Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub

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Audio pronunciations of non-Anglophone place names

I was wondering whether we should give audio pronunciations of non-Anglophone place names? If so, how? I am asking such question because there are certain languages (e.g. Bengali) whose transliteration does not correctly reflect the actual pronunciation. For instance, Nadia is a transliteration of what is written as নদিয়া in Bengali. However, the place name is actually pronounced as NOH-diyah (according to Wikivoyage:Pseudo-phoneticization guide). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:46, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

you should check out Portuguese phrasebook where this is done in a smart way. Ibaman (talk) 18:52, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I am not looking for inserting audio pronunciations in phrasebooks, I am looking for inserting audio pronunciations in cities. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:57, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation is inserted for several Portuguese cities (all?). See e.g. Albufeira. I don't think that format has been discussed, but changing it should be relatively easy, so I would just plunge forward. The audio files should be uploaded to suitable categories at Wikimedia Commons. For Bengali pronunciation, use categories under Category:Bengali pronunciation of names of places, for other languages there should be similar categories, create as needed. –LPfi (talk) 20:35, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for help. I'll insert audio pronunciations accordingly. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 04:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

In case anyone wants to make audio recordings for this purpose, one of my teammates did something very clever with a recording on how to pronounce his name: Say it once normally, and then say it again more slowly, carefully enuniciating each separate sound. Think "Smallville, ss-mm-alll-viiilll". It's helpful for someone who is specifically trying to learn how to pronounce it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Not just non-Anglophone place names. See Mousehole, Leicester, Bicester and Warwick. Ground Zero (talk) 17:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Switch to New Vector?

Since the English Wikipedia has switched to the new Vector skin, should we make it a default as well? Wikivoyage looks amazing with the new skin - it looks less like a wiki page and more like an actual travel guide. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I have no love for the new Wikipedia look, with its totally unnecessary white space on the right, and if we changed to it, we'd instantly have problems with images, wouldn't we? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I also found it terrible, spent several minutes tweaking settings, not really knowing what happened. This new skin is ugly and unwanted. I wish I could program my browser to display the old one. Ibaman (talk) 16:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't mind the skin too much. Sure, the default margin settings are complete crap, I can agree with that much. There is however a button in the bottom right of all pages that overwrites the maximum page width settings and maximises the content, which I suspect might fix Ikan's main issue. With that enabled, I honestly find Vector 2022 a quite decent skin, and I would argue that that 'max-width' mode ought to be the default over the 'compacted' mode. The only real downsides I can see would be:

• The skin doesn't work well with templates like {{Pagebanner}}, the TOC of which is small to the point of illegibility.
• The sidebar doesn't use the full page height, nor does it include some of the more essential items that were in the old-Vector sidebar.

-- Wauteurz (talk) 17:17, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I've used both versions, and am reaching the point of not really noticing which wiki is using which. If you all want, I could ask my teammate to run his voluntary opt-in banners over here.

Wauteurz, what are you missing in the sidebar (which, BTW, I tend to keep collapsed in the newer skin)? The interlanguage links move from the bottom left to the top right, but I think everything is still present somewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: My issue with the sidebar is, to be fair, functionality that old Vector didn't have either. I think it'd be nice if some elements of the side bar like the more used links (Get involved, Tools) would be pinned in the sidebar. I know it's only a small bother, but I've never really liked having to scroll back up to the top of an article to get back to the main page, recent changes or the pub.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 15:15, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I tend not to use the sidebar for those purposes. I type the page name in my search bar. That said, on a Mac, Control–Option–r takes you to Special:RecentChanges from any page, and if you use that page a lot, it'd probably be worth figuring out the equivalent for your web browser. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm one of the believers who think the new vector skin is hideous and would oppose implementing it until the issues raised with it earlier have been resolved. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

At the German Wikivoyage, the new Vector skin is used since several months. In future, it is the only skin which will be refined. --RolandUnger (talk) 17:56, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I support changing to the new skin, although that feels like throwing a rock at a tank lol. I can fix the issues with the pagebanner if there is ever consensus to change (and someone gives me permissions). New Vector is easier to navigate, more accessible, and will be updated going forward. All the improvements are listed here. The narrower margins were selected for human factors reasons, and more comfortable reading. Check out Bringhurst if that's a wormhole that you're interested going down. ButteBag (talk) 19:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

I admit I don't understand the complaints about the text width. Wikis are hard to read at full screen width. I've been using New Vector here for a while and it seems fine aside from the pagebanners. Powers ^(talk) 18:39, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware of the current problems with Vector 2022, but they will be fixed eventually (in some manner). It's a good idea to change to the only skin that will keep receiving support. Better sooner than later, so that everyone can get used to it because it will have to happen eventually. Wikivoyage guides are supposed to look good when printed, and on the new skin the page looks more similar to the printed version, precisely due to the text width. It also helps identify problematic areas regarding formatting, possibly unnecessary tables that have never looked good on many modern devices etc. Alalch E. (talk) 23:42, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Anyone who wants to switch to the new skin need only click on this link:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers'_pub?setskin=vector-2022

Note that clicking on this link will automagically and durably change your preferences. If you want to switch back, you can go to the "Appearance" section of Special:Preferences.

If you just want to see the new skin, but not change your prefs long-term, then try this temporary link:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers'_pub?useskin=vector-2022 (this page)

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Random?useskin=vector-2022 (random article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Voting on the ratification of the UCoC enforcement guidelines Ongoing

Hi all,

There are 42 eligible voters in English Wikivoyage for the ongoing revised Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ratification vote. But none of the voters have cast their vote yet. Votes will be accepted until 23:59 on January 31, 2023 (UTC). Please visit here to cast your vote.

Best,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 13:31, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Spring cleaning 2023

Hey, all. Many of you will have seen on your watchlists that User:InternetArchiveBot has been on its travels, touring the world of Wikivoyage and flagging hundreds of dead links. If you find yourselves lost for something to do at any point this weekend, then spending a few minutes fixing some dead links would be a huge help to the project. Alternatively, if you have better things to do, have fun doing those! --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:29, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I did this for Indianapolis, Indiana, and Midwest yesterday and learned a few things while doing the work, so it was more engaging than just mechanical edits (if that encourages anyone else). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:10, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

You can find affected articles in Category:Articles with dead external links. Do please double-check the bot's work, because it'd be sad to lose a listing if a website was only down briefly, but I'll bet that this is a good way to find attractions that have closed during the pandemic.

Justin, did you have any success in finding replacements (e.g., if a restaurant changed its website)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:18, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

A problem is that I cannot keep up that speed, even with articles I have been engaged in. The list will be lost in Recent changes and the Watchlist sooner than I can fix those (which also means flooding them isn't really helpful). Luckily there is Category:Articles with dead external links, to which one can return later, to find familiar articles (or any articles, if one has got the time). –LPfi (talk) 21:23, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I did, thank you for asking: nothing was entirely removed and I found that a certain bus route was outdated and replaced it with another. In no case did I just remove a listing entirely. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:27, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

In many cases the dead link is because "example.com/In_english" has become "example.com/en" or similar more complicated changes, especially where the link was to some specific aspect of a venue (one example I stumbled upon was a senior home with good lunches, in a town with few restaurants). A few years ago a lot of places in Finland moved from example.com to example.fi. Such things are often reasonably easy to fix if you know the language or the local web trends. Possibly important to fix, but the entry should certainly not be removed just because of the dead link. –LPfi (talk) 10:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Category:Articles with dead external links is the hardest maintenance category is get under control. After every round by a bot, we end up with 8000 or so articles that have dead links. Just have to keep on going at it! Gizza ^(roam) 23:35, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Cyberpower678 (but also ThunderingTyphoons!, WhatamIdoing, LPfi, Vidimian), could you tell me how can I activate this bot for it:voy as well? --Andyrom75 (talk) 14:09, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

First, I suggest reading Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/2022#InternetArchiveBot to get some idea of what it's capable of. The way it works for Wikipedia might or might not be what you want. (It wasn't what we want here, but every community is different.) Then I suggest contacting User:Cyberpower678. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Great; I think it's perfect how it has been tuned to work here on en:voy. Thanks, Andyrom75 (talk) 21:38, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Misidentified links

Cyberpower678 and Harej would probably appreciate a few notes about links that are tagged as dead, but which seem to be working. Please add anything that seems like it could be a pattern that the devs might want to investigate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I'll start with this pair of links in the COVID-19 article. Alasdair said they're just slow, rather than actually dead, and the bot has been edit-warring to tag them for days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I think I identified a pattern of the bot tagging websites opening with a pop-up as dead when they aren't. I wasn't watching here closely these days, so I started a thread at the user talk of the bot at Meta instead. More details can be seen there. Vidimian (talk) 23:49, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

IABot is generally whitelisted as a bot on most CloudFlare protected sites. In this case, the firewall it's hitting is a geo-restriction, set by the site, to challenge all clients outside of the local region. We'll have to whitelist them. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:07, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I've temporarily blocked the bot from editing British coast and Boating in Finland (cc AlasdairW and LPfi) to stop it from edit warring. Cyberpower678 and Harej, once you've resolved this issue, please give me a ping so I can unblock the bot from editing those two pages. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:47, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

@SBH2000:

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T329972

I've whitelisted the domain from the British coast page as the bot is disallowed from accessing it. As for the Boating in Finland, there's a syntax parsing bug happening resulting in repeated tagging. Fortunately there's a workaround. The issue is caused by the <!-- markup for HTML comments. When it's directly attached to an external link, this bug is triggered. Simply adding a single whitespace between the link and the markup, will workaround the bug. I have opened a Phabricator ticket to track this.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 18:44, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

@SHB2000: fix ping.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 18:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

In Germany, http://lufthansa.com was tagged as broken, but for me it just forwarded to the https version of the site (which works fine). El Grafo (talk) 11:28, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

On London/Westminster, the bot keeps flagging this website as dead, but it's live. It's an understandable glitch, because it is a very old-looking site ("© Oxford Tube 2012") and there is a much newer official site at this URL ("© Oxford Tube 2021"); however, the latter redirects to the old site when the user attempts to buy tickets, so the old one must be considered the primary official site. This is probably more Stagecoach's fault than IA Bot's, but it's still annoying having to "edit war" with a bot.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

