User talk:EvanProdromou/Jun 2006

See also User talk:(WT-en) Evan/Archives

very Important: change my username

Hello Evan,

I have a problem with my user name. It is a trade name in Germany (www.travelo.de). I decide this only now. To use Tradmarks without an authorisation is not allowed in Germany. (Don't contact the page)

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Change me Username from "Travelo" to "cyclist". Me ID-number is the 573.

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Thank Yow

with kind regards

Dirk Schmidt (Smith) Kassel Germany

PS: my english ist not the best; but I hope yow understand the problem.

OK, it's done. I guess I should probably put out a Project:Requests for username change. --(WT-en) Evan 18:08, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

Watch List Gaps

I'm seeing changes not make my watch list, though credited to me in Recent Changes. Oddly, a minor edit on the same article will appear right after the missing one. I'm having trouble staying logged in from behind the firewall at work, but that isn't affecting this (and is normal on some other sites. (WT-en) OldPine 11:09, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

So, you're saying that changes to pages that you've put on your watchlist by clicking the "watch" tab or by ticking the "Watch this page" checkbox when saving a page aren't showing up in Special:Watchlist? --(WT-en) Evan 11:23, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

Yes, except the page may have been added to my watchlist through a save because my preferences say to add pages I save, correct? (WT-en) OldPine 11:26, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

OH WAIT... it probably was the first change after changing my prefs to do that. Sorry. (WT-en) OldPine 11:28, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

Vandalism

Re: vandalism that's happening on Afghanistan. Should I assume you guys are waiting it out there and there's no need to bring it to your attention? Or is that some kind of test page as it says?

No, thanks for bringing it to my attention. In the future, feel free to revert the edits yourself, and also feel free to post on Project:Vandalism in progress. --(WT-en) Evan 13:07, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

Moving bug

I figured out what causes the issue, but it brings up something that you'll probably need to fix. See the Project:Bug reports#Moving - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 14:37, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

That didn't really explain the problem for me. --(WT-en) Evan 14:40, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

No? Did you see my comments? I edited your talk page, before I explained it on bug reports. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 14:44, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

Mailing list

I was going over old discussions and came across your comments about getting the mailing list up and running. I'd be interested in helping getting this off the ground, however, I noticed that people are unable to sign up for the EN mailing list because everytime I attempt to subscribe I received this notice - "must supply a valid email address." Could you get this fixed so we could get this up and running? - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 16:42, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

No titles in the non-English branches of wikivoyage

I am really wondering the the bug of missing titles in the non-English branches is not yet fixed until today. I think this bug will increase the trouble which is seen by the non-English authors. -- (WT-en) Unger 03:42, 9 June 2006 (EDT)

Categories in this style are really senseless

There is no advantage of using categories in this way. You cannot distinguish between locations, it's just alphabetically. Is there a possibility of using categories for sights and activities? I ask, because (WT-de) User:Mistoffeles began to install "false" categories in some sights and activity descriptions ([1]). He used "categories" such as "children", "historic museum", "culture", "fun" and "history", but they are simply articles. Please inform me, if there was a discussion with this issue on en:. Honestly, (WT-en) Steffen M. 06:47, 9 June 2006 (EDT)

This looks like an ideal use for tags. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 07:07, 9 June 2006 (EDT)

But it's just the same, see Juarez. Articles are categorized, not sights or activities. -- (WT-en) Steffen M. 07:13, 9 June 2006 (EDT)

I think that there is value in marking up the subject of an article, like places, sights, and activities. I also think there is value in marking up the article as text: its status, related articles, etc.

I'd like to expand Wikivoyage's search so you can find hotels near Cancun with mid-range prices where the staff speaks German. Or aviation museums in California. Or stub articles about towns in Austria. That kind of data organization can either be pre-cooked in categories ([[Category:Hotels near Cancun with mid-range prices with German-speaking staff]]), or we can store important information in different facets (article is a stub, article is about a town, town is in Austria), and let people search it in new and unexpected ways. I prefer the second.

How we use metadata like categories and RDF to make it easier to organize Wikivoyage articles is still a developing point. There's a discussion on Project:Categories and another on Project:RDF. I think that providing detailed and faceted metadata is really important, and I don't think MediaWiki categories are the best way to do it. I've been convinced otherwise on the shared repository, but I'm still not excited about it.

