User talk:Nicholasjf21/Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage and Wikitravel

Cited on Main Page

I put this back so that people realise that the figure quoted on the two main pages refers to different things. We have received comments about our perceived lack of articles before now and I just wanted to clarify the matter. :) --Nick ^talk 09:35, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I was going to add active users, but it seems they're beating us in that regard >_> Wikivoyage: 605; Wikitravel: 524. James A ▪ talk 10:14, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Not an issue James, we're chasing them and perhaps, we can also mention number of admins as well. --Saqib (talk) 10:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, whaddya know. Now we're in the lead. James A ▪ talk 10:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Birth date

Wikivoyage's birth date should be either December 10, 2006, or August 30, 2012 (depending on whether we're talking about all language versions or just English Wikivoyage). LtPowers (talk) 02:17, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Should be December 10, 2006 in my opinion. --Saqib (talk) 06:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

It might be best if went for the English version date as all the other statistics relate to EN, but I'm not hugely concerned either way. --Nick ^talk 10:56, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Why we're making comparison only between English language version of both wiki. I think we should compare both the projects in whole, not only a language version. --Saqib (talk) 11:08, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

True, but the article figures for other languages aren't always so favourable. --Nick ^talk 22:22, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not sure that kind of hard "comparison" is so convincing in the first place. I would say it should rather be an explanation of our rationale, an explanation of why it is okay and fair what we have done. Not too factual, not too technical. (For example: for a non-technical user a data-dump sounds like a negative thing ;-)). I would rephrase the text into something more like what I'll post below (a quick mockup, not sure if you intended us to edit in your user space). If you want to compare, I'd say something like.. "Five good reasons to join Wikivoyage" and only mention positive things. I'd leave date of birth out, for example. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:14, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

"In 2003 a website called Wikitravel was launched, seeking to allow travellers and others to share travel information freely. In 2006 the site was bought by Internet Brands (IB), a commercial for-profit company. Fearing that advertisements and other commercial interference would damage the site's goals, the volunteer communities of the German and Italian language sites decided shortly after to make use of the free license of the information on the website and to make a new, independent start. They used a freely licensed copy of the travel information in Wikitravel to start a site called Wikivoyage, where they edited and expanded the available information into a travel platform of their own.

In 2012, after years of poor technical support and increasing monetisation of Wikitravel, a substantial part of the English volunteer community (along with other language versions) decided to leave Wikitravel too and create another "fork". Plans to put links to a booking engine on every page, out-of-date software versions and slow server response made it clear that IB's interest was in the profit they could make from the site, not in its original goals or community.

In cooperation with the Italian and German Wikivoyage community, a group of active volunteer editors decided to not only merge with Wikivoyage, but to do so under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation.

And so it happened. On 15th January 2013 Wikivoyage relaunched, reunited and reinvigorated. The site is now hosted on WMF servers and we are part of a large WMF community. We welcomed a large number of new users from our sister wikis, many of them experienced wiki-editors. We enjoy the use of powerful multi-wiki tools, including the huge shared image repository at Wikimedia Commons and the WMF cross-wiki anti-spam infrastructure.

The free license of our content is at the heart of what we do and have always done. The right to re-use it, as we have done, is the very point of a free licence. We are therefore proud to build Wikivoyage upon the foundations we brought over from Wikitravel, and invite you to help us develop it further. Despite the intervening period and some changes along the way, Wikivoyage still aspires to the same principles that were outlined ten years ago: to provide a site where travellers and others can share travel information freely and openly."

That sounds really good and I do see what you mean about refraining from making it too technical! Please feel free to edit the page itself if you'd like as well! All contributions are welcome! :) --Nick ^talk 23:13, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

On this particular subject be very careful to stick to verifiable factual information, and try to keep in mind that it may need to be reviewed by legal. Anything that is subject to interpretation is likely to be problematic - for example, using "the community" is likely to be too broad for this particular subject, so "members of the community of editors" would be better. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:32, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Sure - this was just a quick draft. I'm not too aware of the ins and outs of dealings with IB, so please be bold in editing and fixing any potentially problematic wordings. JuliasTravels (talk) 07:21, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Overall, though, this wording is definitely an improvement. Pashley (talk) 12:24, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

While I really like what you've written and believe it does say a lot of great things about our project, I fear it's a little too wordy. If we're going to start linking here whenever a user asks what the difference is, we want to be as clear and up-front as possible. A text wall will just cause people to not bother. My original suggestion to change up this page was to avoid big blocks of text. Sometimes, less is more (case in point). James A ▪ talk 12:45, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, my main concern is with style really, I'm fine with making it shorter or more politically correct. I do think we should give fair attention to the issue and just tell the story (as short as possible, sure). This is not something we'll link from the main page, it's a response to people who ask and /want/ to know, so I don't think people won't bother if it's more than 10 lines of text. However, if we do the same with less text: even better. Just keep in mind that not everyone (especially less technically oriented people) prefers such hard facts/comparisons over just a proper explanation. I for one would get a lot more enthusiastic by knowing why this is the "right" site, combined with stats saying this is the one with more articles and users, than I would get from just technical numbers and facts in a table :-) I'm guessing the same might be true for quite many tourist office staff people. Ideally, we find a good combination of the two and address people of all kinds. JuliasTravels (talk) 14:43, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I do agree with you somewhat. Facts and comparisons between "database dumps" and the like may not be relevant to most users, although I think some of the other parameters in the table give a clear indication that we're not some inferior copycat site. Though the story does need to be told, so if you're blurb could be further chopped down somewhat, I think it'd fit well somewhere on the page :) James A ▪ talk 13:25, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

What next?

This has sort of ground to a halt recently; what sort of things would we like to see added? --Nick ^talk 21:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)