It sounds like we need some anti-edit-warring code. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I have tried both reverting the bot's edits and commenting out the dead link tag, but neither have worked. I think we need a way of flagging that a link may generate a spurous dead link, so that the bot ignores it. Maybe we need a slow link template, which could also generate a list of such links for manual checking. AlasdairW (talk) 23:50, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

At the English Wikipedia, some of the bots just watch for reverts, and stop edit warring. I'm pretty sure that w:en:User:XLinkBot by Versageek and Beetstra is set up that way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

IABot used to do this as well, but unfortunately, given the scale of the bot, the code was to resource demanding on current infrastructure to keep it running. I had to disable it in favor of making the bot simply do a better job instead. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 18:25, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678, what mechanism were you using for the anti-edit-warring code? Could something simpler be done, like checking to see whether the bot has edited the article in the last month/year? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

It was specifically looking if it had previously made alterations to the link in the past, and if it was about to make the same alterations again. Simply checking to see if the bot edited in the recent history is way too blunt of a method in this instance, as dead links can happen at any moment. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 21:58, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, it is a blunt instrument, but that might be better than edit warring. We have enough dead links tagged to keep us busy for a long time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

You can use {{cbignore}} to direct the bot away from a link. Though whitelisting links the bot simply cannot access is probably a better solution. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 18:24, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Oxfordtubes.com is set to disallow ALL bots on CLoudFlare. I have whitelisted the domain on IABot. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 18:23, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Very interesting case here. It's been getting 403s on the specific URL up until yesterday. When I tested the URL with the bot today on the same machine, it's loading fine. Not sure what is going on here, but the bot has self-reset the status to Alive. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 18:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Last call to vote on revised UCoC enforcement guidelines!

Hi all,

A friendly and final reminder that the voting period for the revised Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines closes tomorrow, Tuesday, 31 January at 23:59:59 UTC.

The UCoC supports Wikimedia’s equity objectives and commitment to ensuring a welcoming, diverse movement, and it applies to all members of our communities. Voting is an opportunity for you to be a part of deciding how we uphold this commitment to our community and each other!

To vote, visit the voter information page on Meta-wiki, which outlines how to participate using SecurePoll.

Many thanks for your interest and participation in the UCoC!

On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,

JPBeland-WMF (talk) 21:26, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Voting closes soon on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

Voting closes on the revised Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines at 23.59 UTC today, January 31, 2023. Please visit the voter information page on Meta-wiki for voter eligibility information and details on how to vote. More information on the Enforcement Guidelines and the voting process is available in this previous message.

On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:00, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Voting on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct is closed

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

The vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines is now closed. The results will now be counted and scrutinized to ensure that only eligible votes are included. Results will be published on Meta and other movement forums as soon as they become available, as well as information on future steps. Thank you to all who participated in the voting process, and who have contributed to the drafting of Guidelines.

On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

"class=no-icon" no longer works

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T328739

An example of this issue on Hobart#Get around

See Hobart#Get around or Sorell#Get around for some examples of this issue. I think this issue originates from Template:Mapshape, though I have no clue how to fix this. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:48, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I should also point out that it gets even worse with region articles – see Tasmania#Regions, for example. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:52, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

This is a bug of the Kartographer map team. Today's morning I created a Phabricator task. --RolandUnger (talk) 18:34, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

The bug was resolved. --RolandUnger (talk) 06:57, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Yay!!!! Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:11, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@RolandUnger: thank you for handling this issue! SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:40, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

District section crazy coordinate strings

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T328739

What on earth is going on with the District sections in articles like Madrid and Beijing. I see a bunch of crazy coordinates at the top of the sections. Appears on both Chrome and Firefox. Is it just me who is seeing this? Brycehughes (talk) 11:36, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@Brycehughes: did you read the thread above this? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:48, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@SHB2000: Ah, I did, casually. And I didn't realise it was related. Thanks. Brycehughes (talk) 12:25, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I saw that thing this morning (about 9 hours ago) in Japan#Regions and #Cities but didn't think much of it. --Ypsilon (talk) 15:33, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Popped up for me too (in several other articles). Has some template recently been changed or is the culprit Mediawiki-side? ––LPfi (talk) 15:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

As I noted in the task above this is a big programming failure of the Kartographer map team. I ask them to revert the last changes. This is the second serious failure within the last two weeks. --RolandUnger (talk) 18:38, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE): seems to be responsible for the programmeer's team. --RolandUnger (talk) 19:00, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I do feel like there's some larger issue with the WM development team where Wikipedia gets all the attention (and QA) while Wikivoyage gets kind of ignored. E.g. I've been waiting on this bug for years. Brycehughes (talk) 17:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree; it's not just Wikivoyage, though. At times, I sometimes feel the development team does not give a shit about all its non-Wikipedia content projects (including Commons and Wikidata), and this is another example of why. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:30, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah. Anyway, this one is pretty embarrassing. I wonder how long it takes them to merge to production and deploy. I've never really understood that gerritbot helper they have over there. Brycehughes (talk) 01:40, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Assuming that it passed code review (which normally requires two humans to approve it), or that it will do so before the cutoff on Tuesday, then it will probably appear here on Wednesday. If you are interested in the schedule, it's at wikitech:Deployments. The Wikivoyages are part of Group1 (the three groups are named 0, 1, and 2). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Another instance at Beijing/Forbidden_City#Understand. Pashley (talk) 02:09, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello everyone, thanks for your messages. I am Johanna, your contact person for Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team (I‘m not responsible for the programmers, by the way). Firstly, thanks for reporting this bug. Our team started working on it directly on Friday, but there is a no-deploy policy from Friday to Sunday. Now, the fix has been deployed. To quote my colleague on the Phabricator ticket, “It might be that due to caching some links are still visible. They will vanish over time as the cache gets invalidated, or by updating the page with an edit.”

As a team, we understand the frustration that things are breaking here on Wikivoyage. In the past months, we have improved lots of different aspects of Kartographer, also many things in the backend and the underlying server infrastructure to make Kartographer more sustainable. It is very unfortunate that now, at the end of our work in this focus area, two issues have popped up. (T328739, T327151)

In this particular case (T328739), we wanted to clean up the code, and we found something that very much looked like a bug. We fixed it, not knowing that this code was used to hide maplinks that add markers to groups. Because it so clearly looked like a bug to us, and our unit tests didn’t produce any errors, we didn’t think about reaching out to you all before we deployed this change.

While we understand where the sentiment is coming from, we don’t agree that this was “a big programming failure”. The two recent issues were certainly unfortunate. But they were not severe bugs that broke something permanently, and we fixed them as soon as we could. Unfortunately, mistakes can always happen, especially in a complex system such as the Wikimedia technical sphere. But we are here to quickly fix any issues that we have caused.

As I have said, we are basically finished working with Kartographer, and are shifting our work to our new focus area “Reusing references”. Before that fully happens, there are smaller Kartographer things that we are still working on:

• T308227: clustering markers in the new “show articles nearby” feature
• T328760: a long-standing bug in the backend that we hope we can fix

If you spot something in there that might affect your gadgets etc., please let us know on the tickets.

Last but not least, despite all the unpleasantness, there is something to be learned here: As we are diving into the new focus area, we want to find ways to integrate members of all communities into our processes better and earlier. If you have any thoughts on this, I would be more than happy to hear about it. – Thanks, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 13:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Johanna, thanks for updating us on your progress. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:02, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

FYI: Best restaurant in Montreal according to Tripadvisor does not exist

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/03/montreal-restaurant-that-never-was-online-reviews-canada —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:22, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

That rings a bell: How to Become TripAdvisor’s #1 Fake Restaurant El Grafo (talk) 09:27, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Mapshape template broken?

The {{mapshape}} template seems to be even more broken? In articles like Hokkaido#Regions, it's just printing out "0°0′0″N 0°0′0″E" instead of actually drawing shapes on the map. See also Template talk:Mapshape. Jpatokal (talk) 00:37, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

See also #District_section_crazy_coordinate_strings above. Pashley (talk) 01:17, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Same problem on Austin and Austin district articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:28, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

See Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Mapshape for more examples and maybe see another pattern than "has mapshape". --FredTC (talk) 01:52, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Appreciate this discussion, but in future, can you please not start a brand new discussion that's already being discussed twice? Having the same discussion being discussed in three different places is just difficult to keep things in one place. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:42, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Ramsar sites

Do all the Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance have any importance in tourism? Would it be worth writing a travel topic on Ramsar sites? Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 07:56, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Seems to me that this would be of importance to environmentalists more than tourists. Might also be counterproductive because the Ramsar wetlands are places that need to be protected ̈FROM̈ tourists, not promoted for tourism. Just a thought... Mrkstvns (talk) 21:02, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I assume they are of interest also for birdwatchers and other people interested in biology, including such tourists. However, there may be better spots that aren't in need of protection, unless you are looking for some specific species or habitat not easily found elsewhere. If you are, you probably already know where to look, or have the means to find out from better sources.

If somebody is interested, and ready to invest some serious work, they could try to expand Birdwatching and write similar articles focused on specific areas of interest, such as old-growth forests. Such content could also be incorporated also in the articles in Category:Biomes and ecosystems (and split out only when there is enough of it). The Ramsar Sites are one starting point, but as Mrkstvns points out, national parks and other less vulnerable sites should be included and mostly preferred.

