Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/2020

Used files not used

There was a note put on a lot of talk pages that files are nominated for deletion. Good to have those messages, and the nomination (of a lot of files) seems to be justified. The odd thing is that on at least some of those pages I cannot find any of the files mentioned (see e.g. Northern Mindanao or Negros Occidental). No recent changes in the page history. What is going on? --LPfi (talk) 17:16, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

(On the file description page the articles are mentioned as using the files. --LPfi (talk) 17:21, 16 January 2020 (UTC))

(Also in the link list, such as Special:WhatLinksHere/File:BacolodCollageByMcLovintosh.jpg --LPfi (talk) 17:25, 16 January 2020 (UTC))

I too was puzzled about this phenomenon a few months ago. The pics are in the image parameter of Wikidata items linked to from the articles, and therefore the bot thinks they are in the article. --Ypsilon (talk) 17:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

OK, found it too, now. So we are warned about a default image for an item we are linking. A bit farther than I would bother, but perhaps better that way. --LPfi (talk) 17:47, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps the bot message should be changed to hint at that possibility. I suppose there are users who only care about a couple of articles in their home (or favourite vacation) region, not following discussions in the pub and knowing little about Wikidata. No use confusing them. --LPfi (talk) 17:49, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore

Hello Folks,

Wiki Loves Love is back again in 2020 iteration as Wiki Loves Folklore from 1 February, 2020 - 29 February, 2020. Join us to celebrate the local cultural heritage of your region with the theme of folklore in the international photography contest at Wikimedia Commons. Images, videos and audios representing different forms of folk cultures and new forms of heritage that haven’t otherwise been documented so far are welcome submissions in Wiki Loves Folklore. Learn more about the contest at Meta-Wiki and Commons.

Kind regards,
Wiki Loves Folklore International Team
— Tulsi Bhagat (contribs | talk)
sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:14, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Some of the photos that result from their contest might be of interest to us. We should particularly be looking for photos illustrating UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:19, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

I think we could do with more mention of cultural traditions within our Wikivoyage articles. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:19, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Definitely. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:26, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation becoming the Wikipedia Foundation

Swept in from the pub

There is now a community discussion on Meta around the proposal to rebrand the Wikimedia Foundation into the "Wikipedia Foundation". I would encourage as many of you as possible to go and take a couple of minutes to understand the idea, and then express your views. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I have some doubts about this, honestly. The trigger for the discussion was apparently a Norwegian newspaper saying that the WMF hired a design agency to do something about its "visual profile", and somehow a couple of editors jumped from "visual profile" to "renaming the organization". Honestly, I'd be more concerned about them deciding to change the logos in a "visual profile" project.

It's true that people have been talking about the possibility of letting affiliates rename themselves. (I gather that would ultimately be m:AffCom's decision. As trademark owner, the WMF currently prohibits that, but if the WMF permitted the option, then AffCom could recommend for/against it for any given group.) It's also true that User:Doc James, who is a community-elected board member, has long favored renaming the WMF to "Wikipedia Foundation". But I haven't been hearing anything about renaming the WMF from the branding project for months (and I have been talking to them off and on). It's just not a possibility that they are dealing with right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing to clarify I am in favor of the WMF having the option of renaming itself similar to how affiliates should have the option of renaming themselves. I am not pushing in either direction right now.

The question on meta was "Is it acceptable for the Foundation to use the name Wikipedia to refer to itself?" and I am of the option that it is acceptable. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:34, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

So what you're saying is this is unlikely to happen? At any rate, the community so far seems to be panning the idea.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 20:43, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Whether "the community" (there's only one?) is panning this depends upon whether you think "the community" is synonymous with "the highly active editors who are comfortable posting in an English-language conversation on Meta".

I make no prediction about whether it will ever happen (beyond "not now"). I hate naming things, so I'd never volunteer to rename anything. That makes it difficult for me to make good predictions on any question about naming things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:49, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, if you get a message pop up from French Wikivoyage, it's because I mentioned your above comment over there to alleviate concerns that were brewing.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. I put in my 2 cents. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:29, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: You did a great job of naming your account! Did that come before or after your employment? :)

There are indeed many communities and subcommunities within the wider Wikimedia community, and I do understand your concerns about an overconfident minority selectorate appearing to represent the whole movement ("will of the people, innit?"), but ultimately only those opinions which are expressed can be counted. Of the views expressed so far, a large majority is on one side of the argument.

There are some comments in languages other than English in the thread on Meta, and there are also discussions elsewhere in the community, such as on French Wikipedia's Bistro. We can all do our bit to encourage as wide participation in such discussions as possible, hence my posting here after seeing a post by another user on another wiki. I hope others will see this and put RfCs in other areas of the community they are familiar with.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:06, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

You doubtless meant "of the views expressed on wiki so far". ;-) There are people communicating privately, too, and some of them are unwilling to make their views public for fear of backlash. There are also people who have communicated their view privately in the past and whom we can confidently expect to never participate on wiki. Think about the donors who ask (all the time, according to Fundraising) why their donation "to Wikipedia" is instead going to some outfit called "Wikimedia".

Whether to count votes according to stakeholders (e.g., Wikimedia France's view counts the same as the French Wikipedia's community's view) or according to the number of individual humans (Wikimedia France's corporate view counts the same as my view) is something that the movement has never settled. The branding project's plan seems to be sending it all to the Board, and letting them decide how much weight to put on the various groups.

(My username [What am I doing right now, and is that what I want to be doing with my time?] is older than my time at the WMF. I started editing more than 13 years ago. I'm now 6 years into a three-month-long, half-time temporary contract with the WMF. I'd never have applied if it was meant to be a permanent position, but I'm happy with how it has worked out so far. Eventually, I will reclaim my volunteer status. I find that being employed interferes with my editing time.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Some people seem to feel that democracy is a basic principle of Wikimedia. It sounds like it isn't, and that the views of non-board users who don't donate money are merely advisory. Is that your feeling? Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:40, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, the idea that we're a democracy either isn't a common idea, or it's a new idea.[1] Some individual communities operate in more democratic ways than others, but the overall movement isn't a one-editor-one-vote system. Given where we're talking, this is probably a good thing for us, because a democratic system would mean that the English Wikipedia could outvote almost every other group, and they probably would have voted to delete at least Wikinews and Wikiquote by now, and maybe other projects, too.

As for whose views matter, I'll start by saying that I'm not a lawyer, but that I seem to have spent more time talking to lawyers on behalf of (U.S.) non-profits than the average person. So IANAL, but AIUI, the board for any non-profit organization has a positive fiduciary duty to advance their charitable purpose. (For clarity, the WMF's charitable purpose is technically "education", not "support the community". Happily for us, most actions that support the communities also advance the educational purpose.) Separately, the WMF also owns the trademark for "Wikipedia", which means that the WMF has the exclusive legal right to decide how to use it. Combining these two, I conclude that the board has a duty to use that trademark in whatever manner it decides will best advance its educational purpose. If its educational purpose is, in the Board's judgment, best served by renaming the org, or by letting a local affiliate advertise itself as a "Wikipedia" group instead of a "Wikimedia" one, then that's its duty. I personally hope they will decide the opposite for the WMF, but I recognize that the decision ultimately will be made by the WMF's board (e.g., not editors, not donors, not affiliates), and on grounds other than my personal preference (but hopefully after considering the views of all stakeholders).

I also wonder whether this whole discussion is pointless. If you look at the strategy recommendations that were released earlier this week, the WMF itself might not even exist (in its current form) in a couple of years. The mostly-volunteer strategy folks are talking about devolution and creating two layers of organizations "above" the current WMF. In one scenario, the current WMF could become "Wikimedia Operations", with a special assignment to run the servers, and things like fundraising and grantmaking could be moved to a new organization at a "higher" level of the movement (or the other way around: the WMF turns into the top-level organization and splits off a "MediaWiki Foundation" as a third-layer affiliate). I've never been a big believer in internet petitions like this one, but this one may have a forest-versus-trees problem that is even bigger than usual. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for laying all that out there. Much appreciated. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:03, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, very interesting.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 23:41, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Interwiki linking confusing search engines

I stumbled upon something interesting in a recent Google search. Apparently we don't have any results for what I was looking for, but the search did pull up a lot of Wikipedia pages! Apparently since you can link to a Wikipedia page using the interwiki prefix such as w:Chicago Loop, and you can even type w:Chicago Loop into the search box and get taken to a Wikipedia page, search indexers are finding those interwiki links and counting them as pages on Wikivoyage! That's confusing if someone were to find those in their search results, and it's probably hurting our SEO since it makes WV look like it's mirroring content from WP. Does anyone know how this could be fixed, or where else I should report it? --Bigpeteb (talk) 18:00, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

If you put "drive in theater" in quotes in the Google search, the results are very different and most of the pages are on this site - I got 15 pages on here, 1 on commons, and a few ads; using the search box here gave 21 pages. I think that it may more be a feature of telling Google to search a specific site for several words - there may be some subtlety of the search syntax. You don't get WP results from the search box here, although other WMF sites do sometimes suggest pages from here in a right hand column. i don't think it is something to worry about. AlasdairW (talk) 22:09, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

It works the other way too! You can get Wikivoyage results from a search on en.wikipedia.org. I'm not as confident as Alasdair about whether it's affecting our site ranking or not, though. Big Pete's theory is at least plausible on its face. Powers ^(talk) 21:34, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

"The editor will now load. If you still see this message after a few seconds, please reload the page."

Tried to fix a spelling mistake on Stromboli. I am getting this message every time I try to edit a destination page. I can edit this page just fine, though. 89.172.37.11 11:43, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

It works for me, so either it was a temporary glitch that has now resolved, or your web browser is unhappy. If you still have problems with it, then I have two suggestions:

• Clear the cookies in your web browser. Sometimes that helps.
• Try https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Stromboli?action=submit to get straight to the old wikitext editor.

Good luck, WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Not a temporary glitch. It appears to be Javascript based. I can also duplicate it when I try to edit the page in Pale Moon with Javascript disabled. It looks like the new Javascript-heavy editor doesn't have a fallback for non-Javascript users. The action=sumbit workaround works. 93.136.59.172 11:26, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

It's supposed to have a fallback, and that fallback is supposed to be the 2003 wikitext editor.

What's your OS/web browser/other potentially useful platform information? And are you disabling all the Javascript, or just some of it (e.g., via NoScript)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I realized I can get thru if I press enter again in Links. Digging deeper: it looks like the fallback is <noscript><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=/w/index.php?title=Nha_Trang&action=edit&section=1&venoscript=1"></noscript>. This fails to load in my desktop browser because I have meta redirections and/or noscript tags disabled since they're pretty much never used for anything but ad tracking and page hijacking, and in Links it requires extra confirmation to get redirected which kind of looks like the page didn't render in full. In addition I have Javascript turned off completely in browser configuration in my desktop browser.

It looks like a roundabout way of doing things to me. I think it makes more sense to put the normal editor on the original page, then redirect the user to the Javascript editor if their browser has Javascript. 93.136.119.51 15:18, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I believe that websites generally work the other way around.

You've mentioned Pale Moon and Links. Both of those run on Linux, Windows, or macOS. Which OS are you using? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:13, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I am getting the same message "The editor will now load. If you still see this message after a few seconds, please reload the page." when trying to edit an article on Firefox 73.0 macOS Catalina 10.15.3. I can make edit via the listings editor, though. Syced (talk) 12:21, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Time for another edit-a-thon?

Pardon me if edit-a-thon isn't common on Wikivoyage, I was drawn over to this project in the 2018 edit-a-thon to celebrate 5th year anniversary. Perhaps it's time to run another one (for March)? This should leave half a month to organize and set up an automatic way to count contributions after participants signed up. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:50, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

There has to be some sort of arbitrary statistical landmark. The 10th year anniversary is too far away. The closest milestone I can see is the 30,000 number of articles which Wikivoyage should reach in half a year's time. This is the first multiple of 10,000 that WV would have reached in the post-fork era so it is a significant moment. You could say that quality is more important than quantity but you'd have a harder time convincing the WMF to celebrate 100 star articles or 1,000 guides compared to the total number. And the edit-a-thon will give everyone the opportunity to improve all of these articles. We definitely need a boost in our editing community. Many established editors have become semi-active or inactive in recent months and unfortunately nobody has replaced them. Gizza ^(roam) 08:34, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Completely agree with the last two sentences by Gizza; it's been quiet around here lately. An editathon is perhaps something we can only use sparingly to achieve maximum impact. I wonder if there isn't something more long-term and ongoing we can do? External marketing has been mentioned before. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:40, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be around an anniversary or a particular milestone. Many edit-a-thons just pick an arbitrary time to start. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:21, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it could probably be an annual event... like the Asia month annual edit-a-thon in Wikipedia. If there are enough people here interested in making this an annual event (which would definitely help get a lot more activity at Wikivoyage), I don't see why we shouldn't have the edit-a-thon as an annual event... what's the worst that would happen? they'll just say "no". OhanaUnited, I suggest you consult with the user Atsirlin about this - he was the main force that made the 2018 Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon become a reality. Maybe he could help make it happen this time as well. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 09:51, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited, ויקיג'אנקי: if that's the case, we could send a request at meta:CentralNotice/Request whenever we feel ready to have another edit-a-thon. As the topic of external marketing has frequently been raised on the pub, one thing we could additionally do this time is to include links to our social media pages on the landing page. There was a mixture of support and hesitancy when it came to including those links on our normal articles but as a trial we can see whether including those links will convert a few more first-time visitors to Wikivoyage into longer-term readers and editors if they start following us on social media platforms. Gizza ^(roam) 23:51, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Babel templates

Hey, I was just wondering where the templates for Babel are stored. I would like to update the Babel for Minnan/Hokkien/Taiwanese to add in the Chinese character version (which makes more sense than having the Romanised version, since Chinese characters are by far the most common way of writing Minnan, while the Roman alphabet is virtually never used by native speakers). I was also thinking of whether adding Teochew to Babel will be a worthwile endeavour. The dog2 (talk) 22:22, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: The template have been replaced with a parser function, so that instead of {{babel|en|es-2}} and templates on 800 WMF projects, you now input {{#babel:en|es-2}} and it's a part of the MediaWiki software itself. Changing this would probably be done via phab:. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:49, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Ahhh, so that makes it a lot harder then. The dog2 (talk) 23:27, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

In short, yes. But also makes more uniformity and ease of using the function across wikis. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:32, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: I had a similar problem a few years ago with American Sign Language at metawiki. You can see the discussion here: meta:Talk:User_language#Issue_with_ase. It's possible that you might be able to make the changes at translatewiki.net, but I don't know for sure. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Amire80 will know whom we should talk to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, thanks for the mention.

