User talk:(WT-en) Burmesedays/Archives 2009

Welcome

I just saw that you hadn't been properly welcomed, now you have. Thanks for all the good work you have been doing! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:43, 28 July 2009 (EDT)

Nusa Lembongan

Please see []. Thanks. (WT-en) Texugo 03:23, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

Map licensing

Re: your Nusa Lembongan map, you mentioned that "Future editing for use at Wikivoyage only is not a problem", but unfortunately this is a problem -- anything you contribute to Wikivoyage (text, images, maps) can, according to our Creative Commons copyleft, be used by anybody for any purpose. (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:45, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

Guide status

Sorry not to get back to you sooner—I was out of the internet's reach for a vacation. The article looks great, definitely guide status. I see there are some issues with the map licensing, but it looks like you are already sorting that out. Great work! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 12:58, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

Re Nusa Penida, the only issue I can see is that the article lacks "get out" content. It also lacks photos, which I thought to be a requirement, but it appears that the policy does not require them. Otherwise, it seems to be at guide status. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:56, 9 September 2009 (EDT)

Bali

Just wanted to thank you for your work on Bali, I'm very fond of the place but, despite my occasional applications of the weed-whacker, its articles have long been a godawful mess. It's great to see somebody finally putting some real elbow grease into them! (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:35, 4 September 2009 (EDT)

I was about to say the same, nice work! (WT-en) Globe-trotter 12:44, 6 September 2009 (EDT)

I just wanted to point your attention to the fact that your Bali guide, shows up a impressive number 6, on a Google search for Bali. Apparently there are some nuances to results depending on where you search from, but it's definitely a testament to a high google ranking for your work --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 15:16, 18 January 2010 (EST)

Currencies

One minor style note (and a pet peeve or mine): please use "US$" for US dollars, not "USD" or other currency codes. See Project:Currency for the full scoop. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:50, 9 September 2009 (EDT)

West Bali National Park

Wow, nice work! It's fun to see good articles suddenly appear overnight. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:46, 10 September 2009 (EDT)

User talk:Jc8136#Nusa_Lembongan_page_and_Mainski

Hi! For your interest see on how Mainski responded to Peter's text. Have a nice day, (WT-en) jan 07:24, 15 September 2009 (EDT)

Central Bali see section

I noticed you copied a bunch of listings to the Central Bali see section. As a general rule, content should never be duplicated across articles, and region articles should not contain individual listings—only prose overviews. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 14:35, 20 September 2009 (EDT)

Mount Batukaru

I noticed you placed Mount Batukaru in the article with Tabanan, but I think it fits better with Bedugul. It's much closer to Bedugul, and travelers can drive to or from Bedugul on the scenic Jatiluwih route. When driving on that route, you can see the mountain being closeby. Tabanan is completely in the south of Central Bali, while Mount Batukaru is in the north. (WT-en) Globe-trotter 10:22, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Yes, we can keep it at Tabanan, but then I think it's best to move the Jatiluwih rice fields to there as well, as it is very close to the mountain. (WT-en) Globe-trotter 10:58, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Bali map

Hey there. You are doing an awesome job on our Bali articles. I wonder if you have an .svg file of the Bali map you made. I'd love to Wikivoyage-ize the map, i.e., give it our standard icons, fonts, water color, logo, legend style, title style, etc. per Project:How to draw a map. Could you supply that? (or do it yourself if you like). (WT-en) Texugo 04:46, 27 September 2009 (EDT)

Welcome messages

The easy way to do a welcome message is {{subst:welcome}} which gives:

Hello, Burmesedays! Welcome to Wikivoyage.

To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page. If you need help, check out Project:Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub.

