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In a few months we have our anniversary, what could we organize to celebrate it?
I was thinking of making a meta page to set up a global campaign for our anniversary, apply for a rapid fund to organize a contest like the one we had five years ago, and maybe other activities that don't require funding.
@Galahad: Great idea! I was also thinking if we can get Wikipedia and other WMF projects to add a banner at the very top for maybe a month. How hard would that be? This way, we also draw more editors and increase Wikivoyage's awareness. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:56, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
CentralNotice would be a good idea. But we share our birthday with Wikipedia. I don't know what would happen in that sense.
+1 to the month-long banner idea. That brought a lot of Wikipedians here last time, and it's good to remind them that we exist, even if they don't stick around as consistent contributors. I remember it being a bit of work, but it was also a lot of fun.
RAdimer-WMF could help us get a post in m:Diff (blog). This is a multi-lingual blog, so different Wikivoyages could write about things that matter to them, in their own languages. If there was interest, we could probably set up a little series. Maybe someone would write about how Wikivoyage supports the other wikis, someone else reflect on what it was like to edit a travel-oriented site during the pandemic, and another to write about some of the distinctive features (like the listing editor, which is awesome) or distinctive policies and values (like Wikivoyage:Be fair, and our choice to be silent about bad restaurants rather than to "neutrally" say they're bad). I suspect that blog posts on why non-English content matters to the world, or a story about how it made a difference to someone, would be welcome at any time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:48, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the above comments. We should create a banner on other wikis and organize an edit-a-thon. This should introduce a number of new editors to our community. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Best to establish criteria that encourages and rewards good contribution (like linking a relevant picture, not engaging in copyvio). Otherwise projects will hate the contest for the cleanup that follows. Some ideas can be found in 2018 edit-a-thon. Some of the "more fun" ideas include extra points for countries that didn't have a lot of coverage for that community, edits that covered X number of countries, at least one edit from each province/state in that country, and bonus points for having at least 1 edit in each country in a continent. But to do that, we need some automated tracking like using the Outreach dashboard. OhanaUnitedTalk page04:20, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the contest held a year ago, a series of parameters were used. Specifically, higher scores were given to those who completed challenges (in the case of eswikivoyage, to finish translating autotrad destinations). In that sense, each community that wanted to participate would define its own challenges and they would be added.
Regarding the rules, yes. Before starting the contest I would present a draft of the rules and we can all collaborate. Also get volunteers to be judges, among other things.
Finally, my team made an adaptation of the logo we used five years ago, you can help locate it.
+1 to another edit-a-thon. The 2018 one was a great success in terms of getting new contributions to articles on parts of the world that had rarely received attention until then. There was scope for improvement when it came to retaining the new editors (a select few stayed on beyond a month but not many compared to the number that participated in the edit-a-thon). I support Ohana's suggestions to incentivise contributions to variety of countries/continents. We should also consider attracting readers to Wikivoyage and not just editors. Based on a page views analysis in 2018, it looked like many people who landed on the edit-a-thon page never explored any other page here. It would be good for new people to see our main page and best content too. Gizza (roam)01:43, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As one of the editors that was brought in and stayed because of the edit-a-thon, I think people landed on the edit-a-thon page and didn't have any directions on where to go next. There is no "suggested list of pages to improve" or "these things can be added/updated" that kickstart their first edit. Veterans just assume that new editors know what to do. But we don't. There could be new users (as in complete wiki newbies) wanting to sign up, but the button to sign up is 4 sections down. Naturally, it attracts those like me who already know their way around. OhanaUnitedTalk page03:45, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
More generically, I often suggest that people look up their own hometowns or places they have fond memories of (e.g., where their grandparents lived), especially places that aren't major tourist destinations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Great idea. I also like the proposal from the Spanish community about the scoring, with the only exception being the "Challenge 8 destinations" (you must complete one location per inhabited continent before working on another set of locations). I find that this particular challenge disincentivises those who want to focus on a particular region. For virtual awards, we can put barncompasses to good use, especially for editors who focus on continents. OhanaUnitedTalk page04:23, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like something that will appeal to some and not others. I could imagine a similar one for one city per Spanish-speaking country. I know people who have a life goal of visiting each of the US's 50 states, and I can imagine people doing the same for visiting every country in South America. It might really appeal to certain contributors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link! I think the 5 points for creating a new article, especially following "7 points for creation of new or existing article that represents some important content gap in the project," is problematic and could help cause a repetition of our problems with participants in an editathon about Nigeria that resulted in lots of "articles" copied and pasted from Wikipedia and "copyright, all rights reserved" sites or with irrelevant information that is either the same throughout the country or about cities hundreds of kilometers away. I don't think giving people points for creating any article, regardless of how plagiarized or irrelevant its content is, is a good idea at all. This also has a similar problem: "1 point for each 2000 bytes added to an existing article or a new article that has a basic structure." So, if I copy and paste irrelevant copyrighted content from any old website, I get a point? Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:53, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ikan Kekek thanks for your feedback. I got your point but unlike the editathon you point out, the editathon of each language version will be under the control of the local jury. This means that they will admit the articles that should get points, as well as modify the scoring criteria. Therefore, it indicates "maintain or adapt". They can make it tighter, lighter. It is up to each language version! Best, Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy)15:18, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A few thoughts:
"creation of new or existing article" is unclear. You can't create an existing article. I think you want to say "7 points for filling an important content gap in the project (e.g., by creating an article on a large city or important region, or substantially expanding an empty/outline article on such a destination)". This clarifies that outlines about tiny villages don't qualify.
"5 points for creating a new article" could set a minimum threshold (e.g., an opening sentence plus two listings; five sentences/elements).
"provided that what is illustrated in the image is not already illustrated by content present on Wikimedia Commons" is a little unclear. Does this mean "provided that Commons doesn't have any similar images"? (If so, I suggest giving it more than 2 points.)
In general I think that objective "points" should only be used as a qualifying criteria. The award of any prizes should be in the subjective judgement of a jury panel. This might avoid the non-value added edits that we saw in the Nigeria competition. A long running competition which is largely subjective is "Wiki Loves Monuments" - there are objective qualifying criteria like the subject of the photo being a recognised monuments or historic building, but the main judging is a subjective selection of a good photo.
Points for creating a new article should only be awarded if the article is proposed on the competition page 24 hours before it is created and there are no objections - this may prevent the creation of articles about every township with 5 houses. Bytes added should only get points if there are uniquely written for the article concerned - no points for adding the same paragraph about mobile phones or road safety to 20 articles.
Points could be awarded for creating a quality unique pagebanner for an article which doesn't have one. Updating listings in an existing article could also be eligible for points, even where the resulting article is no bigger. If an article has 20 sleep listings and 19 get updated prices and 1 is removed because it has closed, that is a very useful edit, but might not change the size of the article. AlasdairW (talk) 21:48, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Thanks for your suggestions, I added to the scoring criteria. @AlasdairW: As mentioned above, each language version can modify, adapt or maintain the criteria and it is up to the local jury to decide whether to award points or not. It is at the discretion of the global jury whether to give the global awards to the winners of each language version (which perhaps answers both concerns). Then, each language version can add more criteria, relax or tighten the existing ones. Best, Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy)05:47, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In addition to AlasdairW's concern that I have, I am not sure whether we should reward points solely due to article creation. As we learned in the last Nigeria Expedition, this incentivises low-quality article creation, resulting in several of us having to clean up their mess even six months after the expedition ended. Even then, it had to result in a change in deletion policy to delete the articles with inaccurate content or articles that contained listings over 150 kilometres away. I don't think any of us are prepared for a repeat of the same next year. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)07:03, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The new criteria will be:
7 points for filling an important content gap in the project (e.g., by creating an article on a large city or important region, or substantially expanding an empty/outline article on such a destination),
5 points for creating a new article (the article will be valid if have the required basic templates, basic article structure and an introduction that briefly describes the destination (simply "X is a city in region Y" does not count as a valid introduction),
3 points for editing an existing article,
1 point for each 2000 bytes added to an existing article or a new article that has a basic structure,
1 point for illustrating an article,
3 points if the article is illustrated with original images taken by the participant, provided that Commons doesn't have any similar images.
I still don't agree 5 points should be given for every article that's created. It doesn't prevent the addition of low-quality listings (that can sometimes be a hoax). I won't name this user out in the pub (email me if you want to know who this is), but last year, there was a user who had many of us clean up for four straight months. For starters, this user created 37 articles within one month and they have very detailed understand sections plus many eat and sleep listings. Many others they created have been redirected, but it doesn't show up on the X-tools data base. Looks normal, right? Well, no โ nearly every article they created had a Connect section that was copied verbatim from one another. This is in addition to listings as far as 178 kilometres away from the destination, copyvios, listings copied from other articles,
It became more succinct when Ground Zero tried to mentor this user; all they gave was an "apology"* but they still cantankerously went on. Ground Zero and I spent the next two months cleaning up this user's mess and we had to delete 40% of their articles as copyvio. It finally came down to having to nominate every single article they created for deletion, and in the end, all 37 articles were deleted (inc. the 40% that were copyvios). So ultimately, if you look at it summarised, their contributions have been a net-negative to the project as none of the content they created stayed. It did, however, result in other contributors spending night-after-night cleaning up someone's mess for four months because they wanted to game the system.
That's just as Galahad has been saying all along. @Galahad, the only only change for the *global* version that I'd suggest is that "editing an existing article" should say "improving an existing article".
For the *global* version, I think "creating an article" is a fine option. There is some value in having articles even if they aren't very good.