Categories are enabled on all Wikivoyage language versions. If you want to experiment with using categories to organize articles, I ask two things: first, that you discuss it and think about it first. Second, that if you use categories, you wrap them in templates so if we want to use more specific RDF-style (or another kind) organization later, we can just change the templates rather than changing every article.

So if you want to use categories to organize articles by status (say), then rather than adding [[Category:Stub]], make a [[Template:Status]], and add {{status|stub}}.

If that's not how you want to do things, please bring it up on the aforementioned discussion pages. --(WT-en) Evan 20:12, 9 June 2006 (EDT)

I think Steffen's point is that even categories will not serve the purpose that he has in mind. Even categories will classify articles, not individual listings. You yourself had this idea of storing and tagging individual listings at Project:Listings. That is what will solve the problem. I'd really like to see that get off the ground. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 05:46, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

Wikivoyage - Italia

Hi Evan, here I am, I'd like to be go-between for the Italian wikivoyage. I spoke to Sabine, she said she will help me if I'll have problems, but at the moment she has not enough time to spend on wikivoyage. She follows a lot wiktionaryZ.

If there is something more I need to know, please just let me know (in my disc. page plz), I've red the exepedition pages quite well!

Let's start this wikivoyage! :) (WT-en) Dennis 05:38, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

Deal! I've finished setting up the it: site, and it's now available for editing. You need to create an account on it: and then I'll make you an admin there. Some other things that need to be done:

• Contact all the people who signed up for the expedition and let them know that the site is launched (use the "email this user" feature, since it's more likely to get checked).
• Post a notice on the Project:Logbook and on Project:Project.
• Start building the infrastructure so new contributors can make new pages. See Project:how to start a new language version for some suggestions.

Good luck! I'm excited about this launch. --(WT-en) Evan 15:25, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

Great! "DaniloP" is my nickname on the italian version. I'll start doing allthing as fast as possible! thanx!!!!  :) (WT-en) Dennis 03:42, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

Ok, allright, i see the new tabs. I'll use them carefully. My question now is:

• Is all the language stuff in the file language.php and nowhere else? I see that the site is not complitely translated, so I though, maybe there was some other file to watch. (WT-en) Dennis 12:33, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

Try it:Speciale:Allmessages. You can edit each interface message as an article in the MediaWiki: namespace. For example, you can change the text that appears in the it:Speciale:Recentchanges page with it:MediaWiki:Recentchangestext. Editing these articles is a black art, but you can probably get help from people on it: Wikipedia or here on Wikivoyage if there's something you don't understand. --(WT-en) Evan 13:02, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

Ok, cool. Some other things: I see that the voices "Message","Discussion", "Edit," History", "Move", ecc..., the sidebar and the footer are not well translated. Where should I work to correct allthing? (WT-en) Dennis 12:10, 14 June 2006 (EDT) (i'll try to find a reference on mediawiki.org)

I usually go to it:Special:Allmessages and search on the page for the English word I want to replace. By doing that, I found it:MediaWiki:Edit, it:MediaWiki:History_short, it:MediaWiki:Move, it:MediaWiki:Talk, it:MediaWiki:Nstab-mediawiki.

It may be worth your time to talk to administrative people on it: Wikipedia about this. The Italian Wikipedia allmessages page has a lot of messages we don't seem to have. I can try and import the messages from Italian WP and we can customize from there. --(WT-en) Evan 12:46, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

Hello Evan, i'm already working for Italian Wikivoyage. It's exciting to operate in a new project. (WT-en) Luciodem 15:33, 23 June 2006 (EDT)

beyond the usual tourist guide

Evan,

Thank you very much for your comment regarding the efforts to deploy microformats within Wikivoyage. I realized the potential Wikivoyage has as a platform for our project at http://global-culture.org and that's why is listed for good in our blogroll. I stand corrected regarding the lack of structure and am quite pleased with the progress that you have on microformats. I insist, however, that the particular elements of information that we need for our project are not there yet. I will discuss with the other people involved in the project and come back with a few ideas on what we think could work well. To better understand the type of information that we're talking about you may want to read my post on the diffusion of memes and maybe this other one explaining our project.