After that, you can add your own comments. (WT-en) Pashley 00:13, 29 September 2009 (EDT)

Bold for redirected names

Tiny style tip which probably isn't even documented anywhere: if a name X is redirected to article Y, it's good practice to bold the name in the article, so confused users can understand why they were sent there. Eg. "Seminyak is a town which has grown to include the nearby villages of Kerobokan, Umalas etc." (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:25, 30 September 2009 (EDT)

User talk:Jc8136#Messy_Thai_articles

Hi! I started in early 2009 to redo the Ko_Samui article. As you start with Thailand you should know that AoT has messed up the articles and with support of Peter and Jani started to clear smaller parts. That's just for your info, so feel free to adapt the data input of AoT. Most articles are obvious messed up by data dumps. (WT-en) jan 10:25, 6 October 2009 (EDT)

Senggigi

Mate! Our friend Felix505 under his anonymus IP has "found" the Senggigi article and guess: repetitions as far as you can see. I started with the cleaning and deleted primarly links to the Senggigi article that links to Senggigi etc. Would be great if you could help out a bit...(WT-en) jan 04:20, 8 October 2009 (EDT)

Tour listings

If you want to erase links from the Berlin tour page, do so after scrutinizing the link against the wikivoyage tour listing guidelines. A blanket delete will only end up in a revert.

http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Activity_listings#Tour_listings

Barnstar

Barnstar

We don't really use these a lot, and I kinda like how they are not subject to the same rampant inflation they have on Wikipedia, but I think you deserve one for all the all the hard work in central Indonesia, and helping out with the touts! ----(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 08:32, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Congratulations! Stefan you are right it is rarely used and the major rewrite of Bali and Indonesia deserves the barn star! Keep up the great work, (WT-en) jan 08:42, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Well thank you very much Stefan :) I am not sure if I deserve one of those (rather attractive it must be said) things. All the work on the Indonesian articles is just driven by passion and well, because the country deserves it. And help with battling the touts? Well, everyone else's work here deserves that. I will try to continue to do my best. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 09:15, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Mount Tambora

wow i looked at the image of it its huge you been to the top of it? amazing... (WT-en) Gullsofpeace 11:03, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

nah sadly not. Only a handful of non-Indonesians ever make it each year. A truly brutal place to both get to and climb. It is top of my list but I doubt I will ever get there and even if I did, not at all sure I could make it.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:10, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

sounds and looks like a hard place to climb and get to. (WT-en) Gullsofpeace 11:08, 20 October 2009 (EDT) thanks for the info though. (WT-en) Gullsofpeace 11:08, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

West Bali NP

Lest you think I forgot, I am indeed hard at work on that Bali regions map ;) Could you find some image that shows the official boundaries of the entire park? I haven't been able to come up with anything, and this is thwarting my perfectionist aims with the map. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:13, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

I had not forgotten :) On the complete boundaries of West Bali NP...... you would think that is easy. It isn't. But let me have another go at finding this via official channels. The problem is especially with defining the eastern boundaries. By the way, please do not hesitate to ask if you have any other queries at all about this map Peter. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 23:27, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Bali map discussion moved to Shared:Image_talk:Bali_regions_map.png. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:04, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

FYI, I uploaded a new version, and it's probably ready to go live, but I thought I'd wait for you to look over it once more. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 18:45, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

Great stuff Peter and I have commented on the image talk page. A few little corrections required but nothing major and the map is, as you surmised, pretty much ready to go live. I personally do not much like the monochromatic colour scheme but that is a personal opinion and nothing more. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 05:45, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

Bali for star nomination

Hi Burmeseday, I just wonder if you would be interested in bringing Bali up for the star article nominations? I think it would be great if we feature the article as DotM with the star lable but your support would be essential for it as you are on the island.(WT-en) jan 03:41, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Hi Jan. That has certainly been on my mind. The bar is extremely high to get a region up to Star but that is definitely the aim. Please though let it rest for month or so as there is a lot going on right now with producing maps for the Bali articles. And some of the older Bali articles really need a lot of work on See, Do and all listings. So my reaction is a definite yes, but let us look at it again in one month when most of the maps will be finished. Cheers. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 03:59, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Hi, simply drop me a line when you want to start. I have seen the discussion about the maps and it's a good start.(WT-en) jan 04:44, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

All good Jan and will do of course. Have a look at Bedugul please. That's my first WT style map uploaded. Can and will do a lot better, but at least the map now looks right.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 04:50, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Just to highlight how difficult this will be, here is the bar for Region Star:

• Has a tourist-style map showing all the linked cities, subregions, and other destinations (all guide status or better) and routes between them. The format either matches the manual of style exactly or is the exception that proves the rule. Prose is not only near-perfect grammatically but also tight, effective, and enjoyable. The article is well illustrated throughout with high quality photos.

