This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
It appears to me that I have now completed the description of itinerary E11 hiking trail. Could somebody please check if this is what WikiVoyage understands as a good article about an itinerary? Please read the Discussion page of the article first. DrMennoWolters (talk) 13:30, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Specific suggestions for the article which cannot edited directly, should go to the Discussion page of the article. General ideas about how itineraries should be written, may come to the pub or the Project page or perhaps elsewhere. DrMennoWolters (talk) 17:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Site notice
We need to get something together for the launch. Currently I have proposed "This week we are launching Wikivoyage. Join us in creating a free travel guide that anyone can edit."
Feel free to adjust . Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Try to keep it under 140 characters so it will fit on twitter, and lets decide on a hashtag too, maybe #Wikivoyage -- S.Bryan04:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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We're scheduled to leave beta next Tuesday, so I'm wondering if there is a single place where we are enumerating tasks to complete for launch? I've seen discussions in a few places, but it might be useful to have a master list with pointers to relevant discussions. The list below contains some of the things I'm aware of, but if others could append (or move this discussion to a more appropriate place) it would be greatly appreciated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We should probably have a policy in place and fully explained for how to handle the import of new templates. This will likely be an issue with new users from Wikipedia & other WMF wikis which use template a bit more liberally than we do. There has been some discussion at Wikivoyage_talk:Using_Mediawiki_templates on changes, specifically in the last section.
Another item to consider (maybe not high priority, but very nice to do at launch) would be to use a bot to add the Wikivoyage template to the relevant Wikipedia article. Matching the correct WV/WP articles should be easy (use whatever page is in the WP template & shows up in the sidebar), but the bot would have to recognize other sister project templates and, if present, add w:Template:Sister project links instead. Doing this around the launch would call a little more attention to WV if WP editors see not only the banner, but also the addition of the WV template as a way of WV joining as a sister project. AHeneen (talk) 07:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A page for info for press might also be useful. It would include contact info (at WMF), an overview of the site (history, move, language versions, how it works), stats (# of pages, daily edits, users, etc), examples of quality pages (list a few big cities, off-the-beaten path locations, travel topics, & itineraries that are at guide/star level and can demonstrate the breadth of quality content we have at Wikivoyage). While most of the topics that were listed have their own page, it would be very useful to write a couple sentences about each topic and have a link to the relevant page than leave some journalist unfamiliar with wikis and (of course) our site to hunt around for info. AHeneen (talk) 04:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Learning Vacations
Swept in from the pub
From what I've been seeing on the web and from talking to people is that 'Learning Vacations' are getting more popular. The website, Road Scholar, has some great examples of this. Definately something to consider as a topic for the new wikivoyage site. —The preceding comment was added by 216.171.198.40 (talk • contribs)
Travel is often, among other things, a learning experience, we have Gap year travel & a suggestion that we should have studying abroad has been made; I do not recall where. Checking their web site, though, I do not see that Road Scholar offer anything special. They appear to be just another tour agency. Pashley (talk) 03:09, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It must be noted that you two must identify to the foundation with confirmation of being at least 18 + age of majority in your country before you can receive access.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This talk page is getting rather long. I wonder whether there's already a bot on this project for managing the archiving of threads. Tony(talk) 12:57, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations on this new page. We do need more travel forums with travellers input.
We also need more forums for travel partners search, especially for countries like Tibet- where there are restrictive policies for solo travel.
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A year ago I created the mediawiki skin "synagonism-mw" at SourceForge which improves READING of big files like the wikivoyage's articles. I don't know if it works with current version!! and the code needs improvements. I created to show its functionality and wikivoyage I think needs it.
-- Synagonism (talk) 14:59, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just a quick heads up that the http://en.wikivoyage.org/ link doesn't appear to be working at the moment. This address is currently used by the link on Wikipedia's main page and in other locations too. Is it as a result of today's server changes? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:13, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It works for me. Perhaps it was a temporary issue. I've had several temporary issues today with the server move happening but they have all resolved quickly. Are you still having that link problem? --Rogerhc (talk) 02:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wonder what people think about using the article feedback tool to allow our readers to provide advice on articles? Details here . If we like it it might be possible for use to get it in April of 2013. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:01, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a good idea. As I said at the other discussion, a lot of travellers who use our guides will notice out-of-date info and errors while away but not bother to update it when they return. Having a space where they can make a comment is so much simpler for them, and will mean our guides can stay more up-to-date and organised. It is also more inclusive of the community and encourages new editors. No harm in running it for a few weeks as a trial. JamesA>talk15:10, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a good compromise. Would we need to wait until April to start that sort of trial? However, we would need to make it very, very clear that users are providing feedback on the article itself, not the destination or listings. I foresee a lot of misinformed responses. JamesA>talk15:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The earliest version 5 (the link) could be implemented because that is the latest version currently under development and is scheduled (subject to change) for a full release on March 26.AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would not like this to be a substitute for people plunging forward and eliminating inaccuracies in articles, and that's what I fear would happen. It's counter-intuitive to quite a few new users that they can edit articles, as shown by the number of complaints I've read on talk pages of problems the complainer is best able to fix, him-/herself. There could be a positive aspect, though: There's a degree of arbitrariness to which restaurants (e.g.) are listed, and perhaps a spate of bad reviews could get a mediocre restaurant like Gandhi on 6th St. de-listed (which I'd love to do but won't take individual responsibility for). Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:14, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would echo G-t's plea for the return of the [add listing] button, but perhaps this time with the filip that the new listing is automatically placed in the correct alphabetical order rather than at the bottom of the listings. -- Alice✉ 03:18, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
This could be a potentially useful feature, but this may be something worth shelving for a while. We still haven't put together all the documentation for creating books, which should be fixed before moving on to another extension. For article feedback, I think there are a few issues that, while possible to work out, will take time to fix because we will need a customized version.
Current version (v4) of Article Feedback on Wikipedia. I think we'd need to change the metrics & questions...relevant for an encyclopedia, less so for a travel guide.
The four metrics—trustworthiness, objectivity, completeness and writing quality—are great for an encyclopedia, but less useful for a travel guide. We need metrics like: completeness, writing quality (easy to understand), quality of listings (number/variety of eat/sleep/buy/etc listings), quality of attractions (see/do), Quality of background information (understand/stay safe/cope), Up to date? (is content up to date), and there are probably some more good ones that I can't think of right this second. Of course, we would not use all of those...only 2-5 (reasonable?)...but the list is to give an idea of the direction we should be heading in when it comes to metrics for our travel guides. Also, would we need...or rather, would we want...to have separate metrics or questions (more on that below) for travel topics, phrasebooks, & itineraries than we do for destinations?
The questions/statements would need to be changed to reflect our needs...like "How knowledgeable are you about this locations?", "Have you lived in this city/country/region?", "Have you visited this destination? If so, how long have you spent here?", "Do you travel often?", "Do you travel often to destinations such as this one?", "Have you used this Wikivoyage guide while traveling to this destination? If so, did you use any other guides concurrently with the Wikivoyage guide?" and so forth. We should probably have more detailed feedback options for individual sections, like questions for eat/sleep regarding number/quality of listings (quality meaning not closed locations or franchise locations of major hotel chains with just name/address/phone, but price and description...the question would have to include a note that it's not just a rating of hotels themselves, but our content) and whether stay safe is comprehensive/accurate, whether get in/around is comprehensive/accurate, and (once again) there are many more questions that I haven't thought of/included.
Another important aspect to look at is the collective data gathered from these ratings! Questions/metrics can be worded/chosen to gather quantitative feedback from editors & readers about the quality of our guides & project. Sure there are some big issues with this, we don't know people's expectations, whether they're telling truth, if people are giving inaccurate feedback (misread something, missed a section or important sentence, etc), but when you take a holistic view, soliciting user feedback can be immensely useful for improving our site. We can learn where our sites weaknesses are (even analyze data per country/region) and use this feedback to track progress/improvement to the quality of our site over time (compare user confidence in quality of listings over 2 years' time). See Article feedback/Data and metrics on Meta to get an idea of how focused use of questions is used to gather data that is interpreted in many ways to—ultimately—encourage users to contribute & improve the site and its pages.
Having said all that, adding article feedback will be a BIG project for our site and sorting out the above issues (because, above all, we will need a customized version) will take a lot of discussion and also a lot of work on the software/development side. Given all the work needed in the past week surrounding the launch, working with/guiding new contributors, and fixing unresolved issues (as mentioned...working to improvecreate documentation for the Book extension should be a high priority before moving on to a project like this) this is something that should be set aside to work out later (6 months? A year?). (Note:I wrote the OP of "Peer Review" at the same time as this...just splitting one long remark in two to keep relevant replies in order.) AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You'll probably need a way to hide feedback that isn't useful or that needs to be removed. For example, someone writing "pen1s" or something inappropriate, etc. --Rschen775407:43, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I find this system ridiculous. Everyone can tick the box "I am highly knowledgeable", and we have absolutely no way to check this. In my opinion, the present feedback style is highly offensive to editors, because unknown people put some grades based on unknown criteria. Moreover, they do this strange stuff instead of editing and improving the article, which is contrary to the main idea of a wiki. I would like to have the feedback feature, but it should be unobtrusive: no grades, no alleged "experts"... just comments. --Alexander (talk) 20:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On Wikipedia, how is decided which articles get the tool? Or is it a random 10% test now? For Wikivoyage, it would be most useful for guide articles, in order to identify what's missing and get an idea of how readers react to articles we think are pretty good. For the enormous number of outlines and usable articles however, I imagine it would create a huge database of information we already have. We know those are incomplete, need more listings, are sometimes poorly written. We also know that some parts of the world are substantially underrepresented in terms of information available. Analyzing thát feedback information will cost energy I would say is better spent on improving those articles. In short: if we test it, I would say let's start with our more or less complete articles. And then, sure, let's talk about the exact how, and wordings. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:32, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We are completely free to ignore the self-proclaimed expert status. However, a tick-box like "I have visited this destination recently", may offer some insight useful when applying corrections. But I agree that comments are the most useful. --Inas (talk) 21:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I mostly agree with Inas' ideas. The tick-box should be about visiting the destination, and the Feedback tool should be the comments version, so that viewers can comment on things they find to be incorrect or outdated. Maybe ratings are useful on star-rating guides that we think are worthy of assessment, not improvement. Is there a way only star guides can get the rating version? JamesA>talk06:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes so both version 4 and 5 are used on EN wp. Version 4 has the rating scale while version 5 have written comments. I much prefer the written comments but one could potentially use a combination of the two I suppose. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be good to test the feedback tool on some of our guide-status articles. It would be better if readers jumped in and edited the pages directly, but that isn't always the case so if this helps provide more feedback that's cool. I assume if it goes ahead, we'd use version 5 over version 4? (since comments can provide specific points on how to improve the guide) -Shaundd (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The feedback gadget is potentially useful, but only if the users know what kind of feedback will be useful to us. How will they know this?