As Koavf says, it's very good for uniformity. The problem for the particular case of Min-nan is that currently in MediaWiki we only have one variant of it, and it's in the Latin script.

However, it may be possible to add a Chinese characters variant. Since it's something that will go into technical details, I'll continue it on The dog2's user talk page. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:04, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Enhanced Password Reset now available on Wikivoyage

Note: I am posting this on English Wikivoyage, but I welcome this message being translated and shared on other wikis. Thank you!

Hello, everyone! The Community Tech team has released a new feature, which is called Enhanced Password Reset (EPR), to Wikivoyage and Wiktionary. With this feature, you can optionally select to require both username and email address to be submitted on Special:PasswordReset in order to generate password reset emails. This feature was developed by the Community Tech team, in response to the #3 wish in the 2019 Community Wishlist Survey. We decided to incrementally release the feature, so we released to Wikivoyage and Wiktionary first. The release to all other wikis will happen soon. In the meantime, we would love your feedback!

To enable the feature, go to the “Email options” section in “Preferences.” You can click on the checkbox that states, “Send password reset emails only when both email address and username are provided.” Once you click the checkbox and save, the preference is enabled. Please note that Password Reset Update is not a global preference by default. It is enabled per wiki. However, you can make it global in your global preferences. For more information on password resets and EPR, you can visit the Help:Reset_password page on MediaWiki. Thank you, and we look forward to checking out your feedback on the project talk page! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Ikan Kekek, I think you may want to try this out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I guess I don't need it right now? Dunno. Thanks, WhatamIdoing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:42, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I suppose its main use is to avoid others spamming your mailbox with reset messages. I think there is a maximal frequency on these, which makes them just a small annoyance even in the worst case (unless somebody is eavesdropping on your e-mail); the feature can be activated if you at some point feel fed up with such messages. --LPfi (talk) 17:32, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

FlyBe

(Swept in from Grahamsands Talk page)

Good morning, Graham. Thanks for your updates regarding FlyBe. I think the information you're adding would stand out better in a cautionbox, rather than as straight prose. What do you think? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:48, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I considered that, but thought the added value of doing so would only stand for a day or two while everyone caught up with the news. I was thinking more of the longer term impact on viability of airports and indeed of whole destinations such as Newquay, Northern Ireland and Jersey. I'll complete the present update in the next ten min then we can take stock. Grahamsands (talk) 08:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

It will be of value for longer than a day or two, because people will have tickets booked and will still want to get where they're going, and at some point it will become clear which routes are going to be replaced and which are axed. I understand there are other sources of information, but we do aim to be a self-contained travel guide. If necessary, we could put the box in a template, and deploy it across however many articles (so you edit the template page, and it changes automatically across the site,) if the idea of keeping so many articles updated over an indeterminate period of time is daunting.ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:24, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

It's tempting to try to be the first with travel news, but the way Nationalrail enquiries crashed last night suggests that most travellers are ahead of us. I didn't think the extra prominence of a cautionbox added much, but don't object to one. But what doesn't work is standard warning content for all Flybe destinations, for the very reason you raise. For some it's a hammer blow (Newquay, Belfast). For some it's a damned nuisance but you can workaround (Southampton). For some it's a major concern (Blue Islands still fly to Jersey, but can they keep going?) For some it's indirect (Flights to Scilly and by Loganair to the Scottish islands are by separate carriers, but what about the onward air connection). So that's what I've sought to portray. It's difficult to see other operators taking these routes in the next few months as everyone is retrenching over coronavirus. Grahamsands (talk) 10:50, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

It seems at least a few dozen articles still recommend FlyBe for getting to destinations. Someone will need to go through and remove the airline from each of them. I can try to do that when I have time, or one of you can if you have the chance. —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:28, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Let's move these discussions to the pub, I don't own the topic . . .

continuing from that, we'll find more examples as the days go by. For instance the warning has just gone on the city pages, not on the surrounding regions - Newquay and Exeter are handy portals for Devon and Cornwall, or were. But what travellers would find most useful right now are other ways to Get In. My impression is that rail links are reasonably well-described for the affected destinations, but bus routes for many are kinda vague. Grahamsands (talk) 13:45, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Covid warning boxes

Many of our Covid warning boxes on country pages warn about the outbreak in the country, and list details. I think that as things have changed from "avoid certain areas" to "go home while you still can" and "we're not letting foreigners in", we should focus the warning boxes to information about travel restrictions as that is what is most useful to travellers now. Ground Zero (talk) 09:47, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

That makes sense. Though I think we should still give key information about the situation within the country for travellers who are travelling for essential reasons or unable to get home. —Granger (talk · contribs) 12:37, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I think what I want to avoid is trying to keep up with the news in these boxes: ### of cases, ## of deaths, it has now spread to Xyz province, etc. Ground Zero (talk) 08:52, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we should concentrate on travel restrictions, though even keeping that info up-to-date will be difficult.

To what extent can we offload the problem, provide links instead of trying to have the info here? What links? WHO? WP? Our Coronavirus article?

Ideally every warning box in a country article would include a link to that country's source of authoritative info on restrictions, quarantines, etc. Pashley (talk) 09:20, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree that at this stage it's not a good use of our time to update numbers of deaths and lists of provinces. Also agree it would be good for each warning box to link to that country's source of information. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:26, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

How do you feel about having a Discord server for for the English Wikivoyage community?

I am currently looking to create one for the small Hebrew Wikivoyage community. I think it works a lot better than the IRC servers, it is a lot more secure, it gives us a lot more options to collaborate, and it is a better and more up-to-date way of welcoming the new editors interested in joining the effort.

I can see that many other Wikimedia communities have opened Discord channels as well.

I am mostly hoping that it would be a good place to have more natural communication with the new people whom are curious about Wikivoyage, and would like to chat in real time with our more active members (and because it can be used on a mobile app, this probably means more people would participate in the chats when someone new joins, in comparison to the activity in the IRC servers).

How do you feel about this idea? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 22:21, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I am not opposed in theory but I am very pro-IRC and do not see the value in moving to another service. How is it that IRC servers are not working? How are they more secure? I'd be interested in any sources you used to make these claims. IRC is very much a "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" situation for me but I am happy to be corrected. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:18, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Have you tried using Discord before? it is a much more up-to-date platform. Several things I like about discord so far (and i'm quite new to it still):

• It is much more secure - people cannot look up your IP address or figure out your real email. The Wikipedia Discord server seem to accept only people with verified emails, while other Wiki servers I've seen accept anyone - So I guess, we could also decide if we want it to only be available to verified people or if it should be available to anyone whom wants to join in right away.
• It works on both PCs and mobile devices, and the apps are very advanced - they are a sort of combination between a modern VoIP apps, IRC and internet forums. You can even have audio or video group conversations in it and people could send each other files directly if they want. I believe that it is also possible to configure it on your phone so that you would get a notification if there's any activity on the server while you are on the go.
• While IRC is very nostalgic for many of us (I grew up with it in the 90s too), my impression is that Discord seems to have gradually become a popular alternative to IRC among younger folks these days. So using it as the main communication platform might probably better appeal for younger people considering joining the efforts.
• While the user lists at the IRC channels only show users currently connected that are probably siting by a stationary PC, many times it seems to me that it is hard to get an immediate response in the IRC channels or even a late response. The situation seems to be less of an issue in Discord as the discord app on people's mobile makes it much more available to the members.
• Discord servers seem to be programmable... allowing addition of many various useful features.
• A discord server is similar to a forums platform - on the server we could create different channels for the main things our community is focused on ... for instance a channel for the main Expeditions, channels devoted for people focused on the site's maintenance, etc..
• As the participants in it might be more active than IRC because it is more available to people in mobile phones, it seems like the perfect landing page to send new people to.
• I understand that people don't have to install the app for it to work... if they want they could alternatively also use it through a web browser.
• I believe concentrated collaborations focused on improving specific things would be much more easier through it due to all the features I mentioned above. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 09:34, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

I personally have never used IRC, but I have used Discord before, and to this day maintain some small servers, some of which are related to editing on private wikis. I cannot compare the two, but I can offer a bit of insight perhaps. To correct ויקיג'אנקי:

• The servers themselves aren't programmable. They are customisable to a large extend, but most of these customisations are done through the use of Discord bots, which are programmable and offer most of the extended usability of the servers. I don't have experience with programming and creating Discord bots though, so I can't really tell you what it'd take.
• Discord largely has a young userbase and would most likely be a way to get more interaction going with younger (potential) editors, as well as being not too difficult to get the hang of for veteran editors. It does require an account, which is about everything you need as a participant. The platform can be accessed through the browser, on mobile through the apps, as well as on desktop. If it is any insight, the reason I never bothered with the IRC to now, is because the thing as a whole seems very dated and impractical to me. It seemed to me as though it'd require a lot more effort from me to set up than it'd gain me.

Other than that, the above is pretty much accurate. Discord as a community tool offers lots of possibilities. Through the means of a custom bot, I reckon it wouldn't be too difficult to, for example, transfer ranks between a server and Wikivoyage (speaking of autopatroller, sys-op, moderator and so on). This might not be ideal since not every WikiVoyage Sys-op might want to be an Admin on the Discord server, but that's details that need to be worked out later. Either way, depending on their rank in the server, a user can see different channels. Moderation servers and logs, for example, are best not shown to the average user, and visible only to moderators and admins.

I have seen bots around on "product support servers" that let one create a ticket, which is essentially a private room. This could be a way to let users make their own projects/expeditions, and users could browse these in one way or another. Also not unimportant: Channels are distinguished between in voice channels and text channels, and they do pretty much what you'd expect. These can be organised through categories. To visualise, this image shows the structure of one of the wiki-specific Discord servers I run. It's not got a load of members, so it's nothing big, but the essential structure is there: The general category contains a closed channel which no-one but administrators can post in, and is pretty much a landing page; general and learn-to-wiki are channels intended to as they suggest. One is the general discussion, the other a channel for helping people get the hang of wikitext. The about category is mostly for feedback to us (administrators/sys-ops) in several kinds of ways, and the category mod talk is for sys-ops' documentation and discussion. Finally, there's several voice channels for different purposes.

Either way, the sky is the limit when it comes to customising a Discord server. I for one would be in favour of creating one for Wikivoyage and wouldn't mind lending a hand to its creation. If there's any questions I may be able to answer as a more long-time user of the platform, as well as the owner of several servers, please do send them my way!
-- Wauteurz (talk) 20:12, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

We have to meet people where they are. For text- and voice-based collaboration, Discord is it. IRC works for what it is, but people have to make a concerted effort to find it and use it. Powers ^(talk) 20:49, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Why use private channels? Whats wrong with talking publicly on wikipages? Just curious. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:36, 25 March 2020 (UTC) (please ping me)

Nothing, and that's the normal thing to do. And as a matter of fact, I think most of us have ignored this thread. I had forgotten it existed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:26, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that the goal is private communication. I think the problem is that communicating on wikitext pages is weird, compared to everything else people use for internet-based communication. Think about it: When was the last time you sent a message off-wiki in a system that let you change the other person's comments? And not just a copy of their comments, e.g., in a quotation, but the actual main record of their comments, so that if nobody else noticed and undid the unauthorized changes, someone could change your words to say that this was a grand idea and that you fully supported it?