–LPfi (talk) 10:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Since there's already an article about UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (which also don't benefit from being advertised to travelers), then I suppose it would be appropriate to have a similar article for Ramsar sites. Mrkstvns (talk) 20:11, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

We cover at least one Ramsar site, Olango_Island#See. Pashley (talk) 12:29, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Global ban for PlanespotterA320/RespectCE

Per the Global bans policy, I'm informing the project of this request for comment: m:Requests for comment/Global ban for PlanespotterA320 (2) about banning a member from your community. Thank you.--Lemonaka (talk) 21:40, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

This user appears to have made one edit in 2017, to Ethiopia. AlasdairW (talk) 22:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

By global policy, if a user is nominated for a global ban, every wiki they've edited on must be informed. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:05, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems that their behaviour has been unacceptable and that they don't understand how social interaction works, but I still wonder whether a ban is needed. I am not going to fight this ban, but I am a bit worried that as soon as you get blocked on two projects (perhaps for bad reasons, on projects that aren't your main ones), you can get a global ban with more or less nobody defending you, as those interested are those who try to get you banned. –LPfi (talk) 10:30, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems pointless to block them here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:07, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

No, that would be pointless. We could try not to get them globally banned, but if I am to take that fight, I'll try to take it for somebody who isn't themself their worst enemy in this. –LPfi (talk) 22:40, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm saying that a global ban that blocks them here is pointless. But maybe I'm wrong. It certainly doesn't matter for this site, though, anyway. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

List of articles by last edit

This is bit of a weird one, but owing to this bug (which has finally been fixed), would anyone have any idea of how to get a list of WV articles ranked by the last time they were edited? Or something of that sort? I'm looking for a list of barely-edited pages, of which, on here, there are a lot. Brycehughes (talk) 01:34, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

To elaborate, the REST mobile API has been delivering ancient versions of Wikivoyage pages for years due to the bug mentioned above (this was particularly annoying given the pandemic and all the changes that occurred then). Now they've fixed it. However, they can't just do a full cache purge such that every Wikivoyage article is suddenly up-to-date in the REST API. Instead, each page cache will be purged individually once it is edited. So, okay, no worries on articles like Madrid, we'll get an edit pretty soon, and the cache will be purged and Madrid will be up-to-date. But we have thousands of pages that are rarely edited, which means their caches might not be purged for months, if not years. And this wouldn't be such a big deal but this has been a bug since at least 2019, and we're getting really old versions of pages, even for articles that are edited at least once a year. So, the WM development team has kindly offered to write a bot that will dummy edit a large list of rarely-edited Wikivoyage pages, such that their caches are purged and we finally get up-to-date articles. But I'd somehow need to make a list of articles based on their last-edit date or something similar. If anyone has any ideas about this I'd really appreciate it. Brycehughes (talk) 13:06, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I assume the best way is to check a database dump. The size should be manageable, and you could skip any actual content, just looking at the metadata. –LPfi (talk) 13:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

LPfi, thanks. But how to do a db dump? Is there a link (or set of instructions)? Brycehughes (talk) 16:43, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

@Brycehughes: See m:Data dumps, indirectly linked through the "Developers" link in the page footer. The relevant files might be on the page enwikivoyage dump progress on 20230201; perhaps enwikivoyage-20230201-stub-meta-history.xml.gz is the one you want (300 MB). Otherwise, start exploring from the data dumps page. The data is available in several formats. –LPfi (talk) 17:27, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Hm. enwikivoyage-20230201-stub-meta-current.xml.gz (12.5 MB) might suffice. –LPfi (talk) 17:35, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

It shouldn't be too difficult to find a null bot. User:Joe's Null Bot is one (and the note about it being broken may be about three years out of date). @DannyS712 might know if there are any others currently in service, as I remember him planning to write one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

LPfi and WhatamIdoing: thanks. Honestly I'm thinking I don't really see the point of doing a dummy-edit bot on "rarely-edited" pages. Why won't we just do it on all pages. It's Wikivoyage, not Wikipedia... there's not a ton of articles. We could just dummy-edit everything imho. Even at one page per second it should only take a few days. Anyway, I'll interface with the WM dev team and see what they need. Thanks for the help. (Oh btw LPfi I'm an idiot... I've used those dumps before... I just forgot about them. Cheers.) Brycehughes (talk) 22:49, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

If you are doing a dummy edit on all pages, it would be better if you could avoid the pages that have recently been edited (say within the last month). You will flood people's watchlists. I am happy to ignore all the edits by your bot, if I know that there hasn't been another recent edit. Otherwise there is the possibility of a vandal hiding behind your edits. I don't want to ignore all bit edits, as some like InternetArchiveBot require follow-up action. AlasdairW (talk) 00:09, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

AlasdairW. Good point. I'll see what I can do. Brycehughes (talk) 04:24, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

If you do just null edits, then they won't show up on watchlists. According to the Joe's Null Bot page and its links, I assume they'd be enough. If you need to do dummy edits, then flooding watchlists will be a problem. With a significantly slower pace – which might be possible if only part of our articles are updated – it could make people notice some interesting articles in need of love. –LPfi (talk) 10:27, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi: What's the difference between a null edit and a dummy edit? Brycehughes (talk) 14:39, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

@Brycehughes: Does Special:AncientPages help? —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:34, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Mx. Granger It just might. Thanks much. Brycehughes (talk) 04:46, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

A null edit is just clicking save, without having done any changes. The edit will not show in recent changes, watchlists or the history, but updates some caches. A dummy edit is one with some irrelevant change (usually removing some invisible whitespace), but as a change is made, it will show in the history, and thus allow a visible edit summary. –LPfi (talk) 19:00, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi, WhatamIdoing, AlasdairW, Mx. Granger: Null edits will effectively flush the mobile caches, apparently. What's the opinion on running a null edit bot (like User:Joe's Null Bot, if not exactly Joe's Null Bot) very slowly on all pages? The edits won't show up on people's watchlists and all mobile caches will eventually be flushed and the articles will be up-to-date from then on (since bug T226931 is fixed). Personally, I'd be fine with it running so slowly that it took a month. Brycehughes (talk) 11:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Maybe I just misuderstood something, but can't you just use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Purge on all the WV pages? Combine that with https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Allpages and you should be good to go with a few lines of python code... Also, even the old pages probably contain some 'base template', perhaps it'd be enough to dummy-edit such a template ({{geo}}, {{pagebanner}}. By transclusion, this should update everything. -- andree 13:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Different measures differ in what caches they purge. One should check with a few manual edits on articles with this problem before doing something large-scale. Do you have an idea about how many pages we have, and how many of those are edited any single month or couple of months? I didn't find the relevant statistics. I assume a large portion of pages are untouched for years; if a majority of pages have outdated pages in the cash, then purging the cache for all is no big difference compared to purging only those in need of a purge, but if there are many pages that don't need a purge, then one might want to target the right ones. LPfi (talk) 14:07, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

andree: manual purge probably works also. I can ask WM development whether that's a better option over null edits. LPfi, this has been tested, reasonably extensively, while bug T226931 was being resolved. The problem is obtaining a list of pages that need purging. It would require writing a parser, sorter (by last edit), truncator and formatter for something like enwikivoyage-20230201-stub-meta-current.xml.gz or Andree's suggestion of API:Allpages that we would then run through a bot. However, given that this is Wikivoyage and 1) the total number of articles is not huge and 2) I would assume that the number of articles that are rarely edited and therefore out-of-date on the REST API is quite high relative to the number of articles that are frequently edited and therefore not out-of-date since the bug fix. So, my proposal is just to run a null edit bot, slowly, on all pages, and if it null edits those pages that have been recently edited, no harm done. By the way, this problem is not just mine. Other organisations have been complaining about it (see the bug report) for years now too. So it would really help whole WV REST API user community if we could get all these pages up to date. Running a null bot (or manual purge or whatever that doesn't affect the watchlists) slowly on all pages seems relatively harmless to me, since we know (by testing) that this will purge the caches and won't affect the watchlists, and it seems by far the easiest solution. I just don't know if there's some potential problem here that I'm overlooking... am I? Brycehughes (talk) 15:07, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

OK. It seems we have 166,928 pages, of which 31,803 are articles. One null edit a second, covering the articles would take a day, with one edit a minute, a few weeks. LPfi (talk) 15:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

LPfi: Whatever everyone here is comfortable with. I'm happy with a day. I'm happy with a month. Is there a list of just article names anywhere? (Don't care about pages.) Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 16:00, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Maybe this enwikivoyage-20230201-all-titles-in-ns0.gz (List of page titles in main namespace) Brycehughes (talk) 16:18, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Hmm that gives a line count of 62210, so I guess it includes redirects. Anyone know where I can find a list without redirects? There is a "Redirect List" that I thought I could just diff with the original file, but it's just some useless SQL code. Brycehughes (talk) 16:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

@Brycehughes, do you have some examples what's out of date and how to show it? I did a null edit on {{geo}}, you could check if it helped everywhere... -- andree 17:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

andree I'll see if I can find one within the next few days (all the examples i've noticed so far i've already either dummy edited or had the WM devs purge the cache). They're a bit hard to find, because 1) they're rarely edited pages, 2) they'd have had to have been edited sometime within the past couple years, and 3) I'd have to try to notice the difference between the two versions. I might fail at this. Although, I can promise you're they're out there... unless your geo template edit worked, in which case that would work fine for my purposes (although might not help the other organisations that complain about this – maybe a null edit on IsPartOf or something would work better, if your null edit worked). I'll ask the WV dev team if they think just null editing common templates would work via transclusion. Brycehughes (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Just as a follow-up, the null edit of {{geo}} doesn't seem to have helped. At least some sub-articles of Sicily (e.g. Trapani (province) at this instant) still seem to have the issue. Unfortunate... -- andree 07:05, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

WM has some kind "load balancing", relatively routinely some template changes refreshed basically whole WV and probably noone noticed. I'd say there's no need to be overly cautious, if this is a once-in-month or so action, a few articles/second is probably plenty slow... -- andree 17:05, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes I would hope they would :) Brycehughes (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what we are comfortable with; what matters is what Tech/Ops is comfortable with. Since this is (relative to their infrastructure) a smaller wiki, for a one-time-only action, I suspect that the one-per-second level would be fine with them, and I'm certain that one-per-minute would have no significant effects on performance. That said, they're really nice people, and we could just ask them directly. Sometimes they even have useful advice (like not doing it on a particular date because they're running a server switch then). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, yup, I have an ongoing conversation with them. They asked me to ask to the community here. Yes they are really nice people. Brycehughes (talk) 02:02, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I suppose I should note, a null edit bot is now running on 16k pages not edited since February 7th, the date that this bug was fixed, 1 page per 10 seconds. Should be finished any time now. Brycehughes (talk) 16:20, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

FYI: Most-loved places for expat families

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230207-the-five-countries-expat-families-love Some discussion like this can be incorporated into the guide. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Presumably it would go in Working abroad. Pashley (talk) 21:23, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

As well as the individual countries or Travelling with children, etc. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:47, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I think a reference to the relevant sections is enough in Travelling with children (which doesn't talk about living abroad). Working abroad should be read by most people contemplating moving abroad for a longer time, including those with children or planning to get children.