Feedback that is not read is a waste of effort for the provider. I recommend that we only deploy the gadget on articles where someone is willing to read the input and do something with it. That said, as long as there is at least one editor who wants feedback for an article, it should be switched on. The person who activates the gadget should automatically get notification of new feedback, and other editors should only get it if they opt in, otherwise if one gets it for every article on one's watchlist we will be inundated with it, and it will mostly be useless. If my experience on WP is anything to go by, less than 10% will be useful, and the amount of extra reading to sift the wheat from the chaff will soon be overwhelming. •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 17:07, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Another feature that might be useful: If the display for the feedback states who requests the feedback (the person who activates the gadget for the page, it will give the reader the assurance that a specific person will be checking their comments. This may result in better quality feedback.
A major downside is that there is unlikely to be any dialogue between the editors and the feedback providers. It is not easy to go back to them and ask what they meant, as IP editors are unlikely to look at their talk pages. •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 17:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say we should implement this as a trial from the planned date of deployment. If we find after a month that it just isn't working, then we can scrap it (but I do think it will be very useful!). As research has shown, it only increases editing, so even if it is implemented and barely used, there is no real damage done. Is there anyone who would oppose a trial of the new, comment-only version? JamesA>talk11:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Peer review
On a related note, we could relatively easily add a Peer Review feature (a modified version of Wikipedia:Peer review). While this could be handled by just adding a new section to a talk page, we could have a procedure for feedback on articles where editors can visit a page and write a paragraph or two about ways to improve a page. This would be a way of drawing attention to articles where a user wants to solicit feedback. Like WP, this would involve a template added to a page which maintains an automated list of requests. It would also only be used for pages with a good level of content (star, guide, & maybe some usable pages, as suggestions for improvement would be quite long/unnecessary for outline pages). There could also be a checklist when doing a review (not intended for every one to be answered, but to give the reviewer an idea of what to look for). AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey all; thanks for your comments here (and sorry for my failure to respond so far - I only became aware of this thread last night). Obviously we're really happy to see talk of deploying/considering deploying AFT5, since we've put a lot of effort into it: I'm just making myself known so you can ask any questions you may have:).
A couple of points that have been brought up so far involve the old version, AFT4. For reference: we totally agree that meaningless star-ratings is not the way to go (readers think our page is only 60 percent readable? That's great, but how do we up that percentage? It doesn't say): for that reason we're no longer deploying AFT4 anywhere - it's simply not a useful way to spend time. Any deployment would have to be of version 5, with the comments field. I note one concern from Ikan Kekek that it might 'cannibalise' users; people who would otherwise edit instead go through and leave feedback. This worried us too, so we did some research on enwiki when we first deployed; not only did cannibalisation not happen, edits do the articles went up, because as soon as someone has left feedback they are prompted to edit.
At the moment you can see a (slightly outdated) version on enwiki. We are preparing our latest release, however, which while buggy is a better representation of what would be deployed here. That can be viewed here, and if you create an account this page has the feedback evaluation/monitoring page (you need some permissions to use most of the functions, but if you let me know your account name I am happy to give you the relevant userrights). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, thank you. I think that this page at wmflabs, together with the very good Wikipedia manual, address all my questions. The feedback tool looks really good! I look forward to having it here at Wikivoyage. I wonder how much extra janitorial work it will require, but we should try and see. --Alexander (talk) 16:36, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we could try a test deployment? Put it on N number of pages, or N percent of pages, and see what happens? If people are interested I'd love to see a formal vote open on a test or on a full deployment: we try to make sure projects want software before deploying it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Will language versions that were previously offered be offered here soon? (Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) They all show up on the sidebar for destinations that had articles in those languages but if you click them now, they take you nowhere. Also, articles like Osaka have the "Better in Japanese, please translate" tag. If the languages are expected to be added soon, I won't delete it, but if not, these should probably be dealt away with. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed that many WP.ja user pages have links to WT user pages and that wiki did appear viable; no idea why this wasn't moved initially. There were a few language projects which appeared to be inactive, dead or mostly empty but it looks like viable languages (es and pt being the most recently created) are being imported piecemeal right now. K7L (talk) 19:07, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed links to some languages that are still in the Incubator being added. I think one was Latin ("la") and when clicked led to the page on the WM Incubator. AHeneen (talk) 22:40, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Japanese Wikitravel was highly developed with an active community. I supported its migration at the time, but am unsure why it wasn't moved. I do remember that some of the notable members of the Japanese community such as Shoestring were not interested in moving and liked things just the way they were. JamesA>talk05:16, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's a shame. To me, Shoestring was the pillar of the Japanese version (I mean that as a compliment to him, no disrespect to the other contributors), but the other language versions and their members seemed less affected and certainly less active in the discussions about the rift, so I'm not surprised. Good to know more languages are on the way. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:00, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Current status according to m:Requests for new languages#Wikivoyage: Spanish, Portuguese were created; Romanian and Polish are awaiting creation (per bugzilla); there has been some discussion of Finnish and Chinese (mostly around how to translate the name/logo). WMF is willing to create Hungarian and Japanese but so far no one has opened discussion for either language.
There are many Japanese user pages (not WP articles, just WP userpages) which mention WT; hopefully this doesn't become an obstacle to getting the WT interwiki prefix removed from the table. In any case, it would be best if they were to move sooner rather than later as IB will try to break functionality (such as api.php) used to export any new edits to the old wiki. If there are no new edits on WT, there's nothing left for them to break. K7L (talk) 17:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can't the user pages just be changed to real links instead of interwiki links, if you're trying to orphan the interwiki prefix? I don't think that you can change links on user pages in any other way.
As far as I can tell, the functionality for importing old edits is already broken. Those who backed up Wikitravel had to stop doing this back in August last year because api.php and Special:Export were disabled. Thus, any edits made to Wikitravel since August can be considered as lost. It's probably possible to get a backup by screenscraping, but that's going to take an awful lot of time to get all revisions of all pages, and it would take considerable time to write a script which would download everything. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It may be the polyglot in me talking, but I was excited when I read on this page that there would be a Latin version. I'm actually looking forward to its launch. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:14, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Retry, wait or forget it?
I've encountered a weird problem in a Wikivoyage edit I've never experienced in all the edits I've made in Wikipedia. (This may be more appropriate for Bugzilla, but I don't have a Bugzilla account and fortunately the help area says if you're not sure where the problem belongs, post it here first.)
Yesterday morning I booted up my laptop, launched Opera and went into the Wikivoyage entry on West Jefferson (North Carolina) to list the places to stay there under "Sleep." One thing led to another, and it was late afternoon before I signed out of Wikivoyage, but at least I had the satisfaction of knowing it had been a Saturday well spent. That is, until about an hour later when I launched Safari on the iPad to review my work.
When I went to the West Jefferson Wikivoyage page in Safari, none of the three entries I'd made in the "Sleep" section showed up. According to "View History," I hadn't made any edits in that entry for over a week. Luckily, all the other work I did yesterday showed up in Safari - the new entry on Mountain City (Tennessee), information in an almost blank existing entry on Damascus (Virginia), adding a restaurant and the Best Western to Jefferson (North Carolina), adding the two hotels I stay at in Boone and some restaurant information.
I know Wikimedia is migrating from servers in Tampa to a server farm outside Washington, so I thought it might be a replication problem. Perhaps the server I used to do the edits on the West Jefferson page hadn't yet replicated the new data to other Wiki servers. Yet, since all the other edits I made yesterday were showing up in Safari, I feared it was more likely a mysterious glitch and I'd need to retrace my steps to find the phone numbers, addresses, etc., for the three lodging establishments in West Jefferson.
Late last night I launched IE 10 on the laptop to listen to ZRadio, and when I checked Wikivoyage in Internet Explorer it was the same experience as Safari - nothing under "Sleep" on the WJ page, but all my other edits showed up.
Today I opened Opera, went back to the West Jefferson page in Wikivoyage, and the info I added under "Sleep" showed up. I hurriedly copied and saved it to WordPad so I wouldn't have to recompose the text if it should be necessary. I refreshed the page in Opera to make sure it wasn't pulling from the cache, and the updated "Sleep" section was still there. Then I launched Safari on the iPad, and ... no entries under "Sleep" on the West Jefferson page.
So I don't know whether the lodging entries I made are in Wikivoyage or aren't in Wikivoyage. Should I use the "old version" of the page in Internet Explorer to re-add the info I entered yesterday? Or would that cause a bigger problem if the edited version is floating around the Wiki servers?
Dlewis77 (talk) 20:43, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm seeing Hampton Inn, Nations Inn, and Buffalo Tavern B&B under "Sleep". For the record, I've never accessed the West Jefferson, NC article before in my life, so it's not an issue with my file cache.
I experienced the same problem from time to time when we were migrating content onto the WMF servers for the first time. In my decidedly non-expert opinion, I'd say there's a good chance it has to do with the server migration from Tampa to Washington.
Like everyone suggests, it probably has something to do with the migration. A couple days ago, I added a couple "Other destinations" to the Sudan page and uploaded a new version of the Sudan map to Commons. Even when I refreshed the page in my browser, the "Other destinations" page remained blank and the old version of the map was displayed. However, when I clicked edit, the ODs were displayed in the edit box. AHeneen (talk) 02:47, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to know how the Wikitravel attribution message at the bottom of imported pages was set up. Over at pt:, import seems to have been done incorrectly, and we don´t have enough knowledgable users to know what to do. First of all, it seems pt: was imported not directly from Wikitravel, but from JAMGuides, though in the history of the pages imported, the only indication of this is an entry from "JAMBot" with the summary of "Imported by JAMBot", which to my knowledge is insufficient attribution. So, a few questions:
Does our attribution message for such pages need to mention users of both JAMGuides and Wikitravel in our case, or is attribution to the last place imported from sufficient?
Does the history need to contain a link to the specific page from which it was imported (as it does here), or is a message specifying "users of" sufficient?
How is the attribution message at the bottom of imported pages here displayed only for those specific imported pages? It does not appear to be from inside the work itself.
How were the WT prefixes added to user names in the history of such pages?
Will it be possible to use a bot/script to retroactively add the page footer message and history username prefixes to only the relevant imported pages on pt:
Sorry to bring up such a pt-specific topic here, but I´d like to use en:'s solution if possible, and there are plenty of knowledgable folk here. If there is a better place for us to get answers, please point me there. Thanks! Texugo (talk) 10:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have an example of a page with a "JAMBot" entry in its history? When data was imported on the original Wikivoyage I gave Hans raw XML exports from Wikitravel, so I'm not sure how any mention of "JAMGuides" would have appeared unless I screwed something up. As to any credit to "JAMGuides", that site was just a read-only mirror of Wikitravel, so there is no need to mention it for attribution purposes. Regarding your other questions, someone else will need to address those for reasons outlined at the top of my user page. -- Ryan• (talk) •16:02, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Portuguese and Spanish versions were taken from JAMguides, because Wikivoyage e.V. never bothered to hand over the pure exports from Wikitravel to the Wikimedia Foundation. Globe-trotter (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
They imported it without any attribution? Wow that's totally against the spirit of the license. Someone should contact the legal department of Wikimedia I think. Globe-trotter (talk) 18:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Full history XML dumps of all Wikitravel content (through August 2012) are available and should be used where possible since they show every contribution and the individual who made it - Hans should be able to provide access. Hopefully that is enough info to help resolve any issues as I need to bow out of this discussion for reasons already mentioned. -- Ryan• (talk) •18:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I presume this is (from whois) Hans Musil, Wikivoyage e.V.. Taunusstr. 39 Boeblingen DE 71032. DE +49.7031281729 hans.musil (at) gmx.de? K7L (talk) 18:55, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
User:Hansm here, and at the German Wikivoyage. However, the Wikimedia Foundation hasn't been able to get the dumps from him yet (and supposedly has tried to get them for some months). Globe-trotter (talk) 18:57, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sit back, I've got to give some background on this. Follow me back to the WT days.