Additionally, in the context of Hebrew, wikitext can be entirely non-intuitive, as some "punctuation" (such as the brackets we use to make links) can end up on the "wrong" side. There's a logical consistency to it (see http://rtl.wtf/ by one of my favorite MediaWiki devs, and especially the video of her StrangeLoop presentation, which is at http://ltr.wtf/lectures/strangeloop-2017-wait-thaw-supporting-right-left-can-expose-bad-ux-decisions/ ) but as the OP said, it's not a "natural" way to communicate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@ויקיג'אנקי: Can you tell us if Discord discussions public? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 21:15, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Discord channels can have any privacy level the creator wants. They're at least as public as IRC channels. As for on-wiki communication, obviously most discussion should remain here. But a Discord server would be handy for real-time collaboration and assistance. Like if a newbie has a question about contributing, they could just ask on Discord instead of posting here in the Pub and waiting to see if any answers come in, which could be a day later or more. Powers ^(talk) 00:44, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I don't use IRC, so I don't understand what you mean when you say at least as public as IRC. Ottawahitech (talk) 12:23, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

The point being that IRC is the current real-time chat platform used for Wikimedia collaboration. You can find more information here. Powers ^(talk) 19:05, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

IRC isn't used by non-devs much any longer. I have the impression that there are more people in the Telegram channel for just the Italian Wikipedia than on IRC for the whole movement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:53, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not surprised. Thus why Discord might be a better option. As stated above: meet people where they are. Powers ^(talk) 02:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

My biggest concern with a focus on Discord is the risk of sustainability of access to features and the freemium model Discord employs, ie data export requires paid level. In my opinion data export should be included in a free model. Mozilla recently moved their chat services from Slack to Matrix based communications which is open source and would provide more control for integration and improvement of user experience and tools - read more on that at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix . The larger question is identifying how conversations are not being satisfied and looking what are possible solutions that meet the needs and values of the community. I'd suggest evaluating if infrastructure being selected supports open development and improvement by the community and most importantly access to leave with the data along with the privacy controls desired by the community.Wolfgang8741 (talk) 11:08, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

While of course, we all support the free software movement, and an open source option has many advantages, I think there's a strong advantage to using platforms that large numbers of people (both established Wikivoyagers and potential new Wikivoyagers) are already using. Powers ^(talk) 20:42, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

wikivoyage monthly statistics

I don't know if this has been discussed here before: The WMF provides all kinds of statistics for all of the wmf-projects. Here is March's 100 top viewed pages report: https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikivoyage.org/reading/top-viewed-articles/normal%7Ctable%7Clast-month%7C~total%7Cmonthly

Enjoy, Ottawahitech (talk) 05:15, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

It seems like the traffic is dominated by visitor following links from elsewhere. Why is a user talk page in the top 20? Good that our list of calling codes is useful, but is that the main thing we have to offer? Farther down the list country and city articles dominate, but the top 20 makes me not exactly trust the list as anything but statistics. Does somebody else have explanations or an analysis? --LPfi (talk) 07:07, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Well done to 13th place runner-up Llanfairpwllgwyngyll; your time has come.

There are plenty of destination articles in the top 20, just perhaps not the ones you'd expect.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:55, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I have noticed Llanfairpwllgwyngyll high on monthly statistic before. I think this could be due to how we choose to abbreviate the name, as I have just searched for "Llanfairpwllgwyngyll" on Google and our page came second. We are further down the page on a search for "llanfair pg", which I think is a more common abbreviation. It is very odd that the user page which hasn't been edited for 2 years appears anywhere on the list, which does make me suspect some of the hit counting. AlasdairW (talk) 19:33, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I think it's probably accurate, and I think it demonstrates how odd internet traffic can be. Our goal should be, among others, to improve web traffic to the most important destinations. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:50, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Almost all of the hits to the user talk page are desktop hits; very few are mobile hits. Such an extreme disparity is reason to suspect that something odd is going on (for example, an automated script generating lots of page views, intentionally or due to a bug). —Granger (talk · contribs) 22:38, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Interesting. Maybe something is really wrong with these statistics. I’m commenting on mobile right now. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:40, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

• On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
• The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
  • an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
  • a rich-text visual editing option, and
  • other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

19:28, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea. Would others agree to our requesting the this tool early? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:47, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Since I'm here anyway, I'll say that in the last week, work-me has reviewed a couple hundred edits made with this tool. I've found a few oddball things (like an unexpected extra blank line), and editors at those four wikis have given the team a list of suggestions, but there were no page corruptions or serious errors. I'm satisfied with the tool myself and hope to be able to use it everywhere soon (although I want about 90% of the suggestions implemented, too). On this wiki, it's possible that we'd see more whitespace changes (we call them "dirty diffs") than these first four wikis did, so I want to be clear that "requesting the tool" means asking for an opportunity to test it. The Editing team will not just turn it on automatically for everyone at this stage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Would that request be on an individual basis, or would it take place on a larger scale? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:05, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Right now, the devs have blocked it entirely on ~99% of wikis, including this one. Ideally, the team would see a consensus to request that this wiki have access. Once the wiki has access, it's all individual choice from there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

I support requesting access for this wiki so that we can test the tool. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:49, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Me too. Support. It's also nice to have an answer to the question of what you've been doing.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:33, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Following the votes above, I also vote support. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:03, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Where can I find a page with all the Wikivoyage milestones in all language editions?

I remember coming across a page like this one, but for the milestones of ALL Wikivoyage editions.

Does any one know by any chance where I can find it? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 00:26, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Maybe meta:Wikimedia_News#Wikivoyage? --Andyrom75 (talk) 21:45, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Diffs in monospaced font

When I look at diffs, they now display in a monospaced font. Is this happening for other people, or have I somehow accidentally changed a setting somewhere? Nurg (talk) 10:34, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Me too. Ground Zero (talk) 10:49, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Software change? Nurg (talk) 11:01, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Happening on Wikivoyage and Wiktionary for me, but not Wikipedia.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:03, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Found the change. MediaWiki_1.35/wmf.30 led me to Phab T250393: Use monospace font (or editfont preference) for diffs. Nurg (talk) 11:38, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

It's happening everywhere, but something (unrelated) went wrong and they reverted the whole week's worth of changes. It'll be back. I imagine that some people will like it, some people won't, and that most of us will be okay with it once we've had a chance to get used to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

This is back. If you try it out and just can't stand it, then there's a way to switch the font for your account (described at w:en:WP:VPT, but ping me if you need help). I think I might get used to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm experiencing it on Wikipedia but not here. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:44, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

You should now get the same font in the editing window and the diff. That font is set at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing (or in Special:GlobalPreferences, but since the two don't match, you probably haven't set it there). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Technical help needed

The United States of America article is showing a bunch of big red errors saying "Lua error: not enough memory." Does anyone know what the problem is or how we can fix it? —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:27, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I'd guess that it's something related to the post-include template size, or whatever that problem is that amounts to "too many templates". User:Redrose64 and User:Johnuniq, do I remember you talking about this problem over at enwiki in the past? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

The error message is "Lua error: not enough memory". The cause is that some templates invoke modules. Each module which is currently active while the page is being parsed uses a certain amount of memory. The total allowed is 50 MB. The error is due to that limit being exceeded. Unfortunately, there is no information on which module is using how much memory at the crash. It's likely that one or two of them are using more than their fair share and some serious reworking might fix them. Or, possibly the article is too long and the templates are trying to do too much work. If you edit the article then preview without making any changes, you can see "Lua memory usage" near the bottom. I've tried deleting various things to see what difference it makes (in an attempt to locate a greedy module) but have had inconsistent results. For example, deleting {{Regionlist}} and previewing showed 41.53 MB/50 MB (good), but deleting everything except Regionlist showed 1.6 MB/50 MB which is confusing because 41.53 + 1.6 should be well under 50 MB. Strangely, deleting {{pagebanner}} and {{warningbox}} from the top gives 44.03 MB/50 MB, yet those templates do not use any modules (so how come deleting them saved Lua memory?). I'll try to think more another time but meanwhile some creative trial-and-error might find a template which is using too much memory. Johnuniq (talk) 02:35, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

BTW, there are two red-linked categories at the bottom of the article. It's conceivable that the error is causing bad categories to be added, but if someone understands what they are, perhaps a problem could be found and fixed in the wikitext. I forgot to mention that "related changes" shows no changes at all in the last 30 days to templates/modules used in the article, and displaying some old revisions of the article from early April showed the same problem (why is there no notice saying that I am looking at an old version when I do that?). Johnuniq (talk) 02:40, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: Thank you for this helpful guidance. You should see a yellow notice "This is an old revision of this page..." at the very top when looking at an old revision (at least I see that notice). This problem has been happening on and off at least since last July, when User:ThunderingTyphoons! brought it up at Talk:United States of America. I feel like we solved it that time, but I don't know how.

The two red-linked categories are a new kind of maintenance category that no one has bothered to create yet. I doubt they're related to this problem, as removing the responsible VisaRestriction templates doesn't get rid of the errors. I'll create the red-linked categories in a moment.

I just noticed another error that's showing up in the article too: "Expression error: Unexpected < operator." Apparently it's related to Template:Exchange rate US, but then why isn't the same error showing up in articles like Bermuda that also use that template? —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:26, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

If US$ is the base currency for the template/module, then it's possible that a problem could affect it and not other currencies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:45, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Those other articles use the same currency (and therefore exactly the same template, with no difference in parameters).

I seem to have solved the problem for now by getting rid of most of the unit conversion templates that were in the article, bringing Lua memory usage down to 43.01 MB/50 MB. The error in the exchange rate template is gone too, suggesting that it was somehow caused by the Lua memory issue. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:55, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

The expression errors occurred because some template in the expression called a module, and that module crashed because the 50 MB limit had already been exceeded, so the module returned some error text which caused the expression to fail when it tried to do arithmetic with the text. Johnuniq (talk) 23:28, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Undeploy Insider and Listings extensions

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T253096

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T206102

I've opened the ticket T253096 on Phabricator to remove those extensions on it:voy. A couple of years ago has been removed the listing one from de:voy with the ticket T206102.

Why to remove them? Briefly: less extensions higher web-speed, but most of all, what doesn't exist cannot be buggy and create problems :-)

In order to remove the listing one in en:voy this search should return zero results, hence, all the special tag shall be substituted with the equivalent Template:listing. Once done a dedicated ticket can be opened.

Regarding Insider extension, since it doesn't work anymore from long time, I reasonably tend to suppose that it's not used here :-)

Any volunteers to clean up that list? --Andyrom75 (talk) 20:35, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I removed the last few from the mainspace. Does it matter if it stops working on talk pages or old user pages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing all the remaining ones, after the deactivation of the extension, will be shown as pure plain text. Not nice to see, but at least is not a big deal for the readers. In any case I would suggest, if possible, to replace also those occurrencies. I would just leave the ones inside "nowiki" tag, that maybe have been placed there to show someone that exact syntax. --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:10, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Maybe a quarter of the (mostly talk page) hits are on pages that also contain a nowiki tag (although perhaps for an unrelated part of the page). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

In this case if you want we can start the community discussion to get the consensus to remove the extension and then fill the ticket. --Andyrom75 (talk) 22:29, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Undeploy Listings extension

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T254820

After the work done by WhatamIdoing on main namespace (NS:0), this extension (whose use has been replaced by Template:listing) can be safely remove (~300 occurrences still exist on talk and user pages). According to the Wikimedia process, each wiki community shall express consensus in a dedicated discussion like this one. Specifying: Support, Oppose or comments. --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:24, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Support --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:24, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Support WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:13, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Support Pashley (talk) 08:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Done. Listings extension has been successfully removed. --Andyrom75 (talk) 18:42, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Contributing to Wikivoyage on the behalf of someone else

Swept in from the pub

I know someone who has a larger knowledge of England than I do, but who doesn’t have an account. Per attribution rules could I contribute on that person’s behalf, perhaps using a separate account that I clarify is me? Just curious. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:47, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

If you are contributing non-copyrightable knowledge (say, adding contact information), then you don't need to bother. You also don't need to worry if you are editing the article on the basis of what the other person suggested (e.g., your friend recommended adding or removing a listing, but you're writing it all yourself). If you are pasting in sentences that the other person wrote, then it's more complicated.

Remember that attribution is about copyright law, so it's about the way of expressing the content, not about whether the ==Eat== section recommends Alice's restaurant instead of Bob's. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:48, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Selfie City, what prevents your acquaintance from creating an account? Nurg (talk) 01:43, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I routinely do something like that because I often point to WV articles in mailing list or social media posts & sometimes get interesting responses. My posts always mention that it is an open wiki & encourage people to edit, but some prefer to just comment on the post or to send me email about it. In those cases, I see no problem using their ideas & do not bother with attribution since ideas cannot be copyrighted & I'm doing the actual writing. Pashley (talk) 01:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, guys. If you see me edit articles in England you'll know why! I'll make sure none of the content is copyright-able. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:57, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Nurg: Not very experienced with technology. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Some CSS for Vector has been simplified

Hello!

I'd like to make a double-check about a change that was announced in Tech/News/2020/21.

Over-qualified CSS selectors have been changed. div#p-personal, div#p-navigation, div#p-interaction, div#p-tb, div#p-lang, div#p-namespaces or div#p-variants are now all removed of the div qualifier, as in for example it is #p-personal, #p-navigation …. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. This only impacts the Vector skin.

On this wiki, this impacted or still impacts the following pages:

• User:Danapit/common.css
• User:Nicholasjf21/common.css
• User:Texugo/common.css
• User:TheGallery/common.css

How to proceed now? Just visit all these pages and remove div before these CSS selectors if it hasn't been removed so far.

Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Easy task, but only an admin can change the above 4 user pages. --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:19, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I am reluctant to intrude on personal CSS. You say this only impacts the Vector skin, so it doesn't break the other skins? Some own tweaks? I suspect those who have their own understand enough of this to do the changes themselves, or at least, if they do, they know what broke the functionality. @Danapit, Nicholasjf21, Texugo, TheGallery:? --LPfi (talk) 08:27, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

What's the deal with RNO PDX Bus Lines?