For the *English-only* version, I'd suggest that creating an article only counts if the destination has certain characteristics (e.g., a national park, a city with at least 25,000 residents) and the resulting article has certain characteristics (e.g., valid introduction plus at least two listings within the city).
Leaving the criteria to individual communities will mean the Wikivoyages with few to no active contributors will contain a mess of low-quality articles, possibly copyvios too. I've made my point on why this shouldn't be left up to the individual communities.
Slightly off-topic, but to WhatamIdoing, I think your English-only version might be a bit too harsh. We *should* be encouraging good-quality articles, even if it's only about a town of less than a 1000. If someone created an article along the lines of Childs, New York, why should we not reward the contributor some extra points? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)06:17, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see. So we can have a jury that metes out our own judgments on what valuable contributions are and are not? If so, how are we going to pick the jury? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The entire structure of the editathon is organized by you; we are in charge of awarding prizes based on the winners of each editathon. This way there are experienced people from the project on the jury. Best, Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy)21:26, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ikan, I don't know how we're going to pick the jury. There's no process prescribed externally, so it's whatever we want. Are you interested in being one of them? I'm thinking that it could be efficient ask the folks who normally watch RecentChanges anyway, since they'll have seen everything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
โโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโ
Feel free to dismiss this suggestion, but would it help if we created a private chatroom offwiki where we can discuss things that we don't want public? While I'm all for keeping things as open as possible, I feel like some things, such as if a certain user's edits violate policy, should be kept private until we communicate something with the user. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)09:19, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also a disclaimer that we can discuss what platform to use later. Anything that's offwiki and private works for me, except IRC which I, for some reason, cannot create an account. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:06, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I hope it's OK if I don't take part in private chats. If you all really need to reach me by email, you can. Or if this involves filters, we could make them accessible to Galahad if no-one objects. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:12, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We need three volunteers
Ikan's said that he's willing to be one of them. SHB's unfortuantely going to be offline most of that time. We need two more folks. Who else would like to help? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I might be on vacation though still able to logon at times at the beginning and start getting busier toward the end, but I'll do what I can. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:30, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would be possible give a extension in the scoring phase. If the contest ends Feb 15, we can award on Feb 20 or Mar 1, as example.
How will we know who is participating? Do we need separate signups on the page we start en.voy, or will there be a master list elsewhere? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:47, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link. I'm unfamiliar with that platform. How would we direct people to that site, and is there an easy way to transclude the list to the page we start on this site? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:24, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Yes, it would be helpful to have a list on this site. Many previous projects have had usernames of participants on a page here, though some have not, but the ones that didn't were arranged off-site and not subject to judgments from a jury of en.voy users. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:05, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
7 points for filling an important content gap in the project (e.g., by creating an article on a large city or important region, or substantially expanding an empty/outline article on such a destination),
5 points for creating a new article (the article will be valid if have the required basic templates, basic article structure and an introduction that briefly describes the destination (simply "X is a city in region Y" does not count as a valid introduction),
3 points for editing an existing article,
1 point for each 2000 bytes added to an existing article or a new article that has a basic structure,
1 point for illustrating an article,
3 points if the article is illustrated with original images taken by the participant, provided that Commons doesn't have any similar images.
For the *English-only* version, I'd suggest that creating an article only counts if the destination has certain characteristics (e.g., a national park, a city with at least 25,000 residents) and the resulting article has certain characteristics (e.g., valid introduction plus at least two listings within the city).
Maybe we should also have an item about adding lat/long information (and a map, if necessary).
4 points for updating a substantial number of out-of-date listings or information throughout an existing article, including deletions of defunct listings with edit summaries explaining the deletions
4 points for turning a bare outline into a solid usable article by adding good templated listings with good descriptions and all relevant fields filled in in every relevant section
8 points for turning a bare outline into a guide article
4 points for turning a usable article into a guide article
10 points for starting a new article and turning it into a guide article
2 points for creating an outline article that has enough information to be used, including several listings or their equivalents in plain text
3 points for creating a usable-rated article that has standard formatting but no more information than a barely usable outline article
5 points for creating a new article and turning it into a solid, informative usable article
1 point for adding well-chosen thumbnails (but not too many) to an article that lacks them or should have more. No points if the photos are stolen from some website and uploaded to Commons by the editor.
3 points if the article is illustrated with original images taken by the participant, provided that Commons doesn't have any similar images.
1-4 points for high-quality copy editing of the text of any article, with greater credit for editing longer articles and making the same points clearer and more briefly
1-3 points for turning plain text information into templated listings, depending on how many listings needed to be changed
2 points for adding geocoordinates for the destination covered by the article and/or a substantial number of listings
1 point for adding a good map to an article that lacks one
What do you all think? When we agree on a system, with the addition of a dislaimer that the ultimate awarding of points will be to the sole discretion of the jury or whatever, maybe we should include it in the just-created contest page on this site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:41, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support all but the adding a good map, because the definitions of what is a "good map" can vary. Here's my suggestion:
1 point for adding a dynamic map with a specific map centre
3 points for every mapmask or geoline added using geojson.io.
3 points for every good static map made for a region article.
5 points for every exceptional static map (i.e. static maps that are very detailed, such as the one on Cocos (Keeling) Islands)
This is based on the time it takes to produce each one of these. Adding a dynamic map with a good map centre only takes a minute and can be considered as "good". Adding mapmasks or geolines take time (the one on E8 took me about two hours to trace). Static maps take time, but you can always get away with making a cheap one, which is why "exceptional" static maps have a higher weighting. The same with geolines in park articles, which also take a lot of time (but you have to do it several times).
Otherwise, I strongly support the disclaimer and will put it in a disclaimerbox, but otherwise, your other suggestions LGTM. That's all I have for now. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)23:07, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've added Ikan Kekek's and my proposed wordings for now, just so we can get an idea of what the page would look like. Please adjust as necessary, and remember that it can always be amended need it be. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)23:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest keeping the list very simple. Anything that we can measure automagically is much better than anything that requires someone to check every single edit and assign a point value to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Of course that's easier, but having the work be subject to a discussion after the end of the contest will result in much more substantive results, right? Do you feel that any of the suggestions SHB2000 or I made are overly complicated? If so, please suggest a rephrasing or propose any substitution or different lineup you think could be more useful or appropriate. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:06, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed; even though some of these are subjective (unlike the Explore Africa project), it ultimately results in a better outcome, which is what we want.
A suggestion for the static maps, would it make sense to have a !vote on whether a certain map should be worth three or five points, somewhat along the lines of COM:FPC? Another thing to note is that we should be a bit lenient with static maps as we have few users who can make static maps (if I'm not mistaken, only Sbb1413 and I routinely make static maps every now and then). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)01:20, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am in favor of keeping things fairly simple. We are volunteers, and the time we spend calculating points is time that we don't spend making our normal contributions.
Also, given the experience with the African expedition, do we want to include creating new articles at all, or as a bigger/more important thing than editing existing articles? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I hope that it will. That's why I started it. But I'm also responsible for a bit on the English Wikipedia called "Nobody reads the directions", because I don't think that most people read such things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Would "10-year anniversary edit-a-thon (English-language)" work, or should we do one central notice for the entire project and have User:Galahad as the primary contact? If we have a separate notice for the English-language site, would you want to be the primary contact? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:16, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The ideal would be a centralnotice for the entire contest. After all, the banner will be translated into the three participating languages (English, Spanish and Chinese). Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy)01:21, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The detail is that in the centralnotice it would not be possible to place the translated logo. The alternative would be to place either the logo in Spanish (which is already available) and create the application or wait to have the logo in English and proceed from there. Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy)01:53, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, I don't see why we can't have the logo in Espagnol. After all, Wikimedia is supposed to be multilingual, which means not favouring one specific language over another (there are some exceptions like the ToU or certain policies, though). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)01:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We can also request multiple banners. It doesn't have to be the same banner for each language.
BTW, CentralNotice banners run per user-interface language, not according to the content language of the wiki. Because of my settings in Special:GlobalPreferences, I'll see the English version at every wiki. It might be good for the landing page to link to other languages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Since the English Wikipedia has switched to the new Vector skin, should we make it a default as well? Wikivoyage looks amazing with the new skin - it looks less like a wiki page and more like an actual travel guide. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have no love for the new Wikipedia look, with its totally unnecessary white space on the right, and if we changed to it, we'd instantly have problems with images, wouldn't we? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I also found it terrible, spent several minutes tweaking settings, not really knowing what happened. This new skin is ugly and unwanted. I wish I could program my browser to display the old one. Ibaman (talk) 16:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I don't mind the skin too much. Sure, the default margin settings are complete crap, I can agree with that much. There is however a button in the bottom right of all pages that overwrites the maximum page width settings and maximises the content, which I suspect might fix Ikan's main issue. With that enabled, I honestly find Vector 2022 a quite decent skin, and I would argue that that 'max-width' mode ought to be the default over the 'compacted' mode. The only real downsides I can see would be:
The skin doesn't work well with templates like {{Pagebanner}}, the TOC of which is small to the point of illegibility.
The sidebar doesn't use the full page height, nor does it include some of the more essential items that were in the old-Vector sidebar.
I've used both versions, and am reaching the point of not really noticing which wiki is using which. If you all want, I could ask my teammate to run his voluntary opt-in banners over here.
