and probably elsewhere. Since we're not just talking about Listings here, then the former looks like the right place to me. --Inas (talk) 05:55, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I see nothing much on the "external links" page, the discussion appears to be on the template's talk page, on this page and on Wikivoyage talk:Listings. I'd suggest consolidating to Wikivoyage talk:Listings. K7L (talk) 06:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Front linking and the reasoning that led us to the postlinking policy, are all at Wikivoyage talk:External links. See you at Wikivoyage talk:Listings --Inas (talk) 04:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Spruce up the Policies page?

Not really sure who checks the Requests for comments page, so I´ll mention here. I'd like some opinions on a proposal to spruce up the Policies page here. Thanks! Texugo (talk) 15:00, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Panorama pictures

Hi guys! I've seen this nice panorama feature in German wikivoyage: [27] Is there a way how I can do the same with some simple template in English wikivoyage? Ml31415^✉ (talk) 21:25, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

{{de:vorlage:panorama}} appears to be a version of Wikipedia's wide image {{w:template:panorama}}. I'm not sure if there are mediawiki:common.css changes that must be made before creating {{panorama}}. K7L (talk) 01:16, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your hint! I translated the template and adjusted the magnify icon. First proud use case: Nha Trang Ml31415^✉ (talk) 03:55, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

It should be possible to print out Wikivoyage on paper. If an image is too wide, then it might be impossible to include the whole image on the same paper. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Should we put Template:Panorama into Category:Exclude in print? LtPowers (talk) 03:57, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Add non-breaking space to edittools

Wikivoyage:Measurements#Avoid orphaned units suggests using non-breaking spaces. I wonder if   could be added to edittools, say on the wiki markup line. I can never remember the exact code and always have to look it up. Nurg (talk) 23:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. LtPowers (talk) 04:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Ahhhhhhhh, so you're the go-to man, Lieutenant!?

Please would you also add to the edit tools both the tollfree=""and lat=""and long="" XML tags now they're working properly, together with the missing currency symbols talked about here: Wikivoyage talk:Currency

Thanks in anticipation. -- Alice^✉ 05:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Any admin can edit MediaWiki:Edittools; I'll leave the requested change to those more familiar with that particular arena. LtPowers (talk) 16:25, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I've made a few additions, including lat, long, & tollfree. Additional currency symbols & useful templates have been added as well (diff). AHeneen (talk) 19:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

View on Wikipedia's city collages

I've been adding images from Wikipedia to cities the last few days (mostly remote Russian cities since they're an interest of mine). Anyway, for many larger cities Wikipedia have created a collage with important buildings and street scenes. I have always thought they would be great for Wikivoyage and that they fit into our vision of creating a more attractive looking guide but I'd like some input on this. And I feel a tiny bit bad about "stealing" them from WP! ;) --Jonte-- (talk) 00:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I have no opinion, but I'll mention Wikivoyage:Image_policy#Montages as the current position.--Inas (talk) 00:31, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

There does seam to b be a lot of historic policies on this site that are putting a damper on new contributors enthusiasm. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:11, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps it's time for some sort of review in order to make it clear just what Wikivoyage's values are and what sort of 'spirit' we're aiming for? I'm quite a new user and must confess I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Wikivoyage's guidelines. Given the fact that at present we're looking at a Main Page consisting almost wholly of images, I don't think that montages would be particularly damaging; in fact, you could say they provide particularly good value in terms of space used. However, I would say that taking them straight from Wikipedia is not a good idea. As (see above and below) we attempt to insert more links between that site and this one, users will not want to see what, at first glance, looks like a page they have just left.

Personally, I think that travel guides have to look a bit 'glossy' because travel is (in the majority of cases) an aspirational thing. In order to retain the reader's interest and to supplement the text I personally feel that images are very important. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 13:05, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

It's probably neatest if we discuss the policy at Wikivoyage talk:Image policy. I have some views, but I'll discuss them there. Please join me; it's important for Wikivoyage to be flexible, as long as the change serves the traveler. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion started at Wikivoyage_talk:Image_policy#Montages. Please participate there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:07, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) First and always: The traveller comes first, then see Goals and non-goals. New goals and non-goals can be added by consensus, removing either a goal or a non-goal would be theoretically possible, bur likely to be extremely contentious. The rest is commentary. If you can show that a change is in the spirit of a goal and not a non-goal, it is likely to get some support. Details of how to do it are another matter, and there is considerable inertia to be overcome to change something like formatting and layout, as we try to keep article style moderately consistent, and changes make for a lot of work to update the whole site. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:16, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Related sites

The current list of interwiki prefixes moved to the sidebar ( 'wikipedia:', 'wikitravel:', 'dmoz:', 'citizendium:', 'gen:', 'commons:', 'tech:', 'assoc:', 'wmc:', 'wtp:' ) by mw:extension:RelatedSites contains a few prefixes which no longer exist or are being removed. I presume we want to keep 'wikipedia:', 'commons:' and 'dmoz:', WT is useless as the underlying interwiki prefix is going away, gen: tech: assoc: were specific to Wikivoyage eV (and are redlinks), wtp: was WT Press (defunct, redlinked) and wmc: (broken, redlinked) was probably an alias for commons:

Not sure how citizendium: ended up in this set; while valid, it's just not anything I've ever seen linked from Wikivoyage. The list is in one of the server config files 'wmgRelatedSitesPrefixes' so presumably any additions or removals would need to go through bugzilla:

Are there any new additions ('wikinews:' categories were mentioned once?) or are keeping just 'wikipedia:', 'commons:' and 'dmoz:' enough? K7L (talk) 03:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

We should definitely add Wikinews and Wikibooks (for phrasebooks). --Peter ^Talk 04:08, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Links to OpenGuides appear there too, at least acc to Wikivoyage:Cooperating with OpenGuides. However I have queried that at Linking to OpenGuides not approved? – Nurg (talk) 05:46, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe Meta for policy pages? What about Wikisource and Wikiversity in addition to Wikibooks? Wikiversity would be great to link with Phrasebooks...for example, today's featured is the Breton Language Department with several lessons for beginners (see: The Center for Foreign Language Learning for more languages). Wikiversity also has "Portals" (rather than categories) for some countries, like Portal:France. Like us, these other projects (Wikibooks, Wikisource, & Wikiversity) are in development, so they may not have relevant categories presently to match our pages, but may in the future. It's also worth noting that if we link to these site, someone should leave a message in their equivalent of the Travellers' Pub to encourage cross-linking to Wikivoyage. Our guides are somewhat like books (some people on the Travel Guide RfC that opposed though our project would fit into Wikibooks) and many Wikiversity portals prominently Wikipedia (on the page, not sidebar).