Swept in from the pub

A few days ago, User:Tim Shelsea added this bus company to several articles, such as Medford (Oregon) and Mount Shasta. Now IP User:97.120.5.16 is going through saying that the company is fake. Is it? The website looks real, but when I start poking around, a few things do seem odd. For instance, if I click the "Legal" link near the bottom of the page I get a warning that "Your access to this site has been limited by the site owner" and then I'm unable to access the site again from the same IP address. Is this some kind of scam? —Granger (talk · contribs) 22:08, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

This webpage seems rather odd as well. I'll need to do some more research. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:14, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Didn't see the question being raised here before I listed it on WV:Vandalism in progress#Tim Shelsea and/or 97.120.5.16.

My gut tells me it's probably a scam. I think the website saw me clicking around too many pages and blocked me on purpose to keep me from investigating further. Trying to make a booking, it's interesting that it doesn't require making a user account, and let me continue without filling in the 'required' name and phone number fields. The domain was registered in March, and the encryption certificate was only issued on May 18 (and is only valid for 3 months). --Bigpeteb (talk) 23:15, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I've been watching scam baiters on YouTube lately. Looks like you've got this one dead to rights. I'd suggest permanently blocking this guy as a crook and reverting and blocking in case of any future mention of this fake scam company if it comes up again in articlespace. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:29, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. The dog2 (talk) 00:57, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

He's been adding similar information to Wikipedia. I've alerted several interested parties over there. A global ban seems appropriate to me, though that's obviously not my call to make. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:05, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Template:Comment I would suggest that that there be a checkuser investigation, either here by stewards or at enWP by their checkusers to identify the depth and scope of the problem. They can also share more broadly with other checkusers through wikis if required, as one would expect this sort of behaviour to return, and good data can be captured. (Thanks for the ping and pointer at enWP) Billinghurst (talk) 01:12, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I've gone in and made the ban, and also rolled back the user's edits. Hopefully this at least prevents him/her from potentially inflicting more damage here. If people think I've acted prematurely, I'll be happy to lift the ban though. The dog2 (talk) 03:54, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I tried to search for a business named "RNO to PDX" in the state business registries of Oregon and California. Nothing turned up, how surprising... --Ypsilon (talk) 04:39, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I have blacklisted the URL.

In the UK, we have a government office which anyone can check called Companies House. It lists all UK-registered companies, gives the location of their registered head office, name of CEO etc. It's not totally crime-proof (it's possible, for instance, to bury criminal enterprises in a loop of genuine holding companies), but it does make it harder for less-sophisticated scammers to pass off their fake websites as legitimate companies. Is there not a similar list in the U.S.? —The preceding comment was added by User:ThunderingTyphoons!

There are 50 separate lists for US corporations. The state of incorporation is not necessarily the state(s) you're doing business in. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah. The intricacies of federalism.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 22:36, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Does the Delaware list contain a plurality of the corporations? If so it may be the best starting place. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:38, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

OK, now try googling for "tim shelsea". That will lead you to this, a story about another apparently fantastic bus line centered in Reno. Jpgordon (talk) 16:56, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Oh and then! That company shuts down after two months. I can't help but think they are related. I wish I had saved or cached a copy of the current website -- it had a picture of their one bus, and I bet it was the same unit as the one on the Inland Streamliner stories. Filing irregularities seem to be a theme here. Jpgordon (talk) 17:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

The links you provided above are certainly interesting, and Shelsea certainly does seem to take an avid interest in and have strong opinions about the Inland Streamliner controversy, but the nature of his relationship with the company is not at all clear. In your first link, the owner of Inland Streamliner is identified as a man named John Wang, and Shelsea is identified as a "Seattle-based motorcoach driver" who goes on to comment about the practice of bus companies operating without licenses and insurance. Here he is again, for the record, defending Inland Streamliner in the comment section of an article on ThisIsReno.com. In my estimation, it's certainly possible and even probable that Shelsea is personally involved with the company somehow (though he claims not to be), and his claim that it's a common practice for upstart bus companies to begin operations before insurance and licensing paperwork is finalized seems ridiculous on its face, but it also can't be ruled out that he's just a guy who's passionate about intercity bus travel and oblivious to, or willing to overlook, the racism and blatant Neo-Nazi references in Inland Streamliner's corporate materials. I'm no lawyer, but as a general rule it's a good idea to avoid making accusations you can't prove in public forums like this. As for us at Wikivoyage, the Tim Shelsea user account has been indefinitely banned and the business URL blacklisted, which is "problem solved" as far as I'm concerned. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:35, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

References?

Hey all, wondering what the protocol on referencing edits is around here. Not really used to wiki-voyage yet, but would really like to get involved. Thanks, I appreciate the advice. Mulstev (talk) 05:53, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Welcome! Have a look at Wikivoyage:External links. Afterwards, please feel free to ask any question you like (except what's for dinner, hah!) :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:49, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I think there are two points not handled there. For travel warnings we link to governmental sites, and if some information one adds seems suspect, a clarification on the talk page may be appropriate, possibly with a link to some reliable source confirming the case. We do not use references like Wikipedia. --LPfi (talk) 09:45, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Good points, LPfi. These might be good things to add to Wikivoyage:External links. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:55, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

One of the Wikivoyage administrators “adapted” text (meaning summarizing it and using small portions from WP, but not copy-paste) in city articles about Canada. Take a look at the edit summary of that edit and the talk page. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:15, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Mulstev, I think you are looking for Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Studying in the United Kingdom article

I was wondering if anybody has the expertise to write such an article, which would be along the lines of the Studying in the United States article. Unfortunately, I never studied in the UK, so I don't have the expertise to do so, but given that the UK is the second most popular country for international students after the US, I think such an article will be worthwhile to have. I would also be a good place on cover the differences between the university systems in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and where things such as visas and work rights can be covered in more detail. The dog2 (talk) 21:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

My understanding is that Studying in the United States was created to prevent United States of America from becoming too long, but definitely it’s a good idea for a travel topic. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:11, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I suppose we want to keep all Learn sections short, especially on studies for more than a few months, so giving any detail would require creating that article, and the article need not to be long to be acceptable. If somebody feels inspired, just plunge forward. --LPfi (talk) 10:50, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

English as a Foreign Language is a big business in the UK. Lots of foreign students go there to study the language, so that would be a very useful section to have. Ground Zero (talk) 10:56, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes. I think somebody from nearly every class here in Turku goes for an English summer course in England. That is of course different from university studies, which also are reasonably common, but I think they might suite the same article, while handling them well in the UK article would be too much detail. --LPfi (talk) 11:52, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Should we have a Studying in the European Union article or separate ones for those EU countries that might need them? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:53, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Eventually, I think it would be good to have both, but I think it would be practical to start with a general article on the EU, and expand to individual countries later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

The UK is no longer part of the EU, and the EU does not have a single unified education system or visa policy for student visas, so I'm not sure if such an article will be practical. I guess we could start with articles for the most popular countries first, which I'm guessing will be Germany and France. And for other European countries, maybe Switzerland and Russia should have their own articles. The dog2 (talk) 20:14, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

In addition to Germany and France, I think Spain and Italy are popular destinations for studying abroad (Spain for the language, Italy for the history and cuisine, and both for the weather, among other draws). I suppose for any of these it would be best to start with the "Learn" section in the country article and split it out if it gets long. Spain currently doesn't even have a "Learn" section. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:11, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Logged out

I hear that everyone got logged out earlier today. I don't know why, but you may want to double-check that you're logged in again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I noticed that too, and I wondered why. But now it seems to be working fine. Thanks for the heads-up! --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:06, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

At least we know that anyone who doesn't come back was an imposter :) ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:04, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Found the cause. Someone had a big whoospie with server configuration so they logged everyone out as a precaution. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:37, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Was there another big whoopsie yesterday? I was logged out on all my devices.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 06:43, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

So was I. —Granger (talk · contribs) 10:49, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Same problem, apparently: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2020-July/002327.html WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Uh oh, spaghettio! --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:19, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

After COVID-19

The Guardian has a long article The end of tourism?. It seems worth suggesting we start thinking about how this might affect our travel guide. Pashley (talk) 23:37, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

For goodness' sake, do you not recognize a doom-mongering clickbait headline when you see one? This may be a conversation worth having, but the linked article isn't going to help us come to any reasonable conclusions. Frankly, the headline is so laughably overblown that it calls into question whatever points are made in the body of the text. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:52, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

And, frankly, we probably wouldn't be able to have an evenhanded conversation about this issue at the present time even if we filtered out all the obvious clickbait noise in the media, just because of how difficult it is for people to see the forest for the trees when they're in the middle of a crisis, rather than afterwards with the benefit of hindsight. I'm reminded of the national mentality in the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It's true that the world changed inexorably, but for the most part, in nothing like the ways and to nothing like the degree that some of the more "out there" predictions from the days and weeks immediately thereafter imagined it would. Al Qaeda never got its hands on a nuclear weapon, for instance. There was no new dark age of terror where a major attack happened every few days or weeks. The U.S. Democratic Party wasn't consigned to permanent electoral irrelevance. Let's please remember that before we start taking some of these extreme and bizarre viewpoints seriously. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:07, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it's an overdramatic clickbaity article. For what it's worth, domestic travel and tourism is very much alive in the handful of countries where the virus is under control like Taiwan. There will be economic repercussions and geopolitical consequences that last for many years even after a vaccine/highly effective treatment is rolled out but apart from that the world will in all likelihood be back to normal. Now there's strong scientific evidence that glucocorticoids like dexamethasone (a cheap, off-the-patent drug, plentiful even in the poorest of countries) will prevent in 1 in 8 deaths overall (particularly helping patients who need oxygen support/ventilators and are suffering from inflammation). Infections are still rising in many countries but in terms of mortality rate per infection, the worst should be behind us. Gizza ^(roam) 01:02, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who generally agrees with the Guardian's worldview, or at least used to, it's really unfortunate over the past few years to see how far it's fallen in succumbing to the worst tendencies of legacy media in the digital age. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:35, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

The Guardian still has a travel section, which has more practical (and balanced) articles about travel in the next few weeks like Travel clinic: what you need to know about your summer holidays. One of the disadvantages of digital media, is that people are more likely to read a single article without seeing all the other articles presenting differing viewpoints. AlasdairW (talk) 10:25, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Huh, I would have guessed the other way around. In print media, you get what's there, and it's probably just one article. In digital media, you get what's there, and at the end, there are dynamically generated lists of related content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Uncommunicative user

I do not know how to handle vkem (talk · contribs). He or she is adding route planners and taxi apps on a large number of pages, to a large degree repeating the same information. They do leave out information that they deem irrelevant for the article, and sometimes tailor it, but still, the same app or route planner is added to tens or hundreds or thousands of pages.

The user is a wikipedian since 2003 and was an administrator at fi-wp, but at some point (2004?) seems to have decided not to communicate.

One thing is that maintaining duplicated information is labourous. Most of those entries will stay long after they cease to be meaningful, unless they maintain them themself – that's why it's against policy. The other thing is that they are not necessarily useful in all articles where they are added. To use a national app on Iniö, an island with a few hundred inhabitants and hardly more than one taxi business, is hardly sensible unless you have that app installed from before (and don't need the details), especially as the local business was already listed.

Without communication, I cannot know whether some of the added listings should be edited to include warnings on incompleteness, without doing own research on each and every destination where they are added.

It seems the user will do their own race unless they are blocked, and either continue as before after the block or disappear. Escalating user blocks would just lead to a permanent block by time. I cannot judge whether these contributions are useful enough to justify letting the user ignore policy and other users' opinions as they see fit.

--LPfi (talk) 16:10, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

The closest analogue to this situation seems to be the user who was adding non-travel-relevant translations to the Bikol phrasebook and not answering talk page messages. We gave him the escalating user block treatment ("Types of unwanted edits include... repeatedly making edits that the user has been told go against community consensus"), and there's no reason why vkem shouldn't get the same. If that leads to a permanent block, so be it; if this user is a Wikipedian (a former sysop, no less), s/he knows full well the importance of talk page communication and how to avoid that fate. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:21, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

The user has been ignoring their talk page on fi WP too, and apparently they were desysoped not just due to inactivity but because the user also has a history of copyright violations. Not that they have done anything like that here on WV (yet?), but it may be worth noting. --Ypsilon (talk) 16:58, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

The last answer on the talk page was 2004 and the desysop happened 2006. I think the copyvios was no reason – at that time we were not so strict – but it seems the user never bothered to add the requested information. No reason to believe copyvios would be a problem now. --LPfi (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Overall, though, this unfortunately seems like a user that doesn't care much about rules or what others say. --Ypsilon (talk) 17:34, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that's the problem. If all edits were good and self-explanatory, there would be no major problem (the user probably still looks at talk page messages and edit summaries). But the user decides to ignore policy regardless of requests, and that does not work. --LPfi (talk) 17:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Removal of competitor's listings

It looks like the IP user for this edit may have removed the listing of competitors. I did a Google search, and the deleted listings still exist, and appear to only have been closed temporarily. I've already reverted the change, but I wonder if this warrants a block. The dog2 (talk) 18:21, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Not for one offence. Just revert and either ignore or leave the {{subst:tout}} message and a warning. A block is an escalation if the tout refuses to adhere to the warning.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:03, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Virtual tours

As of now, virtual tour is a redlink. This got me thinking if it would be valuable to have a link-based article that is a resource for virtual tours: museums showing off their galleries, VR experiences of caves, etc. Thoughts? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:45, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Since we've rethought what travel is during this pandemic, I'd say yes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Mobile

Hi I'm on a phone. Can I still edit here? MoonHarvesting (talk) 03:55, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@MoonHarvesting: Yes, but unfortunately, at this time the mobile version of the site is markedly less user-friendly for editors than the desktop site is. Thankfully, a perfectly feasible workaround is to toggle your display to desktop view. To do that, simply scroll to the very bottom of the screen and click on "desktop". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:04, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

thank you. What would you like me to work on, I might be able to fix grammar or stuff like that. MoonHarvesting (talk) 04:07, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, or perhaps towns or cities you know well. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:12, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Monuments and statues

The last weeks has seen debate over monuments and statues; especially in the United States, but also in other countries. Should Wikivoyage have a policy on monuments? Of all public monuments in the world, most are not controversial (or at least less so than a Confederate general). Should Wikivoyage have a policy for how to describe public monuments? /Yvwv (talk) 17:49, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Do we need a policy other than Wikivoyage:Be fair? I doubt it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:30, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the traveler can come to his/her own conclusion as to whether or not they are controversial. Presumably our readers are well enough aware of history for that.