In 2005, an article was created at the title "Eden". This article was about the fishing town in New South Wales. In 2008, an article was created called "Eden (New York)", and it was about the suburb of Buffalo. In 2011, Globe-trotter moved the NSW Eden's article to "Eden (New South Wales)", and moved the disambiguation page (which I had created back in 2008) to the base name "Eden". This all works fine to this day on WT.
But here on Wikivoyage, something went wrong. The move of Eden (disambiguation) to Eden is still recorded in the edit history of the former title... but Eden is the NSW article, not the disambiguation page! Even more bizarrely, Eden (New South Wales) is also a (different) copy of the NSW article, with its own edit history, and it does record the move. On the other hand, I can't find the history of the disambiguation page anywhere.
Now, this is reparable (not without some effort, but any admin can do it... though I don't think there's any way to retrieve the disambiguation page as I created it in 2008). But it points to a potential problem with the import, and so I wanted to bring it to light, in case a similar problem exists elsewhere in the wiki. Alternatively, I may be missing something here, in which case it'd be nice to have that pointed out. =)
It's bizarre indeed, the Dutch Wikivoyage had at least 100 of such cases. I had to redirect all of them to the newly created page. I hadn't encountered it yet on this wiki though. Globe-trotter (talk) 21:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The scripts I used to create XML backups had some issues with page moves - it wasn't feasible to repeatedly run a full backup of all pages (doing so took weeks or months given the 30 second limit applied to spiders), so my scripts instead tried to track recently changed articles. Unfortunately, page moves proved problematic as the change wasn't recorded as a normal "change", so if the articles weren't subsequently edited then the page was sometimes not updated. I had thought this issue was resolved by forcing a re-spider of most of the articles in the page move logs, but apparently there were still issues. I apologize for the problem, but at this point I think the only solution will be to manually correct problem articles as they are found. -- Ryan• (talk) •21:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's a strange bug - I am guessing it's got something to do with the new URL icon we placed in the listings, but I'm not 100% sure - that is messing up the formatting of the first listing in User:AndreCarrotflower/Elmwood Village#Jewelry. I know it's not anything I myself typed in there, because I haven't edited the listing since I wrote it, and it was fine at that time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to fix it.
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It should be OK now - it looks like the code was confused by the apostrophes around ''Artvoice'''s (two open, three closed, even though the close was supposed to appear in the text). -- Ryan• (talk) •19:51, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Incorrect word for "search" in Romanian on page at www.wikivoyage.org?
Looking at http://www.wikivoyage.org/, I noticed that the word for "search" in Romanian directly above the search textbox appears to be incorrect. Assuming that the words for "search" in the different languages that Wikivoyage supports are given in the same order as the links to the respective language Wikivoyages, Romanian would be last. The word given is "Salt", which a quick Google translate shows as meaning "jump" in Romanian. Checking http://ro.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Pagina_principal%C4%83, I see that the "Search" textbox in the upper right of the page is labeled "Căutare", which another Google translate seems to confirm as the correct word for "search" in Romanian. Is this indeed a bug? If so, where should it be filed? 64.252.206.11601:25, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The guy with the POI maps has created a world wide map feature with all WV articles. here.... Nice. Isn't it? We considering to have it run on our own association's server. I am going to ask him how to adapt it to the other language versions. Are you interested?
We started a project with a town government in Lower Saxony to create a kind of template article. A perfect article that we can show to our new contributors. "Look! This is how a perfect article can look like" Our manual of style can benefit from these experiences. During this process we want to improve our VCard. It should provide different styles (inline and block style as well as a print style and a style for small screen resolutions). We picked your old layout suggestions from Texugo as well. We think about creating icons to be placed at the hotels, sight's descriptions. Icons for WiFi, Bed&Bike, offers for disabled people, pets allowed, gay friendly..... Do you have a discussion about it running already? Do you want to participate? Then we move this part to Meta.
We just established a Paypal account. If you want to support the association and/or becoming a member, just take a look at our associations wiki. It's renewed and some parts have to be translated. Everybody is invited to participate. here... Please tell me, if there are some errors or missing information. I've just moved it from the old server. But I did not find out how to make the wiki interface multilingual and what settings are to be changed. If anybody knows, just give me a hint. -- DerFussi (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We were working on an hCard as {{listing}} which was to handle all data from the <listing> tags once the bugzilla:43220 fix is deployed in mid-February. There was a long discussion at Project talk:Listings but no clear consensus for or against using icons in listings, on linking to Wikipedia or on how to display geographic co-ordinates for individual listings. A locator map showing each listing in a city would be valuable but currently WikiSherpa, a third-party mobile application, is the only one doing this as we have almost no co-ordinates on our individual listings within a city. Many listings here are not tagged or templated at all. K7L (talk) 18:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That world-wide map is really cool. I can think of a lot of uses for it beyond the basic navigation it offers right now too. We could filter by article status, for one. We recently have added geocoordinates to almost all of our destination guides, so we're ready for it. Adding lat long info to our city district articles might be a good thing to get working on... --PeterTalk19:25, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I love the world wide map. Ours is going to get really crowded, though, as en has a lot of articles! Could we possibly link to this from the Main Page under a Interactive map header? I also like what you've done with the town council. I've always thought that collaborating with local governments and tourism boards is a great way to improve our articles, as they will certainly provide resources to those who wish to boost tourism for free!JamesA>talk02:15, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think Mey2008 can change the feature and process the guide/star/stub information. Will ask him. The city council of Wennigsen has invited other local tourism boards and the local ADFC team (German cycling association) as well. So we can improve the affected town, region and cycling route articles and provide a set of featured articles and improve our manual of style as well. Besides we want to create a guide for tourism bords as well to avoid advertising style in our articles. Our articles are for travellers and not a competition about what town the most beautiful sky has. -- DerFussi (talk) 08:53, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is really, really cool! How will it be updated? For instance, I added geo tags to Washington, D.C.'s district articles, but those are not appearing. --PeterTalk15:40, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We are going to move this to the Wikivoyage association's server next weekend. Then you can use it. We'll let you know when it's online. -- DerFussi (talk) 10:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's great that the association is able to have these sort of innovations. Well done to you both!! Once on WV.eV servers, will it be possible to embed the map into Wikivoyage, keeping its interactivity? JamesA>talk10:34, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Dutch Wikipedia has pages like w:nl:Thousand Islands with a link (Kaart) at the upper-right which drops down an embedded map with a marker for each WP article with co-ordinates. That's not the same as a city-level locator map (which would need to pull co-ordinates from individual {{listing}}s within the one article being viewed, so likely WV-specific) but still impressive. K7L (talk) 20:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let me update the url, since it is now on WV-ev servers: . I'm still not sure how to add the map to a wiki page, but I think DerFussi is working on that. We need to get our articles better geocoded now! --PeterTalk18:50, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This new version of article map works for all eleven language versions (?lang=nn). The map search field also, even with Cyrillic letters and international names (eg. Wien, Vienna, Bécs or Вена for Vienna). Actuality of data is the last dump date. - You only can add the interactive map to a wiki page until now, by click on a thumbnail picture. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 06:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is not possible to using Slippy Map. The Slippy Map and the Wikipedia map application are not compatible with most mobile devices I know. My solution is compatible with WV mobile mode on most mobile devices. The Map is automatic in full screen mode on those small screens. The button "Show me where I am" (left top) is compatible with modern gps devices. Application will use wlan spot and mobile net triangulation also (for devices without gps eg. your notebook with wlan). So you can find out all WV articles around your location with a single tap the location button and a little zooming out. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 10:43, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think you mean that you think it is not desirable. But is it possible? We have some mobile-specific and desktop-specific pages, so we can use this in the latter. Or have a mobile users link above a slippy map. Having slippy maps in our articles is a clear goal that we have set, and it would be good to use this map as a test case. --PeterTalk22:46, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the username of the bot that did the original move back in 2004, it appears that these were originally created before the Template namespace existed. LtPowers (talk) 02:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As we're currently attempting to overhaul our main pages for both desktop computers and mobile devices, I thought it might also be nice to have a look at what we could do with the Interlingual Portal as it was earmarked for improvement on the Roadmap. I assume it's made in pure HTMl, so is probably harder to edit collaboratively. What sort of things would we like to see? Such a decision would also, presumably, have to take place with the involvement of the other language communities too, so might be more complicated on that fron too. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 21:34, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The HTML for the portal can be found (and edited by Meta-admins) at meta:Www.wikivoyage.org template. On important thing that still needs to happen is filling out the meta description, which Google will display as the description for www.wikivoyage.org in search results. —Ruud11:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
fyi, wikivoyager.de and wikivoyager.org have both been transferred to WMF and we redirect them to wikivoyage.org. Related RT ticket is RT-4333. The Apache config can be found in the (public) operations/apache-config git repository. Mutante (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
google in my neck of the woods directs to wikivoyage.org when i type in wikivoyage.com, however typing in wikivoyage.com inside firefox - yes it directs to wikiquote... sats (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is totally fixed now. It was done to #redirect the page without getting crashed. But, since WikiVoyage is launched and runs successfully, it is functioning cool. Aminuddinshroff (talk) 21:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Some time in the next month, the Signpost may run a special report on the real-life travel experiences of Wikivoyage editors. At the moment, this is a fishing expedition to gauge whether there's a suitable basis for a story.
We're particularly interested in editors' dramatic, colourful, surprising, or otherwise interesting incidents or experiences while travelling. These incidents or experiences need to be related to either the writing/editing of a specific article or to the process of contributing to the site generally. We obviously can't be too ribald in what we report, though.
More recent accounts are preferred to experiences from many years ago, but news-value trumps the age of the story—as long as there's a solid connection with an editor's onwiki contributions, either to the modern version of the site or to its predecessors. Willingness to be identified in the feature by user name is preferred, but not essential.
If you fit these criteria and would like to be interviewed by email for the feature, please let me know by email, providing a couple of lines of information about where, when, type of experience, and the article to which it's related. If you know someone else who hasn't read this post and might be a good source, we'd like to know too. Currently active editors are preferred, but ex-editors could be valuable to us if their experience is newsworthy and they can still be contacted. I'll leave a similar note to this at the German-language Wikivoyage site, and any others that are reasonably active by now.
