User talk:Rschen7754/Archive 1

Hello Rschen7754!

We do Welcome Wikipedians to Wikivoyage, sorry you weren't welcomed sooner. However, you cannot copy Wikipedia templates here directly as many do not work.

Please take a sec to look at our copyleft and policies and guidelines, but feel free to plunge forward and edit some pages. Scanning the Manual of style, especially the article templates, can give you a good idea of how we like articles formatted. If you need help, check out Project:Help, and if you need some info not on there, post a message in the travellers' pub.

Thank you for your contributions so far. -- (WT-en) Huttite 04:36, 22 Dec 2005 (EST)

I've removed the VFD template from your user page - if you'd like the page deleted for some reason please leave a note on Project:Votes for deletion. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 02:17, 1 October 2010 (EDT)

Vandalism..

Wow, nothing slips past you :-) --Inas (talk) 09:22, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Haha thanks! I guess after seven years dealing with this sort of vandalism, I'm pretty used to it, and the RC feed is a lot slower than on the English Wikipedia. The scripts that I stole from User:Snowolf sure help too :) --Rschen7754 09:27, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Got to say thank you for your patrolling, too! Indian articles are sadly the category with the highest attraction of spammers (after continents). Please keep up the spirit, jan (talk) 10:09, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome! To be honest though, I'm a bit concerned by the 2 hour blocks on IPs and user accounts - I doubt that those will be long enough to deal with some of the long-term abusers that we have on WMF sites. On all the other WMF sites I'm a part of (English Wikipedia, Commons, Meta, Wikidata, Simple English Wikipedia) IP vandals get blocked for a minimum of 24 hours and accounts that are created only to vandalize are indefinitely blocked; some wikis give warnings before, some don't. On the English Wikipedia we have all sorts of games such as "sleeper accounts" that are created en masse, make a few good edits to become autoconfirmed, and then a few days later go on a massive vandalism spree on semi-protected pages; I've seen as many as 50 throwaway accounts used in this manner. If there's an attempt to have a ban discussion for every single one of these vandal-only accounts, things will get chaotic pretty quickly. Sometimes there's open proxies, and those should be blocked for at least a year (though we do not indefinitely block IPs) because anyone who is blocked can just use these IPs that are nearly impossible to trace. Sure, the stewards do their own global locking and blocking, but administrators are entrusted with the ability to stop local damage, and are responsible for doing so; the stewards are not allowed to locally block on wikis this size except in dire emergencies, and cannot lock unless they are crosswiki vandals.

I'm definitely here trying to give advice and help out, while staying out of the way; I know that Wikipedians (especially English Wikipedians) tend to be a bit too forceful whenever they visit other WMF wikis, and I know there's been issues with that on Wikitravel. But now that you're on WMF servers, there's increased popularity, but with that comes a lot more vandalism and abusive editors to deal with; a lot of vandals try to hit all the Wikipedias in all the obscure languages since they think that nobody will discover the vandalism for a long time, and we have to watch those too... I'm concerned that with these two hour blocks and reluctance to indefinitely block you'll be overrun pretty quickly. This site will probably never see the volume of vandalism that en.wikipedia sees, but my guess is it will get a lot more than Wikitravel did. I know there's been a lot of spambots that came by en.wikivoyage early this morning, and the stewards had to run several CUs to block some IP addresses, since a lot of the accounts were throwaway (a name like Dngtt34t3weg can easily be generated and there's tons of names like that). So just my 2 cents. --Rschen7754 10:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi! Thank you for your insight view to WP. I have never been part of the WP community, so i know nothing how you handle vandals. I recognised that some WP "offsprings" is now going to visit us and we need to take care of this. I guess we are currently a bit overwhelmed with the attention we get. On the old side we have been used to neglect, so i'm not a big fan of fast blocks but i guess we need to think about new policies if that becomes a consistent problem. I really appreciate that you share your knowlegde. Imho the community will need a week or two to consider how long and big the tide of edits will be. Then i would highly appreciate if we start to do mass/range blocks for known convicts from WMF sister projects. jan (talk) 15:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I would highly suggest switching to 31 hours blocks or some similar duration. 2 hours just means that the guy will come back after that :) Vandals are persistent, as I've learned over the years. 31 hours stop them vandalizing during the same time period on two separate days :) If this still seems overkill to you, I'd say at the very list go for 8 hours :) Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 18:37, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, users such as User:Asdfghjkl should be blocked indefinitely - there it's clear that all they are here to do is vandalize. (Snowolf blocked him indefinitely already, but going forward, if you want to have the time to write content without reverting every few seconds, you'll have to start sending these people away). --Rschen7754 18:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This discussion should probably move to Wikivoyage talk:How to handle unwanted edits. --Peter ^Talk 21:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Admin bit