However, we may need to focus more on updating our travel information when we, for example, list a monument that no longer exists. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:46, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

A monument or statue prominent enough to have a listing on its own, should preferrably say some words about the commemorated person/event, as well as the time when it was erected. /Yvwv (talk) 21:53, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

When an editor describes a point of interest, context is always appreciated per Plunge forward. That’s the choice of the person adding the information, IHMO. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:33, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Even for Confederate statues, I don't think we need a policy banning their mention. If it is a prominent landmark, it should be mentioned in a travel guide. It is fine to give a history behind the statue so people know why it's controversial, but ultimately, a tourist is not going to be able to change government policy and get the statue torn down. And for your own safety, I'd also not recommend a tourist pulling one down himself/herself or you risk getting arrested and thrown in jail. This is in line with how we treat say, Stalin statues, which still exist in parts of the former Soviet Union today. The dog2 (talk) 03:44, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:22, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Open for signatures - Community open letter on renaming

Dear all,

There is an open letter that requests a pause to renaming activities being pursued by the Wikimedia Foundation 2030 Brand Project.

Individual editors and affiliates can sign with their logged-in account to show support.

• m:Community_open_letter_on_renaming

The letter focuses on concerns about the process, and not about specific naming choices. With 50 major chapters and affiliates and 600+ individuals signing the statement, we are seeing great interest in this issue.

Related to this: the branding team is conducting a survey that runs until July 7. There is concern that the consultation process and options on the survey do not adequately reflect community sentiment, given the effect name changes for the foundation and movement would have. This served as a motivation for the open letter. Useful links are below:

• Brand survey for individuals - Qualtrics survey. If there are options you would like to highlight outside of the three provided, it is possible to write in your own options and views at the end of the survey.

• For more info, there is an English Wikipedia Signpost article about the issue and a Q&A interview with the document writers and collaborators:

There will be a WMF board meeting scheduled in July to discuss the branding issue, so it is important to express your views now.

Thanks - Fuzheado (talk) 13:47, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Signed gladly. I thought it was very interesting that not rebranding at all, and sticking with "Wikimedia Foundation", was by far the most popular opinion expressed during the community input phase, yet that wasn't presented as one of the three finalist options. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:04, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I'd strongly encourage anyone reading who agrees with this letter to sign it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:46, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback on movement names

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language if necessary. Thank you!

There are a lot of conversations happening about the future of our movement names. We hope that you are part of these discussions and that your community is represented.

Since 16 June, the Foundation Brand Team has been running a survey in 7 languages about 3 naming options. There are also community members sharing concerns about renaming in a Community Open Letter.

Our goal in this call for feedback is to hear from across the community, so we encourage you to participate in the survey, the open letter, or both. The survey will go through 7 July in all timezones. Input from the survey and discussions will be analyzed and published on Meta-Wiki.

Thanks for thinking about the future of the movement, --The Brand Project team, 20:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Note: The survey is conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.

@Elitre (WMF): The survey is pretty much a sham because the three "options" are all Wikipedia-something: Wikipedia Foundation, Wikipedia Network Trust, Wikipedia Organization. However, it does allow for written answers as well as box-ticking, so if you feel as I do that the Wikimedia movement should not be reduced to "Wikipedia", I recommend you make your feelings known in the survey. The Wikimedia movement is not Wikipedia; Wikipedia is not the Wikimedia movement. And also sign the open letter, mentioned above. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:23, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

What's their timeline for forcing this through? I can't see Wikivoyage being part of the "Wikipedia Network". Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:23, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Ugh, why can't they propose "The Wiki Network" or anything else without the "pedia"? They're trying to marginalise all of the non-encyclopedic projects once again. The strength of the brand is in "Wiki". It's what many people shorten Wikipedia to in casual conversations anyway. I did the survey and strongly disagreed with every time they suggested to have a "pedia" in the overarching name. Also signed the open letter. Gizza ^(roam) 04:15, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

From what I've read, "Wiki" is a generic word the foundation has no control over, whereas "Wikipedia" can be trademarked. Personally, I'd also prefer Wiki. It's not just hapless civilians either, even Wikipedians say they edit "enwiki".--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 07:00, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Doc James knows more about this than I do. He's not only on the Board, but he's also been thinking about ways to leverage the Wikipedia brand for years. We decided here a while ago to add the line about "The official, non-commercial sister site of Wikipedia..." to the Main Page. That's using the Wikipedia brand for (IMO) our benefit. I think Doc James' argument in favor of flexibility and options is sound. If we ever wanted to create a formal organization, then I think it'd be reasonable to call it the Wikivoyage User Group, and not be forced into something like "Wiki Travel User Group" (which is what I believe the current rules would require – can you even imagine anything less suitable for this particular group?!).

Beyond agreeing that a greater number of options might have some benefits, I have trouble caring about the various organizational names. Certainly names matter to anyone doing fundraising or organizing partnerships, but to us? The [Edit] button is likely to keep working no matter what they call any of the movement organizations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

A whole lot of people don't agree with you and see that their opinions aren't being considered. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Note that my own history of loathing re-naming and branding exercises stretches back longer than Wikipedia's founding. The first definition of a successful branding exercise is one in which I don't have to be involved at all. I am therefore very happy to say that the decision lies with the WMF's Board. They're responsible for creating rules about how movement organizations can be named, and they're responsible for deciding whether those rules should get updated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I got a private question on how people could know that the Wikimedia Foundation's board considered the views of users. The answer is as simple as it is obvious: By giving us the choice in a non-contrived survey of keeping the "Wikimedia" name or at least changing, if change is really essential, to a name other than "Wikipedia" for all Wikimedia sites. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

While I understand that technically the decision does belong to the Wikimedia Foundation as WhatamIdoing said, aren't wikis governed by consensus that is based on the input of the editors themselves, not staff who are paid to do technical maintenance? On a volunteer website the opinions of editors must be respected, since volunteers maintain the right to leave or fork to another website. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, the main reasons for the fork of en.voy from Wikitravel as I remember were that the owners of that site decided to override the consensus of the users, and secondarily, that they made it very difficult to stanch the encroachment of spam on the site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:44, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

As I understand it, the stated reason is to concentrate trademarks to a strong brand, and Wikipedia is the strongest brand of WMF. Defending more trademarks was said to be costly and hard, although how costly and hard was not stated – which would have needed for the community to form an informed opinion based on those points. They also did not explain why this was needed now. Are they afraid that Wikipedia's fame will make unscrupulous businesses conquer "Wikivoyage" & al in countries where we are less known and trademark difficult? Is defending "Wikimedia" globally really that hard? --LPfi (talk) 06:43, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Social media influencers

I'm wondering if we should create a separate welcome page and template for social media influencers. Many people run travel vlogs and blogs these days, and we certainly want to welcome these people to Wikivoyage so the project can grow Of course, as per current policy, you can't use Wikivoyage to promote your blog or YouTube channel, but you may provide a link to them as part of your profile. Perhaps creating a separate page will help to make it clear how social media influencers are welcome to contribute, and how Wikivoyage cannot be used by them. Social media influencers weren't really a thing when I first joined (back in the days of WT), and YouTube was just in its infancy, but I think perhaps its time to have an update based on the explosive growth in social media in recent years. The dog2 (talk) 21:39, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Placing the cart before the horse, I'm afraid. Let's see some social media influencers actually contribute to the site first before we create any influencer-specific welcome templates. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:25, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

An influencer probably help us most by mentioning WV elsewhere, rather than contributing here. A separate welcome page would be useful if there was a way of identifying influencers, as would a page for journalists and authors of paper guides. How would we identify a person who has done a few edits here, but has a 100k followers on YouTube, or a column in the Daily Voyager? AlasdairW (talk) 22:51, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@AlasdairW: If they don't disclose it, we can't. If they post a link to their blog or YouTube channel on their user page, then we know, and perhaps an influencer welcome page would be welcome in such as circumstance. See User:Shegowandering for an example of an influencer though unfortunately, she hasn't really contributed in articlespace yet, though I hope she will one day. The dog2 (talk) 22:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

There are two things here, a welcome template and a guideline page, à la {{welcomebusiness}} and Wikivoyage:Welcome business owners. For the latter we do not need to identify anybody, and it should probably be written first, so that we can link it from the template and extract the essence into it. It might be good to think about the issues before they appear, and a draft guideline could be the place for it. If and when we start working on it, I think we should not restrict them to influencers, the guidelines should be the same for any blogger/vlogger/whatever. There are many reasons we want to welcome them (not necessarily explicitly), but having read some blogs about a local path, I am a bit worried that they may describe places a little too touty, perhaps in hope of benefits. --LPfi (talk) 08:02, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

How about just drafting a guideline page then? And speaking of which, what should the collective term for vloggers and bloggers be then if not "influencers"? And with regard to places being to touty, that's what a guideline page can address. It can tell them that while they are free to share their experiences, the language must not be too touty. The dog2 (talk) 15:33, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

What about simply Wikivoyage:Welcome, bloggers? It is the older term, and I suppose vloggers can feel included. We could mention both, but I am afraid we can run into the LGBTQIA madness (or have somebody feel even more left out) if we do.

Do we feel it is time to try drafting the page? Some more support is needed to make even a stub draft worthwhile, and the page has to be good to be useful.

--LPfi (talk) 16:36, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree with AndreCarrotflower. I don't see enough evidence of social media influencers editing our website to make this worthwhile at the current time. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:57, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

No harm in letting someone draft such a page, if that's how they want to use their volunteer time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Strategy transition design draft

Dear colleagues, I have been working for more than a month in the Strategy transition design group - a body of about 20 people who were working together to establish the principles to be used to design the events to implement the strategy recommendations which you might have heard about. (Do not even ask me how I ended up to be part of the group). Anyway, now we have produced the draft: meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Events Outline/Draft. It is written for the whole movement, not just for the projects, and certainly not just for the English Wikivoyage, so the language from our perspective can look a bit bureaucratic, and the text a bit (or sometimes too much) unspecific. However, I would encourage all the users interested in the relation between projects and WMF, and generally in the development of the Wikimedia movement, to have a look, and, specifically, to look at whether the communities (in the language of the document, online communities) will be involved enough, how they will be involved, and how this involvement can be stimulated and improved. Whereas obviously there were many people involved in the creation of the draft, and these people have very different interests, the importance of involving the projects has been recognized by everybody as a crucial issue. What we are trying to avoid is the (unfortunately, common) situation when the projects are completely decoupled from the process, the process runs on, and at some point some decision taken without even thinking about the projects comes out of the blue and gets a (predictable) very negative reaction.

The draft has been posted on Thursday 6 August and will be open for comments until 20 August (my apologies for posting here only now, I was on holidays last week). You are welcome to leave the comments on the talk page of the draft on Meta (where it will be directly read by the WMF people running the process), or here. I will somehow make sure that useful comments do not get lost (I do not watchlist this page, but will check the comments if any). I can probably also clarify things if needed. There is also some discussion ongoing on the English Wikipedia, w:en:Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)#Strategy transition design draft, which might (or might not) clarify some issues.