Wauteurz, what are you missing in the sidebar (which, BTW, I tend to keep collapsed in the newer skin)? The interlanguage links move from the bottom left to the top right, but I think everything is still present somewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: My issue with the sidebar is, to be fair, functionality that old Vector didn't have either. I think it'd be nice if some elements of the side bar like the more used links (Get involved, Tools) would be pinned in the sidebar. I know it's only a small bother, but I've never really liked having to scroll back up to the top of an article to get back to the main page, recent changes or the pub. -- Wauteurz (talk) 15:15, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I tend not to use the sidebar for those purposes. I type the page name in my search bar. That said, on a Mac, ControlโOptionโr takes you to Special:RecentChanges from any page, and if you use that page a lot, it'd probably be worth figuring out the equivalent for your web browser. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm one of the believers who think the new vector skin is hideous and would oppose implementing it until the issues raised with it earlier have been resolved. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)22:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I support changing to the new skin, although that feels like throwing a rock at a tank lol. I can fix the issues with the pagebanner if there is ever consensus to change (and someone gives me permissions). New Vector is easier to navigate, more accessible, and will be updated going forward. All the improvements are listed here. The narrower margins were selected for human factors reasons, and more comfortable reading. Check out Bringhurst if that's a wormhole that you're interested going down. ButteBag (talk) 19:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I admit I don't understand the complaints about the text width. Wikis are hard to read at full screen width. I've been using New Vector here for a while and it seems fine aside from the pagebanners. Powers(talk)18:39, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm aware of the current problems with Vector 2022, but they will be fixed eventually (in some manner). It's a good idea to change to the only skin that will keep receiving support. Better sooner than later, so that everyone can get used to it because it will have to happen eventually. Wikivoyage guides are supposed to look good when printed, and on the new skin the page looks more similar to the printed version, precisely due to the text width. It also helps identify problematic areas regarding formatting, possibly unnecessary tables that have never looked good on many modern devices etc. Alalch E. (talk) 23:42, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone who wants to switch to the new skin need only click on this link:
Note that clicking on this link will automagically and durably change your preferences. If you want to switch back, you can go to the "Appearance" section of Special:Preferences.
If you just want to see the new skin, but not change your prefs long-term, then try this temporary link:
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It seems that their behaviour has been unacceptable and that they don't understand how social interaction works, but I still wonder whether a ban is needed. I am not going to fight this ban, but I am a bit worried that as soon as you get blocked on two projects (perhaps for bad reasons, on projects that aren't your main ones), you can get a global ban with more or less nobody defending you, as those interested are those who try to get you banned. โLPfi (talk) 10:30, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, that would be pointless. We could try not to get them globally banned, but if I am to take that fight, I'll try to take it for somebody who isn't themself their worst enemy in this. โLPfi (talk) 22:40, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying that a global ban that blocks them here is pointless. But maybe I'm wrong. It certainly doesn't matter for this site, though, anyway. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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Regarding the proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing, the Foundation intends to strengthen its tools to support existing community policies against marketing companies engaged in systematic, undisclosed paid editing campaigns.
Finally, regarding new laws, the last ToU update was in 2015, and that update was a single item regarding paid editing. The last thorough revision was in 2012. While the law affecting hosting providers has held steady for some time, with the recent passage of the EUโs Digital Services Act, we are seeing more significant changes in the legal obligations for companies like the Foundation that host large websites. So with a decade behind us and the laws affecting website hosts soon changing, we think itโs a good time to revisit the ToU and update them to bring them up to current legal precedents and standards.
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Just FYI, if everything goes perfectly, this could take as little as 90 seconds, but a few minutes is the most likely outcome. Don't close your tabs if you get the warning message. Just hang out for five or ten minutes and try again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reminder: Office hours about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use
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This is bit of a weird one, but owing to this bug (which has finally been fixed), would anyone have any idea of how to get a list of WV articles ranked by the last time they were edited? Or something of that sort? I'm looking for a list of barely-edited pages, of which, on here, there are a lot. Brycehughes (talk) 01:34, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To elaborate, the REST mobile API has been delivering ancient versions of Wikivoyage pages for years due to the bug mentioned above (this was particularly annoying given the pandemic and all the changes that occurred then). Now they've fixed it. However, they can't just do a full cache purge such that every Wikivoyage article is suddenly up-to-date in the REST API. Instead, each page cache will be purged individually once it is edited. So, okay, no worries on articles like Madrid, we'll get an edit pretty soon, and the cache will be purged and Madrid will be up-to-date. But we have thousands of pages that are rarely edited, which means their caches might not be purged for months, if not years. And this wouldn't be such a big deal but this has been a bug since at least 2019, and we're getting really old versions of pages, even for articles that are edited at least once a year. So, the WM development team has kindly offered to write a bot that will dummy edit a large list of rarely-edited Wikivoyage pages, such that their caches are purged and we finally get up-to-date articles. But I'd somehow need to make a list of articles based on their last-edit date or something similar. If anyone has any ideas about this I'd really appreciate it. Brycehughes (talk) 13:06, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I assume the best way is to check a database dump. The size should be manageable, and you could skip any actual content, just looking at the metadata. โLPfi (talk) 13:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It shouldn't be too difficult to find a null bot. User:Joe's Null Bot is one (and the note about it being broken may be about three years out of date). @DannyS712 might know if there are any others currently in service, as I remember him planning to write one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
LPfi and WhatamIdoing: thanks. Honestly I'm thinking I don't really see the point of doing a dummy-edit bot on "rarely-edited" pages. Why won't we just do it on all pages. It's Wikivoyage, not Wikipedia... there's not a ton of articles. We could just dummy-edit everything imho. Even at one page per second it should only take a few days. Anyway, I'll interface with the WM dev team and see what they need. Thanks for the help. (Oh btw LPfi I'm an idiot... I've used those dumps before... I just forgot about them. Cheers.) Brycehughes (talk) 22:49, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you are doing a dummy edit on all pages, it would be better if you could avoid the pages that have recently been edited (say within the last month). You will flood people's watchlists. I am happy to ignore all the edits by your bot, if I know that there hasn't been another recent edit. Otherwise there is the possibility of a vandal hiding behind your edits. I don't want to ignore all bit edits, as some like InternetArchiveBot require follow-up action. AlasdairW (talk) 00:09, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you do just null edits, then they won't show up on watchlists. According to the Joe's Null Bot page and its links, I assume they'd be enough. If you need to do dummy edits, then flooding watchlists will be a problem. With a significantly slower pace โ which might be possible if only part of our articles are updated โ it could make people notice some interesting articles in need of love. โLPfi (talk) 10:27, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A null edit is just clicking save, without having done any changes. The edit will not show in recent changes, watchlists or the history, but updates some caches. A dummy edit is one with some irrelevant change (usually removing some invisible whitespace), but as a change is made, it will show in the history, and thus allow a visible edit summary. โLPfi (talk) 19:00, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@LPfi, WhatamIdoing, AlasdairW, Mx. Granger: Null edits will effectively flush the mobile caches, apparently. What's the opinion on running a null edit bot (like User:Joe's Null Bot, if not exactly Joe's Null Bot) very slowly on all pages? The edits won't show up on people's watchlists and all mobile caches will eventually be flushed and the articles will be up-to-date from then on (since bug T226931 is fixed). Personally, I'd be fine with it running so slowly that it took a month. Brycehughes (talk) 11:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Different measures differ in what caches they purge. One should check with a few manual edits on articles with this problem before doing something large-scale. Do you have an idea about how many pages we have, and how many of those are edited any single month or couple of months? I didn't find the relevant statistics. I assume a large portion of pages are untouched for years; if a majority of pages have outdated pages in the cash, then purging the cache for all is no big difference compared to purging only those in need of a purge, but if there are many pages that don't need a purge, then one might want to target the right ones. LPfi (talk) 14:07, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
andree: manual purge probably works also. I can ask WM development whether that's a better option over null edits. LPfi, this has been tested, reasonably extensively, while bug T226931 was being resolved. The problem is obtaining a list of pages that need purging. It would require writing a parser, sorter (by last edit), truncator and formatter for something like enwikivoyage-20230201-stub-meta-current.xml.gz or Andree's suggestion of API:Allpages that we would then run through a bot. However, given that this is Wikivoyage and 1) the total number of articles is not huge and 2) I would assume that the number of articles that are rarely edited and therefore out-of-date on the REST API is quite high relative to the number of articles that are frequently edited and therefore not out-of-date since the bug fix. So, my proposal is just to run a null edit bot, slowly, on all pages, and if it null edits those pages that have been recently edited, no harm done. By the way, this problem is not just mine. Other organisations have been complaining about it (see the bug report) for years now too. So it would really help whole WV REST API user community if we could get all these pages up to date. Running a null bot (or manual purge or whatever that doesn't affect the watchlists) slowly on all pages seems relatively harmless to me, since we know (by testing) that this will purge the caches and won't affect the watchlists, and it seems by far the easiest solution. I just don't know if there's some potential problem here that I'm overlooking... am I? Brycehughes (talk) 15:07, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK. It seems we have 171,411 pages, of which 32,520 are articles. One null edit a second, covering the articles would take a day, with one edit a minute, a few weeks. LPfi (talk) 15:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
LPfi: Whatever everyone here is comfortable with. I'm happy with a day. I'm happy with a month. Is there a list of just article names anywhere? (Don't care about pages.) Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 16:00, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm that gives a line count of 62210, so I guess it includes redirects. Anyone know where I can find a list without redirects? There is a "Redirect List" that I thought I could just diff with the original file, but it's just some useless SQL code. Brycehughes (talk) 16:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
andree I'll see if I can find one within the next few days (all the examples i've noticed so far i've already either dummy edited or had the WM devs purge the cache). They're a bit hard to find, because 1) they're rarely edited pages, 2) they'd have had to have been edited sometime within the past couple years, and 3) I'd have to try to notice the difference between the two versions. I might fail at this. Although, I can promise you're they're out there... unless your geo template edit worked, in which case that would work fine for my purposes (although might not help the other organisations that complain about this โย maybe a null edit on IsPartOf or something would work better, if your null edit worked). I'll ask the WV dev team if they think just null editing common templates would work via transclusion. Brycehughes (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WM has some kind "load balancing", relatively routinely some template changes refreshed basically whole WV and probably noone noticed. I'd say there's no need to be overly cautious, if this is a once-in-month or so action, a few articles/second is probably plenty slow... -- andree17:05, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter what we are comfortable with; what matters is what Tech/Ops is comfortable with. Since this is (relative to their infrastructure) a smaller wiki, for a one-time-only action, I suspect that the one-per-second level would be fine with them, and I'm certain that one-per-minute would have no significant effects on performance. That said, they're really nice people, and we could just ask them directly. Sometimes they even have useful advice (like not doing it on a particular date because they're running a server switch then). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you want to host an in-person or virtual session at Wikimania 2023? Maybe a hands-on workshop, a lively discussion, a fun performance, a catchy poster, or a memorable lightning talk? Submissions are open until March 28. The event will have dedicated hybrid blocks, so virtual submissions and pre-recorded content are also welcome. If you have any questions, please join us at an upcoming conversation on March 12 or 19, or reach out by email at wikimania@wikimedia.org or on Telegram. More information on-wiki.