You'll notice that a very important aspect of our project is the involvement of people who are moving between cities as curators for content, so I'm thinking that if we were to define a few microformats to be deployed across Wikivoyage, we would have a good number of people to do the work. While I was assuming we would do this through blogs mostly, I'm perfectly happy with Wikivoyage being the platform of choice. Let me know if you think this could fly.

Finally, tell me if you're hoping to leverage all this information through some aggregation or search tool. I've been following technorati's microformat search but maybe you've come across others.

juan aka Graffiti Neuronal from Toronto 23:13, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

Bit

Whenever you get around to flipping the admin bit, would you also give me the admin powers on Shared? TVerBeek attempted a speedy delete for me yesterday, but curiously didn't have the admin powers on Shared. Thanks. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 01:13, 15 June 2006 (EDT)

It's done by hand right now. I'll add the two of you. --(WT-en) Evan 04:19, 15 June 2006 (EDT)

• Thanks. I see some of the super powers, but where's the revert button? That way I don't get tempted with protecting the main page? - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 21:42, 15 June 2006 (EDT)

Shoestring can't delete

Shoestring over at ja: is complaining that he can't delete any articles, he just gets an error message and is bounced to the Main Page. I, on the other hand, can delete the pages with no problems. This started happening back when the DB upgrade messed up quite a few things over at ja:, any chance of you figuring this out? (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:57, 15 June 2006 (EDT)

Oh, I thought it had gone away! That's really strange. Is it the same error as on the bug reports page? --(WT-en) Evan 22:06, 15 June 2006 (EDT)

Shared template

Thanks for fixing the template problem on Shared. Sorry about not removing the vfd notice. I thought I had the apostrophe problem fixed and was going to vfd it, because I thought the "dont know" template wouldn't be used. I didn't remove the vfd, because that was about the time I had a small issue with the ac adapter. (In case you don't know - it caught fire. I'm still using it, but I have to hold it together with rubber bands.) - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 23:47, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

Technical request

Hi Evan, allthing is right with Wikivoyage:it. I'd like to use some "if" conditions in the wiki code. I asked in the Italian Wikipedia and they say I have to installa an extension for MediaWiki... This http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions is the link they gave me. The "if" condition would be great for some templates... maybe is already possible to use it, I tried but I didn't obtain what I wanted: http://it.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Template:Citta . (WT-en) Dennis 17:36, 18 June 2006 (EDT)

Hey, Dennis. Feature requests need to go on Project:Feature requests. My understanding of the parser functions extension -- from its authors! -- is that it considerably slows down performance of the server. Is there any way you can work around not having the parser functions? It seems like parameter defaults should work fine for what you're doing. --(WT-en) Evan 17:49, 18 June 2006 (EDT)

I'm not big expert. I'd like to crete a common Template for cities. But there could maybe be some cities which don't have something the others have (for ex: the name of their inhabitants). I'd like to make this parametere ("name of inhab.") optional. Is there some other way then the parser funcions, then? (WT-en) Dennis 12:54, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

Tawkerbot

Hi Evan - here's a link to the Wikipedia bot we were talking about today: WikiPedia:User:Tawkerbot2. The vandalism reversions it makes seem to be remarkably accurate and include everything from the "Bob is gay" edits to page blanking (see WikiPedia:Special:Contributions/Tawkerbot2). It also leaves a note on the user page for an author whose change was reverted, and will not revert a change twice when in "calm" mode, which is the default - there is also an "angry" mode. They have a WikiPedia:User:Tawkerbot2/requests page for getting it to run on Wikis other than Wikipedia. I know Maj had some reservations, so maybe the two of you can consider it, and if you think it might be worthwhile you could then open the discussion to the wider Wikivoyage audience in either the Project:Travelers' pub or Project:Feature requests.