Just to clarify, what do you mean by "related to" work on the site? Does the story itself have to be reproduced here in some way, or could it be more along the lines of having a crazy travel experience tangential to work on the site regarding the destination? --PeterTalk18:06, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Am I hallucinating, or is IsPartOf broken for Categories, making the whole region category hierarchy appear to be non-existent? Texugo (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, my fault. Fixing one minor problem I went and broke something else. Have now reset back to previous method until I figure out a better method. Give it a few minutes to rebuild the contents. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! A while ago I saw that one of the goals on the Roadmap was to improve WV's interlingual portal. So, with that in mind, I tried my hand at making a new one. Unfortunately the page is made in HTML; not Wiki-markup, however, you can find the code here and a screenshot of the proposed design below. The background image is only 50kb so shouldn't cause any loading issues. I've also posted this on the Wikivoyage Lounge in Meta. I dare say some of the translations are a bit rubbish too, so please let me know what they should be! The reason the Romanian page is away from the rest is that it would be the first of any others that joined at this time as there's only room for 10 around the logo - I chose it because it had the fewest articles of all the WV language versions. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! --Nick (talk) 02:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The proposed portal
I love it! I particularly like the graceful and elegant shading of the colours that provides good contrast for readability and the maritime theme in keeping with the "voyage" part of our name. Great that you've thought about readers with slow connections too! Will you be doing a mobile version, Nick? -- Alice✉ 02:55, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks very much! I think, as this is based upon the current portal, it should automatically optimise itself for mobiles... but we'll see! --Nick (talk) 09:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a good start, and thanks for putting it out there, but could do with some refining. I think the shaded corners seem a bit odd, and the ocean picture just reminds me of a romantic beach scene. I dunno; it stands out but just doesn't cut it for me. Any other ideas to improve upon Nick's design? JamesA>talk10:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Strictly speaking, I don't think we have a tagline. "The Free Travel Guide" was taken by Wikitravel, and we never came up with an alternative. Could we perhaps put eight languages around the logo instead of ten, so that Romanian doesn't look so lonely below? I'm also afraid the dark gray background at the bottom makes some of the sister project logos look really bad. Still, this is certainly along the lines of what I'd like to see. LtPowers (talk) 14:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Right- I've changed it a little in order to reflect some of the above opinions. You can view it 'live' here. Please ignore the chinese characters at the bottom - they are not part of the design, but something either inflicted upon me by the host or an internal WM script that won't work on that host. Any thoughts? --Nick (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For me it looks super-freakin-awesome except for the links to sister projects section, which is enormous. Would it be possible to shrink that section down and lose the white box behind them, overlaying them directly on the sunset? Texugo (talk) 15:58, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestions: (1) I also feel the WMF sister projects are too prominent there. This is the WV portal, not a portal to the MWF family. So I'd make the sisters much less prominent on the page, think footnote at most. (2) Let's not leave any of our WV language versions out of the main hallow display. They will all fit if we squeeze. They are all important players on this WV portal. Think group photo, shoulder to shoulder. Don't leave the baby out. We don't have hundreds as WP does. To make room, leave article count line out except for the top few. No need to show meager numbers anyway. More important to fit everyone in. (3) Our tag line is an even more important clarifier of what we are than in was at our former host. We are a travel guide. We need to keep it, at least that part of it, or newcomers wont know what we are. Cheers! (4) Maybe lighten the sunrise a little so it is a little closer to daytime. In fact, might be good to play with it actually being day time and see what we get. The sunset look is pretty but could has problematic connotations. --Rogerhc (talk) 16:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The sisters on subdued (gray version) background gave them acceptable prominence. The sisters with a light background when everything else had a subdued background put the spotlight inappropriately onto the sisters. It is probably a matter that lighting could fix. The "spotlight" needs to be on WV on this stage. --Rogerhc (talk) 16:39, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don´t know if it´s because of my small monitor here at work, but what I´m seeing is a super tall white box with two columns of 6 sister sites.Texugo (talk) 16:54, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The sister icons might just look fine against the sky with no box behind them, or maybe just a line between them and the main players on this stage. Maybe put them in a centered div of width 90% or so and let them wrap into a rectangular space against the sky? Probably best not to sink them into the briny deep of course;-). --Rogerhc (talk♣) 17:10, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm more than happy to try other ways of displaying the WMF links, but I do agree that they should be kept at the same prominence as on other projects - we don't want a family feud!
I would be happy to try and shift the links around the logo a bit, but it's based on a WMF-wide template that would have to be rebuilt. Also, as soon as a new language arrived (there are several in the pipeline) a list would have to be created, so we should probably accept that it is a necessity now.
Personally, I think the colours of the photograph suit our logo quite well, but if any one can see a good alternative, please let me know!
I too think that a tagline is important here (see below!)
Looks quite nice. I have an additional idea: how about changing the background picture every now and then? We used to have a "picture of the moment" back at WT Shared... Ypsilon (talk) 10:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure we can do pictures well on our portal. The sky picture really only works because it is more a background gradient than a picture. Plain white might actually be even better. Beauty in function. Google.com is a famously user oriented page; plain white and beautifully simple. Bing.com introduced beautiful photos to their Search page and I love beautiful photos. I still like Google better. (I'm biased also and don't use Microsoft product when I have good alternatives, but I believe plain white serves Search users better than a random distracting beautiful photo.) Portal pages really are very annoying. Users want the site, not the portal. I believe WikiMedia community has made a gross mistake with this "portal" thing. Why do we send people to a portal? People want to see our product. Our Main Page shows it. A portal does not. I say the best portal is no portal but instead a Main Page. --Rogerhc (talk♣) 04:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think what Roger meant was that we need to make the portal look less 'portal-like' than other WMF ones: it needs to be engaging on its own merits and not just a page of links. --Nick (talk) 23:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please discuss www.wikivoyage.org changes at m:Wikivoyage/Lounge, concerns all WV language versions. I'd like to see if we can build a consensus there on switching to this sky background version. Thx --Rogerhc (talk♣) 00:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Couldn't disagree more about Asheville. It's one of my favorite places in the South.
Also, I find it very interesting that Detroit is on this list as an alternative to Chicago. While my strange fascination with urban prairie, post-industrial decay, and the Rust Belt in general have led me to truly enjoy my visits there, I would be hard-pressed to say the least to recommend the Motor City to the quote-unquote "average" HuffPo reader. It's an incredibly depressing place to those who haven't come with the right mindset or expectations. Even downtown and the New Center have veneers that are easy to penetrate—much of that world-class architecture is vacant, derelict, and crumbling.
Although I agree that the article is pretty lame, I must admit that to all of the places I've traveled Detroit was one of my favorites. Not because of any of the reasons listed in the article (although I did like the art museum) but because of my fascination with the urban decay. I've gone twice on self guided 'urban spelunking' trips with a few friends through abandon buildings and the scale of the decay is beyond anything else I have experienced. Detroit would be on my short list for anyone wanting to get a holistic view of the USA and see its dark-side. Not safe, not recommended but still near the top of my list for adventures. --Lumpytrout (talk) 16:43, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've found such articles to be barely worth the pixels on which they're printed. Mostly it's an attempt by individual travel writers -- who I'm convinced may have actually reached the thought-impossible "travels too much" threshold -- to rationalize their own personal and usually quite irrational responses to individual destinations. Your Chicago/Detroit complaint is spot-on; it's painfully obvious that he chose to ignore certain negative aspects of Detroit that he'd just finished decrying in describing Chicago, while touting Detroit features that Chicago matches or exceeds. It's not worth your time. LtPowers (talk) 19:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, this writer really has a chip on their shoulder. So you meet one lousy barista and decide to write off San Francisco as a worthy destination? And while I can believe that Austin is overrated, recommending Houston as a serious alternative is laughable. PerryPlanet (talk) 19:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if I'd be quite as harsh as all that, LtPowers. This particular article certainly isn't the gold standard of the genre, but ipso facto all travel writing is subjective and opinion-based to a certain degree. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Of course it is; that's the point. But these guys have been to these places so many times that they can no longer see the destinations through the eyes of someone who hasn't, and they think their experiences are somehow representative of the majority of travelers. They aren't. LtPowers (talk) 22:33, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm inclined to say that's the wrongest travel article I've ever read! The only comparison that could in any sense be construed as right is favoring the mountains outside Asheville to the (very cool) town, but who goes to Asheville without visiting the mountains anyway? --PeterTalk23:08, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I back up all the criticism above that this article is truly awful. Only way that this could be worse is if it were a Yahoo! article on "10 Overly Visited Destinations". AHeneen (talk) 03:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The default position of the "edit" link in page section headers is going to change soon. The "edit" link will be positioned adjacent to the page header text rather than floating opposite it.
Section edit links will be to the immediate right of section titles, instead of on the far right. If you're an editor of one of the wikis which already implemented this change, nothing will substantially change for you; however, scripts and gadgets depending on the previous implementation of section edit links will have to be adjusted to continue working; however, nothing else should break even if they are not updated in time.
Ideas to do this all the way to 2009 at least. It is often difficult to track which of several potential section edit links on the far right is associated with the correct section, and many readers and anonymous or new editors may even be failing to notice section edit links at all, since they read section titles, which are far away from the links.
This was discussed at length but not followed through on. I'd like to submit a bug request to have larger en.WV image defaults implemented. I see lots of support at Wikivoyage_talk:Image_policy#Proposal_to_change_default_thumbnail_size, but no one mentioned submitting a bug request. Any comments before I submit it? (Comment at end of above linked talk page section please; your fresh support there, however redundant, will help get this done.) Thanks, --Rogerhc (talk) 00:13, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
[we don't configure] different thumbnail sizes per wiki for the following reasons:
we keep thumbnails forever currently, the more we have the more disk space it takes
different sizes lower the cache hit rate which in turns cause...
... a CPU cost on the cluster to generate a thumbnail, varying the sizes cause more and more thumbnails generations
whenever a file is updated, we have to purge each thumbnails ever generated.
So I changed my own user preferences from the default, 220, to the maximum, 300, to see how that looks. I think we can have the default upped from 220 to either 250 or 300, because these are already available user preference options, but we would need to decide that as a community. Maybe developing a horizontal Table of Contents (discussion at Wikivoyage:TOC#New TOC) would allow us to use 300 as the default without page crowding. --Rogerhc (talk) 03:05, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What to do when a listing (museum, theatre, temple, etc) has a Wikipedia page? How about a new optional listing field? For instance, wikipedia="Manneken Pis" would result in a small icon that would lead the reader to the sum of human knowledge about this listing. What do you think about it? Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:22, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, there are just as many editors for this as against this. There is plenty of good info on Wikipedia which we actually don't want to duplicate here - individual articles for museums, historic landmarks, roads and airports are a few common examples. We just need to ensure enough info is still here, so a printed copy of a WV city guide is a self-contained reference if printed alone without bothering to print all of the WP articles for the individual museums and landmarks in the town. K7L (talk) 18:29, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From what I can gather, most of the users who "are against this" are just hesitant about the idea until we can make it very clear where WP links are allowed and where they are not. I don't think they are unreservedly opposed to any WP links whatsoever. Someone just needs to gather the ideas and collate them into a draft policy for discussion. JamesA>talk09:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"On the trail of ..." itineraries
Some years back, I did On the trail of Marco Polo and I have just finished On the trail of Kipling's Kim. These are great fun to write and, while they are not precisely itineraries in the sense of ready-to-follow routes, they may be useful to someone planning a trip.