For the full disclosure, whereas the process has been run by the WMF, I was never paid by the WMF, nor ever been a member of any affiliate. I participate in the group solely in my volunteer capacity.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:35, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Ymblanter. I guess this isn't something to try to read through in one sitting. Could you possibly summarize in plain language whatever is likely to affect Wikivoyage? -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:14, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, I do not know right now. It currently looks like the first step of the strategy implementation would be to figure out what are our priorities (which strategy recommendations we want to implement first, and what we do not care about, or possibly do not want to have implemented). Personally, I care a lot about tech support regrading maps, but I have not yet figured out what recommendation it would most pertain to. At this stage, we are not yet talking about specific questions to discuss, but about whether the scheme to discuss them is viable and gives us a chance to influence the process.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:08, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. So I'm not sure how I would participate in this discussion. I'll look at the discussion thread and stop trying to make sense of the hard-to-penetrate language of the draft. However, if a native English speaker with a Doctoral degree is having trouble reading the draft, that ought to be a clear signal to start again from the beginning, emphasizing brevity and simple language. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:14, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, this is indeed similar to other feedback we have received. There is currently an effort to improve the draft lanfuage, as well as the corresponding discussion on its talk page on Meta.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:43, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I read through most of the discussion thread on Wikipedia and felt somewhat depressed. In particular, KVaidla (WMF) seems to post in the same kind of difficult-to-penetrate language that's in the document in question. And to the extent I understand what s/he's saying, my reply would be that a bunch of general stuff written in overly verbose buzzwords is not merely "abstract" but useless or worse. I think the entire document should be junked, not edited but started again from a blank screen. There are so many good editors on Wikimedia that there's no excuse to produce an opaque document with a bunch of vague buzzwords. And I think most Wikimedians just want to continue editing without hindrance, with improvements to Wiki Markup that help whichever sites they edit. Buzzwords in an official document are a threat because they could be used to justify all kinds of actions, but we have no way of knowing which ones. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:36, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Ja.voy is approved

@Swept: Heads up that voy:ja: is being ported from incubator:. See T260320. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:24, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Welcome! Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:07, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

I think you mean ようこそ (or いらっしゃいませ or いらっしゃい—I don't know Japanese). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:55, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

I know konnichi-wa/konban-wa, but I don't know how to read or write Japanese. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:38, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

wikt:en:ようこそ, wikt:en:いらっしゃいませ, wikt:en:いらっしゃい. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:10, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Definitely ようこそ (yōkoso). The others are mainly for greeting someone at a store. --Bigpeteb (talk) 16:02, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Cool! This makes me happy. I'm curious, I know there was a Japanese WT, but when WV forked we didn't bring it over. (I guess it was a per-language vote whether to fork to WV or not?) Why the change now? Is the new JP WV also a fork of WT, or based on a translation of EN WV, or a brand new site with no pages being built from scratch? --Bigpeteb (talk) 16:02, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Ja.voy is now live

It's being ported over. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:19, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

That's great, but shouldn't it be on the landing page at wikivoyage.org? Powers ^(talk) 18:09, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

It's on landing page now. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:52, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

How you find out what other people have done

Swept in from the pub

Hello, all,

I'm looking at phab:T261023 about how people "patrol" other people's contributions. I know that some of you spend a lot of time doing this, but my own experience here doesn't go past checking a short section in RecentChanges or my watchlist. I'd like your perspectives to be represented in this project.

Feel free to join the Phab task (the etiquette there is that anyone can post "information", but "discussion" should usually happen elsewhere) or to ping User:Keegan_(WMF) to any discussion on wiki (or I'll pass it along to him later). Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

What is the ToolHub being referred to in that topic? Powers ^(talk) 18:34, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

LtPowers, I'm pretty certain that it's m:Toolhub, which is the mw:Wikimedia Cloud Services team's effort to make a list of all the tools. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

30,000 articles

The English Wikivoyage has reached 30,000 articles after Lazarus1255 created the South African town of Klerksdorp. This is the first major round number milestone since the fork in late 2012. We have come a long way since then. More importantly, the level of content and quality of each article on average has risen considerably over this period. There is a lower percentage of outlines than ever before and the benchmarks set to become a usable, guide or star have increased since the early days. However, there is much more to do. There are significant holes in our guide, especially for countries or regions where there are no active editors. And one of the biggest challenges we will be facing is making sure the guide is up to date as the number of articles increases and our editing pool may not keep up with this increase. Thank you to everyone who made this achievement possible, continue to improve Wikivoyage and further the goal of making it the best source of travel knowledge in the world. Gizza ^(roam) 02:50, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

This brings up a real editing limitation of this project versus the other sisters: it's very hard for someone to be constructive in a meaningful way without having first-hand knowledge. Yes, obviously, I can fix some spelling errors or take the initiative to figure out when a certain restaurant opens and closes but to provide the real content of the travel guide, I have to have actually gone there or live there and that's going to severely restrict what I can add to this project versus (e.g.) Wikiquote or Wikibooks, where I have some competence or interest in some topic that's germane. I'm not sure what the solution is here other than just convincing a lot of persons to edit and thereby making all bugs shallow with enough eyes but it's very hard to scale this project due to the fact that every very dedicated editors are only going to have so much they can add. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:28, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I think that whenever the pandemic is over and it's safe to travel, there will be a lot of pent-up demand, and that will probably lead to a larger number of excellent edits. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:41, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

There is actually a lot that editors can contribute from their sofas. Especially for outline articles, content can be adapted from Wikipedia articles for Understand sections, and often for See and Do listings. Hotels and restaurants can be found using travel book or review sites. This content is not as good as first-hand knowledge, but it is better than having mostly empty articles. A new reader who is thinking about a trip to a place and finds an outline article will likely just move on and not come back to Wikivoyage. If they find enough content to get them started in planning, they are more likely to add to the article later.

I use building Wikivoyage articles as part of my travel planning: before I go, I do research and add that to the corresponding articles. The only problem now is when I will be able to go those places. Ground Zero (talk) 12:40, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Sure, but you know what I mean. Anyone can look at OpenStreetMap and figure out "Use I-70 to get into Podunk, Oklahoma" but anyone can also just use a map app on a smartphone to do that, too. The real substance of the guide is providing recommendations on where to go, what to see, and how to do things once you are in a location, not tables that give climate extremes. The idea that someone can really provide the meaningful information on an entry without having first-hand knowledge is dodgy at best. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:20, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Not really, it depends how much research you're willing to do. Do you really think I've visited every listing on the York page? Not even close. Admittedly, I have first-hand knowledge of the city, a lot of the attractions, and a few of the restaurants, but for the rest I've read numerous primary sources and online reviews, spent ages poring over maps and checking out other travel guides, and even contacted owners in some cases to verify details. Overall, I've spent much longer reading and writing about York than I ever spent visiting it.

I'm not saying someone who has never been a particular place could singlehandedly write a useful travel guide to that place, because they probably couldn't, just that it's surprising how much you can contribute by online research alone. And what Ground Zero was saying about someone's online research providing a springboard for someone else with first-hand knowledge to contribute to an article rings true.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:01, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

As far as writing a capsule summary of the history of a place, I cannot write that based on first-hand experience (I'm not Betty White). I'm better off taking the Wikipedia history and summarizing it, taking out excessive or encyclopedic details. Frankly, it's going to be better than a lot of guidebooks where writers don't do their research and end up writing absolute tosh. I agree that copying climatological data from Wikipedia or another source is pointless, so I don't do it, but often Wikipedia does have an overview of the climate that is useful, or can be made appropriate for a travel guide. I wrote the Wine Regions of Ontario using various sources. I have visited only one of the wineries, but I have drunk enough Ontario wine to be able to adapt information from other sources in a useful way. (I did not edit while drinking, just to be clear.) I think that it is a useful starting point from someone planning to such a tour. And ThunderingTyphoons!' work on York is exceptional. Wikivoyage guides will be made made better with more first-hand accounts, but if we don't have enough of a base to start from, we will never attract enough readers and contributors to make that happen. Ground Zero (talk) 20:25, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Agreed that a network effect is necessary for this to be a truly useful resource. It's hard to see how that can happen. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:33, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that to write a great article, you would need some sort of personal touch. But writing a good article can still be achieved from online research. Wikipedia is dry but the official tourism website, travel forums, blogs, vlogs on YouTube and friends are all useful sources of information. Even better if you have relied on a blog or friend's advice when travelling to another city. If they were reliable for places I've been to, I'll trust them more for places I haven't been. Gathering information from many sources and putting it together is still very beneficial for the reader because they don't have to peruse through the internet for hours themselves. Gizza ^(roam) 03:02, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

• Speaking for myself, take a look on the history of the Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Roman Empire and Aviation history to name just a few articles. I WISH I had "first-hand knowledge" about all the places mentioned (ROFL). To me, contributing to these is, at the same time, deep study of English language, factual research, wishful travel planning, a hobby and a meditation. I'm very happy and proud with this milestone we have achieved. Let's party and rejoice. Wikivoyage is the best. Ibaman (talk) 20:39, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Koavf, do you honestly think the writers who work for Lonely Planet, Fodor's, Frommer's, etc. all have intimate firsthand knowledge of the destinations they cover? I'm a frequent reader of traditional dead-tree travel guides and the Lonely Planet website - sizing up the competition, you might call it - and every time I do, I become more and more confident in the quality of the material we put out. Diligent online research conducted by a writer who's passionate about travel beats in-person research conducted by a burned-out hack who's just trying to make deadline every single time. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:37, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Obviously not but they are also professionals who have a budget and (usually) actually travel there. Sure, I can write something about Brazil and I can fix up things, add photos, etc. but do I really have anything useful to add? If so, it would only be because of second- or third-hand knowledge which is fine as far as it goes but is definitely not as good as actual, first-hand experience. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:47, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I think building or building up articles for places you haven't been can be useful to attract people who have been there or are planning to go there, both of which could become editors. Some people are inspired by a complete lack of information, but I think most editors start out editing an existing article, either adding new content/details or changing descriptions that are inaccurate or bothersome to them in some way. If you have little/no confidence in yourself or your sources then definitely don't edit, but a lot of places have enough information out there about them that an editor without knowledge can at least give a short (if dull) description that someone who has been there may see and improve. I think if you do a significant amount of editing and haven't been there, it's a good thing to mention if it's nominated for featuring, though. I did that with Dakar when it was nominated, because I noticed at that time the "See" section was almost entirely my writing but I'd never been there. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 10:44, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

This is why we should to run more edit-a-thons, like the one in 2018, to improve our coverage. If we look at the 2018's report, we can see that there is a wide number of countries covered, including many "off the beaten paths" cities and countries articles that were created or expanded through the edit-a-thon initiative. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:02, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I completely agree. There were many articles that were improved during the edit-a-thon that hadn't been edited in a substantial way by our core group of editors here. We should do another one. Gizza ^(roam) 23:53, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

@DaGizza: With everybody stuck at home, we can use this upcoming drive as an opportunity to reminisce our previous travels. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:54, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

News coverage of Wikivoyage

Stuff published an article the other day on "NZ tourism's Wikipedia problem". In it, there's this paraphrased quote about us from the New Zealand Wikipedian at Large: "Dickison said Wikipedia could not be used as a marketing tool for businesses, but tourism operators could use online travel guidebook Wikivoyage and image library Wikimedia Commons for free, saving them thousands on their own website that would not have the same reach." Thoughts? Sdkb (talk) 21:34, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

well, for the record, I can testify there has been a steady flow of editing on NZ destination pages for some days, maybe weeks; Greymouth is the prime example. As of today I had to block an insistent anonymous IP number trying to link its own Facebook page and live stream about Ceduna, but this is South Australia. We've been copyediting normally so far, AFAIK. If the tourist operators comply with policy, and refrain of aggressive touting, they are welcome, as always. Ibaman (talk) 21:47, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

The paragraph is correct. We're ready and waiting to work with any NZ residents, businesses and tourism professionals who care to contribute; the same goes for any nationality. As long as they respect the wiki and its policies, the mutual benefits are there for the taking.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:55, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

True, we do have an entire page called WV:Welcome, business owners that encourages them to contribute. But I don't see how a business listing themselves on WV is going to "save them thousands on their own website that would not have the same reach". WV is not a web hosting service or an exhaustive directory. Listings here are a summary, not a complete substitute for information from the business in question. (Can you imagine us listing a restaurant's entire menu for them?) Listings are also not exhaustive, and editors are free to prune a listing if it's inferior to others (e.g. bad reviews) or if there are simply too many, which would leave that business back where they started with no web presence. And of course there are some types of businesses we outright do not list.

(As it happens, the situation on WV for New Zealand maybe isn't as dire as on WP. Fox Glacier, for example, is 3 times as long as w:Fox Glacier.)