Per Wikivoyage:Administrator nominations#User:Rschen7754 for temporary admin I've flipped your bit to give you access to the shiny buttons, with the caveat that if someone raises an objection then we revert and go back to the normal nomination process. Thanks for your help so far! -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:39, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I think I'll go for a reconfirmation in a few months to be sure that people are still happy with me. --Rschen7754 20:40, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Victoriaville

I've left a note on 24.49.254.148's page; we actually do lack an article about Victoriaville, Québec (in both en: and fr:) but it would need to be in the proper format and posted to the correct wiki for the language being used in the text. Not sure why this was written here instead of fr.wikivoyage.org (that IP4 has no contribs over there)? K7L (talk) 20:27, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

It happens all the time on the English Wikipedia; not sure why people think they can write in a different language here... Thanks. --Rschen7754 22:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

In this case, that big site notice on Wikipédia might be a factor... the message has been translated to French and other languages but the link from WP in those languages still points to en.wikivoyage.org. K7L (talk) 23:08, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Uggh... might want to bring this up on Meta so that they're aware of it. --Rschen7754 00:45, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

January 2013

Hi, I'm Rschen7754. I wanted to thank you for your of your recent contributions but please note that should not be used for advertising. We have a page explaining things a bit for business owners that might be of interest to you as well. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks! Rschen7754 20:24, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Rschen7754, i am Targetkristy. Thanks for your message and feedback but i am not an advertiser or marketing company. I add and amend parts on Morocco as i know the area for having lived over there for many years. I amended differents parts on the page such as the part where you wrote that the water smells like sewage, obviously wrong. Just like the fact that the water is not suitable for beginners kitesurfing or windsurfing... I added hotels, place to eat, things to do... Not sure where you are coming from tbh

The specific edit I saw made it seem like you were trying to promote a certain business. Please see Wikivoyage:Don't tout. --Rschen7754 00:46, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Thanks for giving me the auto patrolled right. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:11, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Not a problem; it just saves us having to patrol all your edits :) --Rschen7754 21:13, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Acknowledging your welcome

Thanks for the welcome notice! It's good to see a familiar name here already. Daniel Case (talk) 06:12, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

81M

It's difficult to believe 81M is the same user as John Daker. Are you certain? LtPowers (talk) 18:49, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I understand your concern and wonder that myself, but I don't have access to the technical evidence. You're welcome to ask w:en:User:DeltaQuad who ran the CU on enwp, if he can give any insight. --Rschen7754 20:34, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

However, I will note that I have seen a behavioral similarity between 81M and John Daker on enwikivoyage (I haven't looked through the enwp evidence thoroughly). I won't post it here because of w:en:WP:BEANS, though. --Rschen7754 20:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Demotion to admin

Congratulations! -- Alice^✉ 06:38, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. --Rschen7754 06:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you may know me well enough to realise that there is NOTHING personal or pertinent to you when I made this comment.

However, I do wonder exactly what PeterFtizgerald's agenda is in continually calling me a sockpuppet or troll and removing any attempt to clarify the de-sysopping procedure. On balance, he is a huge asset to our project, but he does need to stop with the childish name calling and censorship attempts.

Since you already have sysop powers, I would prefer to fructify the de-sysopping procedures before I withdraw my wait. However, if this is inconvenient, ask me to withdraw it and I will. -- Alice^✉ 03:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The desysopping procedures are pretty clear: you discuss it with the admin first, if they don't get it, you start a rights removal discussion on Wikivoyage:Administrator nominations. That's generally how it works on almost all WMF wikis (with the exception of enwiki, of course).

I highly doubt that the bureaucrats will take your oppose into consideration when the request is closed, but I would suggest that you remove it, because all it is doing right now is causing drama. --Rschen7754 03:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

You write "The desysopping procedures are pretty clear"; they may be to you or I who follow debate on these matters but the effect of the edits I reference mean that no newcomer would be able to fathom this procedure. Why should the procedure be such a big secret? -- Alice^✉ 01:15, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not a secret. Wikivoyage:Administrators: "Administrators who abuse their privileges can have those privileges revoked via nomination." --Rschen7754 01:53, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Why would a newcomer ever need to know how to initiate a deadmin procedure? Ever? LtPowers (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Your adminship is no longer temporary. Condolences. LtPowers (talk) 15:06, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, great to have you longer around here and the first switch from temp to permanent. Enjoy and safe travels, jan (talk) 15:46, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks all. --Rschen7754 19:09, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Note