While not concerning the sidebar, any ideas on how to coordinate with Wikibooks once we get the Wikivoyage:Books up and running with community saved books? Specifically, could the search function on Wikibooks contain links to relevant Wikivoyage book. Someone searching for "Germany guide" could be linked to a WV book with all Germany-related pages or maybe a book about visiting concentration camps. AHeneen (talk) 06:32, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I recently went ahead and created b:Template:Wikivoyage on Wikibooks, with the approval of an administrator. I also went ahead and added links to all the Wikijunior countries. In terms of what links to add to the Sidebar, I'd say add all the WMF projects, as we don't necessarily have to use them right now. It gives us the option of doing so later, at least. I'll also draw attention to some open questions about the dmoz link here. JamesA ^>talk 08:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with this template linking to Special:Search/{PAGENAME} by default. It should always link to a specific article here, if it does anything at all. A link to a search page is useless for SEO (as Special: pages are excluded in robots.txt) and not particularly useful to the reader (as it encourages editors to dump the template blindly onto pages without verifying the destination article even exists). The default link to a page of the same name was tolerable (it's in many templates where I've been replacing WT → WV in various obscure foreign languages, some of which should have no default as the character set isn't the same for that language) but the link to the search page was a kludge. It's unfortunate it exists already in the English-language verion of w:template:sister project links and is certainly not desirable in new templates. K7L (talk) 19:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

One issue with cross-linking WP-WV is the naming policy. We should create redirects using the WP naming policy, so Pueblo, Colorado redirects to Pueblo and so forth. AHeneen (talk) 04:08, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Why not just link directly by specifying a destination in the template, ie: {{wikivoyage|Pueblo}}? No need to go through redirects, Special:Search or anything else. K7L (talk) 23:30, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

If we get w:Template:Sister project links modified to include WV by default, then there will be many incoming links that haven't been explicitly synchronized with our titles. LtPowers (talk) 04:04, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Have we requested that the other sister projects be added to our Extension:RelatedSites list yet? If not, where should we do that--Bugzilla? It would be really handy to be able to add more than one link in the sidebar per sister site, too. For example, we sometimes combine municipalities like Clinton-Camp Springs, and those should have two WP links (to Clinton and Camp Springs). --Peter ^Talk 03:57, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Agree, it would be useful to be able to add more than one link in a sidebar. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:00, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

New SEO Expedition

There's a lot of ideas floating around lately about increasing our Google ranking and ensuring we are the most popular travel wiki on the web. I think the best way to go forward would be a new expedition focused on improving these aspects of our site. It cannot be emphasized enough how important it is to move up the Google rankings, as the site can't be successful if we don't have many viewers. Of course, more viewers will naturally come with more content and better quality, but we already do that quite well. The following is some suggestions and ideas I had that the Expedition could focus on:

• Useful addition of the Wikivoyage template to Wikipedia articles
• The continuous project of removing that site which cannot be named links from WMF wikis
• Working on improving cross-linking between other WMF wikis such as Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Commons, etc
• Verifying and monitoring our Alexa profile
• Promoting the inclusion of a "As featured on Wikivoyage" badge on tourist bureau websites about high-standard articles
• Working on the widespread inclusion of Wikivoyage links on dmoz
• Other common SEO techniques and alternative methods of garnering attention

I think in the long-run, a focused project with set goals will be very beneficial. Thoughts? JamesA ^>talk 08:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a great idea to me. Attracting people through Google is absolutely key to our success. Is there already an "As featured on Wikivoyage" badge, or does one need to be made? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 12:01, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we should be contacting the owners of non-WMF sites which still link to the old wiki, explain the situation (perhaps with a link to the NYT coverage) and ask that they update their links? DMOZ is limited as they only link any given site once, the cleanup of WT templates from obscure foreign languages in Wikipedia is ongoing, not sure how much Alexa can do for us as they're just a traffic counter. The main concern should be to update inbound links to point to WV. K7L (talk) 19:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Let's start it, at least it will be a gathering point for this discussion and a few others going on. I don't suppose we can think of a better name than SEO Expedition? --Inas (talk) 23:03, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that: it'll definitely need a much better name. I couldn't think of anything good at the time! JamesA ^>talk 06:02, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Search expedition? K7L (talk) 18:50, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

• Notice - I've created the Expedition as a trial at Wikivoyage:Search Expedition. The name can always be changed later :) Please join and help me out, everyone! JamesA ^>talk 00:37, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

How to link articles on WP?

Wikipedia has an article on Yowah. We have an article on Yowah, with some images that were here, that have now been transferred to commons. Can someone who has done it, write a couple of liner as to what we should add to the WP article to make it link to the right places? --Inas (talk) 22:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I have put in interwiki links on the two Yowah articles. Wikipedia to Wikivoyage and Wikivoyage to Wikipedia. The appear to display as the documentation describes.

• Both links go at the end of the articles.
• The Wikivoyage link to Wikipedia [[Wikipedia:Yowah]] displays in the sidebar, so I don't think it makes a functional difference where you put it, but it makes it easier to find.
• The Wikipedia link to Wikivoyage {{Wikivoyage|Yowah}} goes in the "External links" section, as that is where it will display as a small box with icon and text on the RHS. This is the place recommended by WP:MOS.

I am not sure if this is what you wanted. If not, please explain. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:14, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

That is exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks. It looks like the WP template needs to be the first thing in the section to format correctly. --Inas (talk) 02:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Salem (Massachusetts) article in serious condition

I won't call it critical, but for such a highly visible tourist attraction, the Salem guide is in horrible shape, with all kinds of terrible formatting and touting problems. I just slapped a "style" tag with some remarks on the "Eat" section and did major excisions and detouts, but the section still looks dreadful, and "Drink" and other sections are also in big trouble. To hearken back to Salem's olden days as a seaport, this calls for all hands on deck. Anyone's attention and participation in the cleanup of this article would be time well spent. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:51, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Airport Articles

I've just posted here that I feel large airports (as well as huge ones) should be permitted articles. Any thoughts would be gratefully received! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 18:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

The Template:Infobox again.

This is the current one, background-color: #f3f3ff

This one is background-color: #fec {{{2}}}

This one is background-color: cornsilk {{{2}}}

This one is background-color: cornsilk And it has no border, but has rounded corners

background-color:#eff A more bluish box.

A more white box I also got rid of the padding on the top and bottom to see what that would look like.

I proposed changing the Infobox template about a month ago, as I think the current one looks UGLY. I proposed, lightening the background color, the border color, rounding the border, removing padding and shrinking the text size slightly. Some mockups were made, shown above and there was some discussion but nothing has happened about it in the last three weeks. Just want to restart discussion. 86.40.39.20 14:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

To avoid having discussions in two places, the discussion referenced by the anonymous user is at Template talk:Infobox#Style and it would be best if further discussion takes place there. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:54, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect word for "search" in Romanian on page at www.wikivoyage.org ?

Looking at http://www.wikivoyage.org/, I noticed that the word for "search" in Romanian directly above the search textbox appears to be incorrect. Assuming that the words for "search" in the different languages that Wikivoyage supports are given in the same order as the links to the respective language Wikivoyages, Romanian would be last. The word given is "Salt", which a quick Google translate shows as meaning "jump" in Romanian. Checking http://ro.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Pagina_principal%C4%83, I see that the "Search" textbox in the upper right of the page is labeled "Căutare", which another Google translate seems to confirm as the correct word for "search" in Romanian. Is this indeed a bug? If so, where should it be filed? 64.252.206.116 01:25, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I've reported the problem, thanks for letting us know. –sumone10154^(talk) 01:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Bulk transfer of images to Commons

So what's the best procedure for getting bulk images from WV-old over to Commons? User:Travelpleb's contributions look solid (seem to be actual own work as far as my detective skills can tell) and would fill in a lot of obscure gaps. Jpatokal (talk) 01:03, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Anybody? Jpatokal (talk) 05:16, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Image transfer discussions are centralised at WTS.[28] One problem is that a lot of people have uploaded images without a licence. If such files were uploaded before a specific date in 2007, they can normally not be copied to Commons. If they were uploaded later, they can often be uploaded to Commons, but this depends on the exact wording of MediaWiki:Uploadtext at the point when the file was uploaded. --Stefan2 (talk) 19:02, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Ta, I've raised this on WTS-old. Travelpleb's images should be fine, as they all date from 2012. Jpatokal (talk) 22:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Bump -- WTS seems to be down? Jpatokal (talk) 03:13, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Notification of IdeaLab proposal for a new Listing Editor

Hi all. As per the original discussion here, I've made a new proposal on the Meta-Wiki IdeaLab for a Listing Editor. I've proposed that it'd have to be built and funded by the WMF. If you could provide input, comments and/or support on that page, it'd be appreciated. Please comment on why you think the listing editor is such an integral part of our wiki, and how we are severely disadvantaged when we lack it and other "free" travel wikis have it. Comment here: meta:Grants:IEG/Listing editor for Wikivoyage. JamesA ^>talk 01:58, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I think Wikidata Phase II (currently in development) will eventually include an editor like this. It might be a good idea to ask the Wikidata devs about this. —Ruud 18:26, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The proposal will need to be modified to match m:Grants:IEG#ieg-learn. It's currently worded as if new or existing WMF staff are to do the programming; this needs to be changed to estimate time and monetary cost for a non-WMF programmer (or programmers) to implement this entirely as a client-side script or gadget (so no MediaWiki extensions or code to be installed server-side, and no WMF "engineering" involvement either to write or to evaluate the code). K7L (talk) 21:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

White Space

I tried to find a tech savvy explanation somewhere as to why wikivoyage - specially in outline articles, has so much white space between headings and text, and portions of text.