From my resources of non-online material I have uncovered a 'distance book' produced by the western australian main roads department. I cannot find any earlier discussion (and if it is somewhere - please alert me so that this thread here does not become space or time consuming here) as to whether there ever have been - at a country or large region - any usage or perceived need for charts / tables of distances within a country or region? I can understand for some it might be anathema and run against the general scope of the project - in which case I will probably keep my sub-page and use it for informing the various articles the information is useful in. Thanks to anyone who might feel it is worth discussing. sats (talk) 07:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Some articles contain a few distances to neighbouring cities in their "Go next" section, but apart from that I don't think complete table are really needed? Someone may know better, though. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 14:54, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know of a central discussion to point you to, but in practice it has always been considered that this type of information is much better provided by a good map, so lists and tables of distances have generally been discouraged.Texugo (talk) 14:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, they're almost invisible up there - if the links are to be kept there they should be colored red/orange or something. Otherwise the page looks great. I'm using Safari and I don't see any empty blue rectangle. Ypsilon (talk) 16:16, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The first letter of the Ukrainian translation for "Travel Guide", "туристичний путівник", isn't capitalized like the rest of the translations are. Should be "Туристичний путівник" in both the hovertext and the <em/>. Bigpeteb (talk) 18:06, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, too bad. Has the time of sticking templates instead of fixing problems begun at last? If we are to develop such templates, which in my opinion are severely over-used on en-wp, we should try to come up with some kind of policy on how and when to add. You seem to know something about this Birka place, and it's just a couple of lines of text. The layout of the template is fine, in principle. But is there any way we can convince you to fix the problem instead of sticking that template on it?:-) JuliasTravels (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with JuliasTravels. Oftentimes, adding a template can serve as an "easy out" in favor of making the required changes oneself. That may fly at a place like Wikipedia, which has a much larger population of committed editors, and where it can therefore be assumed that someone else will come along quickly and make the changes rather than the template staying on the page indefinitely. But for all our recent growth, Wikivoyage is still a small fry compared to Wikipedia. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:59, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Julias and Andre. I think such a banner may itself be cruft. Simply deleting whatever specific details of an entry one finds to be out of date, assuming one finds it impractical to update them, may be better. If one lacks the info or confidence to do that, leaving a note about the matter here in the Pub may be more helpful than a banner template. Thank you Yvwv for bringing this up here.:-) Rogerhc (talk) 23:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see a huge box on the page but am still uncertain as to what of the info is presumably outdated or what the original poster wanted done to fix this. Perhaps something small and less obtrusive like (dated info) or (disputed) or (see talk) should link to a section of the article's talk page, where something more descriptive than "fix this" could be provided without displaying as part of the article. And no, (citation needed) shouldn't be one of these unless we ever start using Wikipedia-style cited secondary sources for info. K7L (talk) 01:05, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with K7L. Big boxes claiming generic problems are not very helpful. They are a cmplete pain on WP, as they often leave you in nearly complete ignorance of what to do about the problem. I accept that it is not always possible to fix the information oneself, but the inline markers are far more useful as they more accurately identify the problem text. Such notices should always be dated. On WP that is usually done by a bot. •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 05:03, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest that the problem text should be exactly identified, possibly by highlighting the text in some way, so it is clear where it starts and where it stops. Maybe underlining?
Suggestions for policy for inline templates. (formalising K7L suggestions)
If information is wrong, correct it if you can, delete it if you can't correct it
If information is contentious, tag as (disputed|date)
A much better solution indeed! I would say such inline remarks, exactly identified, have all the advantages (making people aware that the information is flawed and can't be relied on blindly) without the dreaded boxes. It's probably the next best thing to fixing. Is there a way to list those inline-tags on a separate page, somewhere? I wouldn't mind digging into information, when it is available on other sites, to update a spotted problem now and then. On other wiki's there are always people who prefer fixing small problems over writing content. It might help to keep the number of such tags somewhat in check? JuliasTravels (talk) 09:30, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree most templates on EN wiki are silly and should be deleted. I deleted certain types (like the expert needed one) on sight. The last thing we want to promote is a mentally of people tagging rather than fixing. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know a template can add a category to a page which will allow all pages with that template to be listed as a category. The category can be hidden if you don't want it to show on the page. Removing the template after the problem has been fixed should automatically remove the category.
So what is the status on this one? It is still tagged as experimental and used in only one article. Personally, I am not a fan of this idea at all, for the reasons initially stated by JuliusTravels, Andrecarrotflower, and Rogerhc above. If every potentially outdated bit of info we have were tagged like this, we would have many thousands of instances of this tag. If somebody knows that something is wrong but doesn't have time to find and add the right info, it is better to just remove the info than to just leave it there with a tag that a traveller may miss when reading the actual text.Texugo (talk) 14:45, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Invalid interwiki
There are a lot of invalid interwiki from incubator in articles (like here). They link to pages that don't exist. Maybe it'll be better to remove them. The same operation was carried out on uk, ru and it wikivoyages. My bot can remove ar, ca, eo, fi, hi, hu, ja, ko, zh interwiki, but I'd like to ask for permission to make these changes. What do you think about it? --SteveR (talk) 16:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd think that languages which were never imported (or never imported properly) should be imported to either incubator or a new wiki instead of merely removing the links. No idea if anything is being done, or on what expected timeframe, but unless the target page was originally spam (or voted out of existence for some reason) I'd hesitate to pull the links. We do need to do something about importing fi hu ro and zh as there are many templated links from WP in those languages which currently still point to WT and need to be pointed to us once we import the content. K7L (talk) 02:44, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Help test the new account creation and login
Hi all,
After many weeks of testing, We (the editor engagement experiments team) are is getting close to enabling redesigns of the account creation and login pages. (There's more background about how we got here and why our blog post.)
Right now are trying to identify any final bugs before we enable new defaults. This is where we really need your help: for now, we don't want to disrupt these critical functions if there are outstanding bugs or mistranslated interface messages. So for about a week, the new designs are opt-in only for testing purposes, and it would be wonderful if you could give them a try. Here's how:
Which is the most appropriate place for feedback? I think "contributors this month" is misleading in an ugly Internet-Brands sort of way, since it sounds like it's trying to imply there were that many unique editors during this month... Texugo (talk) 20:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Here works for feedback.:) On this: it's supposed to use the {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} magic word, which shows all users who took an action in the last 30 days. Right now it mistakenly includes just {{NUMBEROFUSERS}}. If folks still think that's unacceptable, let's talk about alternatives. (You can of course customize the local MediaWiki message for the statistic and its description.) Steven (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Customizable in MediaWiki:Helplogin-url. Let's remove that link, maybe for now by placing something else, maybe even just " " in MediaWiki:Helplogin-url (blanking it would not work as that just reverts to the default link). Putting a "help" link there is an unnecessary invitation to excess. The corresponding Wikipedia page w:Help:Logging_in is an example of excess that does not help the traveler nor probably anyone else. Could an admin do this please? The MediaWiki:Helplogin-url page is protected. --Rogerhc (talk) 00:10, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think a simple help link is not an invitation to excess. It's pretty standard user interface design to not dump help content on to the login page, but put it somewhere else so that it doesn't distract or annoy people who don't need help. I would highly encourage Wikivoyage to have a basic help page about login. Since Wikivoyage doesn't have a help namespace, which is slightly unusual, where do you keep help guides? In the project namespace? Perhaps Wikivoyage:How to create a user account is the appropriate interim link. Let me know and I can help customize any MediaWiki namespace messages if an admin hasn't beat me to it.:) Steven (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Taking someone to a page that is not the "create an account" page makes it quiet a bit harder, not easier, for him to complete that "create an account" page. A more helpful way to offer help where it might be needed there on that very simple page is to put it in hove boxes that pop up when a user lingers over or clicks a "help" link there, so that the user is still on the "create an account" page while he is reading that brief, to the point at hand, help. Paragraphs of explanatory text on an entirely different page simply are not helpful nor relevant to the simple process of filling out the "create an account" form. Certainly lets not take someone away from the "create an account" page while he is trying to fill it out. Rogerhc (talk) 06:00, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You wouldn't be "taking" anyone anywhere. The person would be looking for help, since they'd have to click the link. I redirected it to the help page for now, but if people really want it blank, any admin can just turn it in to an empty comment. Steven (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As a quick update: it's been quite some time and localizations are mostly complete, so we're enabling the new forms for most of the major wikis. Let me know if there's anything I can do going forward. There are a few remaining enhancements we want to make but they're relatively minor. Steven (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, redundant I think. Usually an area will only have one city with any consulates or embassies at all anyway. I wouldn't mind a note in the region article saying "Various consulates/embassies can be found in City X" or something short to that effect, but I don't see any need to reproduce the whole list. Texugo (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
specifically I was thinking of a time I stepped off a train in Japan to stretch my legs (I was young and dumb) only to have the train leave without me. My backpack, passport, money etc was all on the train (did I mention I was young and dumb at the time?) anyway, long story short I really needed an English speaker and fast and obviously I was not familiar with the area. If I had a resource like wikivoyage available to me at the time, where would I look for a consulate? I wouldn't want to spend my time looking through individual city listings trying to find the right one. Lumpytrout (talk) 21:04, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in that kind of situation you'd be stuck in one city. So I would imagine you'd start by looking at the article for the city you're in, right? PerryPlanet (talk) 21:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I will work out a better one-liner strategy for that section, some of the local consulates are off the beaten track for some reason so I do think that some direction at a higher level would be helpful. Florida was probably a bad example to be tracking as it is both a state and its own United States region. Lumpytrout (talk) 01:58, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
[en] Change to wiki account system and account renaming
Some accounts will soon be renamed due to a technical change that the developer team at Wikimedia are making. More details on Meta.
The notice says that bureaucrat's rights to rename users will be removed. Will that affect our little system we've got going here of renaming and merging old WT users? If so, maybe it's not such an issue, as users have had plenty of time to be renamed and merged if that's what they wanted. JamesA>talk03:44, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is a good question. But in the meantime, if you have not merged your en.wikivoyage account with your other WMF accounts using Special:MergeAccount you probably should before May 27, or otherwise things might become a huge mess after that. --Rschen775404:25, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for following up. Hopefully there is a way to maintain that functionality since we still get a trickle of users wanting their contributions imported here from the other site merged into their Wikivoyage account contribution history. -- Ryan• (talk) •06:22, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a Dummy's Guide to migrating files? I've had a look and can't find one. I never really understood the procedure, but I've found a file that looks adequately licensed and should be moved to Commons:
In theory, if you tag it with the Move template (as I've just done), a bot will take care of the move. But I don't know if the bots are still running or not. LtPowers (talk) 14:59, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like User:MGA73 last performed some migrations on April 7. That said, many of the remaining images, including the one you've referenced, are images that may or may not have been properly licensed. There is no explicit indication on (for example) that the uploader is actually the photographer, aside from a license tag that was automatically added based on a droplist selection, so in such cases I'm not sure that we should risk putting the file into Commons. -- Ryan• (talk) •15:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If the image isn't available elsewhere on the web (aside from WT of course), given the resolution of the image and the presence of full EXIF data (which is the same for all three of the user's uploads), I think we're safe assuming own work. Whether certain parties at Commons would agree or not, I don't know. LtPowers (talk) 15:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but since the uploader will be legally liable for any copyright violations, I think User:MGA73 was only migrating files that were very explicit in their sourcing and licensing, and the bot used was ignoring images tagged "move" without an explicit source. As a result, I'm not sure that a "move" tag will be sufficient if the bot is re-enabled. Also, as you've pointed out, parties at Commons may be similarly cautious if the file is moved there. I'm probably more gun-shy than most given recent experience, but personally I don't think the reward of moving remaining images to Commons outweighs the risk of accidentally pulling in copyvios given the incomplete info for most remaining images. -- Ryan• (talk) •15:47, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the input. The same user's other shots have already been transferred to Commons, so it seems strange that this one was left behind. The photographs were all taken on the same day, in the same place, with the same camera model; but perhaps there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll.Travelpleb (talk) 08:08, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The process for moving images that you have already checked and tagged is to poke one of the filemovers who participated in the process. See example. --PeterTalk16:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I copied the file mentioned above and some of the other files to Commons. Unless someone find a huge load of good files I think we are down to moving the files one by one as we find some good files to move.