Activity note: I will be offline for the rest of today, Tuesday, and most of Wednesday. I will be back on Thursday. --Rschen7754 23:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

endless

http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Log/newusers - something has been automatically creating a very large number (my guess is over 20,000) of accounts since november the 11th 2012. I think it would be good if it was explained somewhere, but knowing my luck here so far - it probably is already eplained somewhere - cheers sats (talk) 15:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

apology - I got pointed to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login at meta - dumbo me... sats (talk) 16:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello

Hello Rschen7754. You have a new message at Curtaintoad's talk page. Thanks, Curtaintoad ^{(curtain or toad)} 10:49, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay but I have your talk page on my watchlist so I don't need these. Thanks. --Rschen7754 20:21, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll try to remember that, thanks. :) Curtaintoad ^{(curtain or toad)} 23:27, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

U.S. route abbreviations

Your input would be helpful in this discussion: Wikivoyage_talk:Abbreviations#U.S._routes. AHeneen (talk) 19:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah we had *quite* the discussion, which resulted from an arbitration case: if you're interested in reading. :) --Rschen7754 05:55, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

User:Rschen7754/wikitravel

Hi Rschen7754. Hope you don't mind, but I moved your useful subpage from your userspace into the project-space, as a subpage of the Search Expedition at Wikivoyage:Search Expedition/wikitravel. If you disagree, feel free to move it back. However, considering that many people from across the project are making use of it, it is more logical to place it at the Expedition. Thanks for all your help organising that page, by the way! :) JamesA ^>talk 07:36, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. --Rschen7754 08:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Great. By the way, the external links in the Interwiki links section don't seem to be working for me, reporting back an error. Is there any way to get this fixed? JamesA ^>talk 08:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Only thing I can think of is that somehow the Wikidata launch today changed the API, but I find that hard to believe. --Rschen7754 09:23, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

It's been broken for weeks. I've never seen the links work, I just never mentioned it. JamesA ^>talk 10:08, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

That's odd - last night one or two of them weren't working but I clicked a few random samples today and everything seems fine. --Rschen7754 20:47, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I seem to be able to get some working now. Very odd. Should wikis that now have no more interwiki WT links be striked out, such as ast? And for wikis that still have links like meta, should they be replaced with direct URLs? Except in cases where it is logical to replace with a Wikivoyage link, of course. JamesA ^>talk 01:15, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, they should be striked out. It depends on the context and the place really... some wikis may not be too happy if you change links on userpages. --Rschen7754 01:18, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

8 years on the English Wikipedia

I have posted an essay marking my 8th anniversary on my home project, the English Wikipedia. It can be read here. --Rschen7754 10:29, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, critical words can come over as much harsher than the writer intended - and they stick around for eternity on the Internet. It can be difficult for non-professional writers to express tone without the facial expressions and voice inflections of face-to-face interactions or telecons. I personally greatly miss the ability to establish CONFIDENTIALLY my real-life user identity and bona fides. -- Alice^✉ 03:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

E-mail

You have a new mail. --Kolega2357 (talk) 08:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Please stop with your crosswiki disruption (such as your running your bot without local approval on dozens of wikis, sockpuppeting, personal attacks, etc.). --Rschen7754 08:18, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not attacking you. --Kolega2357 (talk) 08:20, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I beg to differ. --Rschen7754 08:27, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I forgot, I apologize if there was something gross on me. Now you can unblock my bot, I turned it off. --Kolega2357 (talk) 08:31, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Kolega reports his bot as "Flag: Flagged on de, pt wikivoyage." at Wikivoyage:Script_nominations#User:Kolega2357-Bot. Is this something you want to look at in your cross-wiki patrolling? Pashley (talk) 16:09, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately there's only so much that I can do as it's really each local community's decision. I believe that it's dishonest to not disclose such an issue like that, and it's a bit foolhardy for the local users to not check the SUL record, but not even the stewards can necessarily intervene as they are bound by local consensus. --Rschen7754 19:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

@Pashley: My bot can be corrected, this incubator that is removed. He did not make any bad change, are all good. --Kolega2357 (talk) 16:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

User:Technoquat

Hello Rschen7754, User:Technoquat is keep on creating socks . Isn't there any way to prevent him creating new accounts? --Saqib (talk) 19:46, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately no, not even with CU assistance. --Rschen7754 19:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

What about blocking range of Technoquat's IP addresses? --Saqib (talk) 20:06, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

This is not possible, considering that he has been using open proxies and shared webhosts. --Rschen7754 20:13, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your vote anyway. --Saqib (talk) 20:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I was only defending me