(In wikipedia in the old days, some eds would take issue with white space pointing out that the spacing would be fixed by the software)

The answer is at Wikivoyage talk:Section headers and Wikivoyage:Section headers - however it appears to be an unresolved issue.

If I understand the text at section headers, the extra spacing it is to make some editing 'easier' by designating the space convention into a fixed number.

The way it is presented in the current MOS/Section header instruction - suggests that wikivoyage can afford the space? sats (talk) 23:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Each <newline> character takes up a whopping one byte... same as any other unaccented character. K7L (talk) 00:29, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough - that could be interpreted as (a) why worry? (b) so what, etc... currently WikiVoyage has less than 30,000 articles. It can afford to not worry about server space compared to other wikimedia projects like commons or wp en, what happens when WikiVoyage clears 100,000 the accumulative effect of a spacing policy that is for the benefit of editors, not readers, might just be taking up more than a few bytes... will it be too late then to retrospectively re-format spacing? Just a thought... sats (talk) 09:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

If the concern is solely about storage of text, don't worry about that. A space character (uncompressed) is one byte. A MB has 1,000,000 bytes, and a TB has 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Modern data centers have storage capacities in the hundreds or thousands of terabytes, so even a million articles with a thousand extra characters each would take up a negligible amount of space (1GB), and that's before considering any savings due to data compression and other techniques. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:02, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that - I suppose the only real concern was that at talk of the Section header page there was what looked like an inconclusive discussion as to format and spacing.... sats (talk) 01:04, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Certainly the revision required to remove it, would take an several orders of magnitude of additional space. --Inas (talk) 23:21, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps not, if a bot could do it automatically. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Bot or no 'bot, every previous version of the article still needs to be stored as part of the revision history, whitespace and all. K7L (talk) 00:41, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Settlement of litigation between Internet Brands and the Wikimedia Foundation

A settlement to the lawsuit between Wikimedia and IB was announced today: [29]. From the blog post:

"The settlement was signed on February 14, 2013, and Internet Brands has now released the Foundation and Wikivoyage e.V. (the German not for profit who worked so hard to make the project a success) from any and all claims related in any manner to the creation and operation of the wiki travel project. In return, the Foundation will dismiss the suit... It's now possible for the Wikivoyage community to continue their efforts to build a global free-knowledge travel site unhindered. We wish them the best of luck and look forward to working closely with the Wikivoyage community as the project grows and thrives."

On a personal note, the Wikimedia Foundation immediately offered to help me when IB first announced the lawsuit against James and I, they provided excellent defense through the law firm of Cooley LLP, and they have been amazingly supportive and professional through this ordeal. I hope no one ever has to go through the stress of being sued, but the WMF made a difficult ordeal as easy as it could possibly be and impressed the hell out of me during the process. While I was a supporter before, having seen first-hand how hard and professionally they worked to support this community, I'll be an even bigger supporter of theirs for a long time to come. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:00, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Here's to catharsis. Onward and upward.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:08, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Very great news. I and other WV contributors are also very thankful for the work WMF has done to establish this wiki and for the work and courage of the two of you to open doors to make this move possible and bear through these lawsuits. AHeneen (talk) 04:11, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Massive creation of user accounts.

There is an ongoing massive creation of user accounts at a rate up to several per minute. I don't know what should be done, but if any steward sees this I suggest a checkuser may show account creation from one or a small nimber of addresses. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:15, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, this isn't good, but I'm not sure if something can be done at this point. Should a massive spam/vandal attack occur and local admins are unable to handle it, it's usually possible to flag down a steward to take emergency measures, BTW. (Apparently this happened with a ton of IPs over at Simple English Wikipedia a year ago, and the stewards temporarily made the site a m:global sysop wiki.) --Rschen7754 10:46, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Endless... where are the stewards? sats (talk) 14:23, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any issue unless these accounts start doing malicious things. Looking at the last few days of account creations, the rate of account creation doesn't seem too high (Special:Log/newusers). What exactly can be done to stop this purported problem? Checkuser? AHeneen (talk) 15:05, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

They have been created non-stop (about 2 per minute) since November 11 - there might be a very rational explanation of what is creating the automatically generated new users (now over 100,000 I think), it would be good for someone in the know to pop up and explain it all, so that the average wikivoyage participant doesnt have panic attacks looking at the new user log.... sats (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Aren't most of them created when they sign up to other wikis? I know I've never had an en-wiki account until I joined Wikivoyage, and now I've a red-link userpage there. - Torty3 (talk) 15:50, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe that is the rational explanation - maybe there is a need for clarification of something like that - otherwise there is uncertainty as to what is generating the names and where they are coming from... sats (talk) 15:57, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Sincerest apology to all who have read this - answer is at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login sats (talk) 16:09, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

It's my understanding that an account is automatically created when someone is logged into a WMF wiki and visits another project. So someone logged in at en-WV and visits ru-WV will automatically have an ru-WV account created. Same as someone logged into en-WV visiting en-Commons will have an account automatically created there. AHeneen (talk) 16:55, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the "was created automatically", as opposed to simply "was created", for most accounts indicates this is the case. These are likely people with a Wikipedia account that are now visiting Wikivoyage for the first time. —Ruud 19:42, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Looking up a few names at Special:CentralAuth suggest there is indeed little to worry about. This actually looks like a good thing. —Ruud 19:48, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought it seemed a little high, but I guess I wasn't used to the numbers (seemed a little high for even the English Wikipedia). --Rschen7754 19:58, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I would beg to differ as to the explanation now visiting Wikivoyage for the first time - over 100,000 new since november 2012 suggest the wikimedia server is simply placing usernames that exist elsewhere and might take months yet

For something positive to come out of this - any suggestion where the following should be placed:

Note that automated background Automatically created newusers appear on the User creation log are being generated as part of the linking in with Wikimedia servers and not to be concerned about  ?? sats (talk) 01:17, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this is a background process. Your Wikivoyage account should be created when you visit the site for the first time. No sooner, no later. —Ruud 19:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Would it be more appropriate then to have a comment - Note that automated Automatically created newusers appear on the User creation log when users from other wikis visit Wikivoyage for the first time - would that be closer to the mark? sats (talk) 23:57, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds right to me. —Ruud 10:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

w:en:Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/IBobi

In my role as a SPI clerk and English Wikipedia admin, I have blocked four confirmed socks of IBobi on enwiki. The only one to have an account on enwikivoyage was already blocked. I don't hold sysop on any of the other affected wikis and did not block there. The stewards have been notified. --Rschen7754 11:10, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Interesting that this is happening after the resolution of the lawsuit. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:06, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yup. foundation:File:WMF IB 021213 Signed Settlement Agreement.pdf was signed on the 13th. The libellous claims from anonymous user "WorldTravelller" on mywot.com falsely claiming viruses on our site were posted on the 14th [30]. No idea whether there's a connection, at least without asking the admins of that site for logged IP addresses, but it would be very unfortunate if an out-of-court settlement were misconstrued as a green light to further disruptive editing. K7L (talk) 18:51, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