And right above the post mentioned above there is a request from Magog if some admins could help check and delete the files Copied to Commons. You do not have to delete 100 files. Any help is welcome. --MGA73 (talk) 19:01, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What to do about contributions with extremely bad grammar
Lately, we've had a bunch of content contributed on pages about China (such as Fuyang, Hangzhou, and previously, Wenzhou, but I did a lot of editing in that article and it's now better). That's the good news, and don't get me wrong: I'm glad the content is being added.
However, the bad news is that the new content is written in extremely poor ESL English and often also poorly formatted. I've edited some entries, "Understand" sections and the like to make them acceptable, but I can't keep pace with the volume of the edits. I feel like we really need more contributors who are fully bilingual in Chinese and English (and more contributors who are reasonably proficient in English, period), who will be able to easily make sense of Chinese English contributions and "translate" them into good English. Meanwhile, whoever would like to join me in trying to fix a lot of poorly-phrased listings and the like would be doing a good job for the reader. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
comment re this - an example The base of volplane in Yongan mountain: There have a big base of glide, you can rental the glider in here. There is a best place to glide because there have best weather, landing area, slope of hill, terrain, wind direction, and condition of traffic and vegetation. Few years ago, there have the international glide competition, the sportsman from Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, and 20 cities from China, and the international sportsman from France and Germany. Whatever, there is the best place to glide!!!!! = Yongan mountain is a gliding location.
Are paraphrases considered copyvio here? If not, is a translation a form of paraphrasing? In a way, it is, almost necessarily. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am sure in the end translation and or paraphrasing is not really a copyvio issue - on thinking the issue through my question is redundant. sats (talk) 12:22, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For paraphrasing, isn't part of the point of paraphrasing because it avoids copyvios? In terms of translations, I don't know the legalities of copyvios from translations however, because we try to be concise and avoid lengthy explanations, I think it forces us to paraphrase after translating.
In the case above, though, the 'translation' is from English that is difficult to understand/incomprehensible to English that is natural. That's not a copyvio. If the added info seems both touty and difficult to read, it can just be reverted. In this case, it may be a hassle, but a little research on gliding in that city might be enough to smooth it out, but I think the above example is understandable enough to be fleshed out without research (at least enough to make it acceptable until someone with more knowledge edits). ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are at least two principles in copyright law that appear to apply here:
Copyright does cover "derivative works", so a paraphrase can be a copyvio and a translation almost certainly is.
Copyright does not cover ideas, only the expression of them, so taking information but not text from anywhere is OK.
For how these apply in a particular case, and what other complications come into it, only a lawyer can give a plausible answer and only a judge can give one that is definitive for a particular jurisdiction. I'm not certain a full answer is even possible on the Net; probably the WMF legal dep't could give a fine approximation. Pashley (talk) 14:42, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Both translating and paraphrasing someone else's writing without permission is a copyright violation. If the "paraphrasing" is sufficiently different, then it would be fine, but then it wouldn't really be paraphrasing. Spotting such copyvios is can be pretty hard, though. With paraphrasing, some original bits usually get thrown in that you can catch and then match the original to the derivative. With translations, you can occasionally guess where the info is coming from and check (if you can understand the language with or without a translator).
If you find a good source of information, don't rewrite it using the same structure. Instead, read it, copy some facts, and then write something fresh without looking at what you read while you write it. --PeterTalk19:02, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the responses - even after I disqualified my own comment - it is very useful to have such information regularly explained and put up - I think all wiki project users need to be reminded of the issues. sats (talk) 08:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia en 'Travel and Tourism Project'
I do not know if there are any editors who would be in any way enthusiastic/interested about wikipedia en editing in the almost dormant Travel and Tourism project ( a very different approach to issues, but potenatially useful nonetheless )
I could see that there are some potentially extraordinarily useful synergies between the almost inactive project - and the project here.
However I do not wish to over-burden this initial query here apart from seeing if there is any interest first. I will wait for a while as I realise that some editors here might need a close look first... sats (talk) 08:19, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As there has been zilch response to this - I will pursue the points of common interest/ points of disjuncture quietly and resurface the idea later when I have more of a handle on some of the ideas. If anyone is interested in the idea at this stage please contact. sats (talk) 02:56, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd love to see more cross-project collaboration, but at the moment I don't have time available to commit to any additional endeavors. Others may be similarly time-constrained given all that is going on here, but it would be great if you or someone else could continue to investigate and spearhead options for further collaboration, perhaps as a expedition that might slowly attract more attention here. -- Ryan• (talk) •03:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Time is indeed a serious issue for me as well. The interesting thing about the fate of the Travel and Tourism project (and probably the hotels project as well) on wp en - is that although the articles and content of the project inside wp en may be at odds to the general aim of this project - I feel that where there have been 'exclusions' here - due to the keeping to the scope and aims of this project - there maybe points where a clearer understanding of what the wp en Travel and Tourism project was going - there might just be material/crossovers of benefit to both... I will endevour to make a sub page of the category tree of the wp en project sometime soon and see what might come from that - at the same time being very aware of the boundaries limited by scope and policy... sats (talk) 03:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Android: wikivoyage.org redirects to www.m.wikivoyage.org which does not exist
On Android 2.2, I searched "wikivoyage austria" on Google, click the first result, and got an error "Web page not available" at http://www.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Austria. Is there currently a known problem? Apparently on my device www.wikivoyage.org redirects to www.m.wikivoyage.org which does not exist. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:18, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ewww, that's ugly, I'll open up a bug and post the link here for anyone who has more info. It looks like the old wikivoyage.org redirects did not take the mobile redirects into account. It's likely relatively easy for them to fix just that no one realized it. Thank you!! Jalexander (talk) 23:47, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Added as bugzilla:48394 not sure how prevalent it is (a couple random wikivoyage searches did not come up with it) but it's clearly consistent on "Wikivoyage austria" and If it happens there I'm SURE it happens elsewhere and that's not acceptable. Jalexander (talk) 00:10, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Test wiki
I created a test wiki—http://voy-en.instance-proxy.wmflabs.org in Wikimedia Foundation Labs Wikivoyage project—but it's anemic, doesn't even have parcer functions. To be useful as a test wiki it needs to be a clone of en.Wikivoyage, database and extensions and all, but I don't know how to set that up. If anyone with server administration clue wants to help me make that test wiki into a clone of en.Wikivoyage I'd be extatic, please let me know.:-) Rogerhc (talk) 05:40, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage has a fair bit of health info. Some of it is of questionable correctness. Wondering about providing links to Wikipedia / adding references to some of it? Wikipedia as I am sure most are aware is now linking to Wikivoyage in many places. Also with respect to some of the medications. Should we link to Wikipedia for those? Use something like a sister site template maybe? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:50, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Travel Doc, if you see any health info that's incorrect or questionable, please edit it.
Allowing other-subject links to Wikipedia is a controversial subject, and opinion has divided about 50/50 on whether to allow more links or not. I'm having trouble locating the latest long discussion thread on whether to allow more links to Wikipedia. It's not in the intuitive places, like Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikipedia or Wikivoyage talk:External links. I'd like for someone to provide the link for you, in case you have more suggestions for ways to go forward that might achieve a consensus, however unlikely that is. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:08, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! Having looked at the vfd page recently, I was wondering whether it might be worth creating a 'Not yet' page for all the articles that don't at present fit with our remit, but may one day find a use. As we continue to sort our house out we're going to keep finding long, interesting articles that don't quite fit our needs, but we're also going to perhaps look at expanding the topics we cover. Is it therefore worth creating a central archive where we can store these articles until they're wanted and perhaps even improve them in the meantime? Any thoughts welcome! --Nick (talk) 21:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nick, if I'm getting you, do you mean we should create "Not yet" page for all the localities that don't have an article yet? --Saqib (talk) 21:27, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No - as an example, take some of the airline articles that were recently up for deletion. We didn't really want to keep them, but didn't want to delete them either as we could see a use for them in future. I'm not suggesting creating hundreds of stub articles by any means; on the contrary, I'm thinking of articles with lots of content that don't quite fit within the WV remit. If people would be interested in creating some sort of 'incubator' as you describe then maybe that's another, different avenue that could be explored. --Nick (talk) 21:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nick, your idea reminds me of the exact same idea we produced in this discussion, but forgot about;) I'm all for creating a Wikivoyage:Limbo, where things could be slushed for the time being. Moving things to userspace is pretty effective, but a little too confusing for some of the types of new editors that create articles that wind up on the vfd page. --PeterTalk04:20, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
'Limbo' sounds like a good name for such a page! Userspaces are useful (I'm the proud adoptive father of M5 motorway), but once there, articles are out of the public domain. It would be nice to have somewhere between deletion and the mainspace.:) --Nick (talk) 16:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Remove unneeded features from the edit toolbar
I understand that we can somehow edit the toolbar above the edit window. Since we don't use <ref> and we don't encourage <gallery>, could we remove the reference button from the main bar, the reference section from the help tab, and the insert gallery button from the advanced tab? (Could someone please show me where admins can edit the toolbar?)
Thanks. Actually much progress has been made since I posted that, and I found that page you mentioned. We now have working listing buttons, but the remove script given in that documentation only seems to work for encapsulation buttons on the main bar, and we haven't got it working for the three things I mentioned above. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Details here. Texugo (talk) 01:03, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Portal pages
Hi! I'm still trying to give Flying (and associated articles) a bit of an overhaul, but that page really serves only as a portal - it's not an article. Despite this, it is classified as such, but fits none of the criteria. Is there any way to put 'portal' as a page category or is it better just to leave it as it is? --Nick (talk) 23:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, I know that it isn't usual on here and I'm certainly not trying to create some Wikipedian multi-tiered article structure, but I think Flying needs a page of this sort (the name 'portal' is purely academic). There is no other way to really sort this information (as it's been split into 4), so in the interests of the traveller, I fear a portal here is necessary. --Nick (talk) 00:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's an attractive and helpful page the way you have it organised now, Nick. Is this query just about the appropriate (hidden) classification of this unique page? -- Alice✉ 09:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Alice; yeah that's basically it. I wasn't planning on changing that page at all, I was just concerned about its classification. --Nick (talk) 19:24, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
List of bus routes in (Kalamazoo)
A batch of pages which consisted of lists of bus routes in cities were recently deleted from English Wikipedia. Are those appropriate for adding to articles here? The list of routes might be significantly longer than the current article on the city, depending. Are they appropriate for creating a new article with if it doesn't exist? :) Sj (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One was moved here and, after considerable discussion, the resulting article was deleted.