Where in Working abroad should we handle it? A quick skim through Working abroad didn't reveal anything about choosing country (we have a lot of discussion on that in Studying abroad and Retiring abroad). Family considerations are not covered in any depth in those articles and they suit this article better - so add a section? Some info should be added to Prepare subsections such as Social security, and Expat life could be expanded to cover families.

How much should we tell in the country articles? I added a sentence or two to the second paragraph of Finland#Work (Finland was the fifth country on the BBC list). Is that enough and reasonable? I hesitated a little as there is a lot of talk here currently about our education system's problems, youth violence on the rise etc., but I assume a quick walk in a suitable part of New York would be enough to convince me we live in Heaven (even though people seem not to leave infants in their pram in the street anymore when going grocery shopping, as was common twenty years ago). I'd like to paint a more nuanced picture, but that would require several paragraphs.

LPfi (talk) 14:33, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Add `zoomlevel` param to marker template?

IDK how dumb this is or if anyone would use it, but do you think it'd be interesting or useful to have this parameter on the template? Some POIs are super important, and others... less so. But markers will all have the same visual weight on the map. Set it like: `zoomlevel=14|` to only see the marker at zoom 14 and below. Omit to always see the marker. A visitor would probably always want to see the Eiffel Tower, but maybe not always the local boulangerie. Is this even possible technically? Would anyone use it? Is there already some POI clustering algorithm in the works that will magically fix the "too dang many map markers" issue? ButteBag (talk) 03:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I think that there is no mechamism/opportunity to include/exclude markers in dependence of the map's zoom level. It is impossible to do this with GeoJSON, and the functionality has to be added to the maplink tag. I think that there is no programmer who would implement this feature which can be used only on Wikivoyage (the opportunity to combine/group separated markers on a single map is not available on Wikipedias). Maybe it makes no sense to ask for such a feature while there are a lot of other map bug/feature tasks. --RolandUnger (talk) 06:52, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply Roland! I'm indifferent to this idea in particular, but it's a bummer to find out there is no way to cluster markers on wikis. I guess the only real solve would be to omit lat/long for "minor" POIs, or hand draw a static map. Neither of which sound very fun to me lol. Is this even a problem for other WVers? Does anyone else find too many markers on a map overwhelming? Thanks! ButteBag (talk) 13:32, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

This is only the opinion of a WVer who has learned a few map tricks, but I don't think the problem is in too many markers. Minor POIs can be informative if they're close together or near something more major. As someone who looks at the map before the text, they'd be easy to miss if they're not shown. If I stumbled on a destination with more text than map content, as a casual reader I'd assume most of it was out of date, and once I switch browser tabs to look up an address, odds are low that I'd find myself coming back to read more.

I'd say it just takes practice to use the various maps. Take Buffalo/Downtown as an example of a map with a lot of markers. But if you go into full screen (by clicking the button in the top right of the mapframe), it's manageable to filter by listing type if you know where the layers button is and scroll where you need to. The trick is that I cannot click the map icon in the upper right, or the numbered bullet for an individual listing - the map won't show layers for the listing types. It also won't work if you click the 'enlarge window' icon in the mapframe caption. It's probably a bug, but I also can't click the filter button on the mapframe before going into full screen or the basemap disappears.

A densely packed mapframe can look overwhelming, but at least it's also a signal that there's a lot of information somewhere to discover. Gregsmi11 (talk) 16:15, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your insights! I'd argue it shouldn't "take practice" to get the maps to show what you want, but yes the larger point of many dozens of markers representing a stronger "this page has good content" signal is probably the most important thing. I guess the "most beautiful way" would be a hand drawn map showing the top 5-9 things that are most popular and unlikely to change, paired with a dynamic map with all the details. I just wish making static maps wasn't so hard! ButteBag (talk) 01:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

First of all my belated thanks to those who sorted out the mess with tram stops, which turned large city maps into cratered moonscapes and small ones into metastatic tumours. This demonstrated the principle that there is such a thing as too many markers. The problem, and therefore the solution, is not technological but cultural, that markers are over-valued, and plonked down by rote without considering whether they assist the traveller. A megablob of markers does not signal a good page to me, and when they're crowded, I can't tell which part to zoom into to find what I seek. I use the "Dom" principle, that there is a hierarchy of markers. If I tell you Paolo's Pizza is next to the Duomo, bet you can find it. If the other way round, you may struggle, and if you mark all the half-dozen places around Piazza Duomo then nobody will find a dom thing. Transport hubs, major POIs and accommodation therefore rank high, others are nice-to-add but not if they obscure the mission-critical markers. Grahamsands (talk) 21:34, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Template:Seealso "Mitched"

what happened to Template:Seealso and its variants being "mitched" ? i dont know how to revert the template or if i even should, but i feel like it shouldnt be that way InvitedRhino683 (talk) 15:39, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@InvitedRhino683, I don't understand what your concern is. You have made one edit, during which you (incorrectly) placed terminal punctuation at the end of non-sentences (e.g., "Popular trekking region of Nepal with the world-famous Annapurna Circuit." – there's no verb in that phrase, which means there's no sentence, and therefore there should be no period/full stop at the end of it) and removed a {{seealso}} link to South Asian cuisine. Neither the template nor the linked article have been edited for a while. What is it that you think could be reverted? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:40, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

what ? i saw that someone had posted some "wikivoyage has been mitched" into the nepal article, so i edited that article to remove that, and saw that it had been generated from the seealso template. as for the other thing, that was my bad, sorry. as for the template itself, i checked again and apparently it wasnt like that ?? i dont know what happened with it, i guess i must have just been really dumb. sorry for wasting your time - InvitedRhino683 20:06, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

ok so i just went back and checked the article history and it wasnt even there ??? in any edits before mine ?? i honestly dont know what i was thinking - InvitedRhino683 20:14, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

• it's a long-term-abuse vandal, very familiar to us admins. It was I who took action. If you are curious about this, take a look at WV:Deny recognition and its talk page, to familiarize yourself with the context. Welcome to Wikivoyage. Ibaman (talk) 20:17, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  @InvitedRhino683, you did the right thing. Thank you for reporting the problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  thank you i guess lol - InvitedRhino683 04:25, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

  That reminds me: there were two bouts of widespread vandalism in the last few weeks. (As an example, one of them caused a photo of handguns to appear in a large number of articles, even though the photo wasn't "in" the article.) If you (=anybody) ever see something strange that you can't figure out how to fix, please post. It may be part of a bigger problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Article about Ainu culture

I wonder which of these will be better. An article dedicated to Ainu culture, or a more generic article about minority cultures of Japan. The Ryukyuan people of Okinawa often consider themselves to be culturally distinct from other Japanese since they have their own languages, albeit ones that are related to Japanese, and once had their own independent kingdom. However, the Japanese government considers the Ryukyuans to be a subset of the dominant Yamato people (i.e. ethnic Japanese) and not a separate ethnic group. On the other hand, the Ainu are officially recognised as an ethnic minority by the Japanese government (and in fact are the only officially recognised ethnic minority in Japan), and the Ainu language is unrelated to Japanese. Historically the Ainu people lived in Russia too, but they are not recognised by the Russian government, and they are basically extinct as an ethnic group in Russia. But of course, an article about Ainu culture will theoretically allow us to also cover Ainu sites in Russia (if they still exist), while an article about minority cultures of Japan will not. The dog2 (talk) 20:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I'd say go ahead with a Ainu culture page. We have a page on Okinawa & I think anything we need to say about Ryukyu culture can be covered there.

Should we have an index page for all the indigenous culture articles? We have them at least for both Americas, Oz, the Maori, China, Taiwan, Russia & I'm not sure if there are others. Certainly one could be written for parts of India & perhaps more. Pashley (talk) 22:16, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I have no sense of how much travel content there is for either people, but the Ryukyuans have very little in common with the Ainu and are peripheral to Japan in the south vs. the north. There are other minority cultures in Japan, of course, notably including Korean-Japanese and Chinese-Japanese. I don't know where the "untouchable" w:Burakumin fit in, as they are differentiated by known or presumed caste, not ethnicity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I have not been able to find any information on Ainu cultural sites in Russia. If anybody here knows Russian, maybe you could do a Google search in Russian to see if there is any information that is not published in English. In Japan, there appears to be a number of Ainu museums and cultural villages in Hokkaido, which you can find pretty easily with a Google search. I went to one of those Ainu cultural villages when I visited Hokkaido. And apparently, many Hokkaido place names were derived from Ainu even though the Ainu language is almost extinct. That said, there are language revival efforts, and a number of YouTube channels teaching Ainu (but in Japanese though). The dog2 (talk) 23:49, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@Jpatokal, ChubbyWimbus, JRHorse: You guys seem to know Japan pretty well. Do you think there will be enough tourist attractions to fill an article about Ainu culture? The dog2 (talk) 23:52, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Actual Ainu culture is basically dead, so the museums and tourist villages are probably the best if not only places to really learn about them. As for cultural sites, there are old Ainu castle/fort sites, known as "Chashi", especially around Nemuro. I'm not aware of many others. I tried to research religious sites for the "Religion" section of our Japan guide back when I rewrote those sections but was not able to find a source that pinpointed any specific locations. That's why the Ainu are not given mention, even though they did have their own religion.

The suppression of Ryukyuan culture and forced Japanization during and after annexation combined with the decimation of the main island in WWII also killed Ryukyuan culture. Even in the museums in Okinawa, there is surprisingly little known about it. All of the places where you can learn about the culture repeat the same handful of facts with little depth. Ryukyuan cultural sites are more known and plentiful than the Ainu, though. They have castle sites (Gusuku), imperial tombs, Sefa Utaki, and Asumui. A lot of Okinawa's sites are part of its UNESCO World Heritage listing. The Ryukyuan Kingdom may be able to hold a small article. I'm not sure about the Ainu. The Emishi are the only other non-Japanese "native" culture that I'm aware of, but I don't think an article is warranted for them. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 12:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

OK, from the looks of it, it might be better to have a more generic Minority cultures of Japan article then, and if it gets too unwieldy, then we can split off the Ainu and the Ryukyuan cultures to separate articles. I have still not been able to find information Ainu cultural sites in Russia, but I don't rule out the possibility that there is information that is only available in Russian but not English. But unless we have someone here who can type in Russian and translate that information into English or Chinese for me, I won't be able to add any information in that regard. There are articles published in English about the Ainu by Russian media, but they give no information about Ainu sites in Russia; all the Ainu sites they mention are in Japan. The dog2 (talk) 15:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Again, if the title is "minority cultures of Japan," the Korean-Japanese and Chinese-Japanese cultures cannot be ignored. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:12, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ And I do not object to covering them either. Just like how I added a section about the Indians in Hong Kong to the Minority cultures of China article. The dog2 (talk) 19:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I have created the article and will be progressively working on it, but please feel free to improve it in the meantime. The dog2 (talk) 00:39, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct revised enforcement guidelines vote results

The recent community-wide vote on the Universal Code of Conduct revised Enforcement Guidelines has been tallied and scrutinized. Thank you to everyone who participated.