Which could be quite useful. However, it only takes into account actual articles and not any listing within articles, and therefore only comes up with a few results as in this example.
That's kind of a fun article. It raises a questions in my mind....What range is appropriate for determining if a place should be considered a good weekend destination from any particular city? I'm kind of thinking that weekend getaways should be within about 3 hours driving distance. Wonder what y'all think... Mrkstvns (talk) 15:11, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds fair. Perhaps another way of saying it is: People should be able to finish their workday at a usual hour on Friday (say, 5:00 p.m.), go home to prepare for the trip (whether that means a quick dinner, dropping the dog at a friend's house, collecting the kids, or whatever else is needed; so, 6:00 p.m.), and then check into a hotel with enough time to get settled before a normal bedtime (say, 10:00 p.m. bedtime, so 9:30 p.m. check-in).
Three-ish hours on a (frequent) train sounds equally good to me. I think that if you have to fly there, it's not a reasonable weekend destination. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd extend that to at least 4 hours. Boston is a reasonable weekend trip from New York, and it's over 4 hours away by bus. Ditto for D.C. As for flying, I'm not sure about that. Would Germans consider the Canary Islands a reasonable weekend trip? You can't get there quickly by boat. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:48, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weekend visits to cities such as Prague or Budapest (by plane from Finland) were not too unusual before the pandemics. Probably more people would think twice nowadays, but I would be surprised if such visits have ended. โLPfi (talk) 22:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weekend road trips interstate were (and still are) very uncommon from Sydney unless it's a trip to Canberra, which isn't really interstate, but that shouldn't come out as a surprise given the closest state border is over 550 km by road (excl. Canberra), or about 5.5 hours and flights are inconvenient for a two-day trip. Like Ikan, I also agree that 4 hours is around the max. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)05:30, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A little less than an hour to get to the airport (by train from the central station โ the train ride is just half an hour, but you have to get to the train station first), plan for a bit more than an hour to get through the Helsinki airport, more than two hours in the air, another hour to get out of the airport and to your hotel โ that's five hours' travel time, even if everything goes well, which seems like a bit much for me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you are right. It seems those "weekend in Prague" flights require taking Friday off, both in marketing (even some MโW journeys are marketed as weekend ones!) and weekend journeys people are talking about. In Finland it is quite common to have four days off; some holidays are always on Thursday, others may happen to be, and offices are quite empty on those Fridays. People still mostly regard them as weekends. Of course you won't get a bargain flight at those times. โLPfi (talk) 09:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In Europe it is not unusual to be able to finish early on a Friday. I can finish work at noon on a Friday, if I have worked longer hours in the rest of the week. So a 4-6 hour journey would be possible occasionally. I sometimes go to a remote hostel for the weekend that involves 4 hours on a train then 30 minutes walking. AlasdairW (talk) 23:50, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Same in Germany, we call that a "long weekend" (langes Wochenende). I'd expect most of the more catholic countries to have a couple of Thursdays and/or Mondays off. El Grafo (talk) 14:31, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My recent view of Mt.Kenya plus the Buffalos
I recently visited Sweet Waters at Olpejata conservacy in Nanyuki. What caught my eyes is how close the animals were from my tent.
It was a beautifu scene to view the magnificent Mt.Kenya in all her glory. The buffalos were walking majestically outside my tent and a short electric barbed wired fence came between us. I highly recommend everyone to Visit. I stayed at Serena Sweet Waters Camp. Amazing Esther Baraga (talk) 13:37, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mt.Kenya Show Off
Welcome, @Esther Baraga. It sounds like it was a wonderful trip, and I like the photo you uploaded to Commons. I wonder if you could add a little information to Nanyuki for us? Since you were just there, it might be easy for you to write a little bit. The ==Understand== section could use a short description, and surely there's a good local restaurant for the ==Eat== section? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 23 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is basically a workaround to get the GPS coordinates of the related OSM relation. I am open to any other approach here on WV, but I tried including trails on WV with the OSM-Wikidata-listing combination, but it will only be displayed in the WV mapframe but cannot be downloaded through the GPX icon in the top right corner.
Also, we would need a solution where trails are potentially separateable, not all cramped into one GPX.
Maybe a listing feature that adds download icons at its end, in case the wikidata-osm object is a hiking trail, like there is a wikidata or wikipedia icon after markers with existing entries.
I'm not sure adding gpx/kml download to all such listings is a good idea, perhaps some sweep and random pre-check would be good here. But such an icon alongside WD/WP icons sounds handy in general. -- andree06:07, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your contribution to Wikivoyage
Hey, you would like to contribute to Wikivoyage, but you don't know what to do currently?
I've got something for you:
The 'Eat' listings in the most-clicked city articles could need an URL. So the reader can find out by the website if he/she would like to go there. All the listings are up to date, so you won't have difficulties to find the restaurant and its URL.
How to do it:
Go to the Eat section of the popular city article
Go to Google or Google Maps and put in the name of the restaurant and the name of the street. Check if the stated URL of Google Maps is the still the right one. If not, Google may help.
Copy the URL (preferably it's website or Facebook page, otherwise an online ordering website is okay)
in Wikivoyage you can add the URL either by clicking on the 'edit' button at the end of each listing. Or you do it in the source code ('Edit' button behind the headline "Eat")
when you're finished you can add this symbol โ๏ธ behind the city name of the list further below
For example for Birmingham:
Copy 'Grand Central Kitchen, 7 Stephenson St' and paste it in Google Maps
Click on the button 'copy website', check and paste https://grand-central-kitchen.business.site/ into the listing.
FWIW, many Google Maps urls are often out-of-date or use the http website. Searching the listing up is much better than using Google Maps, Flightnavigator. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)22:52, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, we don't have it, and I don't see how we could. Can we do better than Lifehack? The linked article does not impress me though. Yes, prices are high. Yes, this is the season to book your vacation flights unless you have done so already (or don't need them). Although told nowhere in the Lifehack story, their sources seem to ignore anything but the USA. We should cover most of the globe.
We could, of course, write lighthearted columns in the spirit of a travel magazine, but is that where we want to compete? If we want to do it better than that? Serious stories require serious journalism. Do we have the expertise? Do people want to invest the work needed?