All the sub-articles at guide or better.... whoa! I mistakenly had it in my head that the sub-regions and key destinations had to be guide but not all of them ! With the best will in the world, I ain't got a clue how the likes of Negara and Klungkung could ever be guides..... --(WT-en) Burmesedays 13:50, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

It's not quite that strict. Only the linked destinations need to be at guide status—that means all the 5–9 articles listed under "regions," "cities," and "other destinations." So neither Negara nor Klungkung would need to be at guide status. Getting all the regions to guide status is the hardest requirement, IMO. That and the main article will need to be beautiful ;) It would be quite an accomplishment to get this to star status—it would be the first star region on Wikivoyage! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:58, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

Thanks for the clarification. This is on the backburner Peter because of the demands of the current Bali map project. But it has to be the ultimate aim, as tough as it seems. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 01:22, 25 October 2009 (EDT)

Bedugul and other Bali article maps

Nice work! The main issue I'd bring up is font. Listings icons should use Sans Bold (Bit Stream Vera Sans Bold or DejaVu Sans Bold). Both look the same, but the Deja Vu fonts are preferable, since they have support for non-Latin alphabets (so maps can be easily translated into Russian, Korean, etc.). I've played around with those a lot for maximum readability, and have uploaded the districts map template I use for myself here.

You'll notice that the same template suggests bolded fonts for all other map labels. That is because bolded Sans fonts stay readable even at very low resolutions. Using DejaVu Sans Condensed is another option, although I've never been too sure what Jani thinks of its readability. As a rule with city/district maps (not with region maps) the only text I leave unbolded is that which I use in the listings list (below See, Eat, etc.). (If I'm not being clear, take a look at this example.) The few bits of text that read as "notes" might be fine if left unbolded, though, like "Great views from this area." Perhaps put it in parentheses, shrink it, italicize it, and even lighten the font color a bit? And since it is somewhere between a "city" and a "region" map, it might be OK to leave the town names unbolded as well. I'm starting to sound convoluted, so let me say clearly that the See, Eat, Drink, etc. headers should be bold, as should be the scale icon's text, and the map title text.

The water fill color looks great on the web, but is hard to distinguish from the foreground grey color when printed in black & white. So I'd use the fill pattern available from the template I linked above. Inkscape does not yet handle patterns well, so if you are having trouble getting it to render nicely, let me know.

For WTP, maps should be exported precisely at 3008 x 1709 pixels. You can use the thin green rectangular object in my map template as a frame (just remove the line color before exporting), as it is already set to those dimensions.

It might be nice to add arrows to designate which way is "to Lovina." If you don't feel like cooking one up, you could just grab one from my Korea map. I'd also italicize that text.

Cool temple icon, by the way. I'd suggest removing the background from it though, to make it look a little cleaner.

That's all I can think of at the moment! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:52, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Great feedback as I expected :). The very fact that you have been through this process and figured out so many of the pitfalls that are far from obvious, is of enormous help to Johnny-Come-Lately here. I will certainly utilise those resources you have created. I have to say that even with a greyscale screen render, the indistinct nature of the water objects was bugging me. You have probably gathered that I have been fairly religious in following the guidance at Project:How to draw a map. It is now clear though that Wikivoyage maps have moved on a bit since that was written. Jani has already put me straight on fixing the output dimensions. Invaluable guidance Peter and hugely appreciated. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 21:48, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Re Seminyak map: Looks great! I still would strongly recommend that you use the travel icons from Image:Template for districts.svg. They'll be much more readable at low resolutions. In addition to using the water pattern, you should also use the "park" pattern for those green areas--in addition to having a distinguishing pattern, the color is of much greater contrast with the grey. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 04:22, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

Thanks Peter. I have looked at Image:Template for districts.svg and you are so right. Far better icons. To be frank, the detailed information at Project:How to draw a map and the map template there especially, is now so out of date as to be nigh on useless. I will definitely change icons on all 3 maps I have done so far.