After 3097 voters from 146 Wikimedia communities voted, the results are 76% in support of the Enforcement Guidelines, and 24% in opposition. Statistics for the vote are available. A more detailed summary of comments submitted during the vote will be published soon.

From here, the results and comments collected during this vote will be submitted to the Board of Trustees for their review. The current expectation is that the Board of Trustees review process will complete in March 2023. We will update you when their review process is completed.

On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

The map text coordinates bug returns?

@SHB2000, RolandUnger: I'm still seeing the map text coordinates bug beside the map under the Cities section at Lake Sevan Region. Are you? Has it returned or is this something new? Brycehughes (talk) 07:58, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

After a refresh (null edit) it is gone. --RolandUnger (talk) 08:10, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything since it was resolved. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah, well I guess the null edit script I'm working on with the WM dev team will fix these hanger-ons too. Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 12:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Community feedback cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of use starts

Hi everyone,

This February 2023 the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department is planning to host a feedback cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use (ToU) from February, 21 to April 2023. Full information has been published here.

The Terms of Use are the legal terms that govern the use of websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. We will be gathering your feedback on a draft proposal from February through April. The draft has been translated into several languages, with feedback accepted in any language.

This update comes in response to several things:

1. Implementing the Universal Code of Conduct
2. Updating project text to the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (CC 4.0)
3. A proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing
4. Bringing our terms in line with current and recently passed laws affecting the Foundation including the European Digital Services Act

Regarding the Universal Code of Conduct and its enforcement guidelines, we are instructed to ensure that the ToU include it in some form.

Regarding CC 4.0, the communities had determined as the result of a 2016 consultation that the projects should upgrade the main license for hosted text from the current CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0. We’re excited to be able to put that into effect, which will open up the projects to receiving a great deal of already existing CC BY-SA 4.0 text and improve reuse and remixing of project content going forward.

Regarding the proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing, the Foundation intends to strengthen its tools to support existing community policies against marketing companies engaged in systematic, undisclosed paid editing campaigns.

Finally, regarding new laws, the last ToU update was in 2015, and that update was a single item regarding paid editing. The last thorough revision was in 2012. While the law affecting hosting providers has held steady for some time, with the recent passage of the EU’s Digital Services Act, we are seeing more significant changes in the legal obligations for companies like the Foundation that host large websites. So with a decade behind us and the laws affecting website hosts soon changing, we think it’s a good time to revisit the ToU and update them to bring them up to current legal precedents and standards.

See the page on Meta to get all the information.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Wholesale deletions of Taiwan photos

Hi, everyone. Because of a change in Taiwanese law to prohibit the commercial use of photos of publicly-displayed statues and so forth, thousands of photos of Taiwan are being nominated for deletion on Wikimedia Commons. Quite a few of them are or maybe should be on our pages. We need help with uploading them locally to Wikivoyage, as we have fair-use policies that Commons does not use because we are using the images as part of a travel guide, whereas images and documentation about them are all Commons has. I've been looking at some of the files linked by Community Tech bot and posting remarks to the relevant talk pages, and I have also locally uploaded a couple of photos, but the nominations are too fast and too numerous for me to keep track of them all, especially as I'm behind with my own very time-consuming "real-life" work. So please help! Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:45, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

how do you discover the photos that are nominated and used on WV? -- andree 17:06, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

There is a bot adding a note on talk pages. You might want to check Special:Contributions/‎Community Tech bot. How to find images we might want to use is harder, but some might show up in the same RFDs.

I am surprised that this seems not to have caused any big discussion on Commons. The thread related to the change in Commons:Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Taiwan#Freedom of panorama had just four participants, although many more were pinged, and it was just one screenful (in my quite narrow browser window).

–LPfi (talk) 18:11, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

The Community Tech bot posts to Wikivoyage link the filenames. If you click "Recent changes" in the menu on the left side of every page, you can do a search for "Community Tech" and see its posts among the changes, then click them. You can then look at the article(s) in question to see whether the photos nominated for deletion are visible (many are just used on Wikidata) or whether there's room for them and you'd like to upload them locally and insert them. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Recent changes shows just so many edits, so the contributions page covers more days. One could (right) click the filenames mentioned in the nominations, to get to see them. That would cover also some that aren't used here because none of us found them yet. –LPfi (talk) 20:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I have recent changes set for 1,000 edits. The part of the recent changes URL that says "limit=" can be limited to any number of edits (I've even limited it to 10,000 at times when I was offline for a while). Similarly, I have "days=" limited to 30. It's easy to search using Ctrl-F on a PC or Command-F on a Mac to find "Community Tech" among the edits. If you're using a cellphone, all bets are off. I don't know how to search within files or Wikivoyage search results effectively on a cellphone. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Your idea of looking at Community Tech bot's contributions is a great one, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:28, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I thought I once (or multiple times) had reached some quite low limit on how many edits RC would show, which I assumed was due to a table of limited size in the server. Either I remember wrongly or the limit has been significantly increased. Both are possible. –LPfi (talk) 20:37, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Editing news 2023 #1

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This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Layover guides?

While looking for possible ideas to do outside of the airport during an extended layover, I noticed that we don't have any layover guides (think: "8-hour layover guide in London" or "what to do if you have 6 hours to spend in Copenhagen"). Sites like Tripadvisor have Q&A section while dedicated website has become out of date for years. All of our major city pages have in-depth listings, but most of the important listings are scattered across multiple district pages and do not do a good job to point out what are the "must-see's" for those who don't have a lot of time (e.g. Buckingham Palace and London Bridge for London; Little Mermaid Statute for Copenahgen). I'm envisioning to write something similar to this kind of layover guide. What's everyone's appetite for this type of pages in our project? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:44, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I see two problems: on one hand these will nearly necessarily fall into the "Personal itinerary" category, on the other, I don't think we want people to do those "musts". What do you know about Copenhagen after having taken the taxi to the Little Mermaid? I think the time would have been better spent in a café in Strøget. For a more positive comment, see Helsinki itineraries, trying to do something like what you request. Yes, they are "personal itineraries", but I agree with you that such guides are useful, and they are allowed if they get reasonably complete and add something more than just listing sights. I think that in a big city, the selection of sights is necessarily arbitrary, and pointing out an easy-to-reach area with many sights and some of the essential atmosphere of the city (and telling about that area and its sights) could be more useful than pointing out the "musts" – which will be listed in the main city article's See (hopefully mentioning their locations and linked to the listings). As for the arbitrariness, telling whom you have in mind when choosing those sights is useful ("The A would probably want to use there time in B, which will easily keep them occupied for the C–D hours available."). –LPfi (talk) 06:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

One thing to do for airports is to tell what districts of a city are directly reachable by the main transport options of the airport: If there is a rail line, in what districts are the stations? If you need to take a taxi, what interesting districts are nearby? The district is often too coarse a division for everything of it to be in easy reach, but the district has a map where hopefully the train station and the sights are marked, so you can zoom in on the station neighbourhood and check the sights in the See section (open in another window). –LPfi (talk) 06:53, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

To make See entries more useful for this purpose, they should include information on how much time you would like to spend there (there was a discussion on good ways to do it when somebody suggested an hours figure – a free-text characterisation wins hands down) and whether there are issues such as queues or the building being too large for easily finding anything. "The museum is small and nice. Most would do it in less than half an hour, while it could keep geeks occupied for a few hours.", "The houses are scattered around, so you will use most of your time walking between them, hopefully enjoying the weather and the gardens. Any individual building is small, but there are 32 of them in all, giving a good insight in the housing and crafts of the time." –LPfi (talk) 06:59, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree that layover guides could be useful and that airports should provide something about which distracts are directly reachable. Personally though, if it comes down to just figuring out how best to make it from the airport to the top attractions, and describing how long someone should spend at each stop, I don't see myself contributing or reading much of it; it's just not my style of travel. The top few "musts" are probably either completely obvious or completely subjective, and I wouldn't feel like I was getting too much value out of figuring out how to do them quickly from the airport.

I think it could be interesting to combine the idea of a layover guide with descriptions of what is directly reachable from the airport, if it did so with a bit of collective creativity, to highlight a part of the city that is, (borrowing some of @LPfi's terms) 1. easy-to-reach 2. with essential atmosphere 3. offering a (dense) mix of eat and see listings in the linked district. Instead of a personal itinerary, it could describe the "how" and the "why" (from a layover perspective), then point to the "what" in our district articles. It gets creative because we'd need to settle on what truly makes for a good well-rounded layover, and it adds value for the typical layover-traveler (hungry, rushed, wants a couple good photos, etc) even if they might miss out on the Eiffel Tower or Colosseum.

For example... in London, I think Big Ben and the Tower of London would be on most people's "must" list. But from a Heathrow layover, it could be a better overall experience to take the Elizabeth Line to Bond Street, eat anything from a sandwich to a splurge meal, then see Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, or some of the British Museum. In any other article I wouldn't advise walking 20 minutes to see 40 minutes of the Museum, but it's a lively walk that gives you a feel for the city, and the museum is free, so no pressure to stay too long. If anyone wants to venture further, it's obvious from the district articles that they've got options, but this gives them a non-obvious slice of the city that will at least meet their needs for a few hours.

Maybe it's not even a whole new section for the airport article template, but just a leveling-up for the "nearby" section. Gregsmi11 (talk) 11:07, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I like this idea of having a beefed-up "nearby" section in airport (and train station) articles. I don't think it should be large, but maybe one or two "must-see" items, plus one or two neighborhoods that offer a variety of attractions. In choosing items, I'd put a little extra emphasis on what can be reached on a direct transit line, and on things that could be done/seen at different times of day. Hopefully the recommended neighborhoods would contain at least one hotel listing, in case the layover is due to severe weather or missed flights.