I just want to help improve this article, but you are not helping me at all, you should not be bad with me. --Theryx7 (talk) 05:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Your calling people stupid was completely unnecessary, and if you do it again you will be blocked. --Rschen7754 05:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Excuse me, I was very angry with the user --Theryx7 (talk) 05:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't matter. If you want to edit on this website, you must treat people with respect, because this is a collaborative effort. If you cannot do this when you are angry, then that is going to be a problem. --Rschen7754 05:23, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Spambot

Hi Rschen - based on this edit, is it still correct that spambots blocked here should be reported on meta (as per Wikivoyage:How to handle unwanted edits#Spambots)? I'm all for doing anything I can to cut down on spam, but I also don't want to create any unnecessary work for stewards. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:38, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's no longer the correct process, as there just aren't enough stewards to lock the accounts and do a CU like there used to be. The spambots are also getting smarter and using different IPs for each wiki, making CU worthless unless there's local CUs. If you notice that spambots are editing multiple wikis though, then those definitely should be reported - but a lot of them are not programmed that way. --Rschen7754 18:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I've updated Wikivoyage:How to handle unwanted edits#Spambots with that info. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:19, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Away

I will be away from August 6 through August 13. I will try to reply to time-critical matters as soon as possible while I am away, but there may be delays. --Rschen7754 00:40, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

The traveler comes first

Hi. I just want to say, I am aware that part of the reason at least some of the departed admins left was that they don't want this site to become a "Wikipedia of travel" - whatever exactly that means. My viewpoint is that Wikipedia is the go-to source for quick encyclopedic information, so, by analogy, if Wikivoyage becomes the go-to source for quick travel information, that would be great. But fundamentally, I take no overall view on how much or how little this site should be similar to Wikipedia. Instead, I take the guiding principle of this site seriously. Whatever is of most use to the traveler is what we should be doing, within the limits of our ability and legal limitations that have to be observed. And if you examine my history, you'll see that I have supported a broad view of what travel is and can be, a broad view of how much and what kind of information a traveler may be interested in knowing, and a broad view of what kinds of places we should cover with articles. That has a lot to do with my own personality and what interests me when I travel - learning about local culture, history, arts, cuisine, religion, flora and fauna, terrain, etc. But I make my arguments and accept that they may not win, and that I will sometimes be convinced that the other side is right. But even when I'm not convinced, it's still been fun for me to do what I can within the existing consensus. That means that when my proposal for inline Wikipedia links was defeated for cause but the creation of travel topics such as Gothic architecture was agreed to, I started the topic and made it into something. And similar topics could be made on other subjects, with appropriate Wikipedia links for each of those travel topics.

The other thing is that everyone here should be very grateful to Wikimedia for taking this community, defending and supporting it. I can't speak for others, but I would think and certainly hope that most members of the fork are grateful, and I've certainly been glad to be editing here, rather than Wikitravel (where I would not be contributing now, regardless of what else had happened).

I'm not Nostradamus, but my prediction is that this site will gradually become more similar to Wikipedia, as more Wikipedians become editors here. And in my opinion, that will be good, because more editors means more and better content, and that serves the interests of the traveler.

Best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:24, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, my main issues generally aren't the content policies - Wikivoyage is a travel guide, not an encyclopedia, and there will be some differences. My main issues are generally more about how this site operates - in some areas, it does not follow general founding Wikimedia principles (m:Founding principles), and other Wikimedia norms that are practiced on other Wikimedia sites as diverse as Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, etc. For example, there are some transparency issues, and consensus does not have the same definition here as it does on other Wikimedia sites. We have a massive backlog of things that need fixing from the migration, yet we waste a lot of time on things that could be done more efficiently. The W. Frank incident showed some other issues too. And I'm concerned that the community won't change - scaring away these potentially new editors from Wikipedia. It's so much so that I would not support having local CheckUsers here, because I worry that they would follow "local policy" whether or not such actions are allowed under the global CU policy. It's a bit of a jumble right now, but I'm hoping to explain this further in a writeup. --Rschen7754 09:39, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I'll look forward to reading that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I will say that at least one founding principle is a clear and seemingly basic problem for this site: Neutral point of view. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