This was discussed here back in January, but I can't find it in the archive. For somewhere like Kalamazoo, the information is readily available online from the bus operator or local authority, so a separate article is not appropriate. If the information is not online in English, then there might be a case for an article, but this would have to be written to be useful to a traveller, not a bus spotter. AlasdairW (talk) 22:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am not receiving mail when changes are made to watchlist articles. I have tried, but can't seem to fix this. Has this affected others? Seligne (talk) 07:50, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You will only receive ONE email alert when the watched page has changed (if you have set this in your user preferences) subsequent changes are not alert e-mailed but will still appear on your watchlist in bold, Seligne. Keep cool! -- Alice✉ 16:38, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Tech newsletter: Subscribe to receive the next editions
Latest Tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf4) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and to the English Wikipedia (with a Wikidata software update) on May 20. It will be updated on all other Wikipedia sites on May 22.
A software update will perhaps result in temporary issues with images. Please report any problems you notice.
MediaWiki recognizes links in twelve new schemes. Users can now link to SSH, XMPP and Bitcoin directly from wikicode.
The UploadWizard on Commons now shows links to the old upload form in 55 languages (bug 33513).
Future software changes
The next version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf5) will be added to Wikimedia sites starting on May 27.
An updated version of Notifications, with new features and fewer bugs, will be added to the English Wikipedia on May 23.
The final version of the "single user login" (which allows people to use the same username on different Wikimedia wikis) is moved to August 2013. The software will automatically rename some usernames.
A new discussion system for MediaWiki, called "Flow", is under development. Wikimedia designers need your help to inform other users, test the prototype and discuss the interface. .
The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring people to act as links between software developers and users for VisualEditor.
Important note: This is the first edition of the Tech News weekly summaries, which help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians.
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you cant click in the map on central america -it gets either to north or south americaOlmav (talk)
As the color coding on the map at the bottom of the main page suggests, Central America is, for the purposes of navigating this site, lumped together with North America. The map shows the seven color-coded continents divided the same way that map at the top is; in most English-speakers' conception of the continents, there are seven, of which Central America does not constitute its own continent. Texugo (talk) 11:39, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From a geographical perspective, our current method is acceptable. But from a traveller's perspective, we really should be separating the Middle East and Central America as major regions/continents in their own right. That's how Lonely Planet does it, except they further separate Central America and the Caribbean, and I don't think that is necessary. Have we had a discussion about this before? JamesA>talk03:03, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From what I remember, I think we did have a version of the new Main Page which divided the continents like that, though I can't remember why we changed it back; perhaps to keep in line with our Destinations page? --Nicktalk10:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If that's what we want it should be fairly easy to do - it's just a question of changing the co-ordinates. --Nicktalk11:11, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If we are going to do it, we should go the whole way. So not just changing the map, but the Destinations page, the breadcrumbs (making Middle East/Central America top level continents), and many of the underlying region maps (so Middle East will be pulled out of Asia and the map reconfigured. Any less is inconsistent and somewhat confusing. I do think the other Wikivoyages also make the division I'm proposing. JamesA>talk11:55, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Without responding directly to that proposal for a sitewide change, I don't think adding it to the map would actually be inconsistent. It's not as if the map screams "here are our seven top hierarchy levels". Texugo (talk) 12:38, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Central America, Caribbean, and Middle East are most certainly not separate continents, and we shouldn't treat them as such. I also don't see why we should treat them any differently than we treat other Continental Sections like Russia, Central Europe, Southern Africa, or Canada. LtPowers (talk) 13:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Destinations doesn't list continents; it lists destinations. The traveller comes first, and if it makes more sense to separate the Middle East and Central America from a travel perspective, it should be done. Moreover, continents refer to large landmasses; so technically, the continents are North and South America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. But a continent like Eurasia is not helpful, so we divide it as per common practice. JamesA>talk14:09, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But that's just it; it doesn't make sense to promote those two or three tiny regions to Continent status. They're considerably smaller than Oceania and are historically and contemporarily considered parts of the seven traditional continents, not separate continents. LtPowers (talk) 14:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Twitter (and some other things)
Hi! I was just thinking that it would be a nice idea to contact the tourist board of destinations that we were about to feature on our Main Page, so they could capitalise on it and direct some people here (A win-win situation!). To my mind, Twitter would be a good method to use for this (it's quick, informal and public), but, of course, we don't yet a WV account. I'd be more than happy to set this up myself, but from what I gather, we might have to talk to the WMF first. The other issue is that there are already 2 Wikivoyage-ish accounts in existence: this one, seemingly in use by the German project and this one, the particulars of which are somewhat mysterious. Either way, I think such an account would be a good to way to get people interested in the project, as well as interacting positively with it. --Nicktalk16:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikivoyage talk:Social media. There's no separate discussion for Twitter. We'd need to find out who owns the accounts (German Wikivoyage?) and if there is trouble handing over the account, contact WMF to contact Twitter and usurp the account. AHeneen (talk) 04:31, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of tweeting tourist boards sounds interesting. Obviously, we can only contact those who have official Twitter accounts, so you could start building a database of them on your user page. One question though: If we send the same unsollicitated tweet to many users, won't it be considered spam? Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:05, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is it worth me getting in contact with the German project and seeing if they'd be prepared to hand it over? In terms of sending messages to Tourist Boards, we'd do it sparingly and only when their destination came up. We could always email those who don't yet have Twitter. I just think it's a nice medium to use to interact with people and inspire interest. --Nicktalk09:17, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's a good thing that the page views recovered. But of course, why did that temporary drop even happen in the first place? And it's unfortunate that our page views are hardly increasing, while that of WT appears to be constant or even remaining the same. I do think we need to be more hardliner with the Search Expedition and create a private forum to discuss issues instead. JamesA>talk14:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if my wording was a little off. I really meant what James has said: we had a big drop, have recovered, but haven't really grown. I think you're right about pushing the Search Expedition harder - how could we set that up as a private forum? I'm going to push for Twitter (as above) which will hopefully encourage a few more people to take a look. --Nicktalk14:45, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That extension does look like a good idea. Having looked at the stats for a few other pages over the same period, it looks like it was only the Main Page's views that fell with that pattern - why might that be? --Nicktalk15:13, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, a good private forum would probably be an invite only mailing list (Google Groups?), and invite only Expedition members who have a spotless and substantial wiki record, to weed out the untrustworthy. --PeterTalk15:22, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps some sort of link problem caused the issue - has Google only just re-cached us? As you say though, it's a relief that it's sorted itself out now. Those sound like fair criteria for the Project: World Domination (:D) forum and Google Groups seems a good way to do it. --Nicktalk15:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is there actually anything to be discussed about SEO that can't be discussed on the search expedition? I don't see anything in the discussions thus far that would require additional privacy, so is there something more that people have refrained from discussing? For example, is the fear that if we reveal any keywords we are trying to optimize around that someone else might do the same? Unless there's a good reason to do so I'd be hesitant about moving discussions off wiki. -- Ryan• (talk) •15:33, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there is, and I believe other users are also withholding ideas because they may be jeopardized. We know that IB is tracking our every move seeing as they have nothing better to do with their time. Let's just trial a private Google Group and see how it goes. There's no real harm in it. JamesA>talk10:52, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was told on #mediawiki IRC that the Extension above is dysfunctional. To get the Google Webmaster tools, we need to add the following to our LocalSettings.php:
That can only be done through a tech request, which can hopefully be fulfilled swiftly. Does someone want to make that, as I haven't made a tech request before? JamesA>talk13:38, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sitting a room with most of the WMF's tech staff at the moment, so I'll ask around. I think there will be some legal/privacy with this request, though. —Ruud14:12, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The operations team have never really given any though about this yet, but think it would probably be idea to have access to Google Webmaster, Alexa, etc. for WV (Google Analytics and other services that require you to install a web bug are definitely out of the question, though, because of privacy reasons.) There doesn't exists of process for this yet, but they would prefer the ownership of this to be tied to Wikimedia('s site operations team) instead of to "someone with a gmail address."
Their advised course of action was to file a "shell bug" in Bugzilla with very specific instructions on what you want done (e.g. "change the Alexa description for wikivoyage.org to such and such.") The person in particular to bug about this is Rob Lanphier (RobLa). —Ruud14:54, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for asking, Ruud! There are a variety of things we would like access to, including Google/Bing/Yahoo Webmaster, Alexa and some other SEO sites listed on the Expedition page. I can understand their preference for the WMF to be the ones with access and control, but the issue is the WMF having to be a middle-man, and unfortunately often a slow one at that. If we had access to the Webmaster tools, we would want to be periodically and regularly checking it to determine changes in how we are displayed in search results and what keywords trigger Wikivoyage to pop up in results. It's not just a matter of adding a sitemap and we can put the issue aside.
It would be good if it were possible for the WMF to have the ability to edit settings and change access, but admins were simply able to view the statistical info and data when they pleased. Is that possible? I may send a message off to Rob later. JamesA>talk03:36, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Are we going to go ahead with the aforementioned Google Group then? I can't see that it could do any harm. --Nicktalk15:27, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, I don't really understand the rest of this thread. Why did the views on the Main Page drop so quickly and in such an abnormal way? PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:48, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Racist establishments
Heya! I was wondering if anyone could tell me if there is a particular policy on WV to not include a listing (in this case accommodation) if they do not accept all travellers regardless of their race. I do know of a few places that have this policy and I personally find it quite disturbing, and have seen a couple of them on here.
In such a case should I delete the listing or state in the description that, for example 'This hostel does not accept bookings from citizens of India or Middle eastern countries'. I prefer the former personally. Winter.daniel92 (talk) 04:08, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On the surface, any establishment which actively discriminates based on race should not be listed on WV (on ethical grounds, but Avoid Negative Reviews seems to be the only appropriate WV criteria). However, I'm a bit concerned about deleting entirely, rather than just the mention of racism. There are a couple reasons which make this problematic:
We don't know who wrote the review. For all we know the person who added the comment is a competitor out to slight their competition. It could also come from a misunderstanding...a person of said race having issues dealing with one particular employee at that hotel has come here to leave a remark. In the latter, the issue may lie with a racist employee who has long been released, an overly grumpy patron who took a conflict to equal racism, or an employee who made a prejudiced remark to someone during a conflict (eg. "These Asians always giving me trouble.")
If the establishment is located in a small town, it could very well be the only or one of 2-3 hotels in town. Even if they have a prejudice towards one group, (and as much as racism irritates me and I don't really want to say this) on Wikivoyage The traveller comes first and an establishment should still be listed so that the (let's say) 90% of other travelers still benefit from that knowledge.
