User talk:EvanProdromou/Dec 2003

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Evan, is there a way to rename images once they have been uploaded? (WT-en) DD

Unfortunately, no. The best you can do is re-upload the images with a different name, and then ask for the older ones to be deleted (Project:votes for deletion). I'd like to get this fixed in the MediaWiki software pronto, btw. --(WT-en) Evan 09:25, 2 Dec 2003 (PST)

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Sorry, I didn't notice that Wikivoyage uses a different license from Wikipedia.--(WT-en) Aspire 21:51, 2 Dec 2003 (PST)

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Hey, here's my attempt - - at a favicon which hopefully distills the real icon into something that works at 16x16. I figured the planet and the arrow were the most imporant bits, doing anything else made it impossible to squeeze into that tiny image size. -- (WT-en) Mark 10:04, 4 Dec 2003 (PST)

Nice job! I added it as [1]. Seems to be showing up in Mozilla Firebird. --(WT-en) Evan 11:12, 4 Dec 2003 (PST)

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Neither, unless you count being native bilingual and exposed to several other languages in childhood. (I came up with the pronouncement that Spanish is to French as English is to German, based on the words for "is", when I was a child.) But I did try to get into Wycliffe. -(WT-en) phma 18:38, 5 Dec 2003 (PST)

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Hi Evan, I see that you have "changed" the North American "destinations" into "countries". The past few days I have been doing just the opposite on some "continent" and "large region" pages. I figured that not every item on those lists were countries (e.g. Greenland in North America). Maybe we could think about a suitable name that covers most possibilities (territories?). (WT-en) DhDh 13:39, 6 Dec 2003 (PST)

Oh, yeah, I should have started talking about that. So, I think for continents, we should do:

==Sections==

*Section 1
*Section 2

==Countries==

*Country 1
*Country 2

==Other destinations==

*Territory 1
*Territory 2

...etc. I figure the "others" should be written with the country template. --(WT-en) Evan 13:44, 6 Dec 2003 (PST)

Why didn't I think of that? ;-) (WT-en) DhDh 13:53, 6 Dec 2003 (PST)

Oh BTW, could we devise something similar to replace my "cities and towns" sections in Flanders and Western Australia and their regions. We either need something more encompassing than cities, or we should make a distinction somewhere. I've started a stub about the Apo Kayan, and I really can't speak about "cities" there. The most you can say is that there are a few settlements or villages. You can trust me, I have visited the region in 1991 and I'm pretty sure these settlements haven't grown into megalopolises these days... (WT-en) DhDh 14:14, 6 Dec 2003 (PST)

I gotta say

I like this "Post a comment" feature. --(WT-en) Evan 16:16, 11 Dec 2003 (PST)

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You wrote me a message on Talk:Greek phrasebook telling me to go to a page that doesn't exist. When will UTF-8 be working? After Romanian? -(WT-en) phma 10:00, 13 Dec 2003 (PST)

Oof! An unkind cut. Well, we're moving to a new server sometime next week, and I'd like to do the UTF-8 conversion after that. I know, I've been promising a server move for a while, but this time it's for real.

Anyways, no, it will be before Romanian. --(WT-en) Evan 10:30, 13 Dec 2003 (PST)

There's still no page Project:UTF-8 conversion. Could you write it, please? -(WT-en) phma 20:23, 25 Dec 2003 (PST)

Works as far as I can tell. Check out my keyboard layouts. -(WT-en) phma 15:04, 26 Dec 2003 (PST)

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Hi Evan. As you can see, I'm back (and glad to be :-). It's taken me some time but I have finally written my promised explanation. You'll find it (WT-en) here. Cheers! (WT-en) DhDh 09:37, 19 Dec 2003 (PST)

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Romanian Wikivoyage script

Hi Evan - we've finished correcting and proofreading the Romanian localization at LanguageRo.php. Now there's just one more question - below all of the actual translation of every field, there's a section that starts with:

);

class Language {

	function getDefaultUserOptions () {
		global $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn ;
		return $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn 

I have a feeling that this shouldn't be edited - but Danutz, someone else from Romanian Wikivoyage, told me that we should change, for example, 'global $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn' to 'global $wgDefaultUserOptionsRo'. It's probably logical to change these to Ro from En, but should we?

He also told me that, because Romaniann Wikivoyage is Unicode (UTF-8), we should change this class Language section.