I think directing people at WV is great, but directing businesses here is, at best, not ideal. The biggest problem, really, is that almost no business is interested in contributing anything to WV other than listing themselves. Even the most well-meaning business contributors have been of no use in discussing regions, writing "Understand" and "Get in/around" sections, etc. They come here to add one specific listing to no more than a couple of pages, and if we're lucky make some other minor improvements. I'm not saying we should shoo them away, but I don't think targeting ourselves towards businesses will substantially improve our coverage of any destination. --Bigpeteb (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Other than Greymouth, are there any other pages that received a "boost" in NZ editing? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:52, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

They could of course add valuable information to Understand and See: Instead of saying their hotel is "a stone's through from the beautiful ..." they could write that the place is known for that beautiful whatever, and describe why you'd like to see it. There's the same problem on Wikipedia, they seem not to understand (and especially not care about) what we are interested in and how to get the mutual benefit of cooperation. It's like marketers were a special breed with no sense for communications and cooperation (which I have also noted as consumer: when I am interested in one of their products they try to tout about everything else instead of providing any of the information I need on that item). –LPfi (talk) 06:21, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree that businesses just want to add their business as a listing (in multiple articles if possible) and then leave, often with touty language. But tourism agencies would want to promote the destination as a whole and we could benefit from collaborating with them. Many editors already focus on their hometown or country and never venture beyond their geographical bubble. Even if their scope is niche, tourism agencies can fit in if they cooperate with us and respect the rules, especially WV:Be fair which will mean that their destination isn't glowingly praised all the time. Gizza ^(roam) 13:30, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes, I wish that businesses with existing listings would check out those listings (e.g., once a year) and remove or correct errors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Seems like Hokitika and Westport (New Zealand) also got some influx of edits by new editors. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 07:38, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia edits have a massive impact on tourism

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/18/wikipedia-edits-have-massive-impact-on-tourism-say-economists —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:37, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I emailed one of the authors suggesting they also consider WV. Pashley (talk) 06:19, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

New feature: Watchlist Expiry

Hello, everyone! The Community Tech team will be releasing a new feature, which is called Watchlist Expiry. With this feature, you can optionally select to watch a page for a temporary period of time. This feature was developed in response to the #7 request from the 2019 Community Wishlist Survey. To find out when the feature will be enabled on your wiki, you can check out the release schedule on Meta-wiki. To test out the feature before deployment, you can visit Mediawiki.org or testwiki. Once the feature is enabled on your wiki, we invite you to share your feedback on the project talk page. For more information, you can refer to the documentation page. Thank you in advance, and we look forward to reading your feedback! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Wow, that's neat! --El Grafo (talk) 09:32, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes indeed. –LPfi (talk) 09:47, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

IP block

I blocked 62.60.63.20 for calling reverts vandalism. In itself it could have been seen as a finger slip, but I believe the IP was evading a block. Do with this what you might. –LPfi (talk) 11:15, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Good call. Looks like block evasion to me. Ground Zero (talk) 11:39, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Hey, @LPfi: @ThunderingTyphoons!: I am part of the Wikimedia Database team. Recently there was a (quite rare) data issue, that may have led to a blockage not being applied correctly in the range you mention here. You may have seen some instability on recentchanges on certain wikis a few hours ago, it was related to this. I would like to talk to you (please message me in private if discussing user blocks is a sensitive issue), as I need to make sure the data regarding blocks is consistent with what you need to be applied throughout all databases. If public on wiki discussion or private messaging is inadequate can also pm on IRC (Freenode) as jynus in the following hours. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 14:06, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@JCrespo (WMF): I have no problem with talking on-wiki. There was a lag with recent changes at the same time as I imposed a longer block on the IP in question.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:36, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

So the issue is that 2 blocks were setup, but 1 is currently active in a subset of database servers (the old one in some and the new one in others). This needs to be corrected ASAP. With your permission, I would delete from the database the previous block, and leave the last one. I think this would end up in a consistent state and desired state by you (ip blocked). Please do not do any manual operation on the ip until that is done. Do you think that is an ok procedure for me to do to get the databases in a consistent state? Thank you for your work protecting the wikis! We never edit the database manually, except in this exceptional situations (data corruption) and with the project admins ok.--JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 14:46, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

PS: The lag happened because this inconsistency (not your fault!) caused replication to break temporarily between dbs. I am now trying to get us to a health state so this cannot happen ever again. However, only one "block" can be active per address (so one will have to go away). JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 14:50, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In other words, the blocking actions will be kept on the logs of the user, but only the last one will be active. The previous one will be deleted. Ip will continue to be blocked. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@JCrespo (WMF): No problem. This is not a user that will make massive changes if unblocked. –LPfi (talk) 14:55, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I will apply the server fix and report here. Again, the user will still be blocked with the last block applied, as the older one didn't apply fully to all dbs. I wanted to warn you because you will see the older block "disappearing" magically with my server powers. Thanks for your understanding. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. All the best, ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:50, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

The database consistency issue has been solved. Final state: Logs are kept, but only the block of 62.60.63.2 made by @ThunderingTyphoons!: at 2020-09-25 11:39:33 is active. You can now, if desired, edit/delete/modify the block if needed, as dbs are in a consistent state. Don't be afraid of blocking/editing, this was a one time thing, and you didn't break anything (it was the database's inconsistent state's fault). No other data or blocks should be affected by this issue. Thanks to everyone that helped here. If you want to know more about this issue, there is a ticket open at Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263842 Cheers! --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 15:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Blocking Radisson marketers

Hi. I think I should mention that I am now blocking Radisson marketing IPs without warning when they tout. My reasoning for this is that they change IP addresses often and not one of the Radisson marketing accounts has paid any attention to touting warnings or instructions on avoiding default address info in listings in talk page posts nor to any of the content of edit summaries. I don't think we should tolerate promotional, paid accounts creating unnecessary work for us (basically, trying to jerk us volunteers around) by refusing to cooperate. Therefore, at the first example of touting, I block right away. This is the second time I've done that to a Radisson account, after following usual procedure for weeks. And I think we should seriously consider blocking for persistent violation of Wikivoyage guidelines on default address info, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:06, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Some context: See User talk:103.48.102.46 and this edit. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I've been correcting lots of Radisson updates lately, maybe 10 or more a day. While I totally agree with your reasoning, I fear that hard reverting these edits may end up with Wikivoyage keeping a lot of obsolete weblink and phone numbers, which is, ultimately, unhelpful to the traveller. Only because of this, I usually go for manual edits, which is a drag, agreed again. If a consensus about a total block of Radisson updates is agreed upon, I'll gladly enforce it from this moment on. Ibaman (talk) 12:23, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm currently only threatening a "block on sight" policy to try to get the attention of a Radisson manager, but I think we should at least be reverting touting posts by Radisson employees and blocking any Radisson account that touts right away after they tout (without trying to block every single account already used by Radisson at this point). I'm happy to tolerate their continually disregarding our attempts to get them to respect Wikivoyage's address content guidelines if you'd like to continue correcting those fields. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:30, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Should we contact Radisson directly? They have an interest in their listings being up to date, and if the people updating listings do so on orders from some one person, it might be possible to get them change their instructions. –LPfi (talk) 12:35, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Perhaps one of our users with experience working in or with hotels as something other than a regular customer would have some insight into who should be contacted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:38, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I really hope this works. These edits are tricky stuff, almost malicious, should I say. About half these edits seem to already got the gist and just update the link and phone numbers (these I keep). The other half will change the name from "Radisson Blu" to "The Ultimate Highscale Radisson BLU Hotel, Spa & Lobster Restaurant, Ibiza, Baleares"and insert three paragraphs of flowery promotional prose on "content" (these I revert). Again, I hope that contacting their marketing department, or whatever, works. Ibaman (talk) 12:43, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The IP I blocked also just deleted some addresses. I don't know what that was about. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:45, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

https://www.radissonhotelgroup.com/media_contact-us has a list of e-mail addresses. Are these edits all about one part of the world, or scattered around? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

For the record, today it was mostly about Finland and Norway, yesterday it was UK and USA, I'd say it's nearly always Europe and North America, but it's really global, on the long run. I already saw India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Australia, Hong Kong, for instance. Ibaman (talk) 16:08, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The edits that remove addresses need extra scrutiny: I've seen cases where the Radisson hotel in the destination has closed, but an IP editor edits the entry to remove the address and contact information and replace the URL with a link to the Radisson page for that country or region. In effect, this directs readers to a Radisson website even though there is no longer a Radisson hotel in the destination. That seems to be what was going on here. I think the appropriate response in this situation is either to remove the listing or, if a new hotel has opened at the Radisson's former address, to replace it with a listing for the new hotel. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:14, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I support the initiative to contact Radisson directly. The overall aim of these edits, updating links and contact info across hundreds of listings, is very useful for us, but it's not acceptable that volunteers should be made to run around after paid employees. As Ibaman noted, simply reverting and blocking the troublesome edits is counterproductive because it also reinstates outdated information. As usual, communication is the key to solving the problem. If nobody with industry experience comes forward (I know we have people with such experience, but will not nominate anyone who doesn't choose to come forward), I'd be happy to try to contact Radisson, but must stress that I'll not be able to do so for at least two weeks for several reasons, but first among them being that I currently only have access to a mobile phone.

If we can't get in contact with someone in authority, then we still have at our disposal the spam filter to block new Radisson links, but that would have to be a last resort given the number of hotel brands they manage all over the world.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

In answer to WhatamIdoing's question, these edits have been all over the world. In addition to the countries Ibaman mentioned, there have been edits in the Arab world, for example. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:12, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Since it is a global effort, we should probably e-mail one of the people listed for the corporate office, rather than a regional representative in their public relations department. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Looking on the contact page you linked, there are three regions to the business (EMEA, Asia-Pacific, and Americas), but no single global contact. Perhaps a single email to the most senior relevant person in each region? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:39, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. I think the key points we want to make are that everyone working for Radisson must avoid: (1) using promotional language, (2) describing what a hotel location is "near", (3) putting in more than the street address except in countries (notably including the UK) where we've decided post codes (but not city names) should be included. Also, they should delete listings for locations that are closed and shouldn't delete the address and leave a merely promotional link to the company's website. At least some of us are also deleting city names in the name fields of listings for hotel branches. If we consider that promotional SEO, not really part of the title, we need to tell them they can't include it in the name field of their listings, that it will be considered touting, whatever. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I think we might want to start with a shorter, more general message. Something more like "It looks like Radisson has hired an employee or contractor to edit Wikivoyage. We'd love to have Radisson entries updated, but we're having trouble with the quality of the work, and they're not responding to our messages. Can you help us contact them?" My recommendation is to focus the PR people on their task (find that person) instead of on our policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:41, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think we should contact the company. It can't be in their interest to have a bad reputation in the travel writer community... Hobbitschuster (talk) 10:32, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be time to establish paid editing policy here if one isn't already created? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:03, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

It's here: Wikivoyage:Don't tout#Marketers and SEOs. -- Powers ^(talk) 23:12, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh! I have missed that. The exception was not in the lead of Don't tout ("Business employees, like everyone, are welcome to add information to Wikivoyage"). I reworded to reflect it, and added it to Welcome business owners. –LPfi (talk) 08:09, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Good job making our policies clearer and more present.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:01, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

It still seems that Radisson is a special case in terms of the volume of edits by different IP addresses and the refusal to communicate. I would support a briefer, more targetted email of the kind proposed by user:WhatamIdoing in the first instance, as our first goal is just to open a dialogue with the company and be put in touch with the person responsible for the edits, either the editor(s) or their manager. Once we have that contact, we can go more in-depth with our specific concerns, like what user:Ikan Kekek proposed. Additionally, I would want the Radisson editor(s) to be more available; to stick to editing with just one IP address or, better yet, to create a named account and crucially to reply to on-wiki messages within a reasonable period of time. Without the ability to communicate with them moving forward, I can't see how we can tolerate any editing arrangement with Radisson.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:01, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

A month on, do we still think it's worth contacting the people at Radisson? I haven't had a great deal of spare time since going back to work, so haven't particularly noticed much Radisson action in recent changes of late, but if it's still considered an issue that needs addressing, I'm reaffirming my offer to get in touch with them.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:24, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

This (helpful) edit showed up on my watchlist today.[2] —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:04, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen a few, including some not so helpful ones. But my perception, perhaps coloured by lack of patrolling on my part, is they're not as frequent as before.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:09, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

There was also this edit, though, and see also User talk:2401:4900:36C0:B411:D554:2F23:156B:41B1. So yes, I think it could still be worth contacting people at Radisson, although I agree that the edits are not coming as fast and including as much new touting as before, at least for the time being. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:14, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

OK. I'll proceed with that.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:19, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Great! Let us know whether or what kind of responses you get. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:04, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm surprised we didn't already try to contact them; I definitely think we should. If this is someone who was told to go and add all this information, then we need to make it clear to corporate that they're not following our policies and that we may punish them for it by reverting all their edits. If it's an overly-enthusiastic employee who's doing it on their own initiative, we ought to inform corporate so they know someone is making them look bad by being unresponsive and not following our policies. Either way, I see no reason not to reach out to Radisson. --Bigpeteb (talk) 19:55, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I have seen a few edits where a Radisson listing for a specific hotel has been changed to just point at a general country webpage, when the hotel ceased to be part of the chain. I think that we need to be explicit that if a chain location closes the only permissible edits are to delete the listing or to update it to reflect the current occupants of that location. If the chain moves to another location, even in the same street, then that change is subject to the same rules as new listings - marketeers should suggest the new listing on the talk page. AlasdairW (talk) 22:24, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Good afternoon friends. I had hoped to have a bit more news to share, but it seems like enough time has elapsed without an update.

In the middle of last week, I sent a short email to three senior media contacts in Radisson, outlining who we wanted to get in touch with and why, and the following day I received a reply from the person claiming to be part of the team behind the edits to Wikivoyage. She asked what our concerns were and how we (Radisson and WV) could better work together moving forward. I followed that up on Friday with a much longer email that went into detail about our concerns with promotional language, location touting, and the replacement of defunct listings with generic links to Radisson websites. I also drew attention to their lack of engagement with our messages on-wiki, and suggested that they consider creating named accounts, rather than editing with IPs so that we could more easily communicate.

Since my second email, I haven't heard anything further but tracking of recent changes suggests the edits have stopped (can anyone else confirm?). Ideally we would have wanted them to continue the maintenance of listings while also respecting the rules on touting and responding to messages (which is a point I put to her), but from our perspective a total cessation of their activities is probably the next best thing. Since it has only been potentially three working days since Friday, and there was a lot in my email to digest and maybe discuss among themselves, I remain hopeful of a reply, but won't be surprised if one isn't forthcoming. Either way, I'll let you all know. Best wishes --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:35, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for taking are of this and for the update, and do please let us know if there are any other developments. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:10, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

What is the actual inclusion criteria for the ten most prominent Wikivoyage sites that appear on the front page of www.wikivoyage.org?