There actually have been discussions about that on wikimedia-l. That particular one is clarified on m:Neutral point of view: "Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource and Wikinews – but not Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, the many "backstage" projects, or Meta – have a strict neutral point of view (NPOV) policy." But even then, you could say Wikivoyage:Be fair is in the same spirit, even if it is not an exact match. --Rschen7754 10:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, it's of a kindred spirit. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Regarding your comments above and in this edit, I very much look forward to hearing your thoughts. There have been numerous accusations lately that longtime editors here are too insular, our consensus-building process does seem to be suffering from growing pains, and I'm curious what transparency issues you see. To cite two specific examples of where some feedback from someone whose primary wiki isn't Wikivoyage would be helpful, one recent attempt to deal with a user who seemed to be here on a crusade against the site devolved to the point where that user left with a final post about his "disgust in you and in this site" , while failure to deal meaningfully with the perceived disruptions that Frank created led directly to the departure of two longtime admins. As a result of those episodes I'm personally feeling somewhat lost as to how best to balance a huge variety of opinions and personalities, remain inclusive of everyone who wants to contribute positively, but at the same time prevent individuals who either don't care about creating great travel guides, or who don't care about doing so in a collaborative way, from frustrating and driving away others. I look forward to hearing your criticisms, suggestions, and other thoughts. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm writing down notes as I think of stuff, but unfortunately my time is short right now :/ Hopefully I'll get to this soon. --Rschen7754 21:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I feel concerned about how Frank is being dealt with now. Accusing him of sockpuppetry pushes his buttons, and then when he replies defensively or/and angrily, he gets suspended, although in this case, it wasn't his main account, but one or two IPs that said they weren't him (and maybe they weren't; I have no idea anymore). I think it's really important, and perhaps should be codified as a policy, never to accuse someone of sockpuppetry unless that's been investigated and proven. I also feel like we might cut Frank a little slack for having health problems, as trips in and out of the hospital can certainly make a person a bit irritable, and while he makes his points emphatically, his action points seem pretty thought-through to me, plus, he's often pretty good-humored and sometimes funny. I'm sorry that some really valued admins left over this, but I certainly don't think there's a benefit, on balance, to making Frank leave the site, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:30, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I encounter this a lot out at enwiki's SPI... to accuse someone of being a sock, you need a good amount of proof. Sometimes one makes the accusation, requests CheckUser, and it turns out that they're wrong. That unfortunately happens sometimes. But to accuse someone of being a sock on a flimsy basis is not okay. I encountered this at en.wiktionary a few months ago - my colleague created a global userpage, and it was deleted. Then, he recreated it after a discussion, and was blocked. When I raised a question over the block, I was accused of being a sock. Never mind our both being Wikidata admins, and my holding adminship on several other sites, and if the accusations were true, our losing all our flags on all Wikimedia sites.

Whatever issues there may be here, there are plenty of Wikimedia sites that have worse problems. --Rschen7754 01:19, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's reassuring that some other Wikis have worse problems with this. I'm actually surprised Frank hasn't given up on Wikivoyage, and the fact that he comes back after suspensions and continues offering well-argued proposals to me demonstrates a commitment to, or at least a real interest in this site. Would you support me if I were to suggest a new policy of avoiding accusations of sockpuppetry without proof? If so, on what page should the policy be inserted? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

At present that would probably be the Wikivoyage:Checkuser page. Nurg (talk) 02:57, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Nurg. I started a thread at Wikivoyage talk:Checkuser. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:13, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Premature (?) "sweeping"

Where did you sweep this to, please? --118.93.91.14 07:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The archives, which can be found in the header. --Rschen7754 07:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Rschen7754/The future of Wikivoyage

Here is my essay that I've been promising. It's still only half-written, but it still provides enough to think about. --Rschen7754 23:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

South Norfolk

Just wondering if you could delete South Norfolk and then re-create it with {{subst:Region skeleton}} and then I'll come back an fill in a bit of detail. It currently doesn't contain anything useful and the deletion will remove the need for wikitravel attribution. -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:32, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Also Richfield (Wisconsin) and then {{subst:Smallcity skeleton}}. Thanks -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:57, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Done. --Rschen7754 19:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:User essay

I noticed the red link on your essay page. Is Template:User essay something you might like to propose? Texugo (talk) 11:43, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll get to talking about that eventually, but it's not necessarily a proposal, no. --Rschen7754 20:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Private information

What kind of information about me that was posted and then removed, and where? Tony (talk) 21:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

If you send me an email, I can give you more information; I'm reluctant to say on a public page. --Rschen7754 21:50, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Honest discussion

Out of all the Wikimedia sites that I am an active member of (a list that includes English Wikipedia, Commons, Meta, Wikidata, MediaWiki, English Wikisource) I am the most concerned about this one, and have been for quite a while now.

We all come from different backgrounds and have different opinions. But lately I am seeing a complete resistance to any sort of proposal for anything, on the part of certain factions. The issue is that both sides are currently saying "this is the way that it has to be, full stop" with no possibility of compromise. That, combined with the fact that some interpret consensus to mean unanimity, and keep pushing this view, means that nothing ever gets done, and the status quo remains, for better or (as we are seeing) for worse.

Quite frankly, unless we figure out a better way to do things, I don't see a way forward for this site at all, and I think we will start watching more and more administrators resign their tools in frustration until whomever can deal with the crap the longest wins the dispute between the "old guard" and the "new guys". And then Wikitravel will be the real winner.