Should we change anything in this section. If yes, then what should we change, and if no, then we're ready to go with Romanian Wikivoyage! (WT-en) Ronline 14:41, 25 Dec 2003 (PST)

Disambiguation

Evan, when you have the time could you have a look at User:(WT-en) Dhum Dhum/My office. I tried to disambiguate 35 places called Santa Cruz using only the 1st and 2nd disambiguation rules. Of course, I don't expect us writing about each and every Santa Cruz in this list, it was only a test to see if the current rules suffice. My main question is: is it clear from the article title which Santa Cruz is covered in the article? Those in Brazil, the Philippines and Portugal are especially interesting... Thanks for your input. (WT-en) DhDh 07:45, 26 Dec 2003 (PST)

Wow! I can't believe that rules 1 and 2 were actually able to disambiguate that many Santa Cruzes! That's pretty amazing.

I actually thought that the list of Santa Cruzes was pretty clear. A few of them are a little funny, but most seem just about right. Did you think the ones in Brazil, Portugal, and the Philippines were really weird? I thought they were pretty straightforward. An unfortunate byproduct of the name's overuse, but not completely non-linear.

As to whether it's clear which Santa Cruz is which: no. But that's not the point of disambiguators! The point is to provide unambiguous titles, not to provide a full description of the location covered. The first paragraph should tell the reader what they're reading about.

Frankly, I am extremely wary of changing the naming conventions that have worked so well so far. As you've probably noticed, people follow the example they see, and I'm pretty sure that once we have Santa Cruz (province of Argentina) we're going to see Minnesota (state in the United States just south of the Canadian border with a population of 8 million and annual rainfall of 38 inches).

So, I guess I just want to say: please be careful with this. I understand that you're trying to achieve better clarity, but I'm afraid that without a clear algorithm for disambiguators, we're in for an extremely messy travel guide. --(WT-en) Evan 09:56, 26 Dec 2003 (PST)

Firstly, the thing with Brazil, the Philippines and Portugal is that I didn't exactly use the same rules for each of them. For Brazil I took level 2 to be the (official) state level, while there is an (unofficial/tourist) intermediate level (see Brazil). I did not take that into account. For the Philippines the 3rd (region) and 4th (province) levels are official. The 2nd level (island) is not (it could be a way to divide the country for tourist purposes). Portugal is a mix of the above. The Azores and Madeira are official regions, Alentejo and the Lisbon Coast are tourist regions above the district level (Portugal is made up of 18 districts and 2 autonomous regions). So, should we follow official or Wikivoyage divisions for the 2nd level of disambiguation (just under country level)? Some differences that would occur are:

Country	Official	Wikivoyage
Brazil	Santa Cruz (Rio Grand do Norte) (= state)	Santa Cruz (Northeast) (= super-state region)
Philippines	Santa Cruz (Central Visayas) (= super-island region)	Santa Cruz (Negros) (= island)
Portugal	Santa Cruz (Beja) (= district)	Santa Cruz (Alentejo) (= super-district region)

The Philippines are even more complicated because there are also (unofficial) super-region island groups (Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao). To avoid unnecessary confusion I tend to favour the official divisions because they do offer a little more hold.

Secondly, I suggest that we use my proposal if and only if there is no way we can disambiguate places by only using rules 1 and 2. This will only be in a few extremely rare cases. I do favour the format Santa Cruz (province of Argentina). Anything more elaborate should be reduced to these rules. (WT-en) DhDh 14:35, 26 Dec 2003 (PST)

Thank you!

Evan - just to let you know - thanks so much for launching Romanian Wikivoyage! It was launched in perfect time and hopefully it will become a great travel resource. -- (WT-en) Ronline (PS: I'm still talking to those Estonians about Estonian Wikivoyage)

Struggling with disambiguations

Evan, I've got a question about disambiguations at Project:Disambiguation policy. Thanks for your input. (WT-en) DhDh 13:11, 28 Dec 2003 (PST)

Well, I admit I have been a bit too narrow-minded about disambiguations and parallelism. But still, I'd like disambiguators to be as unequivocal as possible without being too elaborate. The problem with the examples I gave is that they can be disambiguated in more than one way: horizontal (according to place - rule 2) and vertical (according to hierarchical level - rule 1). I have chosen to disambiguate them first horizontally ("Spain" - "Argentina") and then vertically ("province" - "city", of which "province" is dropped since it's already disambiguated as "Argentina"). But it could be the other way around. Take the La Rioja example (1st column = my choice, 2nd column = other possibility):

horizontal - vertical	vertical - horizontal
La Rioja (Spain)	La Rioja (Spain)
La Rioja (Argentina)	La Rioja (province)
La Rioja (city)	La Rioja (city)

For some reason I prefer the 1st column because it feels more logical.

I'm sorry if I'm really digging into this, but as much as you want uncomplicated titles, I would like clear titles. I hope I've been able to express myself in an understandable way... (WT-en) DhDh 12:19, 29 Dec 2003 (PST)

OK, so, I think the problem here is that the rules we have are for disambiguating two places, and you're doing three or more at a time. The problems arise when you're taking things in different order. Why don't you do this: disambig La Rioja, the Spanish province, from La Rioja, the Argentine province. Then, disambig the city from both.