*Lifehacker. And yes, as you pointed out, we should have global scope. Similarly, I'm suggesting a normative thing we should have. If you imagine the best possible digital travel guide, it would include dynamic maps and the ability to make routes on them, more-or-less stable travel information, up-to-date advisories and tips and tricks, etc. It's possible that the resources don't exist here to do all that as of now, I'm just suggesting that there's another vector of making the best possible travel guide that we may not have comprehended and since this is all volunteer labor, there may be someone who is particularly motivated to do that work. โJustin (koavf)โคTโฎCโบMโฏ20:12, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps, and perhaps resources can be gathered and tools built to gather data from better sources than The Point Guy and Hopper. Some tips and tricks, such as the best timing for cheap flight tickets, are already embedded in our travel topics. โLPfi (talk) 06:55, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the approximate costs for common items at this location. Last update: Apr 24, 2023
Beer (1 pint)
$8
Meal (sit-down)
$25-60
Public transit
$2.40
Blue jeans
$54
Hotel (1 night)
$320
Any interest in a template similar to {{eatPriceRange}}? Where editors could enter something like this? {{relativePriceRange
| beer = $8
| meal = $25-60
| transit = $2.40
| jeans = $54
| hotel = $320
| lastedit = 2023-04-24
}}
The template could start with keys like "beer", "meal", "transit", "jeans", "show", "coffee", "museum", "hotel". Or maybe we already have this lol? ButteBag (talk) 14:42, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I remember seeing it in some country articles, not as a template but as an infobox. If we implement it on a large scale someone needs to be prepared to update it regularly, just like the currency infoboxes. Especially for countries like Argentina with high inflation. Ypsilon (talk) 18:33, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How is the cost of a meal determined? Here in New York, you could get noodles somewhere like Flushing for well under $10, but that's not otherwise common and the sky's the limit. Jeans, hotels, etc. vary widely in price, too, and in the case of hotels, time of year is a big consideration. Beer is irrelevant in places like Saudi Arabia. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:42, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I was thinking this would be useful at the Huge City level, not at the Country level. Thanks for bringing that up. That way readers could see the dramatically different price points between NYC and Columbus, OH for example. The idea is to put a price against a basic good or service found in the See/Do/Buy/Eat/Sleep sections. Numbeo does something similar; but to ikan's point, maybe the range of prices would be too wide and become meaningless. If a huge city was a dry town, leave out the beer listing, and so on. Another way of thinking about it: the "Big Mac Index" is imprecise, but it still provides some value to readers. ButteBag (talk) 19:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It would work for some smaller countries and city articles, but for larger countries like China or India, the price range can differ massively between subnational jurisdictions. Also, how do we define a pint? In the US, a pint is 473 mL, while it's 570 mL in most of Australia (whereas it's 425 mL in South Australia). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a pint is 568 mL(?) in the UK? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)23:10, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I was envisioning only using this template on Huge City articles, not country articles due to the massive price difference issue you mention. I think the answer to the "how many ml in a pint" question is be too detailed & into the weeds for this template. Thanks! ButteBag (talk) 00:16, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Where you buy things & what brand you choose also matters. Here in the Philippines, local beer is about $1 in a supermarket, under $2 in most bars, but most imported brands are at least twice that. For food, a cheap meal (local hole-in-the-wall, or fast food chain) is $2-4, but nicer places are $5-25. Pashley (talk) 23:20, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, yeah I wanted to put "Levis 501 jeans" instead of blue jeans, but I wasn't sure adding brandnames is the way to go. Maybe the key copy should be slightly more descriptive like: "Beer (draft)", "Meal (street)", "Meal (sit-down)", etc. I would not have an exhaustive list, just 5-9 of the most popular/relevant items for a given city. Thanks! ButteBag (talk) 00:25, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say brand names are a very bad idea. I think there are places where Levis are not available, certainly there are some where knock-offs are more common than the real thing, and probably many where a local brand is a better buy than a pricey import. Pashley (talk) 01:32, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In particular, I'd object strongly to using the "Big Mac Index". In my view, you'd have to be crazy to even consider MacDonalds when Malay satay, Mid-east shawarma etc. are both cheaper & far better. Pashley (talk) 02:01, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We do have text in some places that mentions price differences, e.g. at Olango_Island#Drink:
Many of the small roadside stores have soft drinks and beer, and these are generally cheaper than the resorts. At Sagastrand, for example, either the restaurant or the minibar in your room will provide a 330 ml (12 imp fl oz; 11 US fl oz) bottle of any of San Miguel's three main beers โ Pilsen, Light or the stronger and darker Red Horse โ for โฑ65, and the restaurant has other beers as well. The little shop across the street sells a liter (1000 ml) of Red Horse for โฑ90, but that is the only beer they offer.
About Big Macs - the thing is, there's way better food in the U.S., too, and a lot of it is not expensive (good deli sandwiches, slices of decent pizza, a hearty soup in an inexpensive eatery, etc.). Plus, I'm aware that McDonald's has some local offerings in countries like Malaysia and India, though I never tried them, because I never eat at McDonald's anywhere. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:10, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok so restated again, is it worth having a new template featuring a rough approximation of the price for a good or service within a given location, ideally within the Understand section of huge city articles?
See -> "Museum"
Do -> "Tour"
Buy -> "Blue jeans"
Eat -> "Meal (budget)", "Meal (mid-range)"
Drink -> "Beer (draft)"
Sleep -> "Hotel"
We would need to include a "last updated" date field. We could also include a "see definitions" link at the bottom that would expand to show a paragraph of text defining the specifics of each term. Eg.. A "Hotel" is one night of double occupancy, taxes and fees included. A "Tour" is the typical tourist bus driving you around the city center. etc...
Would this provide value to travellers? Too general and thereby unhelpful? Would it go out of date too quickly? Too much work for editors? ButteBag (talk) 13:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also has anyone seen this? Numbeo. Looks like it's designed for people considering moving from City A to City B. I thought something similar here might be useful for travellers, but maybe any cost listed would be too general to be useful. ButteBag (talk) 14:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder to what degree their figures are trustworthy. It is at least partly crowdsourced, and I don't know whether we should trust those providing prices to have the same understanding of "mid-range restaurant" or "apartment (1 bedroom)" as Numbeo or as the reader. For something like "Average Monthly Net Salary (After Tax)" they might use official statistics, but especially if they trust individual users, I wouldn't trust them.
There is a whole can of worms (to say the least!) with concepts such as "net salary". For one: are pension and healthcare fees paid by the employer separate from the salary, included in the "tax", paid as compulsory fees deducted from the "net" salary or paid as privately arranged from the salary received?. Does Numbeo have people who understand these issues and can make a fair comparison across countries?
I live in Turku, a city of some 200,000 + suburbs. Here you could probably get Chinese blue jeans for $20 or less in some supermarkets, while jeans would cost $100 in the shop closest to my home. Local history museums in the countryside (some of which might be included in the article) might cost โฌ5 while Aboa Vetus costs โฌ15. Beer varies quite much between the national bulk brands, Czech import and local artisan beer. One restaurant I checked has salmon soup for โฌ16, cheese salads for โฌ20, fish for โฌ20โ30, steak for โฌ30โ40 and menus for โฌ50โ60. Most hotels don't give prices other than if you specify dates and group size (to get a price for a listing, one needs to try weekdays and weekends and on and off season, but then either may be far in the future, affecting the price).
You can of course specify in detail what you want to buy, but that has the problem of the Mac Index (locally sensible offers don't fit). Budget meals might work, if you take the cheapest one, but for hamburgers, the cheapest offers don't take away your hunger. How hungry are you?
Side note: Technically speaking, I can't see anything "relative" about the way the prices/ranges are being presented here. What is that supposed to mean? --El Grafo (talk) 12:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Or to typical meals in the city. For comparisons across cities the problem of comparing apples to oranges is emphasised: different contributors who visit different kinds of restaurant and choose different dishes. โLPfi (talk) 15:06, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like this template isn't worth doing, since the costs provided would be interpreted as too ambiguous, and the accompanying copy defining what a "beer" is would be too long. Maybe the solve is simply to add a "Costs" sub-section under "Understand"? Would something like this be useful?
===Costs===
New York City has a very high cost-of-living in 2023, so visitors should adjust their budget expectations accordingly. For meals you might head to Flushing to find $10 street noodles, but a more average sit-down price will run you around $20-30. A night in an average double occupancy hotel could set you back $180-200; hostels are a bit cheaper, although prices fluctuate with the weather and the sky's the limit during high-season holidays. Entrance fees for popular museums and tourist sites are between $30-50 each, or splash out on a tourist pass for $140. Entrance to some of the nicer nightclubs is about $10, $30 on weekends. If you imbibe, hoisting a pint is around $8 and mixed drinks are about twice that. To get from point to point, throw in another $50 a day for subway fare and a cab rides. All in, an average visitor could be looking at spending around $320-350 per day. It is possible to go cheaper, of course. To get down to $100 per day you'll need to walk everywhere, cut out restaurants, and avoid most museums.ButteBag (talk) 16:35, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that could be useful. I am surprised at the small range in hotel prices. Maybe a sit-down coffee would be a better drink to give prices for, as there tends to be less variation in cafe prices than there is in pub beer prices, and should work even in dry destinations. AlasdairW (talk) 17:07, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like this better, too. As an aside, though, $20 is very optimistic for most sit-down meals in Manhattan. I would start those at $25. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:17, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The second paragraph of Turku#Eat (just before the subsections) reads:
"Lunch offers, meals at kebab-pizzerias and fast food meals (including drinks and chips) usually cost โฌ8.50โ12.50. Simpler proper restaurant meals of some simple pasta, a soup or a salad, with water or a soft drink, are usually around โฌ10โ20. For meals with a high-grade steak and good wine, expect to pay at least โฌ30โ60. Proper restaurants are often open [...]"
I assume there already to be similar price information in many articles. A costs overview in Buy/Costs might be a good idea in some articles, but I think I prefer to leave most price information to the other subsections (Eat, Drink, Sleep), especially as it is more likely to be updated there. The overview could compare the city to the rest of the region and similar cities elsewhere in the country, and perhaps present some strategies to keep costs down: "there are cheap hotels and restaurants in X, which is 15 min from the centre by metro (consider the day pass)".
Yeah I was assuming there is already cost information under Eat/Sleep/See/Do/Buy in many articles today. I think it's helpful to add a cost overview section with a brief summary of all the costs in a given article. Would it be ok if I add a bullet point to the Skeleton Sections article?
Climate
Costs (for city articles, summarize average prices within article subsections)
The next stage in the Universal Code of Conduct process is establishing a Building Committee to create the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). The Building Committee has been selected. Read about the members and the work ahead on Meta-wiki.
We are glad to announce the new members and advisors of the Elections Committee. The Elections Committee assists with the design and implementation of the process to select Community- and Affiliate-Selected trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. After an open nomination process, the strongest candidates spoke with the Board and four candidates were asked to join the Elections Committee. Four other candidates were asked to participate as advisors.
Thank you to all the community members who submitted their names for consideration. We look forward to working with the Elections Committee in the near future.