It seems IB is putting more resources into ruining us than fixing their own site. That false comment on mywot.com appeared only hours after I posted the link. I'll hopefully able to claim our site on there over the next few days and ask WOT to both retract that comment and tell us the IP of that user. JamesA ^>talk 05:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Legal is aware.  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Update: the new socks were globally locked this morning by m:User:Matanya. --Rschen7754 02:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata

Has anyone here looked into this Wikidata project and how it might be useful for Wikivoyage? They're concentrating on getting it set up for Wikipedia to start with, but after that it might be very useful for the lists that Wikivoyage uses. So someone updating a phone number on the English Wikivoyage would automatically be updating that phone number for all languages. Might be a good idea for people to start getting involved in figuring out what would need to be done, if that's not being done already. 86.44.163.139 22:53, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm an admin here and on Wikidata, so I'm pretty familiar with both projects :) It's probably good to start thinking about, but it will be a while before it's deployed to non-Wikipedia sites, considering that we don't even have it working on 280 of the Wikipedia sites yet at all. --Rschen7754 23:25, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I think someone will come up with a usefull way to make use of the data on wikidata in wikivoyage. Wikidata is more powerfull then most users realise. Carsrac (talk) 22:23, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Can we start with basic stuff like population? That seems like the most primitive use-case for us, and will give us an opportunity to play. It is also something likely to be updates by our friends over at WP, so we can just forget about it, thus saving us time/effort. --Inas (talk) 23:18, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

quite extensive moves are now occurring at WP en of wikilinks - I think it is worth waiting and watching as to how that works. sats (talk) 23:59, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata has a large enough volume of work to perform with just basic info on the large Wikipedia language versions, let alone extending Wikidata's capability to other projects and more extensive uses. Maybe we can set up a page like Wikivoyage:Working with Wikidata or Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage and Wikidata where we can collect ideas and, when the time comes, have a place where all ideas and proposals can be found for Wikidata users to view (and start working on) and for us to communicate with them. Since this is a cross-project and cross-language issue, where is the proper location to keep such discussion? Maybe we can discuss this here and when the time comes, start a page on Meta to formally discuss this with other WV projects. AHeneen (talk) 02:17, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Someone has started a page for Wiktionary at Wikidata. Might be a good idea to get one set up for Wikivoyage. 86.44.163.139 09:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Please, let's use Wikivoyage:Wikidata to brainstorm and coordinate what we might do on Wikivoyage with Wikidata, and possibly, following above Wikidata:Wiktionary example (but I've no other data on how Wikidata is organized) d:Wikidata:Wikivoyage (or d:Wikivoyage?) for what folks might do at Wikidata for or with Wikivoyage. I love names that are so short and obvious that I can type them without looking them up. --Rogerhc (talk) 05:27, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Here's one nice application that has already been build on top of Wikidata. Not particularly useful for WV, but it show what can eventually be done. —Ruud 10:37, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I have started a very basic Wikivoyage:Working with Wikidata. --Peter ^Talk 23:30, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:Traveltopic

Please see Template talk:Traveltopic#What happened??. I am confused by the deprecation of this template; I think it was done in haste. LtPowers (talk) 02:09, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Chicago Tribune

This piece Seniors on the Go: Want to be a travel writer? January 29, 2013 Ed Perkins, Tribune Media Services raises a few questions about our description of air travel and discount airlines - specifically that much of the "discounting" is done by third parties (not airlines), that claims a consolidator can "buy in bulk" from airlines are questionable and that air courier flights where a passenger seat is sold without the associated checked baggage allocation are impossible to find in the US. He then manages to misidentify WV as WT, correction here. Sigh. K7L (talk) 06:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Certainly there's cause for concern on the topic of our information on air travel, but on the whole, it sounded like a pretty positive write-up (though the WT/WV snafu likely means Internet Brands will get as much or more of a bump in traffic as we will). I think most people understand that imperfection is part and parcel of the nature of the wiki model—especially a smaller wiki like ours. And after all, Wikivoyage is far more than a collection of articles on air travel! -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 09:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we could try to correct the factual errors and notify the author? This might result in a positive follow-up ("WV quickly fixed the after they were notified of the situation, while they remain at WT.") Also some of the technical limitations (poor search results, few maps) seem to apply to WT and should be better here. Speaking of maps: why isn't WikiMiniAtlas available here? —Ruud 10:42, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

We should have someone from the WMF write in and complain. That article is disgusting, and disadvantages our position. The small clarification he later makes is referred to as unimportant, and that the content is identical. That is also false, as we've worked very hard over the last few months to improve our content on many articles beyond Wikitravel. It shouldn't be a clarification, but rather an apology. JamesA ^>talk 11:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Agree with James. And how can he say a search for the Aleutian Islands brings no results? Did he try to search for the "Alooshun" islands or what? Texugo (talk) 11:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

@JamesA: I have to agree with Andre here, overall the article sounds quite positive and the author seems quite enthusiastic. The criticism given seems constructive. In such cases it's always better to say "Thank you for pointing these mistakes out. We've been able to fix them and address your concerns." than to start complaining about it.

@Texugo: I think the author uses WT's search engine, not WV's (although it currently present a correct result on both, perhaps we should ask for a clarification?)

—Ruud 11:55, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

My issue isn't with his constructive criticisms, but rather his referring to Wikitravel as being under the Wikipedia umbrella rather than Wikivoyage. That is very damaging to our image, as it makes us look like the bad guys. His clarification was passive like it was no big deal, and even went as far to say that both sites are identical, so why bother with one over the other? JamesA ^>talk 12:09, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

A correction was issued in the article that followed a week later. An let's be honest here, 95% of the content here is still identical to WT. I don't think "complaining" is the way to go here, unless you prefer cultivating a bad reputation. A positive reply is likely to do more good. —Ruud 12:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The WT vs. WV faux pas was unfortunate, but if he's already admitted to having made the mistake in print, there isn't much more to do. The bit about the maps might be a way to differentiate ourselves from WT as we are making initial efforts to integrate mapsources, co-ordinates and OpenStreetMaps into our product. We're innovating. :) Handle this well and OSM could earn some good publicity too. The constructive criticisms about air travel need to be taken and used to improve those travel topics in the guide, as flight is an important topic for travellers. Anything that improves the guide should be eagerly welcomed. K7L (talk) 19:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think he has a really good point about "discount airlines" being a misnomer - as the fares are not actually being discounted, although I don't know what he's talking about when he says Southwest was not the first budget airline in the US (any ideas?). The preferred term nowadays seems to be "low-cost airlines", which has 2.5m Google searches compared to 200k for "discount airlines" (with the quotes). There are about 500 pages in Wikivoyage which reference the term "discount airlines", so it's probably best to rename/move the top pages and then semi-automate the rest with a find-and-replace. I wouldn't mind doing it but the scale of the job is pretty big, so any other volunteers? - Torty3 (talk) 07:51, 19 February 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)

"Closing" discussions

Following up from the brief discussion above about helping to make the consensus-building process more productive, Wikipedia has a process of "closing" discussions and including a summary of the decision once consensus has been reached, be it "no action", "change X", etc. See w:Template:Archive top for the template used, w:Talk:Austrian School#RfC Krugman critique about inflation for an example, and w:Wikipedia:Closing discussions for their policy. While I'm not suggesting we adopt their exact policy, the advantage I see to implementing a template that summarizes a discussion and marks it as "closed" here are:

1. It would be easier to quickly determine what the agreement of a discussion was when reading talk pages.
2. It would be easier to find discussions that had not reached an agreement.
3. There would be a process in place to encourage discussions to be pushed to some sort of closure.
4. It would be easier to determine when to update a policy page, since a "closed" discussion would indicate agreement for action (or lack thereof).