Anyways, I think your preferred disambig is compatible, isn't it? --(WT-en) Evan 16:21, 29 Dec 2003 (PST)

Many thanks

Thanks for letting me know about leaving copyright information on submitted photographs. As you guessed, the photographs I'd uploaded were my own, and I'm happy for them to be used on the Wikivoyage, I've amended the image info to reflect this.

I can see why people get massively addicted to Wiki - I've quite enjoyed what little I've contributed so far. I'll have to have a go at updating some of those London districts - I notice there's already been some discussion about what districts to keep, and which can be lost. Probably the most sensible solution would be to use the existing borough boundaries in London as the first level beneath the city.

I'm always a bit nervous of stepping on someone's toes when amending something more significant, but I'm sure I'll get more confident over time. Anyway, thanks for the advice and the warm welcome. (WT-en) MykReeve 1:06, 30 Dec 2003 (GMT)

Thanks so much for your contributions so far. It's of course in our best interest to get you as addicted to Wikivoyage as possible. Don't worry too much about messing things up or stepping on toes -- just plunge forward and add what you know. --(WT-en) Evan 18:35, 29 Dec 2003 (PST)

Is there a preferred format for vector images? I can upload the original Corel Draw images, but I'm not sure how useful they would generally be. (WT-en) MykReeve 19:48, 30 Dec 2003 (GMT)

Well, on the Mapmaking Expedition, we recommend SVG, but I think any kind of vector format will work. Just having the bitmap format can make it hard to update stuff, though. --(WT-en) Evan 11:53, 30 Dec 2003 (PST)

Cool. I'll export them in SVG format. Good advice about getting rid of the attractions. You'll note that I've left them there for the time being - but my plan is to incorporate links to the into the regions in due course. My only concern there is that people have already contributed quite a lot of information about attractions - like London/Trafalgar_Square, for example. I'd feel bad about removing all that information. Would it be acceptable to put that link in the higher-level region (most likely London/West End) and write a smaller summary there? e.g.

• another thing worth seeing in the West End region is Trafalgar Square, which is the home of Nelson's column - a huge pillar supporting a statue of Admiral Nelson.

...or is the aim to reduce the number of pages? (WT-en) MykReeve 20:38, 30 Dec 2003 (GMT)

The aim is to reduce the number of pages necessary to visit some destination. One of our goals is to have printable guides. If I'm going to spend a weekend in Bordeaux, it's great to be able to print out the Bordeaux page, put it in my backpack, and take it with me. If there's an article for every restaurant, museum, street, park, train station, I have to pick and choose which to print, or download, or whatever.

Breaking huge cities up into districts is a concession to practicality -- the city articles would just be too unmanageable otherwise. But the idea should be about the same. It's nice if we can break up our districts so they're relatively self-contained -- you can stay in a hotel, eat, go out, see sights, etc., all in one district. It's probably a goal that's not quite possible to reach, but it's one worth trying for. --(WT-en) Evan 12:48, 30 Dec 2003 (PST)

I've been thinking about this. My main thought here though is that people will continue to want to write very specific travel guides to individual attractions - for example; guides to what to see in museums or art galleries, or routes around them to take in the main exhibits.

My thinking on this is that these really shouldn't be discouraged - but a more superficial summary should be provided in the higher-level section of the site.

Most printed travel guides provide this level of information (at least for major attractions), and much as I agree that it would be excessive for someone spending a short time in a place to have that much information, I can see merit in keeping pages for attractions. I think that the onus should be on the traveller to decide how much information to take with them, rather than on the writers. As long as the basic information from the specific attraction page is replicated/provided on the higher-level page, I don't see the existence of the attraction page as a major inconvenience for travellers using the site.

For example, in the City of London area, I could add something like:

• the Tower of London, located beside Tower Bridge, is open from Mo-Sa 9am-5pm, Su 9pm-1pm. Nearest tube station: Tower Hill. The seat of the British Royal family from the 10th century to the 17th century. Walking tours of the outer castle are provided by beefeaters every 30 minutes. Tickets are expensive (about £11), and a full visit takes 2-3 hours. For a more extensive guide to the Tower of London, see the Wikivoyage entry here: Tower of London, or see the official site at Historic Royal Palaces: Tower of London.

(though be aware that this information is very suspect, as I just made it up off the top of my head).

This would certainly be a good way to deal with some of the specific tourist attraction information already on the site, without providing extraneous information to travellers using Wikivoyage. (WT-en) MykReeve 11:36, 31 Dec 2003 (GMT)

Disambig

The disambiguation notice is quite clear. Maybe one addition: what about putting "You may be looking for:" just above the disambig list? (See Chaco) (WT-en) DhDh 12:27, 30 Dec 2003 (PST)