Ah, yes actually, all listings should be marked on the map ;) That can get very tricky when you have a lot of listings for a small area (this one was near impossible). When they just don't fit, I've been using "zoom in boxes" like those you'll see here. (WT-en) John has played around with a different idea that's probably a bit more elegant and easier to draw (see example. Now of course, everyone will be thrilled if you make any sort of map, but to get an article up to star status, it must have a WT map with every listing in the article marked. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:31, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

Oh God. I feared you might say something like that. Well at least that gives motivation to cull some of the less helpful sleep listings :). Seminyak for example has 19 private villas/houses in the sleep listings. It has been suggested before (by Jani I seem to remember) that the sleep listings in Bali need severe culling....... I am now in full agreement :). There is also an issue when a listing is not actually in the area covered by the map. Does not happen often but it will for sure in some more rural areas. I intended to use an arrow with a km distance marker... eg Hotel xx 3 km --> . And I finally got to grips with pattern rendering in Inkscape and have changed the water and green area patterns. I am getting some irritating grid lines in these patterns though. I will try to sort that. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 22:08, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

The grid lines are the most annoying part (hopefully this will be fixed in the next version of Inskcape), as well as the fact that you can't handle the scale of the pattern. The first isn't too hard to deal with—just make a copy of the object, move it below the original, and fill the color from the blue part of the pattern. Here's what I told (WT-en) Marc when he asked for a condescending level of detail to fix the latter issue:

1. Ctrl+D to duplicate the patterned water object
2. Move the duplicate out of the way
3. Downsize the duplicate (Ctrl+<) until the pattern is displaying on it at a more aesthetically pleasing size
4. Move the duplicate to the bottom of the layer (END)
5. Combine the original patterned water object with the now-downsized duplicate (Ctrl+k) (At this point the pattern should be at the desired size on the original object)
6. Break apart (Ctrl+Shift+k) the original object from the duplicate (following their combination in the last step)
7. Delete the duplicate

--(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:03, 25 October 2009 (EDT)

Nice tip.... thanks very much for that. You know what Peter, this whole discussion ought to be copied into or linked from Project:How to draw a map. The help you have given me here should be easily available to all users who are getting started with WT-style maps. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 01:14, 25 October 2009 (EDT)

I've resisted rewriting that guide in order to avoid stepping on toes and pushing my own style on others, but indeed, it might be time to do so. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:58, 25 October 2009 (EDT)

Subregion maps

Whew, I'm having to rack my brain to come up with some examples for you—there are very few maps yet created for regions at the "bottom" of the hierarchy (i.e., regions with no further subregions). All I can think of are the ones I made (long ago) for the obscure regions of Nenetsia and South Ossetia. Both are a little too basic in content and archaic in style to be very helpful, I'm afraid.

As far as possible, I would recommend making the subregion maps in exactly the same sort of style as the Bali region map, just with a greater level of detail, and with a solid grey foreground, rather than colored regions. Mark cities with the usual dots; use the light blue squares to mark non-municipality destinations. It's fine to use white colored roads, and that can especially be useful to designate tertiary roads (red = principal; yellow = secondary). With your incredibly deep knowledge of the area, though, I imagine you'll have content you'd like to add that won't fit so neatly into this formula, so please feel free to experiment. I'll be glad to "proofread" one and clean things up where I think it would be useful. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:38, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

While not perfect for this application, perhaps these could serve as some inspiration too:

• Image:Map-South_Africa-Western_Cape-Cape_Peninsula.png
• Image:Map-Mauritius01.png
• Image:MaeSalong.png

--(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 23:51, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

Many thanks Peter and Stefan. I will get going on that basis and stick a draft up on shared for your comment. I think I will start with East Bali. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 03:23, 1 November 2009 (EST)

This looks great! The only criticism that comes to mind is that you forgot to give me credit, as it is a derivative work of Image:Bali regions map.png ;) Otherwise, any improvements would probably be additions, rather than corrections. I'm also glad to see that you were able to create the map from the main Bali map without retracing—that's a goal with region maps, but often a hard one to meet. It sure saves time in the long run, though! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:48, 1 November 2009 (EST)

Thanks Peter. The re-tracing comment is sadly not really correct, although I did try to figure out a way to avoid this. It is certainly derivative though and large apologies for forgetting to credit you. I used your main Bali regions map as the backdrop for re-tracing (together with OSM) and this definitely saved time but did not remove the need for tracing.. It was quite late when I finished the draft yesterday and looking again with fresh eyes this morning, I am quite pleased and this is a decent model to use for low level region maps I think. As an aside, the inability of Inkscape to scale patterns is really annoying me now. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 21:05, 1 November 2009 (EST)

User:(WT-en) JGamberoni

Please stop deleting my contributions to the Philadelphia page. I am doing this for a very important school project and everything on here is an advertisement! Restaurant.com is a website that I frequent being a NATIVE of Philadelphia, which tourists comming to my city can appreciate and save money on thier travels!