Since layovers come to an end, I think it'd also be worth mentioning anything about time constraints for the return trip (e.g., how long it takes to get back through security, that the trains stop running at midnight, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:53, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Basically I think this is a good idea, probably many travelers would be happy to see a new city if they have several hours at the airport. We could start with expanding the Nearby sections of existing airport articles and if the section for some airport gets really long we could make a separate artilcle. Rather than one set itinerary it's better to separate different attractions/destinations and suggestions for combining them if possible. Here it's important to tell readers how long it would take to enter the country, get to the attractions and back and through security and other controls to catch their plane, preferable with an extra hour for long lines, if you miss that bus, traffic jams... Also if some attraction is more difficult to get to and from than it looks on the map, dangerous etc. we need to say so. --Ypsilon (talk) 17:25, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

User:AlasdairW/One day in Hong Kong is a one day itinerary of Hong Kong, which was going to be deleted 9 years ago as it was regarded as a personal itinerary. I haven't followed this itinerary when I have had 24 hour stops in Hong Kong, but have usually gone for a long scenic walk, such as up the Peak. AlasdairW (talk) 23:12, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad you saved that! I remember it was a usable itinerary that was deleted during the overzealous rush to delete "personal" itineraries. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:22, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I intentionally called it "layover" guide (under 24 hours) and not a "stopover" guide (over 24 hours), precisely because you have much more options for food and attractions if you stay for a day or longer in a city. It also gets around the subjectiveness of personal itinerary because it caps out at 24 hours max (no "two weeks in Sydney" vs. "a month in Sydney"). Helsinki itineraries is great, but as WhatamIdoing said, it doesn't tell us the minimum time required and how to get from the airport to the city centre directly. While the airport's "nearby section" seem like a good place to insert, I don't know how discoverable for these airport pages would be in search engines and travellers' expectation to find layover guides at the bottom of airport pages. AlasdairW's one day itinerary of Hong Kong is something that is pretty clean and concise. Perhaps the structure of a layover guide can be a mosaic of AlasdairW's Hong Kong itinerary and the Helsinki itinerary? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:10, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Both are indeed good examples. If we look at only the one-day section of the Helsinki itinerary (Helsinki_itineraries#A_full_day_in_Helsinki), I'd say it looks close to the Hong Kong itinerary in terms of structure, and either would help plan a short layover.

But if we only end up adding airport advice as bookends to an itinerary that is written to be time-limited, I'd worry about about running up against a few policies:

"An itinerary article should be a guide for travel along a specific route and not merely a suggested sightseeing schedule." and "...a purely local itinerary (like One Night in Bangkok) risks pointless duplication of information already in the main city article". I know these are not cast in stone, but I think the rationale behind them is sound, even if somewhat restrictive.

I think our challenge (with either the airport-nearby or separate itinerary approach) is to:

(1) provide a specific route that does more than provide a sightseeing schedule

(2) avoid "pointless" duplication

(3) provide airport get in/get out information

(4) provide objective advice about what can be done in a specific, short timeframe.

Some of these objectives can easily conflict if we're not careful. How should we "structure the structure" to do all this? Maybe we need a prototype... Gregsmi11 (talk) 11:08, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

IMO (3) should be in all the airport articles anyway (for any airport big/complex enough to get a separate article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

See also Wikivoyage:Tourist_office#New_York_airport_transfers. Pashley (talk) 01:48, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Your wiki will be in read only soon

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The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

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Trizek (WMF) (Discussion) 21:21, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Just FYI, if everything goes perfectly, this could take as little as 90 seconds, but a few minutes is the most likely outcome. Don't close your tabs if you get the warning message. Just hang out for five or ten minutes and try again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Mapshape for Qatar article

I tried doing this but notice that two of the administrative divisions (Ad Dawhah and Al Wakrah do not show up on the dynamic map). Is there any way to fix this? The dog2 (talk) 16:24, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The mapshapes for both Al Wakrah and Ad Dawhah were stored under the cities that they contain (Al Wakrah City and Doha). I've gone ahead and swapped the wikidata IDs and all boundaries seem to be represented now.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 18:06, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, thanks. The dog2 (talk) 21:44, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Reminder: Office hours about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use

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Hello everyone,

This a reminder that the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department is hosting office hours with community members about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use.

The office hours will be held today, March 2, from 17:00 UTC to 18:30 UTC. See for more details here on Meta.

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We hereby kindly invite you to participate in the discussion. Please note that this meeting will be held in English language and led by the members of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team, who will take and answer your questions. Facilitators from the Movement Strategy and Governance Team will provide the necessary assistance and other meeting-related services.

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Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:35, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Misspelling in map

As pointed out by an IP user in this edit, the name of the country Colombia is misspelled in this map: File:Map of North America.png. Is there anyone around who knows how to edit PNG maps and would be able to fix this? —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:08, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Done I just removed the label altogether. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Pywikibot touch edit

We had several edits marked "Pywikibot touch edit", such as this one. No change is shown, so what's going on? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:04, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

User:AKosiaris (WMF), could you elucidate? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't exactly know what's going on, but I think it's because the edit might have been made using wikitech:PAWS? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:29, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, but why do none of these edits show any difference? Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

That's a dummy edit, which should result in the cache being purged. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like one: there is no difference shown, while a dummy edit is "a slight change in a page's wikitext that has no effect on the rendered page" according to that page. The paragraph were that slight change was made should be shown with a previous and resulting version. A null edit, on the other hand, should not result in a history entry. –LPfi (talk) 19:18, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, I can add some more information. First, my intent was to do a series of null edits, not a series of dummy edit. However, in what apparently is a rare case, I seemingly have stumbled across a bug, where https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/touch.py creates a 1 character difference edit. I did not expect that and I 'll have to dig a bit into why that is happening. My assumption that it is a rare case is based on the fact I have per https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/AKosiaris_(WMF) 13 contributions while I have scheduled ~16000. So a little bit less than 1 in 1000.

Now as for the context, the whole story is tracked in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T226931, the TL;DR is that following the identification and fix for a bug affecting some APIs we wanted to trigger re-renders for ~16000 pages in enwikivoyage that were not re-rendered by usual editor actions in order to invalidate caches. AKosiaris (WMF) (talk) 07:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I think I found the issue by the way. Per https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles=Saint-Sever&rvprop=content&formatversion=2&rvslots=*&prop=revisions&rvlimit=2 the 2 revisions differ by a single newline (\n) character at the end of the revision. I am guessing there is a function somewhere in pywikibot that strips page ending whitespace (newline is whitespace) from the content before submitting it. AKosiaris (WMF) (talk) 08:03, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. What are APIs? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:22, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, jargon slipped in my answer. It stands for Application Programming Interfaces. Essentially things that are meant to be used by computer programs directly as opposed to humans (at least usually and directly). The link I pasted above on how to get the 2 last revisions is a typical API, another one is something like https://en.wikivoyage.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Wikivoyage:Travellers%27_pub. As you can see, the text returned in both cases isn't immediately and easily read by a human, but a computer program that knows what to expect can do so very quickly and efficiently.

It's a very generic and abstract term. If I am not doing the explanation due service, maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API can help more. AKosiaris (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry Ikan Kekek, I missed this discussion. I had asked AKosiaris (WMF) to initiate this. I made a quick note above, here, after the bot started running. I should have probably created a new section. My apologies. Brycehughes (talk) 14:53, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

No apologies needed! I still don't fully understand what edits are being made, but it's not important for me to understand that in detail. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:32, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Essentially, I use the Wikivoyage API, which I think AKosiaris explained earlier. There was a long-standing bug that caused the information to be returned from the API to be way out of date (for example, Uzebekistan I'd get an article from 2019, pre-pandemic, which was rather useless). So we finally got the bug fixed, but the responses to the API were still cached, i.e. kept in some Wikimedia Foundation computer's memory (bit more complicated but essentially) and not updated until someone actually goes and edits the page, which would clear the cache and update it in that computer's memory so we'd get the up-to-date page. So, there were 16,000ish articles that had not been edited since the bug was fixed, so we decided to use a "null-edit" bot that would update the articles, purge the caches, and (hopefully) not show up on people's watchlists. Clearly there was a small bug in that process but it looks like it didn't affect too many pages out of the 16,000. Sorry for the confusion and the bother. On a side note, these "null edits" should also help in clearing the caches for the problems we had with, for example, the map coordinates showing up in every section we had a map due to that infamous Kartography team bug. In any case, we should be all good now. I'll only add that AKosiaris (WMF) has been fantastic to work with and really adds to my faith in this whole WM foundation project in general. Brycehughes (talk) 17:35, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

What do you think of the Kartographer feature “Show nearby articles”?

Apologies for writing in English. If you can translate this message, it would be much appreciated.

Hello, your wiki is among the first wikis to try the new feature “Show nearby articles” in Kartographer. Again, thanks a lot for volunteering to do this!

In the past months, we have worked some more on this feature based on initial feedback, most importantly:

• Multiple pins at the same location are now clustered into groups when zooming out and unclustered when zooming in.
• When you move on a map or zoom in and out, you now load new pins with a reload button.
• The number of pins that can be shown as nearby articles has been increased from 50 to 300.

With these changes implemented, we consider this feature ready to be deployed to all wikis. We also plan to disable the gadget "Explore nearby destinations" to reduce the amount of code that needs to be maintained. But before we do that, we would like to hear from you: What is working well for you? What could still be improved? Please let us know on this talk page by March 19. Thanks a lot for your time! -- For WMDE’s Technical Wishes project, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The middle link is broken, as it's an interwiki link in external link syntax. The correct link is: Explore nearby destinations. Daggerstab (talk) 18:02, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I fixed it, just in case anyone tries clicking it before reading your comment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Ahem. Sorry about that. And thank you for fixing it! -- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:00, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

While in general this sounds like a useful feature for Wikipedia and Wikidata, and so on, one has to acknowledge that geo-data on Wikivoyage is structured a little differently than on Wikipedia and Wikidata. Geo-coded items on Wikipedia and Wikidata exist as standalone items. Geo-coded items on Wikivoyage contraryly can be articles but also listings within such articles. However, listings within articles would not be included in the "Show nearby" feature with the currently proposed solution, would they? This would discriminate such listings for the Wikivoyage implementation, where on Wikipedia and Wikidata they would be displayed. Indeed, many listings in Wikivoyage articles are already based on their Wikidata item and connected to them.