I got curious, after noticing that the one WV site I'm mostly active at.... the Hebrew Wikivoyage, which was previously at the bottom of that list, is now slightly higher at that list (I think it is no. 8 on that list as of now).

Does anyone know what is the inclusion criteria for these ten sites, and by what definition are they sorted by? Specifically I would really what to know what we've done at the Hebrew Wikivoyage in the recent year that made HebVoy not be at the bottom of that list... Is it because we have managed to get a lot more viewers to Hebvoy compared to other Wikivoyage sites that were ranked lower on that list? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 02:35, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@ויקיג'אנקי: I am also curious: where is the front page (I don't see wv sites on the main page) Ottawahitech (talk) 16:37, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

This question is about https://www.wikivoyage.org/ WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

It might be page views or article count, but rather than listening to me guess, I think that MarcoAurelio or Xaosflux can tell you the real answer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:45, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: The sorting criteria it's page views per day. Thanks, MarcoAurelio (talk) 16:57, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

See also meta:Www.wikivoyage.org template. Xaosflux (talk) 17:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• Interesting to see that the English, German, Italian, Russian,Spanish, Polish, French, Hebrew, Greek and Vietnamese WikiVoyage sites have the most pageviews today. Ottawahitech (talk) 17:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

The stats used by the template are those from September, when I last updated them. I am undusting my old Ubuntu laptop to fetch and generate new ones and I'll see if I can update those at least once per month. Regards, --MarcoAurelio (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I've updated the stats and then the portal template. Those changes will go live on Monday morning (UTC) when developers copy and sync. the code from the portals in the servers. --MarcoAurelio (talk) 18:05, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Mahjong

I wonder if this would be an article worth creating. It's certainly a fairly popular game in many parts of East Asia, and it's certainly possible for people to travel to East Asia to purchase sets and play the game. One of the main issues though is that because it's associated with gambling, in many places, the only way you can play it legally is with family and friends. In addition there are so many different rule sets. Different parts of China have different rules, while Taiwan and Japan have their own rules, and so do we in Singapore, so while the basic gameplay is similar, it would not be practical for us to cover all possible rule sets in a travel article. If we have to pick any to cover, I would say perhaps Cantonese, Taiwanese and Japanese rules are the best known internationally, so these should probably the ones we should cover. Unfortunately, I'm only familiar with Singaporean rules, so I won't be able to write those.

As for tournaments to watch, there is the World Series Mahjong which uses a set of standardised "international rules" that attempts to be the "average" of the Taiwanese, Japanese, Cantonese and all the other regional Chinese rules, so that it is fair to all players regardless of which rule sets they grew up with. However, nobody actually uses those rules in casual settings; they are only used in professional tournaments. The dog2 (talk) 19:34, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Why would the differences in rules from country to country be travel-relevant anyway? Leave that for Wikipedia, I say. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:31, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't know the game at all, but my feeling is that travellers who would like to watch or play should at least be made aware that differences exist. Ideally watchers should know enough to understand what is going on, and those who would play themselves should know whether they have a chance to adjust to the local rules. I understand that we cannot teach people strategy, but if the rules are reasonably simple we could explain them, like in Chess, including differences and their impact on strategies. If the rules are more complex than those of chess, or the differences cannot be handled compactly, then concentrate on the general game flow instead. I'd say the rules section in our chess article should be shorter, but there is definitely value in that it is complete. The tactics section could be longer, if additions would help spectators understand the game. The Understand section in all is about the right length, perhaps a little longer than ideal. –LPfi (talk) 07:42, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2:, If you are collecting names of users who would appreciate having a travel related mahjong article, count me in. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:10, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

FYI: I thought food was the best part of travel, I was wrong

https://www.eater.com/2020/10/13/21498819/food-expectations-travel-to-eat-covid-19 —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:44, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. That's a great story, and I definitely connect to it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:19, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek: "I can connect". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:12, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: Unfortunately even in many places where you can still travel nowadays, restraurants are closed and meeting new people is just about impossible, due to COVID? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:15, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes. When we are recommended not to even see our friends, it is not odd that we aren't eager to socialise with strangers. The fewer people you meet, the smaller the risk that some of them carries the disease, and makes you carry it on to some dear one in a risk group. And travellers are hardly the safest one to meet, as they have not stayed isolated in their homes. It is sad, but more or less unavoidable. Thankfully we have the internet. –LPfi (talk) 16:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Vandals attempting to hijack accounts

There have been 30 attempts to guess my password, and a request to reset my password by an IP. Is this happening to any of you, and what can be done to such abusive IP addresses, when they have no Wikivoyage account? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:26, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

If I recall, checkuser can be used to see what those ips are DannyS712 (talk) 23:28, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I have the same situation happening, 8 attempts and 1 request as of the last 24 hours. I changed password anyway, as I do monthly. Ibaman (talk) 23:35, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Who should be contacted, and with what information? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

We don't have any local CheckUsers, so if DannyS712 is right, we would need a steward's help to identify the IP addresses. meta:Steward_requests/Checkuser is the place to ask.

Admins should use strong passwords and two-factor authentication if possible (you can set up two-factor authentication in your preferences). User:WhatamIdoing may know more. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be simple and straightforward to assign CheckUser status to our bureaucrats (Andre, Evan, IK, Powers etc.), or even to all Wikivoyage admins. It would surely be useful to identify and preempt action by anonymous vandalism sources. Ibaman (talk) 17:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

My understanding is that it's not complicated per se, but CheckUsers do have to reveal their real names to WMF. Maybe more. Powers ^(talk) 04:10, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Please see mw:Help:Reset password#I’m getting password reset emails that I didn’t request. How do I prevent this from happening? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for this. @Ibaman, Ikan Kekek: Looks like this might solve the problem – give it a try and let us know how it goes. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:34, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

That problem, yes, and thank you, WhatamIdoing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

About contacting somebody: The server administrators have access to logs of unsuccessful logins so they have a more complete picture, and can act if there are some especially worrying patterns. I suppose we just have to worry about our own passwords. –LPfi (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

A server administrator is a term I never heard before. Is there a place where one could find out what X stewards and Y administrators do? Just curious, Ottawahitech (talk) 16:33, 25 November 2020 (UTC) oh yes add patrolers and rollbackers

Every computer has to be maintained, and it is essential for servers that must not break. You may know the ADMINISTRATOR account on Windows and "root" on Unix. At least some of those doing that kind of maintenance are called developers in the Wikimedia context, but as I don't know whether all are, I used the more general (or specific?) "server administrator". –LPfi (talk) 16:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

In Wikimedia parlance, administrators (unqualified) are those who can protect and delete pages and block users. We don't have access to the servers proper, not more than anybody else, via the wiki software interface. Stewards are doing similar things, but in any project, which is good especially for small projects, where no admin may be online. They also have some powers that admins don't have. See meta:Stewards and related pages. –LPfi (talk) 16:58, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Global bot policy proposal: invitation to a Meta discussion

Hello!

I apologize for sending a message in English. Please help translate to your language. According to the list, your wiki project currently is opted in to the global bot policy. Under this policy, bots that fix double redirects or maintain interwiki links are allowed to operate under a global bot flag that is assigned directly by the stewards.

As the Wikimedia projects developed, the need for the current global bot policy decreased, and in the past years, no bots were appointed via that policy. That is mainly given Wikidata were estabilished in 2013, and it is no longer necessary to have dozens of bots that maintain interwiki links.

A proposal was made at Meta-Wiki, which proposes that the stewards will be authorized to determine whether an uncontroversial task may be assigned a global bot flag. The stewards already assign permissions that are more impactful on many wikis, namely, global sysops and global renamers, and I do not think that trust should be an issue. The stewards will assign the permission only to time-proven bots that are already approved at a number of projects, like ListeriaBot.

By this message, I would like to invite you to comment in the global RFC, to voice your opinion about this matter.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
Martin Urbanec (talk) 11:49, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Why the apology for posting in English on an English-language website? A bot that knows what language each wiki is in might be handy :-) --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:52, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

MassMessage is rather limited in its ability to customize messages. So the minority of English-language wikis (sometimes) get apologies that are meant for others, and the majority get messages in English. There are two complex scripts that will deliver translated messages, but even with that, MassMessage can't figure out how to translate the subject heading. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

As you know, WhatamIdoing, I am also concerned about massmessages posted by Global users who have no local talkpage and can therefore not be easily reachable.

However, I am glad you piped in because I have a question about this particular massmessage: Why is fixing a double redirect so important? Ideally, if it does not require huge resources, I believe it is better to leave redirects alone to maintain history. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:47, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Ottawahitech. A double redirect happens like this:

1. Write the article at A.
2. Move the article to B (A is automatically redirected to B).
3. Move the article C (B is automatically redirected to C).

At the end of this chain, A redirects to B which redirects again ("double") to C. If you search for/go to A, MediaWiki will not take you through B to C. It will take you to B and show you the redirect page. To get to C, you have to click the redirect link for C.

MediaWiki software doesn't send you straight through because, if it did, you could end up with an endless loop of A redirects to B, which redirects back to A, which is bad for the servers.

Wikipedia editors decided a long time ago that readers probably didn't want to end up at a redirect page, and that they were bad at remembering to search for and find prior redirects to fix them. Also, it's boring work. Therefore they wrote bots that change the redirect from A to B to be a redirect from A directly to C. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata descriptions changes to be included more often in Recent Changes and Watchlist

Sorry for sending this message in English. Translations are available on this page. Feel free to translate it in more languages!

As you may know, you can include changes coming from Wikidata in your Watchlist and Recent Changes (in your preferences). Until now, this feature didn’t always include changes made on Wikidata descriptions due to the way Wikidata tracks the data used in a given article.

Starting on December 3rd, the Watchlist and Recent Changes will include changes on the descriptions of Wikidata Items that are used in the pages that you watch. This will only include descriptions in the language of your wiki to make sure that you’re only seeing changes that are relevant to your wiki.

This improvement was requested by many users from different projects. We hope that it can help you monitor the changes on Wikidata descriptions that affect your wiki and participate in the effort of improving the data quality on Wikidata for all Wikimedia wikis and beyond.

Note: if you didn’t use the Wikidata watchlist integration feature for a long time, feel free to give it another chance! The feature has been improved since the beginning and the content it displays is more precise and useful than at the beginning of the feature in 2015.

If you encounter any issue or want to provide feedback, feel free to use this Phabricator ticket. Thanks!

Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 14:39, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I recommend this feature to anyone who uses the watchlist regularly. I've occasionally seen English-language descriptions get changed in ways that don't work for the non-Wikipedia projects, and it's good for us to keep an eye on them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Just curious: what kind of descriptions work on Wikipedia but not elsewhere? There might be obvious cases, but I cannot think of any. –LPfi (talk) 09:12, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Think about Los Angeles. The Wikidata description at the moment is "county seat of Los Angeles County, California; second largest city in the United States by population". The Wikipedia article restricts itself to the legal city borders, but the Wikivoyage article doesn't. This isn't hugely confusing, but a more generic description of "second most populous US city" or "biggest city in California" would work for both Wikipedia and Wikivoyage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

That one's tricky. The Wikidata item is and should be about the official legally defined city. I've struggled with how to map regions and urbanized areas to Wikidata myself, in the past. Powers ^(talk) 22:22, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's tricky. These descriptions appear for readers on the mobile site and (less importantly) when editors are making links in VisualEditor. Wikidata descriptions were originally invented as a sort of disambiguation note for Wikidata editors, so the descriptions occasionally seemed strange in our contexts. Imagine if the description for LA said "Legal city borders only – use Q1050826 for all else". That could be awkward when it appears to readers here, and if we see things like that, we should advocate for a compromise that works for everyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Videoconferencing guide

Since travel is mostly out on account of Covid, perhaps Wikivoyage could do a guide to conferences on the internet, sorted by region. -There is a Fabric Throughout all of Reality (talk) 19:36, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

First of all, with the imminent arrival of several effective COVID-19 vaccines, all signs point to a return to relative normalcy within a matter of months. Secondly, it's not true even now that "travel is mostly out on account of Covid" - international travel certainly is, but domestic travel is holding its own and even booming in some cases (for example, the U.S. National Park System saw a record number of visitors in 2020). So let's please not let ourselves get carried away with radical proposals to fundamentally redefine the scope of our site in response to a situation that, in the end, is quite temporary. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Three disconnected thoughts:

• In five months, we'll want an April Fool's Day page. Maybe all the places called "Zoom" would be fun.
• I don't think that we have a page about attending a conference specifically.
• Some conferences try to maximize value by providing virtual pre- and post-event opportunities, so an online conference is not entirely unrelated to a travel-oriented event.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

China already has COVID-19 under control, and domestic travel is already back to normal there. Of course, China is lucky in that similar to the US, its tourism market is overwhelmingly domestic (which was true even before COVID-19 hit), and it does not need to rely on international tourism, so their tourist attractions are all pretty much back to normal. An likewise, my father's business partners in China are now flying around for business trips as if COVID-19 never happened. New Zealand has also lifted all domestic travel restrictions, and I presume Australia would do so soon given that they have already successfully contained their outbreak, but unfortunately, Australia and New Zealand are more reliant on international tourism than China, so it will take longer for both countries to recover. The dog2 (talk) 05:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Video conferences aren't really travel-related. I think Wikibooks would be the place to host how-to manuals like this. --Ypsilon (talk) 07:51, 2 December 2020 (UTC)