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees,
It seems she is one of the tourists "others" are, not the traveller for which travel is meaningful. She went to the falcon hospital because that's what people do, not because that was an opportunity you have while in Abu Dhabi (and it seemed to be a tourist trap rather than a charity, which is a point: tourists change their destinations). I think she has a point about seeing the Mona Lisa while generally uninterested in art; if you don't drink wine at home, visiting a wine tasting in France is little use unless you really want to learn from the experience. I also think there is an important point about visiting a sight to get a magical experience that matches one's expectations (or an expert's view) โ on this one I need to ponder. Lastly, as a tourist you don't get to know the locals, as a traveller you might. The author does not seem to have considered that kind of travel. So, routine travel to go to Paris and to see a glimpse of Mona Lisa, or to lie on a beautiful beach, doesn't change you. Travelling with an open mind might. โLPfi (talk) 08:30, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
She has some few valid points, the falconry and Mona Lisa experiences among them. Overall, I think her key message is that it's simply bizarre that we treat all travel as some sort of "magical", "profound", "transformative" thing. Near the end, she writes:
"Travel is fun, so it is not mysterious that we like it. What is mysterious is why we imbue it with a vast significance, an aura of virtue."
It's a valid question; people describe themselves as "travellers" for a reason, and the distinction between "tourist" and "traveller" has never been more blurry. Nobody who claims to be an influencer uses the title "tourist", and nobody goes around parties introducing themselves as a tourist. Maybe we need to start reminding people that if they're travelling, but not meaningfully, they're just sparkling tourists.
I don't think any of this really matters. If someone likes riding around in a big bus from landmark to landmark to restaurants with English menus, all the power to them. Perhaps the writer just wants the rest of us to call these tourists out on their boring stories so she doesn't have to hear them anymore. Gregsmi11 (talk) 09:59, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I thought I was missing something deeper there. What a needlessly convoluted way to approach this ... but I guess this kind of stuff "sells" better if you keep it fuzzy and throw in a famous philosopher or two. El Grafo (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You are trying to get somewhere; everyone else is traffic. You are trying to see the world; everyone else is tourists. (Opening by quoting Chesterson in the New Yorker is certainly a move. Her Specialty of Ancient Philosophy really shines through there hahaha) There's definitely something to taking a deeper a approach to travel, and I enjoy her philosophical approach. Just the way that this sort of thing is usually framed makes it seem more like a fashion choice; "oh I'm so much more cultured than the people that think they are cultured because they only did the surface level stuff in country xyz, whereas I did the slightly more obscure stuff." Ease off of the ego and that insecurity disappears.
Also: People don't have to have the same values. One person could say "I'm going to <major tourist destination> because I want to immerse myself in the culture". Another person could say "I'm going there, too, because I want to treat myself to a pleasant experience" or "I'm going there, too, because in the past, I never traveled anywhere without my family, but my husband died last year, and I want a tourist-friendly destination for my first-ever solo trip". These people aren't bad, even if she indirectly sneers at them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I need to debug something with the WMF REST API (not yet sure if the problem's on my end or their end), so I've created a test page I can play around with at User:Brycehughes/test. To properly test it, I probably need to more-or-less copy an entire article into the test page (e.g. Christchurch). I am wondering, if I copy an article into my test page, are there any templates that I should ensure I don't copy over? I'd hate to pollute any lists or categories (etc.) with my test page. Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 12:21, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not explicitly a template, but if a page has previously been featured, please remove |dotm=yes, |otbp=yes or |ftt=yes from the pagebanner template as it messes up the categories. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)12:27, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing, yes (although not in detail), and this might fix some of the problems (who knows?). I am not aware of any end-user migration requirements/docs... are you? (If not, I'll ping WMF just to make sure). Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 09:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'll just add that, I get the sense that this is mostly a backend thing, not affecting the user-end calls (i.e. REST in the abstract, in this case). But I really don't know. I try to subscribe to as much as I can. Their REST (not RestBase) docs have really improved over the last year or so, so my thinking is that they're not about to do some immediate deprecation, post-launch. But hey, it's WMF, half-absolute-brilliance, half-literally-wtf... so we'll see what happens. Brycehughes (talk) 17:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It might be worth getting the whole story, if you're planning to do much work. I haven't heard of any plans to remove the API, but it's also not the sort of thing I'd expect to hear about until it was over.
"Deprecation" has twice now involved a waiting/warning period of seven years(!), followed by total shock and surprise by editors that those console errors had any meaning, so it's possible that someday they'll try a different approach, like intermittent outages. I know that's been talked about for m:IP masking, but I'm hoping they'll go with some of the other ideas in that case. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:19, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing Yeah. I mean we're dealing with an Alexa top 20 website with engineers whom I'm sure are deeply underpaid; do it for the passion. I asked a question on the support website, no worth linking because literally no one seems to know. So you take what you get. Free content comes with an asterisk, eh? Brycehughes (talk) 17:28, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Several templates will add articles to categories. As Categories are generally hidden on Wikivoyage, this doesn't matter whilst you are doing the test. It would be good to remove them after you have finished testing, as there are special cases where categories are visible on a few pages. IsPartOf adds the article to the relevant region category (hidden unless you select "Show hidden categories" in Preferences > Appearance). The article status template (guidecity in the case of Christchurch), adds the article to three categories (in this case Guide cities, Guide articles and City articles). "Dead link" adds the article to . I don't know if any of these categories are set up to ignore user pages. AlasdairW (talk) 20:51, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder whether "travel to the southern hemisphere, to escape the summer heat" will become (more of) a thing in the coming years. (It won't be free, though.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:43, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the land in the Southern Hemisphere is in the tropics, though, but there may be an increased demand to the southern states of Australia and Brazil, ZA, NZ, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina during our winter sooner than later. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)22:41, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed that Australia at the moment has about as much UV radiation as we do in summer (except the north, which has much more). If it's the same with temperatures, then fleeing north makes more sense โ although I had a 25ยฐ+ experience last time I was in Lapland in JulyโAugust. Does one have to go to Svalbard or the American Arctic to get relief? โLPfi (talk) 10:29, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is not surprising that Darwin is warmer than Lapland, but even the temperatures in Melbourne would fit (Melbourne had 15ยฐ today, Inari 17ยฐ) โ I won't be surprised if Melbourne is warmer than Lapland some of our midsummer days. โLPfi (talk) 18:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In the last few years, we also experienced the Anthropocene in Germany. I haven't read the OP link, but I did already ask myself whether, for example, Nuuk in Greenland might become (more) popular for holidays. People I met have already said they will not travel to Italy again during the summer as it was way too hot (significantly higher than 40ยฐ C up to 47ยฐ C). Pm147-Sm152 (talk) 15:19, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the Destinations page at the Hebrew Wikivoyage has stopped showing ALL the pin marks that were previously shown on the dynamic map for that page. I figured out that this might be a temporary bug in our system so I decided to wait and see if the issue goes away after a while. Unfortunately it is still here.
I noticed that this issue does not exist in the Destinations page of the English Wikivoyage and the French Wikivoyage, but it currently does exist also on the Destination page of the Bengali Wikivoyage, Italian Wikivoyage, Portuguese Wikivoyage, Vietnamese Wikivoyage and Chinese Wikivoyage.
@RolandUnger: So what I understand from you is that in the future no Wikivoyage editions (including the English Wikivoyage and the French Wikivoyage) would be able to display ALL the pin marks on the dynamic map of the Destinations page due to a complete permanent revision of the Kartographer software? If that is the case, whom were the ones making this decision? Is there any way of talking directly to them? Why though hasn't these changes been made so far to the English and French Wikivoyage editions? ืืืงืื'ืื ืงื (talk) 11:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that the Kartographer software needs some major work. Major work sometimes means removing some features and/or adding others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:29, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But, logically, if they removed these features, this should have not worked in all Wikivoyage editions, right? The fact that this works on the English Wikivoyage and French Wikivoyage gives me hope that it could work in other editions as well. Unless the other editions of Wikivoyage were specifically banned from using this feature. ืืืงืื'ืื ืงื (talk) 18:03, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is common to roll out changes on some small projects first, before enabling them on the big ones, to minimise disruption if there are problems. That is easy to do by enabling the new code โ and disabling the old โ by a configuration setting. I don't know what else this affects, but I assume it is about the different way of displaying markers, and it isn't deemed worthwhile to keep the old code for just a few pages, especially if it isn't compatible. It is possible that this should work with the new system, just that there is some bug or unnecessary limit breaking it. Otherwise there should be some other way to have a working destination page โ perhaps a better one. โLPfi (talk) 19:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If that is the case, this same change would probably be coming soon to the English Wikivoyage and French Wikivoyage as well... and when that would happen, the Wikivoyage community would figure out what to do? ืืืงืื'ืื ืงื (talk) 20:31, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I suppose so, unless it is a bug or configuration setting that is preventing a sensible display. It might be that the extension needs additional code to make this (or a different, functionally equivalent, page design) to work properly, and in that case it is good for us to get alerted already, to let the developers fix it in time (for us, in that case I assume the breakage will be there for some time for you). โLPfi (talk) 09:29, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Im not familiar with this issue but strongly advise opening a bug against Kartographer to get clearer answers around whether this breakage is intended and what your options are for restoring the functionality. It's possibly the maintainers are not aware of how they are impacting the projects.
Hi, I am posting the first time. Yes, I am aware this is a Pabricator thing, but kindly tell me if you are seeing the same hick-up: my home Wikivoyage is that of jawv, and as we are a tiny village of 70+ regular users, I decided to come to a large group here.
Sorry if any detail is missing when you would need to help me, and kindly point out if I can supply thank you, arigatล (=
When I push "Go" or any section title in Mobile view, nothing shows, or I mean the section does not roll open as I expect it to do. My settings are as follows on a mobile, and the same recreates on a PC (MacPro) + Firefox browser + Mobile view:
legacy Vector;
on iPhone_11 the latest OS;
open Minami Yลroppa (ja) (ๅใจใผใญใใ), or Southern Europe;
โ go down to ๅบใใใ (ja) or Go next;
On desktop view, there are several destinations listed, but not showing on mobile setting.