At least a few people seem to feel that our discussion process is clunky, so this seems like a potential way to make it a bit less so. If we implemented this "closing" process someone could still revisit an issue later, and I'd suggest that any template we use for "closed" discussions clearly notes that the issue can be re-opened in a new thread. If there is interest we can try this out on a single talk page - I'll volunteer to do a review of discussions and flag some of them with an appropriate summary of consensus so that we have an sample of what this would look like. Additionally, if any other suggestions are available, or if any Wikipedians can comment on how well this process works there, the feedback would be helpful. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:56, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with ever using a word like "closed" on a policy discussion. I'd propose instead that discussions be given a "Summary of consensus (or arguments) to date" and left open. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:27, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I fully support the premise behind closing discussions. I don't think a template would be necessary, however. Rather an informal Closed at the end of the discussion with the consensus. Adding new ideas or opinions to 5-year old discussions half way up a talk page is never a good way of obtaining comments, as most users will look for recent discussions at the bottom of the page. It's another reason to turn our Pub into a wiki 'forum' sort of format as I suggested above, whereby active discussions are pushed to the top, rather than new discussions. This means contentious and popular issues are recognised and not lost to oblivion. I think "closing" discussions is a much, much better idea than simply sweeping it to a talk page, never to be seen again. JamesA ^>talk 06:42, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Ikan - I tried to think of an alternative to "close" that would indicate that the current thread has reached a consensus, but couldn't think of one, so any alternative name suggestions would be welcome. I'm imagining a process that will be somewhat like how we currently handle VFD discussions (but without the explicit 14 day time period) - if we can say "this is the agreement" we mark the discussion thread "closed" (or whatever word is chosen), just as we do with a VFD nomination, and include a note that if someone wants to revisit the issue in the future that a new discussion thread should be started, just as an article would be re-nominated if it was kept after a VFD but there was a new reason to delete it. Addressing your comment about leaving discussions open for new comments, if someone needs to add something to a recently closed discussion then that's an indication that it should not have been closed and should be "re-opened", and for very old discussions James noted it is usually more productive to start a new thread - from experience, I've often found it to be a poor use of resources responding to someone who comments on a thread that is years old and out of date with current practice. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:58, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand the point about live discussions way up a page. I just think the word "closed" would tend to chill new thoughts. I'd propose an alternative procedure and wording: "There appears to be a consensus on the following point(s). Does anyone object?" Then if no-one objects within a day or two, "Consensus reached for now. If you would like to reopen this discussion more than [time period - I'd suggest 2 or 3 weeks] from the date of this comment, please start a new thread." We can talk about the precise wording or procedure, but words like "consensus," "agreement" and "acceptance" just feel better than "closed." Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:46, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Closing discussions is a bad idea. Creating multiple new sections for the same topic is silly; it's much better to have all of the discussion on a particular topic under one heading on the talk page. Anything else is confusing and requires a ton of back links to follow properly. Deletion/promotion discussions are finite, which is why we archive them, but anything else is open to change; we should never be cutting off discussion just because someone decides the discussion is "closed". LtPowers (talk) 15:55, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Could you suggest an alternative that would help to improve our consensus-building/discussion process, per the issues raised by multiple users in the thread above? There are obviously individuals who feel that our discussion process is in need of improvement (I'm one of them), so while I understand that you don't like the proposed idea and find it "silly", any constructive feedback on changes you would accept would be appreciated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:42, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

If some sort of change is deemed necessary, there are some much less disruptive suggestions made above, such as simply summarizing the current state of the discussion. I personally make it a practice to start a new subsection when re-opening an old discussion; we could encode that as a suggestion as well. In general, though, I think it's a very bad idea to keep adding new layers of bureaucracy and process, because it will serve to make discussions harder to enter, harder to follow, and take time away from improving the travel guides. LtPowers (talk) 19:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I think just changing the name from the discussion-killing "closed" to something like this might resolve concerns:

--Peter ^Talk 20:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. The date would be there (as long as the "non-closer" remembered to sign their summary) and as long as the summary was accurate, it would be a lot easier for users to scan to see what the current consensus was.

Mind you, if certain users didn't take it upon themselves to needlessly remove useful information from how-to-do-it and policy pages, we wouldn't have to spend such a long time scanning discussion pages rather than the articles themselves...

I opine that we should remove the experimental tag from this template and start using it right away. -- Alice^✉ 22:23, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, Peter. Excellent template and phrasing. Much better than using the word "close." Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:42, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

An excellent idea and definitely one to be implemented soon! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 00:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to try this out as an experiment on one existing talk page to solicit additional feedback - I think in addition to a "summary" line it would also be helpful to have a few standard "status" choices - consensus reached, discussion ongoing, no action to be taken, etc. Since this could potentially be a big impact on how discussions are done on this site it would be good to try it out slowly to ensure that it's actually useful rather than just another idea that is discussed, sees some limited initial use, and then fades into obscurity. I was hoping to do a test implementation this weekend but never got around to it, but will try to get to it in the coming days if no one does so first. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:43, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I've taken Peter's idea a step further and used some of the suggestions of Ryan, including a new type= parameter that sets whether there has been consensus, noconsensus, ongoing discussion or noaction. That can be easily reverted if we decide only one parameter is required. JamesA ^>talk 06:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

The finer points of districtification

I'm going to be finished districtifying Buffalo before too long, and I've begun looking ahead to my next major project which will consist of articles on suburbs such as Tonawanda, Amherst, Cheektowaga, etc. I hope to have at least one or two of those finished by May, when Buffalo is slated to be DotM.

Right off the bat, I can identify at least one suburb (Amherst), and possibly more, whose article is likely to be comparable in length to the current version of the Buffalo article, which we all agree is far too long at nearly 350K in length. The obvious answer, then, is to districtify.

Districtifying an article on a suburb is, I am almost certain, uncharted territory for our project. Are there any things I should keep in mind as I continue to formulate a strategy? Specifically, I know that the decision to districtify an article is largely made on the basis of its length, but is there a certain minimum population or other factor that a city should have, below which it should not be districtified per policy or precedent? (Amherst has a population of ~125K, most other suburbs which may or may not need to be broken down have populations of <100K). Might districtifying a suburb even be prohibited by our current policies? Should the suburban articles themselves be considered district articles for Buffalo?

Any help would be mightily appreciated.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd think that number of landmarks, actual listings and article length would be a greater factor in deciding whether to districtify, instead of merely population. A suburb with half a million people in identical tract/row houses but nothing unique to see would likely not be worth listing, in the extreme case. K7L (talk) 21:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that whether a suburb could be considered a "district" of a city has a lot to do with local attitudes. It might be defensible to consider places like Silver Spring, MD and Bethesda, MD "districts" of Washington, DC, because people there identify as being from DC, at least in my experience. It would not be defensible at all, in my opinion, to consider any suburb of New York City a "district" of NYC because the city has a very different identity from any suburb, or/and is separated from some suburbs by water (which would cover a place like Hoboken, which is more like a part of New York than a fairly major neighboring city to New York like Yonkers is).

In terms of what to consider when districtifying a suburb, I don't think there's really anything different to consider than you'd consider when districtifying any other city. Just do it in a way that serves the traveler or potential traveler. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, Erie County is one of the most provincialist, Balkanized places in the United States (for good and ill), so Ikan Kekek has answered my question quite definitively with his NYC analogy.