Star nominations: Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay/Pinnacle

Hi Burmesedays, I have fixed a number of issues, including work on some of the items you commented on, in the dive site sub-article Pinnacle. If you have the time, would you mind taking a look to see if you like the results, and leave comment either on the article talk page, or on the star nominations page. (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 02:26, 7 November 2009 (EST)

More updates, including revised map. Cheers, and thanks for your help. -- (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 04:43, 14 November 2009 (EST)

Booking dot com is on the blacklist

Hi Burmeseday! I added booking dot com on the blacklist and it should work from now on. Thanks for your work. (WT-en) jan 04:59, 11 November 2009 (EST)

Prague

Hello, please, why you think, that my edit is "all going in the wrong article in the wrong places"? where is right article and right place? --(WT-en) Prague-boy 07:56, 13 November 2009 (EST)

hello, thanks for your answear. I will try to do better.

Hello again, one more question - you wrote about link to forums, but page, which i linked is not forum and its not my page. There are fresh news from real Prague citizens with many experience from real Prague live. I think it could be very helpful for Prague visitors, what you think? --(WT-en) Prague-boy 09:07, 13 November 2009 (EST)

Ok, but why WT never links to facebook page? WT is full of links to commercial pages and page i linked to is much more valuable and uncommercial... --(WT-en) Prague-boy 09:48, 13 November 2009 (EST)

Patrolling

Thanks a bunch for helping out patrolling new edits, it's greatly needed, and we are always far behind - so, yeah, thanks! A few things to make the process smoother though

• Please go to your preferences, select the recent changes tab, and tick 'Enchanted recent changes' if you haven't already done so, it may look a bit awkward at first, it sure did for me, but it quickly becomes indispensable.
• Once you've done that, remember to click the [Mark as patrolled] under the "Current revision" details. If you've enabled the enchanted view above, you mark all revisions as patrolled this way.

That would save us from doing double duties, I've run into a fair bit of edits today that you had already patrolled. In case you haven't noticed, the !'s in the recent changes page, denotes edits from users active less than 3 months, which haven't been checked. Cheers --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 13:58, 19 November 2009 (EST)

Hmmm, you really don't see those red exclamation marks in front of the time stamp? they might not be there if someone has recently been patrolling comprehensively, but they will usually be there, and should look something like this:

! 02:37 Taunton (Massachusetts) (diff; hist) . . (+123) . . Lesmclok (Talk | contribs | block) (→Splurge - )

If you only have the 50 most recent edits enabled which I think is default, they might be harder to spot, I personally have the latest 250, this can be set in the Recent Changes tab of your preferences - also since you don't seem to have sniffed around in there too much, I just want to make sure you know that you can disable the ads in the the Wikivoyage tab. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 20:49, 22 November 2009 (EST)

Taiwan map

Looks beautiful! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:31, 20 November 2009 (EST)

Cambodia regions

My knowledge of Cambodian cultural geography is 0. I could do some more research after eating and then recovering from my turkey feast, but that will have to wait until the tryptophan wears off ;) I'd ask Jani—I think he's pretty familiar with the country. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 14:26, 26 November 2009 (EST)

Shiny Buttons

It's customary to ask someone if they're interested before nominating, so would you have any interest in gaining some shiny buttons? Based on your contributions here there would seem to be no doubt of a quick approval, and it will probably save you some time having access to the revert, block, and protect buttons. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:57, 29 November 2009 (EST)

Done. While writing the nomination I realized that I've assumed you are a "he" despite any indication one way or another on your user page, so if I've got that wrong let me know and I'll fix the nomination :) -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 23:39, 29 November 2009 (EST)

Europa, UK, England

i can list some outlines for you. (WT-en) Jun9Kinak 10:24, 2 December 2009 (EST)