Thanks for stopping by today - it was nice to meet you and the family. -- (WT-en) Ryan 20:15, 22 June 2006 (EDT)

Creative Commons

Just saw the Creative Commons article on Wikivoyage. Nice stuff. --(WT-en) Dawnview 00:52, 23 June 2006 (EDT)

Eat tags, Sleep tags

Any chance you could fix these up into MoS format? I'm fixing to go postal with hotels soon, and it Would Be Nice if I could use the new tags. I think there is benefit to the new way, but the downside is that the formatting seems to be in only one person's hands. -- (WT-en) Colin 02:04, 24 June 2006 (EDT)

I'm trying to match them up to both the MoS and hCard, and I thought I'd done an OK job. I think the big difference right now is a) there's a spurious linebreak added at the end of the tag, b) you shouldn't have to do the list item by yourself c) the URL is showing up in the output, rather than an auto-numbered link. I'm having some problems tapping into the auto-numbering system, but I think it can work out. Is there something else you're missing? --(WT-en) Evan 10:08, 24 June 2006 (EDT)

To me, the failure to mask the URL is a deal-killer. The hotel scraper generates very long urls, and I love having them hidden. While numbering would be nice, an icon or similar would be an improvement over the long URL. Also:

1. Italics are not currently possible for the phone number. If I had a wish, it would be that CC1 phone numbers (and other popular CCs) would autoformat for consistency.
2. Fax numbers are put into parens for no apparent reason.

Consider the following two entries, one manually formatted to MoS, one using sleepy tags:

• Silicon Valley/Fremont AmeriSuites, 3101 West Warren Ave, +1 510 623-6000, Fax: +1 510 623-6001, [2].
• <sleep name="Silicon Valley/Fremont AmeriSuites" address="3101 West Warren Ave" phone="+1 510 623-6000" fax="+1 510 623-6001" url="http://www.amerisuites.com/reservations/locationdetail.asp?facid=4015 "></sleep>

Don't get me wrong though -- I view these tags as a major improvement since the data is more clearly accessible to any automated parsing. For example, even though I complain about CC1 phone numbers, it's obvious that once in a phone="" field, a bot could alter phone numbers for consistency. -- (WT-en) Colin 22:25, 25 June 2006 (EDT)

While reviewing Singapore's Star nomination, I noticed the following problems:

• If an address end with an abbreviation like "St.", and there is no phone number or website, you get too many periods:
  • <sleep name="Amerisuites" address="3101 West Warren Ave."></sleep>
• On an eat listing, the hours occur as a semi-sentence of their own, and the first letter should be capitalized. This requires that the user who types the hours in know how it's going to be formatted, and requires the user to manually add the capitalization. It would be nice (tm) if you could automatically do the capitalization right. I think the following two examples should display the same:
  • <eat name="McDonalds" hours="daily 5AM-11PM"></eat>
  • <eat name="McDonalds" hours="Daily 5AM-11PM"></eat>
• As you can see from the previous example, it appears you are starting an All-New unordered list for each entry. That's probably not good, but not a priority.
• We need a page to document these tags. The talk page for the documentation would be a good place for people to drop comments about the tags instead of on your talk page -- (WT-en) Colin 20:23, 29 June 2006 (EDT)

Completely off topic

Can I ask what your first novel is about? Don't ruin the ending in case you finish it and have it published. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 04:10, 25 June 2006 (EDT)

Polish Wikivoyage

Hello. I'm a user from polish Wiktravel. On polish version of wikivoyage we haven't an active polish administrator. One of this is from 3 months inactive (User:(WT-en) JanSlupski). I'm admin on Polish Wikipedia from 3 years (contributions) and I please a admin flag in polish wikivoyage. (WT-en) Adam Dziura 07:29, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

And, if it is posible the same for me. I'm 58 y. old polish Wikipedia user [3]. I have more 4 thousands edition [4]. I'm a member of Polish Wikimedia Society. Best regards Paweł Drozd, Drozdp on Pl Wikivoyage [5]

You both sound eminently qualified for being admins. However, I'd like to know that you're familiar with at least Project:Welcome, Wikipedians and understand that there are some differences between how we do things on Wikivoyage and how they work on Wikipedia. For example, we typically don't protect pages (even the main page), don't do user bans, don't delete articles unless the title is wrong, etc. Categories are rare (although rising) and RDF is used to provide in-page metadata.