--Omotecho (talk) 06:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)FYI, for those comprehend Japanese language, we are running a Country Article contest at jawv, by continents. July is for Europe. d=(^o^)=b [reply]
@Omotecho, the blue navboxes normally don't show in mobile. Were you expecting them to be visible?
Hi, @WhatamIdoing, nice to have you come, and I owe you to disambiguate myself. My issue is not about the bluebox, but Legacy Vector and section contents. And/or if it is endemic to jawikivoyage?
OK back to Wikivoyage in ja, an article as a sample.
We apply section titles such as "Go" or "Eat" per skeleton templates (in this case in ja terms), and as contents, embed {{Marker}}: named go or eat or whatever suits that section.
On desktop view + Legacy Vector
Click/tap the section title, I see the contents, no problem.
Even on iPhone, when I change to Desktop view, I can enjoy the contents as well.
On mobile view + Legacy Vector.
Visa versa, on a PC or laptop, change to Mobile view, and no contents under section titles are displayed.
FYI, My peers at jawv points out that Legacy Vector issue on ja-wikipedia, they have seen the same issue, and reloading solves it.
Is Legacy Vector used on mobile at ja? Isn't the difference between desktop and mobile view that you use a different skin on mobile? Or are you looking at desktop view on mobile with Legacy Vector as your skin? โLPfi (talk) 09:59, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikimania 2023
The Wikimania is started. Tonight is the opening ceremony. I will do a presentation tomorrow about how we have integrated Wikivoyage at voy/de. Most presentation are live streamed as far as i know. Is somebody here in Singapore as well? Are the other things, problems I should talk about with somebody here? -- DerFussi04:24, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I will. My telegram chanel is public (but German) @Khmerfreak. But more travel related. Some more at Instagram (also: Khmerfreak). But I am sure commons will have a lot of pictures then. -- DerFussi07:22, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Enforcement Guidelines require a Building Committee form to draft a charter that outlines procedures and details for a global committee to be called the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). Over the past few months, the U4C Building Committee worked together as a group to discuss and draft the U4C charter. The U4C Building Committee welcomes feedback about the draft charter now through 22 September 2023. After that date, the U4C Building Committee will revise the charter as needed and a community vote will open shortly afterward.
Let's keep the initiative between linguistic communities and have our anniversary celebration every year! Since we have precedent with m:Wikivoyage 10, it is a matter of adapting to the needs of Wikivoyage 11. Again Wikimedia Small Projects will be supporting the campaign and will do all the cumbersome process of it globally. I think it would be good to know what we want in Wikivoyage 11, what content gaps in Wikivoyage to focus on and maybe something additional that I forget. Best, Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy)22:15, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd love a Wikivoyage 11, but let's hope they actually put a CentralNotice banner this time โ Wikivoyage 10 was a small-scale success, in that more articles were improved in a short period of time, but it was much less of a success than anticipated. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)10:52, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That was disappointing last time. I'm hearing that the CN admins are feeling rather overwhelmed, and that more than just our request was ignored. So, maybe we put in the request far in advance? They can be scheduled to start automatically on a given date/time.
Also, I found that the variety and complexity of our criteria were burdensome to evaluate. Trying that with more participants would require too much time. I think we should consider only options that can be tallied automagically (with the possibility of a manual override to disqualify pointless or harmful edits), ideally through a single tracking system (we used two different tracking systems last year). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this time the request for centralnotice will ideally be made in October, leaving September for discussion of all these points.
Regarding the other point, apart from those two, I don't see any other that could serve the purpose of the contest. Fountain serves for local edit-a-thon that follow the global rules, but an option should be evaluated for specific cases (as it happened last year).
We can simplify the rules and most go back to Wikivoyage 5, i.e. the Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage edit-a-thon 2018, which was much more successful. There was concern in Wikivoyage 10 that editors would gamify the contest, find shortcuts in the competition rules and make bad-quality edits but as long as the advertising banner targets established editors, you will mostly get high-quality edits. Some of the country-specific edit-a-thons had invited brand new editors who didn't know the policies of any wiki, let alone Wikivoyage which resulted in a misalignment of their edits with the rules and standards here. Gizza (roam)23:35, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The model used (judges being volunteers from that community) works quite well. We can extend the call to both registered and non-registered users.
The global rules base prevents any related concerns. While this year there were no prizes (beyond the certificate), the other year there is an expectation (WLM style). Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy)00:30, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage is accessed primarily through this main website, but there are also other ways that people access Wikivoyage, including through Wikimedia's REST API. The Wikimedia team has built a really nice API for you to access Wikivoyage through your phone: New York City, for example... nice and formatted for your phone (open it on your phone if you want... it will look nice!).
We have a bit of a problem with one specific article, weirdly: Ramla. For some reason, when you query this via Wikimedia's mobile API here: https://en.wikivoyage.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Ramla, you get absolutely nothing as a response (i.e. content-length=0). Now, this gets a bit technical but Wikimedia delivers your content, generally, through a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which per Wikimedia's rules, caches that content up until time it is edited. So the point is, you can "bust" that caching, i.e. get through to the real thing, if you edit the article. So what I want to do is, mess with this article, Ramla, pare it down to its bare bones if need be, and see what specifically is breaking the Wikimedia parser. What I want is the community's permission to do that live. Do I have your permission to mess with this article for a week or so? If not, no worries, will move on to other tactics. Brycehughes (talk) 11:56, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No. To be honest, I don't really want to do it. It's more like, I'd mess with it for, say, 10 minutes at a time, over the course of a week. That said, the task has been claimed on the wm dev team so perhaps they'll figure it out quickly. But see below. Brycehughes (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is the problem with the page itself (~"the URL") or with the contents (in which case, copying the contents to other pages would break all of those pages, too)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Contents I think. In theory, yes. I don't know. One problem is that the API automatically rejects anything that isn't in article space, which makes testing a pain. Otherwise I'd just copy the contents to a user page and run it there. Brycehughes (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Gracias. Funny thing about the wm dev team. If you tag the right people, your problem is often fixed within hours. If you tag nobody, file a bug report in nowhere space there, it can languish for literally years. Brycehughes (talk) 18:26, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
:-)
I suppose few devs watch nowhere space, and those who happen to see the bug report might not have any idea about what it is about, code-wise. If WMF would prioritise fixing everything serious, they should have a system, but I expect the tech people prefer interacting with people who can explain their problem โ and those often know whom to contact and how to tag the task. And if the fix is easy, a dev might do it instead of going for coffee. โLPfi (talk) 18:36, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah there was an issue once where they deprecated their "mobile content service" but also accidentally deprecated their "page content service" for mobile phones. I filed a bug report and they fixed it within 45 mins off of that but I also took a look at the random bug reports coming in. Just a ton of "what the fuck", "+1", screenshots, etc. You really would go for a coffee (or a beer) instead. Brycehughes (talk) 18:45, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, fair enough. How any QA engineer could have woken up and had a cup of coffee between the time I filed the bug report and the time it was resolved, I have no idea. But I live in a weird time zone. Brycehughes (talk) 21:17, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikimedia Foundation will switch the traffic between its data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
All traffic will switch on 20 September. The test will start at 14:00 UTC.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.
You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.
You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 20 September 2023.
If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.
Other effects:
Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.
Hi everyone! The Affiliations Committee (AffCom), Ombuds commission (OC), and the Case Review Committee (CRC) are looking for new members. These volunteer groups provide important structural and oversight support for the community and movement. People are encouraged to nominate themselves or encourage others they feel would contribute to these groups to apply. There is more information about the roles of the groups, the skills needed, and the opportunity to apply on the Meta-wiki page.
AffCom decides which Wikimedia user groups/school clubs/chapters/etc. should get official recognition. Ombuds investigates a particular kind of privacy-related complaint (I hear that it's not a lot of work, and that they particularly need people with a wide variety of language skills and varied experiences). The Case Review Committee is mostly about people who have been banned by the Wikimedia Foundation and who are trying to get the ban reversed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Review and comment on the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package
Please review and comment on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package from now until 29 October 2023. The selection rules package was based on older versions by the Elections Committee and will be used in the 2024 Board of Trustees selection. Providing your comments now will help them provide a smoother, better Board selection process. More on the Meta-wiki page.