Thanks for the assistance; I shall proceed on that basis.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Hoboken is out of state. I suppose the corresponding "not-NYS" example for Buffalo would be Fort Erie (ON) or Erie (PA)? K7L (talk) 22:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Arlington, VA, Silver Springs, MD, and Bethesda, MD are "out of state" for DC, too. That's not the important distinction, in my opinion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Erie is not a suburb of Buffalo, nor is it even a satellite city—it's nearly 90 minutes away by car, and has pretty much the same level of relationship with Buffalo as Rochester. (Perhaps even less, as Rochesterians tend to root for Buffalo's sports teams, while Erie residents usually follow Pittsburgh's teams). Fort Erie is closer, and debatable, but IMO there aren't enough cross-border commuters in Fort Erie for it to truly qualify as a suburb. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

True, but even something like Kansas City gets split in half on our region boundaries (instead of being treated as one city with districts as needed). {{isPartOf}} can only list one parent region due to limitations in mw:extension:GeoCrumbs. K7L (talk) 23:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I am in disbelief that Amherst is in need of districtification. Andre, your enthusiasm is inspiring, but at some point you do have to edit yourself. =) LtPowers (talk) 01:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, just off the top of my head, an undistrictified Amherst article would include: Glen Falls, Amherst State Park, Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village, the Erie Canal, UB-related attractions (art galleries, performing arts center, sports facilities, and so forth), multiple bike trails and golf courses, at least a half dozen entries in "Do#Festivals and events"... not to mention "Eat", "Drink" and "Buy" sections that would be far larger than any Buffalo district article even if only the very best places were included.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

For Do and See, that seems comparable to Rochester (New York), which is not districted. I don't know about Eat, Drink, and Buy. I think perhaps we're coming from the wrong direction on this. Rather than seeing it as Amherst -- which, let's face it, is more of an administrative division of Erie County than a single community -- needing to be districtified, maybe what we should really say is that we need articles on the various communities within Amherst: East Amherst, UB, Williamsville, etc. I can much more readily accept the idea of Williamsville and East Amherst needing to be in different articles, than the idea of needing one giant overarching (i.e., "huge city") Amherst article. LtPowers (talk) 16:42, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Photo gallery issues

I've added a photogallery to the article Chipping Norton, but there is no official 'photo gallery' heading, and this has resulted in the page being tagged as breaking the manual of style. The extra photos included are not vital to the article, but I believe they add something and yet would not easily be intergrated throughout the article due to its size. Could anyone shine any light on this situation? --Therandomfish187 (talk) 19:35, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Have you read our image use policy? LtPowers (talk) 21:34, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Admin request; Double redirect

Please fix the following protected double redirects:
MediaWiki:Country →‎ Template:Country →‎ Template:Country skeleton
MediaWiki:District →‎ Template:District →‎ Template:District skeleton
MediaWiki:Hugecity →‎ Template:Hugecity →‎ Template:Hugecity skeleton
MediaWiki:Region →‎ Template:Region →‎ Template:Region skeleton
MediaWiki:Smallcity →‎ Template:Smallcity →‎ Template:Smallcity skeleton
-- Cheers, Riley 08:24, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. --Rschen7754 08:27, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Why are these in mediawiki: space? That's usually for interface messages like mediawiki:edittools. K7L (talk) 19:18, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, this does seem a bit bizarre. --Rschen7754 20:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Based on the username of the bot that did the original move back in 2004, it appears that these were originally created before the Template namespace existed. LtPowers (talk) 02:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• MediaWiki:Bigcity →‎ Template:Bigcity →‎ Template:Bigcity skeleton aswell -- Cheers, Riley 07:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Done. --Rschen7754 07:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Sister project templates?

Would it be feasible for WV to add sister-project templates, along the lines of w:Template:Wikivoyage or q:Template:Wikipedia? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 14:26, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

There are already links to Wikipedia and Commons in the sidebar in the "Related sites" section (above "Print/export" and "In other languages".) As there are no "See also" or "External links" sections in Wikivoyage articles there would be no obvious place to put the sister-links templates. —Ruud 16:12, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Drug policy

As Wikivoyage:Illegal activities policy leaves some gaps when it comes to destinations known for their liberal, or poorly enforced, drug laws. Therefore, you should contribute to Wikivoyage:Drug policy. Netherlands#Drugs, Black Rock City, Nimbin and La Paz can be used as case studies. /Yvwv (talk) 17:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Do we need another policy? If there's a gap in the illegal activities policy, propose a change to that policy. K7L (talk) 18:01, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I do not think we need this article. My immediate reaction on seeing it is to want to tag in for merging into illegal activities policy. Pashley (talk)

As I just wrote, an illegal activities policy cannot, by definition, cover activities which are legal. /Yvwv (talk) 23:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Admin request: move Guadalajara (Mexico) back to Guadalajara

A new user moved this article back in January. I'm pretty sure the city in Mexico meets our "much more famous" rule (a city of 1.5 million in a metropolitan area of 4.5 million, versus a rather small city of 80,000). Eco84 (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. --Peter ^Talk 03:53, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Tourist Office Alpha

Hi! A trial of the Tourist Office is now up and running here, as a place for travel questions to be asked and answered. Please plunge forward and ask or answer as many questions as you can! If you have any comments or queries about the page itself, please put them on the office's talk page. Thanks! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 18:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, please everyone add questions, if only to get a better idea for how this will work. --Peter ^Talk 18:47, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I posted a selection of recent questions from the TA forum. As I spent several months there back in 2010, I can vouch for the abundance of such vaguely phrased or even silly questions in any general travel forum (LP's Thorn Tree is also a good example). Let's try to be realistic. Not more than 10% of questions will address serious issues. Most of the questions will ask about things that are: i) already written in our travel guides; ii) should be mentioned in our travel guides (although potentially useful, questions of this sort have a high risk of spurring unnecessary travel topics and other ad-hoc things); iii) fundamentally subjective (I can't give advice on a travel itinerary to an unknown person; what you should see always depends on what you want to see and what your interests are).

Anyone wants to respond to this flow of dull questions? Traveller's forum is a good thing, but most people ask questions that you do not want to answer. One serious problem is that this forum will distract knowledgeable people from writing and updating travel guides. It may give some hint on what to write, though. But I think that the enormous waste of time on reading and answering the questions (once again, check the TA forum, try to stay there and answer questions) outweighs this benefit. --Alexander (talk) 19:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

There's no "edit" button beside the headers for each question. The only way to edit the page is with the "edit" tab at the top. This needs to be fixed. AHeneen (talk) 21:18, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

A good point! Maybe we need some sort of specific 'answer' button. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 21:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. --Peter ^Talk 21:37, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Tourist Office page name

I'm 100% in favor of title case, especially for pages like Wikivoyage:Tourist Office. However, if we are going to use title case, as in "Wikivoyage:Tourist Office" can we please also move the Pub to "Wikivoyage:Travellers' Pub". It is really silly using sentence case for stuff like this and I think we are old enough now to out-grow that. We use title case for place names of course without catastrophe. "Travelers' Pub" and "Tourist Office" are proper nouns and therefore, in English, demand title case just like your name and mine does. Sure, we would need to discuss a Pub name change in the Pub first. I like the title case. Let's keep the title case for the Tourist Office in any case. I've opened a thread in the Pub's talk page, discussing moving "Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub" to "Wikivoyage:Travellers' Pub".  :-)Rogerhc (talk) 01:18, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Listing editor

I've started working on a listing editor. As I can only work on this on some evenings, don't expect more than a very rough version in a week or two. —Ruud 23:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll have dancing in the virtual streets if we can get as far as a rough version in a week or two. LtPowers (talk) 01:31, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I've done a few turns just at hearing that you're working on it! Perhaps you'd like to take a look at Wikivoyage:Roadmap/Improved editing interface? --Peter ^Talk 02:47, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

That's fantastic! A rough version in a couple of weeks would definitely lead to dancing in the streets! --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 08:57, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Beta 1

Under the motto of "release early, release often", I can announce beta 1 of the listing editor. Note that this version will corrupt and lose data, so always check the diff after testing.