Is there an equivalent to Project:Administrator nominations and/or Project:Administrators on pl:? I'd love to see this go through some kind of vote rather than deciding it by myself; if you get the nominations system set up, then new admins can be nominated later.

Also, it's extremely important to me that there be a go-between for Wikivoyage pl:. The "go-between" is responsible for keeping pl: part of the greater Wikivoyage community -- reporting news, bugs, and feature requests from pl: to en:, and reporting news, downtime, and new technology from everyone to pl:. It requires some commitment, but it's important to keep the site running well. Can either or both of you take over that job from JanSlupski (who only volunteered to do it for a month in the first place)?

Finally, what contact do we have with Jan? --(WT-en) Evan 11:16, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

First - sorry, my english is not very well ;) I understand differents Wikipedia - Wikivoyage (eg. licensing). I try to understand a RDF (is good think to insert Geo and IsIn to infobox for city or country). I try to convince a polish wikipedia users to dual-licencing (some technical tools in pl.wiki is good for wikivoyage - but not dual-licencing now).

I think that better is closed a upload files to en.wikivoyage and redirect to shared. What do you thin about a link to gallery on Wikimedia Commons in articles (or left menu)?

I try to create a polish Administrator nominations but active registered users on polish Wikivoyage is 3-4. pl:Project:Administratorzy. But now i waiting a comments about this page in polish Pub.

I send an e-mail to JanSlupski in 31 may. Nothing replies. (WT-en) Adam Dziura 14:39, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

Don't apologize -- your English is much better than my Polish! :-) Let's do this: make a page like Project:Administrator nominations, with the same rules. I'll say yes (or "tak"!), and we'll ask Jan to comment, too. Then we can get more administrators. --(WT-en) Evan 18:08, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

pl:Osoba:Adam Dziura/Brudnopis - can you change this messages on pl:? (WT-en) Adam Dziura 15:28, 29 June 2006 (EDT)

Done, except for the travel guide title thing. The English site puts the "X travel guide" on pages that describe a place. The code uses MediaWiki:Xtravelguide, but none of the other language versions use it yet. If you want to add it to Polish, let me know and I'll enable the code. --(WT-en) Evan 16:47, 29 June 2006 (EDT)

Hmm... MediaWiki:Xtravelguide add text to html tag <title>? I think, then users from google (or other search engines) see: Rzym - Wikivoyage - Przewownik turystyczny (en. Rome - Wikivoyage - Travel guide) is better. Wikivoyage isn't a brand known in Poland now. Thanks for other changes :) (WT-en) Adam Dziura 06:34, 30 June 2006 (EDT)

Italian counter

Hi, I have some questions today (Wikivoyage:it):

• our counter on the main page says we have -1 articles. Why? What should I edit to get it function?
• I'd like to translate the page "Special:today's log" (pages name) what can I do?

(WT-en) Dennis 13:12, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

the counter thing is a bug; see Project:Bug reports. It's not possible to change the name of special pages like Special:Todayslog, but you can change the title on the sidebar by editing it:MediaWiki:Portal. --(WT-en) Evan 13:31, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

Mirrors and IB

Did I read somewhere that IB purchased wikivoyage/.org /.net /.com? If they did is the listing of the wikivoyage.net no longer needed on the mirrors page? - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 16:32, 27 June 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, we've had .net and .com as well as .org for a long time. The first two currently redirect to .org, so I don't think they count as "mirrors". --(WT-en) Evan 16:36, 27 June 2006 (EDT)

Minor Edit

I think you have the "minor edit" setting enabled. Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Evan. -- (WT-en) Colin 12:31, 30 June 2006 (EDT)

Time format

Hi, when logged in, I see all the things in my UTC+2 time, except for the time associated to the signatures (~~╩~). I just posted (here is 19:08) and my signature says 13:08, 30 Giu 2006 (EDT). I'd like really much to change this, because EDT is absolutely not OK for Italy. (WT-en) Dennis 13:14, 30 June 2006 (EDT)

Is it possible to set an automatic offset +2 for those who are not logged in? Most of users are Italians, and it would be better if all could see the same time, UTC+2 :)

Yes, that's totally possible. Can I ask you to add it as a bug report? It's easier for me to follow that way. --(WT-en) Evan 16:20, 30 June 2006 (EDT)