But it won't be me who stays on until the end. I'm not wedded to the admin flag here, and I have enough higher priorities on other Wikimedia sites where I feel my input is more valued, and where my passions are. My overarching goal has been to help Wikivoyage as it gets set up on Wikimedia, but if I can't do that, and my efforts are rebuffed, then I really have little purpose here. --Rschen7754 10:37, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Not to mention that I am becoming concerned that holding adminship here is becoming damaging to my reputation across Wikimedia overall, due to the flouting of basic Wikimedia principles here. --Rschen7754 10:52, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what this is in reference to, but I'm not aware of any basic Wikimedia principles being flouted. LtPowers (talk) 20:39, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Consensus, for one.

To be honest, I've been highly concerned with some of your statements lately - it seems that many of them have been to the effect of "this is the way that it has to be, full stop" with no possibility of compromise. --Rschen7754 20:49, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I apologize if my statements have come across that way. Usually what I mean is one of two things: Either we have a clear consensus to keep things the way they are, or no clear consensus has developed to make a change. But it's difficult to address this without specific examples.

As for consensus, do you feel we're violating our own Wikivoyage:Consensus policy, or that our policy is not in line with WMF requirements? LtPowers (talk) 14:11, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I feel that the current implementation of consensus as it is currently practiced is possibly less than practical, and is a bit different than what is practiced on Wikimedia. I also have concerns about transparency, as well. --Rschen7754 18:52, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I hope you'll soon expound on transparency in more detail in some place where everyone can see your thoughts. I'm not sure what your concerns are in that respect. (Forgive me if you told me and I forgot.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:58, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, we should discuss things like blocks out in the open. I think we've been getting better in that regard though. (With the obvious exception being stuff like the exact contents of what was suppressed last week, or CU/OS info)/ --Rschen7754 19:05, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Historically, we have always discussed blocks in the open. LtPowers (talk) 19:44, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

That is definitely not true, from what I have seen. --Rschen7754 20:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

That's news to me. I can think of one instance where there was off-wiki side-discussion, but it was a) basically an historical anomaly that was only made possible due to the unique circumstances of 2012 and b) mostly for the purpose of gauging whether even considering a ban nomination was warranted, not for making a decision on the ban itself. The actual ban discussion took place on-wiki, as have all of those of which I'm aware. I'm confident, however, that that particular misstep won't be repeated, for a variety of reasons. LtPowers (talk) 20:24, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer

Hey Rschen, I see you're maintainer of this wiki as well as Wikidata, and I saw your most recent edit to the page MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer, so I thought maybe you could help me out. I've designed a version on the Graffiti Wall that adds a link to meta's Special:CentralAuth to help the crosswiki countervandalism team plus a link to vvv's Yet Another Edit Counter tool and changed some links into {{fullurl:...}} for faster connections (I've also accidentally renamed X!'s tool to X!'s pcount, but you could rename it back). See here to compare the changes I've made. I've also designed a second version on the Graffiti Wall that I think may be more appropriate, but given that it removes a link I'm afraid you might not want to implement that version, so I saved it as a different oldid on the Graffiti Wall. You can compare the changes here; basically I've removed the global rights link as I don't think it'll be as relevant to Wikivoyage as it is to meta and I've moved the global contribs link and Q's SULinfo next to global instead of editcounters since that seems to make more sense. But let me know what you think and which version you prefer. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 05:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Either version looks fine to me; I have a script installed on my global.js on every wiki that I use instead of the links, so I tend not to notice that too much. --Rschen7754 05:43, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! The second one is the preferred one to put in MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer, except for the accidental change from X!'s tool to X!'s pcount. I've also made another version of MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon that I figure might also be of help. Hmm, do you have a link to the global javascript you use? It might be easier to use that for more cross-wiki projects and dispense with the old tools altogether, or maybe use them both together. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 07:22, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I use m:User:Hoo man/Scripts/Useful links; the catch is that you have to install it everywhere using m:User:PiRSquared17/Global UP. --Rschen7754 07:28, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh? I think I'll continue to use these tools for awhile then, I'm not sure if I want to use the Global UP across all the Wikimedia wikis, but I'll consider it later. Meanwhile, do you think you can change the above messages accordingly? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 16:15, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Done. --Rschen7754 20:32, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

[[Talk:wv:tdf]]

Please read (and comment if necessary) on the discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Shortcuts before you abuse your admin privileges by deleting this discussion page again @Rschen7754:. --61.29.8.41 01:43, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

My apologies. I did not notice I had dropped the colon and used a full stop instead. Sorry for troubling you. --61.29.8.41 01:48, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Template:User essay