You can enable the listing editor by adding the following line:

importScript( 'User:Ruud Koot/Listing editor/beta1.js' );

to your Special:MyPage/common.js.

Known issues include, but are not limited to:

• not all field are handled yet
  • cannot edit URLs
  • 'lat' and 'long' will be lost on save
• round-tripping is terribly incomplete
  • e.g. Wikilinks will be turned into HTML anchors
• missing (must have) features
  • add additional fields to listings
  • add new listings
• does not fail gracefully on errors
• does not remove "save" button while saving (you can accidentally press it twice)

—Ruud 15:09, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. This is wonderful work! I have started testing this, but quick comment. Is it possible for this to handle multi-paragraph listings, e.g. Udupi#See?

Adding index from travel book

Would it be legal to create an index of places based off a travel book such as Weird New York? Also, why are there no citation templates on this wiki?Smallman12q (talk) 01:46, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

We don't use citations. Travel guides (unlike encyclopaedias) generally don't, as they can contain original research. I don't think we'd use an extract like that of place names derived from a non-free source. --Inas (talk) 02:12, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

How to link minor places

I'm struggling a bit with de-orphaning small villages or cities without particular touristic value. Can anyone tell me if there's a common practice to link such places other than via bread crumb trails? I would be tempted to put links under a nearby city "go next" header, but when the destination is not of any real interest, that seems to be a bad idea. Small villages can't all fit in larger region articles, and even bigger cities don't always fit in large region articles unless we create long lists. Do we create administrative county articles just for that reason? Take the example of Oneşti. It's not a village, >50.000 people, but as far as I can see it's not really a destination to recommend. It could benefit from some visibility, though. So where do I put it? :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 09:00, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

It is my understanding that the lowest level region should contain links to every city article it contains, thus any given city should always be listed in its immediate parent region. If that list gets too long and it doesn´t make sense to create new subregion articles, the list should be visually broken up with sub-headers, either geographically or by county or whatever makes the most sense.Texugo (talk) 10:59, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I suggest to put this information into the Go Next section of the nearby city, and create a redirect to this particular section. --Alexander (talk) 11:06, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

If you look at small towns in the USA the region pages often go down to county level. I think that is the solution in this case, create a page for the county and add this article as link together with link to the county town in this case that already has a page.--Traveler100 (talk) 11:20, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes there are still some county articles around, and some of them even make sense logically, but in general I would urge against creating county articles, as several discussions in the past have led to massive backtracking of county subdivision schemes, because too often there is no unique information to put in the county article except the list of cities-- we really shouldn´t be making such small subdivisions with articles unless there is a substantial amount of information that distinguished that area from the surrounding ones, because those things just sit around empty forever. In most areas, it doesn't matter to the traveller at all what county he is technically in anyway. You can and should put the link in the Go next section of nearby cities, but also as I said, every city needs to be listed in its immediate parent region, and the list can be broken up into sections there if needed, without creating lots of administrative division articles that will go nowhere.Texugo (talk) 12:12, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Would agree creating almost blank counties just for indexing cities is not desirable but would creating sections in region pages get round the objections to listing more than 9 cities in a page?--Traveler100 (talk) 13:35, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that´s what I mean by using sub-headers to break up the list...Texugo (talk) 15:09, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

See Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy#Dividing_geographical units: "If there are more than nine things to be grouped, we sub-divide the group into subgroups, each of which has 7 ± 2 things in it... This doesn't need to be applied stringently to the lowest level of the hierarchy; if a region has more than nine cities in it, and there's no helpful way to divide it into subregions then don't split it." -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:54, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The original question "small villages or cities without particular touristic value. Can anyone tell me if there's a common practice to link such places other than via bread crumb trails?"

Make an article on such a place a redirect to the nearest reasonable-size town or enclosing region. We do not need an actual article on an insignificant crossroads, say Bohunk Corners, pop. 35. However, having the redirect in place is dirt cheap and is useful in two cases; users may search for it (my Aunt Shirley lives there), and someone may link to it from some other article (it is the nearest place for groceries outside Trundlebug National Park).

Whether the article it redirects to should mention the place is a judgement call. Pashley (talk) 16:03, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, but rather than hamlets or cross roads, I was referring to places that should have articles of their own, in terms of size and potential useful information, but don't particularly serve as recommended/"good next stops" when travelling. (I took that explanation of "Go next" from Wikivoyage:Article templates/Sections). So the conclusion is (please correct me if I'm wrong): the lowest level region article should link all cities within that region, even if the list is longer than usual. Villages within the region are linked from the nearest city.? Then there's just the question of "what's a city". That's a judgement call, I suppose? JuliasTravels (talk) 19:22, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

We use the term "cities" in that header very loosely. Small villages are often listed in that section, and they should be. It basically just means municipalities. Any municipality that has its own article should be listed in some cities list. --Peter ^Talk 22:42, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Municipality is a legal term (an "incorporated municipality" has a functioning town hall) and doesn't always match our article boundaries. Often a suburb will be outside the town line legally but be listed as part of our cities, conversely many jurisdictions use "townships" ("towns" in NY/VT) as arbitrary municipal-sized containers into which to dump small unincorporated villages, suburbs and farmland. That main airport outside the town line is listed with the rest of the town. K7L (talk) 18:19, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

"Who's been here"

An idea just struck me, something to supplement the underutilized docent system - only 93 articles have docents, many of whom are probably long-gone WT users, and because of its low visibility, I´m not really sure just how much interaction that system has generated. So, this idea is something that I suppose may be useful and relevant to us and potentially helpful for travellers. Laying aside for now the somewhat tricky technical side, here is what I am imagining:

• When Wikivoyagers make their user page, they often list the places they have been. We create Template:HasBeenTo. For each link to a place they've been, the user puts {{HasBeenTo|Placename}}. The template simply creates a normal wikilink but also adds the userpage to the hidden Category:Has been to Placename.
• When you visit a page which any user has tagged on their user page as having been there, in the sidebar along with "What links here", there is a link for "Who's been here". A similar search box is placed on the Help page.
• When you click on that link or use the special search box, you see a page which lists the users who have been to that destination, preferably in order of users who most recently posted on WV. (there's the tricky part)
• Users can use this tool to find active users who have been to particular place to ask for personal recommendations or ask more detailed questions.

I actually haven't yet put much more thought into this than the time it took me to type it, but it strikes me as something potentially cool that might stimulate interaction, and I think it is likely to be used more than the docent system, since it's a lot easier than going to every article for destinations you've visited and adding yourself as a docent. Opinions? Thoughts? Texugo (talk) 17:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

People do not come here to ask questions. Otherwise, we would have a flow of questions posted on talk pages of individual articles, but this is not the case. I think that readers see the Wikipedia-style format, which tells them that it is more like encyclopedia, and certainly not a place for questions or requests. If we hope to change this, the idea of a travel forum is more promising than some additional link that 99% of readers will never notice. --Alexander (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps some tool of this kind could be implemented in the Tourist Office? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 21:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Something like Texugo has suggested might be useful for editing - when there is a districting discussion, for example, it would be nice to be able to contact editors with some knowledge of the area. This idea would also fit in nicely with the larger discussion about userboxes (can't immediately find the link, but I'm sure someone can add it). -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:40, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with both Alexander and Ryan. The Tourist Office is a more likely way to get more readers actively participating in the form of Q&A, but this idea would be really helpful to me as an editor. If I could see a list of people who know at least something about Miami, then maybe I could finally take down that rfc and get started with the districts! Similarly, I just wrote an "eat" overview section for Saint Petersburg, but I haven't actually been there in 10 years.