So, for this being actually useful to Wikivoyage, somehow all geo-coded listings within the Wikivoyage articles would need to be included, I believe. Otherwise, the map would end up with a sparse collection of Wikivoyage article points. Compare: 31k articles on the English Wikivoyage vs. 858,660 geo-coded items on Wikidata just for France (just as an example).

Cheers Ceever (talk) 18:54, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

It would still be useful for seeing nearby destinations that haven't been explicitly mentioned in an article, though. And listings are supposed to be relevant to the particular place they are listed in. Too much markers on a map are either a waste of resources, as most of them get ignored, or distract and confuse the reader - see what happened recently with the UNESCO World Heritage list. That's the reason behind the 7+2 rule, isn't it? Otherwise we could just make huge articles for regions or countries and put all the listings there. I don't think the point of this project (Wikivoyage) is to duplicate Google Maps. Daggerstab (talk) 19:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

So, what you are saying is that a badly structured set of region and city articles shall now be compensated for by this Kartographer feature to find relevant articles, even though this feature will never be available through readers like Osmand or Kiwix?

Also, you are consequently saying for Wikipedia and Wikidata: "Too much markers on a map are either a waste of resources, as most of them get ignored, or distract and confuse the reader", aren't you? Because this would definitely apply in their cases considering the amount of geo-coded items.

I don't see how this causes to be a duplicate of Google Maps. But even if so, a duplicate that is free and open can certainly exist besides a commercial alternative. But can you explain, what you mean?

A more useful feature to everyone would probably be a "Show nearby" that lets the user chose between articles and listing, or just a clear separation of article and listing markers.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 23:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

"Show nearby articles" should show nearby articles. That's one feature I often use in the upper-right-corner map. Showing nearby listings would indeed be useful for listings just outside the area covered by the article, such as when an isolated sight has to be put in either of two city articles, but the other one was chosen. I see little use in showing all listings in the centre of a nearby city covered in its own article (that could of course be an option in a region article map).

I could envision an implementation where the main clusters of listings in articles for nearby destinations, and listings in articles for destinations farther away were shown just as article markers, while listings nearer the area of the article at hand were shown as individual (or clustered) listing markers. This would be considerably more complicated and not to overload the servers might require some additional info to be added in some data structures. This would be a new feature, which needs to be discussed with the Kartographer folks, to see what is feasible.

Allowing a switch to a map of Wikidata items could be a working alternative – especially if we get a mapping from Wikidata items to Wikivoyage listings.

–LPfi (talk) 09:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

One problem is that while many sights have Wikidata items, most listings on Wikivoyage are not sights, but commercial entities... Daggerstab (talk) 11:37, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Read the top post again: Wikivoyage already uses a custom extension/gadget that shows on dynamic maps nearby destinations, by request (clicking on a button). They are just adding that functionality to the core Kartographer. It's the status quo, not something fundamentally new. If it's some form of "discrimination", Wikivoyage has been already "discriminating".

Wikipedia and Wikidata function in a different way than Wikivoyage. And wiki-like map services like OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia already exist. Daggerstab (talk) 11:34, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments.

In the end, everything is up to everyones likings—you prefer this and I prefer that. That doesn't necessarily mean that those things have to contradict each other.

"Show nearby" could just show everything that is geo-coded on WV and one simply selects the relevant pieces by using the layer side menu, excluding listings, accommodation, commercial sites, or articles (as in my case).

I am definitely on your side when it comes to commercial listings, I don't see any point in competing with Google here. But that is not an issue of the Kartographer, but WV itself. Maybe it would be useful to more rigorously exclude them there. I barely use restaurant listings, and never any accommodation listings, for example. But so what, I can just have them hidden in the Kartographer, selecting the right types of items—I don't need a complex clustered display of any kind (@LPfi).

Cheers Ceever (talk) 14:13, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Furthermore, one has to remember that any graphical overview should not come without an option to also have this information in a computer-readable or list form (GPX?). I would definitely see a use case where people are interested in nearby items but will want to load them into an external app. Wikivoyage is already a little limited in this sense, because GPXs can only be exported per article but not region- or country-wide.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 23:46, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE) could ask her team about that technical question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello everyone, there was a parallel thread on the talk page of the feature on Meta. In the spirit of keeping all comments in one place, I have replied there: Talk:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Geoinformation/Nearby_articles#My_two_cents

Thanks a lot, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:52, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Good airports?

Could a useful article be written on which airports are good to route through or to land at?

• Heathrow, Changi and both airports in Shanghai or Seoul are on metro lines. Gatwick or Schipol have trains that are fast, comfortable & frequent. Xiamen Airport is close to downtown; taxi is fast & cheap. From some airports, though, getting into the city is difficult.
• Changing airports in a city may be a hassle (see Wikivoyage:Tourist_office#New_York_airport_transfers for NYC), or it may be quite easy -- the two Seoul airports are on the same metro line & close -- or anywhere in between.
• Some countries allow sterile transit; e.g. if you are just changing between two international flights at the same airport in Korea, then you do not have to go through Korean customs or immigration. Others do not allow this; e.g. the US insists you go through border formalities (& pay for a visa if you need one) even if your plane is just stopping for fuel.

Could important parts of this be summarized in a table? Pashley (talk) 10:39, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that a global table would be difficult to keep up to date, but I would welcome adding this information to airport articles. This could include having an International transfer sub-section to say whether sterile transit is available, and any other points of interest for transit passengers. Ground transportation could have a sub-section on getting to/from other nearby airports (not necessarily just those with the same city in their name). AlasdairW (talk) 21:28, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikimania 2023 Welcoming Program Submissions

Do you want to host an in-person or virtual session at Wikimania 2023? Maybe a hands-on workshop, a lively discussion, a fun performance, a catchy poster, or a memorable lightning talk? Submissions are open until March 28. The event will have dedicated hybrid blocks, so virtual submissions and pre-recorded content are also welcome. If you have any questions, please join us at an upcoming conversation on March 12 or 19, or reach out by email at wikimania@wikimedia.org or on Telegram. More information on-wiki.

April 1st..

It's march 13th already, and we don't have a decision on what to do for April 1st this year. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:57, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Looking at Category:Joke articles, I'm struggling to think of what in principle we could other than just more fictional places. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:23, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

As per my comment on Wikivoyage talk:Joke articles, I'm struggling to see why we can't change things up a little this year and link this? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:21, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe an article on bad advice? "Pet all the fluffy cows, leave food out in bear country, drive fast on blind curves..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I've said it before and I say it again, on Wikivoyage talk:Joke articles there are many suggestions from earlier years from Wikivoyage to Gibberish phrasebook, and Travel advice for dummies that hasn't been written or featured yet. Ypsilon (talk) 20:51, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikivoyage Nearby Enhancement

There is this site: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/-15.772843757894648,-68.64961624145508

Which could be quite useful. However, it only takes into account actual articles and not any listing within articles, and therefore only comes up with a few results as in this example.

For Wikipedia and Wikidata instead it works great, because most nearby listings represent a standalone item with its own geo coordinates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/coord/-15.772843757894648,-68.64961624145508

Would it be feasible to enhance the Wikivoyage one such that it includes all listings as well? Or is there already such a site available?

Cheers Ceever (talk) 18:05, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

See the discussion above: #What do you think of the Kartographer feature “Show nearby articles”? You can provide feedback in that thread. Daggerstab (talk) 18:10, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

What a weird coincidence. 😂🙏 Ceever (talk) 18:30, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

How do we disable the InternetArchiveBot in certain articles?

It's edit warring with me now. The URL it says is dead is not dead! I opened it successfully last night! Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:36, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

By the way, I jumped through a bunch of hoops to try to report a false positive to that bot, and it supposedly sent me a confirmation email that hasn't showed up. And no, it's not in my spam folder either. I'm afraid that bot is fucking up. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:53, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I basically partially blocked InternetArchiveBot from editing the pages it was edit warring for 1 month (which so far has included Boating in Finland, British coast, London/Westminster and Bulgaria). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:12, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

There should be some easy and obvious way to keep the bot away from specific links. In this case there was a superfluous "|" in the URL (perhaps because of the confusing syntax difference between internal and external links). I hope removing it ends the edit war. Some edit warring of the bot can be cured by just removing oddities and errors in the page syntax. –LPfi (talk) 09:35, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678 might be able to fix the bot so that it can handle a superfluous "|". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

But that is adding complexity to the bot code. I doubt there are any URLs that include a pipe symbol as last character, and few that would concern us that have it anywhere in the URL. So simply remove them. If some such URLs are needed in Wikipedia, then something might need to be done, but the problem now was that the bot correctly identified the incorrect URL as not found (error 404), or rather, that the URL seemed to work for IK, probably because of some browser magic. –LPfi (talk) 16:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for dealing with the immediate problem, guys! SHB2000, how did you partially block the bot? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:26, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I think one solution would be to alter Template:Dead link so that there was an optional paramter which "hid" the dead link. I suggest something like "slow=2023-03-16", which would record when the link was manually confirmed to be ok. It would then be possible to monitor how long it has been since the link was checked - like we do with Template:Warningbox and, or get a bot to remove slow parameters that were over 2 years old. AlasdairW (talk) 20:53, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Hiding live links the bot flags as dead would compound the problem, wouldn't it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:25, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it would make the dead link have no effect if it also removed them from, or are there other implications? It would also make it visible to editors that the bot is no longer checking this link, so they might manually check the link when editing the same section. AlasdairW (talk) 21:44, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: when you click on Special:Block/InternetArchiveBot (or whatever link that leads to Special:Block). Under "Block type" (the second section, right underneath "Username, IP address, or IP range", change the block type frok Sitewide to Partial. You then list all the pages you want the bot from editing, and then set a time. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I see. Thanks! Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:22, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Also, if you want to test this feature out, I'm more than happy for you to test it on SHB2000 (test 2) (talk · contribs) need it be. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

It's OK; it seems simple enough. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:43, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Not a problem. I'm glad this feature exists, though, and I thank whoever came up with the idea. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I like partial blocks and they seem like a good way to prevent this bot from edit warring. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:56, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Cyberpower's comment above suggests creating a template with a specific name, which will cause the bot to skip the marked link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I created the template {{cbignore}}, to have its documentation available (the template code is empty). Using it is easier than having to administrate partial blocks. I marked it experimental for the time being. What is the whitelisting Cyberpower678 mentioned? –LPfi (talk) 08:38, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the process for whitelisting is "ask Cyberpower to do it for you", but it's possible that there is a self-service system for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Whitelisting domains would require a tool root such as myself or Harej (talk · contribs) to do it for you. Single individual URLs can be whitelisted by any administrator. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 03:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Completing 0 for exchange rates

I have noticed that many exchange rates end up having just one digit, e.g. €9.1. In school we actually learnt to always include two digits for currencies, even if the second one is a zero. We would also never name just the one digit but always state the number as a part of 100. The reason for that being the fact that the digits also represent the amount of "small" money. €9.10 is actually €9 and 10 cents. So, nine euros and ten. We would never say 9 euros point/and 1, because that would be ambiguous.