Ko Tao diving bumph

I have cut almost everything and put in links, and transferred it to Diving in Thailand#Ko Tao where it is potentially useful. I will prune the touting and both articles will be improved. You may wish to re-arrange the links. Cheers, -- (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 04:18, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Actually the system of dive guides allows them scope for enticing customers by providing good site guides, so they can legitimately and acceptably publicise Ko Tao by providing good information for the travelling diver. As long as they can live with us cutting the bullshit, its a win-win situation. Keep alerting me when this sort of thing comes up, or if you like just cut and paste the raw text to a reasonably appropriate place in one of the dive guide articles and I will clean it up as I have most of them on my watchlist. Important to put in the links though. -- (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 08:24, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Ditto Ko Lanta

Done. (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 06:44, 15 December 2009 (EST)

North Korea vandal

The place to bring up a ban for 70.118.119.3 would be Project:User ban nominations, but I'm not convinced it would be effective -- it's a tool that is rarely used, and it's impossible to ban someone that's dedicated to causing mischief if all they need to do is come in from a different IP address. Since that's a residential, cable modem address, it would be trivially easy for them to do. I'd definitely support blacklisting the tour agency they're pushing, though.

As it is, the problem user is slow enough that it's probably easiest to just keep up with the manual reversions until they give up. (If it were high-speed vandalism, a block would be more effective, if only as a way to ensure they saw a "read your talk page" message.) In a way, I think it helps that North Korea is such a contentious article in general -- it means more people are keeping an eye on it!

Unfortunately, there's no way to put a Special:Contributions page on your watchlist, so it's not always easy to spot it when they edit other articles. (WT-en) Peter keeps a manual list that he checks, User:(WT-en) Peterfitzgerald/Touts. I've stumbled across another simple way of spotting them -- since I usually only check the contributions of an anonymous IP if they've been up to no good, then they show up as a previously-visited link on Special:Recentchanges, which catches my eye. Crude and unplanned, but surprisingly effective. - (WT-en) D. Guillaime 02:00, 10 December 2009 (EST)

Muscat

I noticed you have been to Muscat, so I wondered if you might have an idea on how best to deal with Matrah. It is listed as a city in Muscat Province, but we only have an article for Muscat City. The Oman page states that the Muscat page represents the "area", which sounds like it should cover the province or it was created by someone who is not familiar with the area and dealt with it in the best way that they could. Either way, do you think Matrah should be merged into Muscat to cover the "area" or should it have its own article? It's currently listed as a city inside Muscat, which is poor organization. I would merge it now, but I'd like to know what someone who has been there thinks before I mess with something I don't know about. (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 02:13, 15 December 2009 (EST)

If there is a parent Muscat article, though, do you think Matrah would be better to stay as a city? Are there many other cities in the Muscat province/area that could be listed under the parent article? I looked at the talk page discussion you posted, but alas, my knowledge is near nothing on the nation, so I'm afraid I'm not much help there... (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 03:36, 15 December 2009 (EST)

Until the country is properly regionalised, it is hard to get a clear picture. I am fairly sure though that Matrah is not really a separate article. If the city of Muscat were districtified, then it could be along with Ruwi and others (but that will never be necessary). From a traveller's POV, Matrah is no more a separate city than Westminster or Southwark are separate cities from London. On the regions I suspect we will end up with only 3 or 4 (including the Empty Quarter).--(WT-en) Burmesedays 03:50, 15 December 2009 (EST)

Admin

Welcome to the admin club! The guide to your new shiny buttons is here.

In unrelated news, I'll be in Bali from Jan 8 to 12 (Seminyak & Ubud), let me know if you'd be up for lunch or a drink. (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:24, 15 December 2009 (EST)

Of course! That would be great providing I am here and at the moment that looks likely. And I will unearth somewhere suitably OtBP for lunch:). --(WT-en) Burmesedays 07:29, 15 December 2009 (EST)

London work

You're very welcome, and thanks for the encouraging comments! I have no problem with changing some of the categories I created. Basically there were too many listings in "Pubs and bars" so I attempted to classify them a bit. I thought "Music club" would be good for the ones geared towards listening to live music with a cocktail in-hand...the swankier places into "Bars" and the hole-in-the-wall places with a friendly neighbor also lurking at the end of the bar "Pubs." I'm glad to have done the work and certainly have no issue with you re-categorizing. Thanks again for the note and comments you've made! Cheers!(WT-en) Zepppep 16:19, 17 December 2009 (EST)