Hi there. I've been cleaning up things from Special:WantedTemplates and I came across this again. I asked you once before if you were planning to propose "Template:User essay" and you seemed to indicate that you weren't necessarily going to do that. So, would it be ok to remove the template call from the top of User:Rschen7754/The future of Wikivoyage, so that it doesn't keep showing up in the list of wanted templates? I would have commented it out myself, but you have a note there saying to leave the red link. Texugo (talk) 12:24, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I'd rather that it was left there; should I finish writing the essay, that's going to be a part of it. --Rschen7754 17:07, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

You couldn't just comment it out until the time comes? Just so it doesn't sit in the wanted list forever if you never get around to proposing it? Texugo (talk) 17:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps we should wait until the outcome of the discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Using MediaWiki templates before deciding? It seems like this is controversial. --Rschen7754 19:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Suit yourself, but in the absence of a burning need or purpose for keeping it red-linked, there would certainly be nothing controversial about your delinking it yourself to oblige someone who took the courtesy to ask you first. Texugo (talk) 19:55, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, the thing is, you're demonstrating one of the points that I'm hoping to make in that essay. That red link does no harm, and neither do additional templates that aren't in mainspace. I wonder if this time would be better spent improving the travel guide, and thus helping the traveler rather than editing imported user pages of users that have not edited in years. --Rschen7754 20:07, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Zip zero zilch to do with new template creation or your essay. A policy of always and forever leaving red links does do harm; it completely destroys the usefulness of the Special wanted pages. What does no harm is cooperating so that the wanted lists aren't overrun to the point of uselessness. Texugo (talk) 20:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Are those pages even useful? As the wiki gets even bigger, they get less and less useful. Meanwhile, this sort of removing stuff that does no harm alienates users. --Rschen7754 20:20, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, they are useful for locating broken/non-existent templates in articles and finding templates that need to be created, as Ryan and I have explained there. They only get less and less useful as the wiki gets bigger if you insist on leaving old red links lying around everywhere. Texugo (talk) 20:25, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I've removed the link. However, if this is the direction that this wiki has chosen to take... I'm disappointed, to say the least. --Rschen7754 20:27, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. But I don't understand how keeping special page funcionality useful is disappointing. Do you feel like users should have a right to pointlessly leave their marks at Special:WantedTemplates forever? Texugo (talk) 20:30, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't know that the way this site manages templates is worth the cost of alienating users, as I and others have expressed several times. --Rschen7754 20:38, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe it is "alienating". Any user should be perfectly capable of understanding that a template is either going to exist or it's not, and in the latter case that a perpetual red link is perfectly useless anyway. In your case, you may remember that I first brought "Template:User essay" up to you a few months ago as something you might like to propose, but now seeing as how several months have passed and it's still a red link, I can't imagine why it would be "alienating" for you to deactivate it until you're ready to do something with it. Texugo (talk) 20:49, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm trying to talk about the bigger picture. --Rschen7754 20:52, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

What is the bigger advantage of keeping redlinks in perpetuity? What could be alienating about not keeping pointless links forever? I'm just trying to see how this could possibly be disappointing. I just wonder if you are still conflating it with your apparent frustration at our template creation process, but I assure you the issue of deactivating old redlinks has no bearing on that. Texugo (talk) 20:59, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

If I may interject, without taking a firm position on this, I can definitely see how deleting a template a user wants to use in his/her own user page could alienate that user, especially if said user created the template. For example, we're lucky that User:Saqib didn't decide to stop editing permanently after Template:Busy was deleted. It's certainly true that this is not the same thing as commenting out red links, but it does address the general point that it might be a good idea to leave user pages alone as much as possible. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:20, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't think I've explained well enough why the red link was there in the original essay - the point of having it there was for me to comment on in my essay. Was it worth the extra slot on the maintenance report? That was debatable, which is why I eventually removed it.

But quite frequently, I'm seeing people on this site nominate for deletion templates created by other users, simply because they don't understand what they are for. I'm not sure that's a good strategy to follow. --Rschen7754 04:15, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I would consider that to be only a very tangentially related subject, but at any rate, that's sometimes me doing that nominating, following our standard practice, which aims at consistent sitewide use of a manageable, standardized set of templates for reasonably common purposes, rather than erratic, piecemeal use of myriad idiosyncratic templates for any purpose whatsoever. Keeping templates that are unused and/or have unknown/redundant/unnecessary purposes would not be simply harmless - it would make it hard to ensure consistent use of the templates we have agreed on, and harder for users to figure out which ones those are. We don't need to hoard such useless clutter. Texugo (talk) 11:54, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes... but just because a template wasn't "our idea" doesn't mean that it's not a good one. --Rschen7754 05:46, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