Furthermore, the full way of display (€9.10) is also more intuitive and not to mention more understandable for less literate people. Some people have weaknesses with numbers and reading, which is why we also have a "Simple English" version of Wikipedia.

Hence, would you consider it reasonable to always have two digits in such cases, even if the number is rounded to the next tenth?

Cheers Ceever (talk) 20:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree, when we're talking about currencies, something like "€9.1" does look really weird. Ypsilon (talk) 20:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:05, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

In other contexts I would agree, but for exchange rates? Those are never given as dollars and cents. I prefer having a sensible number of significant digits, and I don't see a problem in not implying cents (or whatever). –LPfi (talk) 08:45, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Currencies like the euro, dollar, or pound, are almost always given in 2 decimal places (not sig figs, though), FWIW. I agree that €9.1 looks off-putting and unnatural. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:52, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Exchange rates for euros As of January 2023: US$1 ≈ €0.9 UK£1 ≈ €1.1 AU$1 ≈ €0.6 CA$1 ≈ €0.7 Japanese ¥100 ≈ €0.7 Exchange rates fluctuate. Current rates for these and other currencies are available from XE.com

I think all prices in currencies with centesimal small change are given with two decimals or none. However, exchange rates are more or less never given with those two decimal places. Would you expect them in a list of exchange rates (at an exchange bureau or the like, with six significant digits for other currencies, but seven for one with the decimal point after the fifth digit)? I don't think the euro rates in this info box look weird, although it has one decimal for all currencies (as of now, January rates). –LPfi (talk) 10:49, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

If it would just be a number in the way of USD/EUR = 0.9, I would agree, but indeed it says that for US$1 you get/need €0 and 90 (Euro) cents, not 9 cents ... which again some people not firm with such things will interpret it as.

Even if one digit might not look weird to you, you wouldn't say the alternative of using two digits increases in weirdness, would you?

It is also a matter of consistency, everywhere on WV we stick to quoting currencies with two (or none) digits and suddenly for exchange rates we apply a different standard. What for?

Here is what people see at an exchange bureau: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3 (just the first things that came up when searching for "exchange rate (display)") ... And while this even sometimes involves more than 2 digits, I believe 2 digits are the best compromise and what people would deal best with.

@LPfi: Does this convince you to head into this direction?

Cheers Ceever (talk) 14:00, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd rather see two or three digits after the decimal point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

If people really get confused, then perhaps we should do the change – such confusion just is hard for me to understand (to quote Professor Kirke: What do they learn in school nowadays?). Having two digits after the decimal point would work for these euro rates, it just means updating more frequently – even for UK£, which seems to be 1.14 at the moment. For something like 9.23, the last digit would probably be spurious for any non-pegged currency. –LPfi (talk) 16:35, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

In several restaurants I see prices like 4.5 (and also 3.95) on the menu. See: this example. --FredTC (talk) 12:33, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I understand that in the US, if the menu says:

Hamburger ...........16

then people spend more than if the menu says:

Hamburger ...........$16

Without the $ symbol, it doesn't "look like" money, so I don't think about the price so much. I wonder if the same thing is going on with that menu. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

:-) That reminds me about the lotteries where you can win €10,000.00. That's a lot more than 10,000, isn't it? –LPfi (talk) 16:17, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, that's not true. In the U.S., unless the menu says "tax is included in prices," you always pay more than the menu price in any state or city that charges sales tax. And that's before considering tips. However, I have never noticed any difference between the charge with or without a dollars sign on the menu. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:54, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

The charge may be the same, but customers may not be as careful with their money. They'll pay the same $16+tax+tip, but think less about it, at least until pay time. Somewhat different logic from the €99 prices, but still manipulating your sense of the price. –LPfi (talk) 17:13, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Are you saying there are studies showing that if a restaurant leaves off the dollars sign, customers spend more money on food and drinks, on average, or is that what WhatamIdoing meant? Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:28, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that was what she meant. I know no studies on the subject, and she didn't hint at any scientific evidence. –LPfi (talk) 18:21, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

If I see $1 = €0.90, I assume that means that exchanging $1 I'll get 90 cents, give or take half a cent. If I see $1 = €0.9, I assume that means that exchanging $1 I'll get 90 cents, give or take 5 cents. They mean different things.

When I update exchange rates every year, I provide general rates like $1 = €0.9 for two reasons:

1. it is more yseful for people doing math in their heads, and
2. more precise rates will go out of date quickly.

Providing rates to 3 or 4 significant digits implies precision that we can't provide when our rates are updated annually. Ground Zero (talk) 19:11, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. If the rate is 0.9323 we should write 0.9 or 0.93, not 0.90. For the euro rates we get a precision of about 1% with two decimal places, which might be about right for a few weeks. If the rate is 0.95 when the readers gets to the exchange booth, that's no problem, as we warn about outdated rates. A rate of 9.63 will become outdated in no time even with major currencies, let alone with minor currencies with inflation problems. Four significant figures is nonsense.

If we update on yearly bases, 0.7 is about as good as we can get, but some readers believing that means seven eurocents for a Canadian dollar is not what we want – we have a trade-off between giving good information that people misinterpret and giving bad information that people grasp. Sigh.

–LPfi (talk) 19:41, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I also appreciate the point of math in one's head. I can do something smart about 0.93, such as rounding down or using a fractional approximation that makes sense for specific calculations (13/14 or whatever), but most people are stuck with the figures we provide. –LPfi (talk) 19:49, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Do we know how $1.7 will sound to somebody listening to the article being read by a text-speech application? I think that $1.70 is less likely to be heard as if it were $1.07, and using 2 decimal places might cause some applications to recognise it as dollars and cents. AlasdairW (talk) 00:04, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

FYI: The best unexpected U.S. weekend getaways for 2023

https://www.timeout.com/usa/travel/best-weekend-getaway-usa —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:31, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

That's kind of a fun article. It raises a questions in my mind....What range is appropriate for determining if a place should be considered a good weekend destination from any particular city? I'm kind of thinking that weekend getaways should be within about 3 hours driving distance. Wonder what y'all think... Mrkstvns (talk) 15:11, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

As someone who has driven from Indianapolis to Chicago and back many times, that is the correct length. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:12, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

That sounds fair. Perhaps another way of saying it is: People should be able to finish their workday at a usual hour on Friday (say, 5:00 p.m.), go home to prepare for the trip (whether that means a quick dinner, dropping the dog at a friend's house, collecting the kids, or whatever else is needed; so, 6:00 p.m.), and then check into a hotel with enough time to get settled before a normal bedtime (say, 10:00 p.m. bedtime, so 9:30 p.m. check-in).

Three-ish hours on a (frequent) train sounds equally good to me. I think that if you have to fly there, it's not a reasonable weekend destination. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd extend that to at least 4 hours. Boston is a reasonable weekend trip from New York, and it's over 4 hours away by bus. Ditto for D.C. As for flying, I'm not sure about that. Would Germans consider the Canary Islands a reasonable weekend trip? You can't get there quickly by boat. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:48, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Weekend visits to cities such as Prague or Budapest (by plane from Finland) were not too unusual before the pandemics. Probably more people would think twice nowadays, but I would be surprised if such visits have ended. –LPfi (talk) 22:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Weekend road trips interstate were (and still are) very uncommon from Sydney unless it's a trip to Canberra, which isn't really interstate, but that shouldn't come out as a surprise given the closest state border is over 550 km by road (excl. Canberra), or about 5.5 hours and flights are inconvenient for a two-day trip. Like Ikan, I also agree that 4 hours is around the max. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:30, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

A little less than an hour to get to the airport (by train from the central station – the train ride is just half an hour, but you have to get to the train station first), plan for a bit more than an hour to get through the Helsinki airport, more than two hours in the air, another hour to get out of the airport and to your hotel – that's five hours' travel time, even if everything goes well, which seems like a bit much for me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. It seems those "weekend in Prague" flights require taking Friday off, both in marketing (even some M–W journeys are marketed as weekend ones!) and weekend journeys people are talking about. In Finland it is quite common to have four days off; some holidays are always on Thursday, others may happen to be, and offices are quite empty on those Fridays. People still mostly regard them as weekends. Of course you won't get a bargain flight at those times. –LPfi (talk) 09:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

In Europe it is not unusual to be able to finish early on a Friday. I can finish work at noon on a Friday, if I have worked longer hours in the rest of the week. So a 4-6 hour journey would be possible occasionally. I sometimes go to a remote hostel for the weekend that involves 4 hours on a train then 30 minutes walking. AlasdairW (talk) 23:50, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Same in Germany, we call that a "long weekend" (langes Wochenende). I'd expect most of the more catholic countries to have a couple of Thursdays and/or Mondays off. El Grafo (talk) 14:31, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

My recent view of Mt.Kenya plus the Buffalos

I recently visited Sweet Waters at Olpejata conservacy in Nanyuki. What caught my eyes is how close the animals were from my tent.

It was a beautifu scene to view the magnificent Mt.Kenya in all her glory. The buffalos were walking majestically outside my tent and a short electric barbed wired fence came between us. I highly recommend everyone to Visit. I stayed at Serena Sweet Waters Camp. Amazing Esther Baraga (talk) 13:37, 21 March 2023 (UTC)