Userboxes would work, but they still require a higher level of expertise (basic wiki editing) than the vast majority of our readers have. Could we maybe add a button to the top left/right/center of articles that says "I've been here!" or something like that? Logged in users would then be added to that article's list, and ip users would get a prompt to log in or register? Then you could look at a list of people who have clicked the button. --Peter ^Talk 22:38, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the general idea, and think it could work. As Peter and the others said, however, templates and userboxes could be too confusing and mean the feature is underused. Another major issue that strikes me is that what if you've travelled to thousands of towns and districts and countries? Are you meant to add the templates for just the main towns, or your favourites, or the overarching districts, or all of them? Having a button that says "I've been here" on the top of each page makes it 100x easier to add places. Then, the page should be added to a profile or subpage on their userpage, as well as category that can be used for the "Who's been here?" sidebar link. Not only does it increase the social aspect of this site which will encourage many more users, it also will help us when improving/discussing articles and needing someone in the know. I see the feature growing even further in the future; maybe users could even have their own map with all their visited places plotted out. Now that would be cool and a real drawcard! JamesA ^>talk 01:30, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I've moved this idea over to Wikivoyage:Roadmap#Generated user maps. I won't have time to work on developing this idea further today, but will soon. As James says, I think this could be a huge draw—people absolutely love seeing their travels plotted on a map. --Peter ^Talk 20:30, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Title case "Travellers' Pub"

Please join discussion of moving "Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub" to "Wikivoyage:Travellers' Pub", on the talk page. (I proposed there that we move it so that it is in proper noun title case, like Main Page is.) --Rogerhc (talk) 01:32, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

biking maps

I'm working on adding biking maps in rural areas of Kitsap County but I'm having a hard time finding sources for non-copyrighted materials. There are lots of great maps out there but they are all on commercial sites. Any ideas? --Lumpytrout (talk) 16:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Try wikipedia:OpenStreetMap. And also see Wikivoyage:Mapmaking Expedition and Wikivoyage:How to draw a map. —Ruud 16:51, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually I'm making one myself right now. If you go to openstreetmap, click the 'layer icon' (3 gray squares drawn in perspective) in the upper right corner, you can select a 'cycling map' as number two option.

Unfortunantly on street level in cities it sucks, so I'm making one from scrath for central copenhagen, any ideas on how to best map streets with cycle tracks in a way that best fits our template? Sertmann (talk) 17:09, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Patroller group

So the patroller group's been created, but there aren't any users in it.... is this something we still want to use? --Rschen7754 02:43, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. It could be used as an intermediate status group between "autopatrolled" and "admin", for example when protecting pages from editing such as Template talk:Listing#Protection -- Alice^✉ 03:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

This isn't possible; the only options when protecting a page are semi-protection (allow autoconfirmed edits) and full protection (allow admin edits). –sumone10154^(talk) 05:18, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I supported and still support the idea of a patroller group, but how would we recruit or nominate people to do this work? I have some names in mind. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:14, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought I asked the same question here: Wikivoyage_talk:Recent_changes_patrol#Patroller_user_group but can not trace receiving an answer.

Sumone10154: Thanks for the quick (if disappointing) response. -- Alice^✉ 07:46, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

We requested this group to be formed when we had a strong need for it (during the launch), but didn't get it implemented until the launch was over. In the meantime, we coped in part by promoting a lot of new admins. So the outcome is that right now we have an extremely high ratio of (active!) admins to casual editors, and there isn't really a whole lot of need for the patroller group. Possibly at some point, when casual edits take up more space in recentchanges, we might want to consider using this (they are precious few now), but for now I don't see it as being particularly useful. --Peter ^Talk 09:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

So dumb question, but can autopatrolled editors do recent changes patrol, or is that functionality currently limited to admins and the patroller group? If only admins can patrol, I'd be in favor of doing the same thing as we're doing with "autopatroller" now and simply let admins, at their discretion, change group settings for non-admins who would benefit from the group change; the more patrollers we have the better. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Per Special:ListGroupRights, autopatrollers can't mark as patrolled (they're just autopatrolled), while patrollers have both mark as patrolled and rollback. --Peter ^Talk 18:22, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I would support that, but we would need another bugzilla request to allow admins to add and remove patroller; only bureaucrats can do that right now. --Rschen7754 21:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for new Travel topics start part

Would like comments at Talk:Travel topics#Travel Topic index page style and pro-active edit improvements, like better text and images, to proposed page style change at Travel topics/sandbox.--Traveler100 (talk) 07:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Interlingual Portal

As we're currently attempting to overhaul our main pages for both desktop computers and mobile devices, I thought it might also be nice to have a look at what we could do with the Interlingual Portal as it was earmarked for improvement on the Roadmap. I assume it's made in pure HTMl, so is probably harder to edit collaboratively. What sort of things would we like to see? Such a decision would also, presumably, have to take place with the involvement of the other language communities too, so might be more complicated on that fron too. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 21:34, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Too much time on my hands... (and thank you!)

Not quite sure where this should go (perhaps my PC's Recycle Bin!), but here's a very poor pictorial representation of the Wikivoyage community pages thus far. Plainly, I'm channelling my inner 5-year-old! In future, I'll keep my attentions focussed on the new Main Page - I promise!

I would just like to take this opportunity however to say thanks to everyone on here who's made my first few weeks on here very enjoyable. You've all been extremely welcoming and it's been very exciting to be part of a project that's evolving and growing so rapidly, but still maintains a friendly heart and hub of great people. I can only hope that all the other new people who've arrived in this current influx can feel as welcomed as I have. Congratulations on a very successful launch; now let's make WV even better! :) --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 01:40, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Brazil Expedition

For such an enormous country with so many awesome destinations, our coverage of Brazil is pretty pathetic:

• Star articles : 0
• Guide articles : 5
• Usable articles : 22 24 25 26

Everything else is at outline status or less. With the World Cup coming in 2014 the Summer Olympics in 2016, I think it's time to get organized and start improving our coverage of this marvelous country, so I am proposing a new Brazil expedition, proposed page here. Can I get some feedback, comments, interest to collaborate? I'd like to launch this and get some people on board. Texugo (talk) 14:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

This page appears to be inspiring improvements already! Texugo (talk) 18:21, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Seems like good reasoning and a good time to give an impulse to Brazil articles. And you've made a fine start! I have no knowledge about the country but I'll be happy to help on general things. JuliasTravels (talk) 19:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Barnstar Equivalent

Hi! I was just wondering, does WV have an equivalent to the barnstar system for contributions on Wikipedia, or do we use that system here too? If not, could there be a travel-themed alternative? --Nick (talk) 16:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

See Wikivoyage:Barnstars for the current implementation. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:45, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Couldn't find it when I searched! --Nick (talk) 16:47, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:IRC

Just reminding people that we have an IRC channel! I'd encourage some of the regulars to use it - there have been people joining the channel expecting to find people who have been around a while and get advice, or to inform the project of something, and have been disappointed as there's nobody else there. If you need help connecting or have any questions, let me know! --Rschen7754 19:01, 25 February 2013 (UTC)`

wikivoyager.de/.org

Hi,

fyi, wikivoyager.de and wikivoyager.org have both been transferred to WMF and we redirect them to wikivoyage.org. Related RT ticket is RT-4333. The Apache config can be found in the (public) operations/apache-config git repository. Mutante (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)