No, of course not, I agree. There have been a number of very nice or useful templates that have been imported. Then again, WP has a lot of others that are completely irrelevant for us.... Texugo (talk) 11:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Open-source Ticket Request System

Well I've just created this page, so let me know what you think and whether I can re-point Wikivoyage:Oversight to the local page instead of to Meta Wiki. I should probably footnote Wikivoyage:Contact us as well. Problem is that I'm not an agent myself so I don't know how it works, but I've gathered all my information from Wikipedia, Commons and Meta's OTRS pages. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 03:05, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Special:Diff/2556980/2557010: Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team says that:

1. "Volunteers must have an exceptionally good track record on Wikimedia projects, and may be required to provide personal identification to the Wikimedia Foundation."
2. "OTRS administrators [are] themselves designated by internal community process and approved by the Wikimedia Foundation"
3. "...being sanctioned on one Wikimedia wiki does not automatically terminate users' access to the OTRS system..."

Did I word those wrong, or is Wikipedia's version of the page out of date? I'm assuming that, in your duties as steward (yet not OTRS administratorship) you have more knowledge about OTRS than any of us do. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 04:38, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I suppose the first one is somewhat true, as volunteers may be required to provide identification at any time, but it has not been required for years, for the traditional queues (that are not "donations", or wikimania scholarships, etc.). The community does not get a say in who is chosen as an admin; perhaps it should, but it generally does not - for example, a few are chosen specifically from some of the other major language Wikipedias that use OTRS a lot. As far as the sanctions, I have seen cases where the OTRS admins did terminate access for sanctions on one wiki; it depends on the situation. --Rschen7754 07:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

User:Rschen7754/The future of Wikivoyage

I have (finally!) finished the essay on my thoughts about Wikivoyage going forward, and it is available at the link above. --Rschen7754 00:19, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Are you sure? The Conclusion section seems to be incomplete. =) Powers ^(talk) 01:30, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I enjoyed reading your essay.

The part where you wrote "It means that if we want to differentiate ourselves from Wikitravel for SEO purposes, we must be willing to change both our content and behavior guidelines and policies, for if they remain the same, then the content generated will remain largely the same, and we will simply be a duplicate of Wikitravel and be ignored by Google until the site dies." particularly resonated with me.

We both know that, to any perceptive reader, it's very clear that we are both a more up-to-date and superior product with different content - the problem is that search engine spiders are not blessed with human discernment and are trained to focus on the first few thousand characters of an HTML page and especially such clues as the H1, H2 and H3 headings.

Obviously, many of us get a deal of satisfaction just writing here and debating, but I do continue to feel very sad that the very few and relatively painless changes needed to be made to boost our readership by an order of magnitude have still not been made. --W. Frank^email_talk 11:19, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Resignation

I am resigning as an administrator on the English Wikivoyage.

While it has been an honor to serve as first a temporary and then a permanent administrator on this site for over a year, the time that I have available for Wikimedia is decreasing, and I have gained additional responsibilities through the last year that require more of that time. Lately I have found it difficult to regularly participate in discussions, and I have barely contributed to mainspace content at all, which is certainly not optimal, and not what I was expecting. Finally, I feel that the current admin team is sufficient for the day-to-day work, and that while there will certainly be significant questions that need to be answered down the road, that this community is on the right path.

In short, I feel that it would be better to do fewer things and do them well rather than trying to do them all and not being able to give them my best efforts.

I am sure that I will still stop by and edit occasionally, and I will still be available by email, IRC, and on my primary wikis (English Wikipedia, Wikidata, Meta). And if I forget that I resigned and delete or block something with my steward tools, please let me know.

Best wishes, Rschen7754 00:39, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

It's really not necessary for you to resign just because you come here only occasionally. In any case, if you really are determined to resign, that shouldn't inhibit you from taking part in discussions here, including policy discussions, where your unique viewpoint is very valuable. Might you reconsider resigning, though? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:18, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I've felt a bit stretched thin with the other responsibilities that I have across Wikimedia, and I need to cut back. I'm sure that I'll still be around a little bit, but I don't think that I will be able to stay active enough here to retain the ability to use the tools. I guess I'm from the school of thought where if you are an admin on a content wiki, you should be active and using the tools in order to retain them. --Rschen7754 01:24, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both for your interesting contributions and perspective and for setting an honourable precedent on this Wiki. The use of many admin tools don't need a constant presence to ensure that they're used appropriately, but some actions do require a reasonable knowledge of contemporary Wikivoyage discussions and policies if they're to be used wisely. --W. Frank^email_talk 11:03, 14 September 2014 (UTC)