Best,
Katie Chan
Chair of the Elections Committee
01:13, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
No commercial freedom of panorama for Spain
See c:Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Spanish FOP. Since Wikimedia Commons requires images they host to be commercially usable, at least in terms of copyright, and a couple of Spanish court decisions have found that "there is no commercial usage for reproductions of works situated in public spaces," we and other languages of Wikivoyage are likely to have to upload all images of public artworks still under copyright locally, with a note that no commercial use of the images in question is allowed and anyone who disregards that warning does so at their own risk. This is likely to be a large task. Should we revive the Collaboration of the month page to help coordinate this work? I will post about this on the Interlingual lounge, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:28, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No-one is taking this seriously? We're likely to lose a lot of photos if we don't move them here, and this is a big job that will require a concerted effort by a bunch of people. There's absolutely 0 chance I'd try to do it by myself. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:40, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Have you solicited anyone at Commons to help? This will require a decent amount of download and upload and a semi-automated tool would help. โJustin (koavf)โคTโฎCโบMโฏ01:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've suggested simple things like editing the misspelled "Quality images candidates" to "Quality image candidates" and was voted down because it was too much work. I see very little probability of any help from Commons, other than possibly keeping photos up or temporarily restoring them in individual cases to give us time to download them. We're going to have to do this project ourselves, or just give up a bunch of illustrations for our articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:22, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am not by any means a legal expert, but I doubt the law is retroactive. Pre-existing photos that are already licensed for commercial use should not have to be relicensed. Any new photographs though should not be uploaded to Commons and uploaded directly to Wikivoyage instead under a noncommercial license. Regarding pre-existing photos already licensed for commercial use, I wouldn't worry too much about them unless you can find any information from a Spanish legal expert that the law applies retroactively. Worst case scenario is that Wikivoyage and Wikimedia Commons are hosted in the USA and so are not subject to Spanish law. There is already a lot of other content on Wikimedia Commons and even here on Wikivoyage that is illegal in certain countries but legal in the USA. It is very difficult or impossible to host a website that respects the laws of every country in the world and legally a website should only be subject to the laws in the country where the website is hosted from. If you are uploading photos from Spain then you should follow Spanish law as well as the laws of the country the website is hosted on (USA for Wikivoyage). Nicole Sharp (talk) 06:23, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The page at Commons says the law isn't retroactive. That doesn't help much though, as it is from 1998. Commons is in no way required to delete the images: it is in the USA and it isn't a commercial project. The question is whether Commons will keep the images hoping that the supreme court will make a positive decision. The policy however is that the copyright law of the relevant country is respected (not all countries, and not even the relevant one for non-copyright things like the LGBT flag), to protect reusers, including commercial reusers. That policy is fundamental to the mission of Commons, which won't be changed because of unreasonable judges in one country. โLPfi (talk) 07:21, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Commons doesn't follow the laws of all countries for all media, just US and local law, and even then the more permissive law is used, in cases like photographing over a border. โLPfi (talk) 07:28, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a good example: "File:Gay Pride Flag.svg". It is illegal to display an LGBT Pride flag in Russia. Providing safety information for LGBT travelers on Wikivoyage can also be a violation of Russian laws. What Wikimedia Commons has done there is add a template with a legal disclaimer noting that that the flag is illegal to display in Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and the United Arab Emirates. Wikimedia Commons is subject only to USA law, where all flags are constitutionally protected as Freedom of Expression (including Nazi flags and other symbols of hate). Nicole Sharp (talk) 06:38, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nicole, I suggest you offer your opinion at the linked Commons thread, but I don't see any reason to assume that laws in Spain cannot be ex post facto, just because the U.S. constitution prohibits such laws in criminal cases. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:52, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The bigger issue here is that the paragraph isn't there because of Spanish legislators, but because of a change to the Berne convention and a corresponding EU directive. If the Spanish court decision is reasonable, then commercial FoP may be illegal in most countries after the change. It was the clause used in the Swedish case, which more or less ended Swedish FoP (regarding internet use). โLPfi (talk) 07:25, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I hope Commons will not just quietly delete the images, and that's why I don't see an immediate hurry to copy over the media. It is a huge project. I assume most images affected don't carry the FoP template, so they are difficult to recognise. Probably all images in articles on Spain have to be checked manually โ and then we might want to add images not yet in the articles. โLPfi (talk) 07:33, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One possibility is to just use the deletion requests. To identify images to delete, Commons has to do the same checks. Of course, media which already has the template are easy to recognise and could be copied already, in case. The biggest problem, I guess, are the thousands of files that will be individually nominated as "no FoP in Spain" without them having the template. โLPfi (talk) 07:38, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
LPfi, you are misled in stating that Commons is not required to delete (=hide) photos that cannot be used commercially because of the laws of the country where the photos were shot. Please read c:COM:Licensing. If Spain lacks commercial freedom of panorama, thousands of images of public artworks in Spain that are under copyright will be hidden, visible only to Commons admins. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:30, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You are also wrong that "the more permissive law is used." All photos on Commons must be commercially usable (at least in terms of copyright; Commons doesn't enforce trademarks or other non-copyright restrictions that are not laws on the books in the U.S., so gay pride flags are not deleted because of laws in, like, Iran) in both the U.S. and the country where they were shot, if different. Therefore, the less permissive law in regard to copyright rules. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:32, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please specify where the linked document says that Commons is legally required to delete (hide) "photos that cannot be used commercially because of the laws of the country where the photos were shot". I am in the belief that that is only a policy decision.
For the latter, see Commons:Freedom of panorama#Choice of law. Yes, content must satisfy US laws, but when there are several other jurisdictions involved, the most permissive of these is chosen.
I see. Maybe it's a policy decision, but it's a firm, basic policy decision they won't change. Try arguing with them and see how quickly you get shot down. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:52, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think I made that clear in my answer above to Nicole Sharp (at 07:21). But as long as the law is unclear, it is about the Commons:Precautionary principle, which leaves much more room for interpretation. Also, as the amendment to the Spanish law was just enacting the directive, which in turn was enacting a change to the Berne convention, this is much bigger than one country. Commons already has an exception for faithful reproductions of 2D works, and one could do something similar. Commons and its users themselves face no legal risk, as Commons clearly is a cultural entity, not a commercial one. โLPfi (talk) 18:13, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Interviews: Tell us about your experiences using Wikidata in the Wikimedia sister projects
Hello, the Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects team at Wikimedia Deutschland is investigating the different ways Wikidata is being used in the Wikimedia projects. If you would like to speak with us about your experiences with integrating Wikidata in Wikimedia wikis, please sign up for an interview in this registration form. Please note that currently, we are only able to conduct interviews in English.
A new feature is coming to your wiki soon: Reference Previews are popups for references. Such popups have existed on wikis as local gadgets for many years. Now there is a central solution, available on all wikis, and consistent with the PagePreviews feature.
Reference Previews will be visible to everyone, including readers. If you donโt want to see them, you can opt out. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you wonโt see Reference Previews unless you disable the gadget.
Reference Previews have been a beta feature on many wikis since 2019, and a default feature on some since 2021. Deployment is planned for November 22.
Yeah, doesn't seem very relevant to this site. The only references we usually have are for travel advisories and sometimes for climate information. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We use links, so those are references. Ref tags are not used, period, and I'd be happy for the functionality of creating them to be removed from this site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:39, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If it really matters that much, we can just edit the abuse filter for any instance of the ref tag, but 1.) it doesn't seem like that big a deal and 2.) it's possible that someone will use those for notes rather than references, but that shouldn't be done either. โJustin (koavf)โคTโฎCโบMโฏ23:06, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
At a glance, it seems like most of those ref tags may be for climate charts. The rest should be removed immediately, but I am minimizing how many edits I make till after a big concert on Sunday. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:16, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A long-term wish is an option to show the user's current location on dynamic maps. I requested it here but it was turned down because of other work on the dynamic map infrastructure. โGrangerย (talkยทcontribs) 14:41, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Brycehughes, we have once or twice pulled together to push for something. There was talk about not having another vote in 2024 (to have the team just keep working on the things that were already voted in; every vote costs that team at least a month of productive time), but it wasn't explained well, and editors insisted that they be allowed to vote annually, even if the results are likely to be very similar. The plan, last I heard, was for there to be a vote around April 2024, regardless of whether that was actually a good idea.
I've been wondering whether the whole thing needs to be re-evaluated. The original idea was for the team to make small, relatively simple fixes that would take about a month or less, and ideally not require any ongoing maintenance. Think "here, we'll fix your complicated template" or "I can do a one-time fix to that bot, since the bot operator stopped editing several years ago". Most of the requests they're getting these days are larger projects or require specialized knowledge. For example: We don't need the Technical Wishes team to spend a couple of weeks doing something about maps. What we really need is a Maps team, with staff and a budget, forever. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with location, is that it requires to ask permission to the user, which is very disruptive and annoying. I'd definetly like to see that in a map of Special:Nearby, where it already has to ask for that permission. Unfortunately, I've never really gotten around to adding a map to Special:Nearby. TheDJ (talk) 09:25, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Permission annoyance would be ameliorated with a button, no? (Typically it's a target symbol.) User hits button, permission is asked. Otherwise it's mute, no bother. Brycehughes (talk) 12:29, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi everyone. I just wanted to mention that there are (minimum) two teams working with wishlists in the Wikimedia world:
Ours is the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Deutschland, and we are working based on a survey on German Wikipedia, while involving communities worldwide.
Hi WhatamIdoing and others. I just wanted to let you know that we've moved the deployment one day ahead, to November 21. (It will be a relatively small configuration change, which is why we're not really affected by the train deployment calendar.) -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:28, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(For anyone who's curious: The train is the week's collection of bug fixes, new features, and other code that needs to be "put on the server". It's called a train because it follows a set route, from one group of wikis to the next. A config patch is like changing the settings on your operating system: the code's already on the computer, but you want to turn it on or off. There are scheduled times for each. This week, because of the long US holiday weekend, there's no train, and there are a limited number of scheduled windows for changing the settings. If something goes wrong, they'd either have to follow emergency procedures, or live with the problem until next Monday. This is a very low-risk change, but it's still bad practice to schedule for the last available non-emergency window, which should be reserved for fixing unexpected problems. So they've moved their schedule up slightly, and if it causes any problems on Tuesday, then we need to let them know about it ASAP so they can fix/remove it before the last config window closes for the long weekend. I'm not expecting any problems, but that's why they changed the schedule.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some people just like to watch the world burn. But while we're at it, we might as well do a force commit on Friday at 5pm and let someone else untangle that mess. :P OhanaUnitedTalk page22:26, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Deleted. Normally, such pages would be listed on VFD, but in this case, it was created as a test page, later expanded by a banned user (Brendan John Williams). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:44, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
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