I STRONGLY believe #1 is behind in 99% of claims that an establishment is "racist" and there are very few establishments where concrete evidence can be given that they are truly "racist" in their practices. By going through and deleting all purportedly "racist" establishments, you would really be doing a disservice to WV by removing appropriate listings (again, almost guaranteed to be either a misunderstanding or even libel). But by all means, go ahead and delete the negative reviews claiming racism. AHeneen (talk) 08:24, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
However, if you personally know a hotel discriminates, and it is not in a place where there are only a couple of hotels, you should delete the listing; wouldn't you agree? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:34, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is a fair point, no establishments should be deleted by just a review alone. I do know a few examples where they acutally say on their website that bookings are not accepted from certain countries. An example is Reggage Mansion , they operate at a few locations in Malaysia: We do not accept online bookings from Malaysia, India and middle east countries. Bookings made and paid online by these countries shall not be refundable. We accept walk in check in only for these countries and it is subjected to the room availability. I think establishments like this should be deleted. Winter.daniel92 (talk) 09:41, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Japan definitely has establishments that single out Russians, Brazilians, Filipinos, etc., or simply close their doors to all foreigners. I'd say that if you have personal knowledge of such a place, just delete it entirely. Texugo (talk) 12:43, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not certain of the current situation in China. At one point it was illegal for a hotel to accept foreigners without approval from the local cops. I've been told that is no longer the case, but some hotels still reject foreigners. Pashley (talk) 12:56, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
At the risk of sounding like a freak, I think that experiencing racism while traveling is important. Personally it is a reminder that I have my own transparent and unsubstantiated beliefs and seeing open racism in other counties has been a huge educational eye opener for me if for no other reason than to see how completely freakish and regional it is. I think that we should be giving travelers as much info as possible and let them make their own decisions. I live in a country that still has segregated high school dances and many racial laws are still on the books that I would want to know about as a traveler before visiting. Lumpytrout (talk) 13:58, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is hard to decide what is racist, though. The Mansions example above has "We do not accept online bookings from Malaysia, India and middle east countries." Is that racism? Or caution against countries with problems in online payment, like some ebay sellers who do not accept orders from China or India? Or something we might call "culturalism", trying to avoid clients from Moslem countries?
If it is either racism or culturalism, why not list Indonesia which is ethnically, linguistically and religiously very similar to Malaysia? Pashley (talk) 14:16, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we should go about imposing our morality. This is a tricky issue and a self-righteous, knee-jerk "this is terrible, ban it" response may not be the best. If a place definitely discriminates, just say so and leave it to the traveler to decide. "Ban it" logic should leads to the deletion of articles for entire countries: Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan etc. (Israelis not allowed); USA (Cubans not allowed); both Koreas (mutual hatred); Armenia and Azerbaijan (mutual hatred) etc. Travelpleb (talk) 14:27, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but if the owners of a place are douchebags, because they are racist or for some other reason, then it probably goes without saying that we wouldn't recommend it. And if we don't recommend a business, we avoid listing it. That is not true for destinations, only for businesses, at least in part because we don't want to get into litigation with owners. --PeterTalk17:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we should try to impose our ideals on other cultures. We should just try and compile a fair travel guide. I believe that may involve listing things that we may not personally agree with.
I agree with Lumpytrout, encountering ways of living and thinking that are radically different from our own (and probably a little unnerving) is an important part of the educational aspect of travel.
Obnoxious proprietors per se should not necessarily cause a place not to be listed. Russia and its former colonies would lose far too many listings if we were not to list places run by grumpy, service-with-a-frown types, and purging racist proprietors from the listings of South Africa—where racism is so prevalent that listings don't bother to mention it*—would not achieve anything useful.
* I just checked: a place in Jo'burg, which I know is run by a nice, white racist couple, is listed without any note of the proprietors' prejudices. As for the Soviet hotel misery stereotype, I've stayed in loads. Also, to be fair, there's many places in Russia, Ukraine, etc. with nice owners, but the ones with miserable, belligerent owners still form a significant part of the accommodation market.Travelpleb (talk) 08:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be practical about this. Where there's a choice of other accommodations that we do not know to be invidiously discriminatory, we should avoid listing the ones that we know are, including the place in Jo'burg that you know about. If there's no choice, list, in the interest of those travelers who will not be turned away. And I don't see it in the least as "imposing our ideals on other cultures." First of all, this is an international site, so I'm not sure who "our" is. But that aside, people everywhere do what they do and certainly won't change their behavior because of attitudes on this website. So it has nothing to do with imposition, just that when we have a choice, we should avoid listing establishments that deserve negative reviews for any reason, including discrimination. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:29, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, a practical response is what's needed. The early posts on this thread seemed worryingly like the beginnings of a witch hunt.
While the whole site is international, we the pub are a largely globally unrepresentative group of well educated (according to the Alexa profiling posted here some time ago), well meaning (we're all volunteers), well traveled (presumably?) English speakers that will definitely have many common cultural traits. Wikivoyage helps people see the world, imposing certain ideals on the site could potentially filter how people see the world, so we are then imposing our ideals, not on proprietors, but on travelers.
As for South Africa, I got the impression it has a delicate and near incomprehensible set of inter-race issues, and I'm not going to meddle in them in the slightest.Travelpleb (talk) 13:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maps!
After basically not being able to create maps for a long time of an SVG exporting problem on OpenStreetMap, I've figured out how to import the data through Maperitive, which is awesome software, making this easier than ever before. Having been cartographically deprived, I've been on a tear since .
I just noticed a lot of wrong information about SVG's on two different pages (Wikivoyage:Image policy and Wikivoyage:How to draw a map). They recommend that both an SVG and a PNG version of the same image should be uploaded. This is wrong. In most cases only the SVG version is needed. The MediaWiki software automatically converts SVG's to the appropriate sized PNG when the image is requested. See mw:Manual:Image administration#SVG, or commons:Help:SVG for more.
Actually, generally, for maps we need both versions too- the svg's contain different layers for different language versions, so a different png must be made for each. Texugo (talk) 02:47, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, no, you don't need the PNG. As I already said "The MediaWiki software automatically converts SVG's to the appropriate sized PNG when the image is requested." If you want different language versions of a map, then you upload different SVG's and let the software handle turning them into PNG's afterwards, like this:
Texugo's point is that people generally create a map for a large area, with different language layers, display size layers, etc, and then generate different PNGs from that single source. Having multiple copies of the SVG, albeit with different language or zoom layers "active", would mean that there will be multiple files to update each time you want to make a modification to the map, rather than a single file that can be tweaked, with the appropriate PNG then generated if needed. For example, File:Yellowstone-area-map.png and File:Yellowstone-map.png use the same SVG source: File:Yellowstone-area-map.svg. If I add a feature to the SVG I only need to update the SVG and any PNG that uses that feature, rather than having two copies of the same SVG that would then need to be updated. -- Ryan• (talk) •03:27, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, browsers often render text in SVGs incorrectly. The solution on Commons has been to convert all text to path before uploading, but that makes the files much, much harder to edit and update. Which goes against the collaborative updating aspect of our wiki, and creates tons more effort for people trying to create derivative works from the maps in question. --PeterTalk03:55, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for editing a map, you usually want to re-export from your GIS software rather than trying to edit the map and freehand draw something in. --Rschen775409:31, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not true; most of the changes I make to maps are to removed closed listings, change the name of renamed listings, and add new listings. The geography doesn't usually change much. The other change that's common is to re-adjust region borders, which also aren't exported from GIS software, but rather drawn in by hand. LtPowers (talk) 18:11, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Does the TOC at Leiden look strange for anyelse too? It appears too far down on the page and the "By car" header overlaps with it. —Ruud10:27, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki does not handle multiple floating elements well. By having three images at the top of the page, the TOC was pushed down below the first two. As a general rule, we should never put multiple images in a row without text in between them; it screws up the formatting, sometimes in even worse ways than this. In this case, one of the images can be moved to the top to serve as the lead image without impacting the TOC, if you like. LtPowers (talk) 13:34, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Airport articles?
In some cases, airports themselves are so complex that they might need articles of their own, linked to transit sections of other pages, especially large ones, especially cities with multiple airports (eg., London). Is this a good idea or covered under Wikivoyage in some way I haven't discovered?
The London article is extremely well written and has everything you need to know about London. It should become a star article. —The preceding comment was added by 68.50.233.28 (talk • contribs)
How to link from Wikipedia to Wikivoyage?
Wikipedia's Paris article has a "Travel guide from Wikivoyage" link to Wikivoyage. But surprisingly, I can't find "voyage" nor "wv" in its source.
The information cannot be stored on Wikidata right now; it is planned, but there are many other things that have to be done first. --Rschen775409:03, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Am having difficulty converting some articles...after completion reported, clicking on "download file" results in modest pause, then display of raw HTML. Example article: "Honfleur". Creation of a "Book" not attempted...not relevant. Using W7 Pro (all updates) & latest version of Firefox. Suggestions? Thanks Hennejohn (talk) 18:52, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As it just did for me. Seems to be spotty; occurred with a few other articles, then they worked. Thanks for the "help". Hennejohn (talk) 23:48, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Following up from a discussion started at Wikivoyage talk:Recent changes help#Do we need this page?, almost all of the pages listed on Wikivoyage:Software features are about Mediawiki software features and are not specific to Wikivoyage. Having local descriptions of Mediawiki functionality might have made sense when we weren't running the latest version, but now that we are guaranteed to be on the latest versions these pages are just out-of-date and incomplete versions of Mediawiki documentation. Given our poor track record of keeping documentation pages up-to-date, and since we have plenty of examples of referring to www.mediawiki.org for software documentation (example: Wikivoyage:Using MediaWiki templates refers to mw:Help:Templates for documentation on template syntax), I would propose turning the following into soft redirects:
Hi, apologies for posting this in English, but I wanted to alert your community to a discussion on Meta about potential changes to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy. Please translate this statement if you can. We hope that you will all participate in the discussion; we also welcome translations of the legal team’s statement into as many languages as possible and encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please see the Trademark practices discussion (on Meta-Wiki) for more information. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk)
Docents?
After reading the article on this subject and offering myself as one for Oakland - I have to ask, after looking through the 101 other articles that have the hasDocent tag - how the heck does the end-user even tell that a page has a docent in the first place? If there's some link on the page or TOC or the new banner, I am sure not seeing it. L. Challenger (talk) 06:31, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there is. On pages with a docent, it creates a new section in the left sidebar called "Destination Docents", just under the toolbox section. Texugo (talk) 11:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone help me adjust the interwiki map on pt:? We don't know how to do it. When we put the wikipedia interwiki [[wikipedia:Pagename]] at the bottom of articles to create the sidebar links, it automatically goes to English wikipedia unless we put "pt:" before the page name every time. I'd like to set it to go to the corresponding WP:pt: page every time without having to specify the language every time. Does anyone know how to do that? Any help would be greatly appreciated... Texugo (talk) 02:13, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We checked it in the very beginning. The interwiki map is fixed for all WMF projects. We are not allowed to change it. Therefore, you have to replace all instances of [[wikipedia: with [[wikipedia:pt --Alexander (talk) 07:53, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Script to find all Wikivoyage articles which are not linked from their respective Wikipedia article
I am thinking of writing a script to find all Wikivoyage articles which are not linked from their respective Wikipedia article. Below is how I am planning to do:
Out of a Wikivoyage dump, filter all [[WikiPedia:XXX]] and [[Wikipedia:XXX]] strings.
I have full confidence that Hazard-SJ is doing a mightily fine job here, so I guess if you have bot-making skills Nick, how about some other bot ideas:
A bot making a nice table of articles within a category, with a status for each and whether it includes a banner or a warning notice of some sort
A simpler bot, making a list of articles in the category that have a unique banner, a default banner, and do not have a banner, also highlighting the ones whose banner is also used someplace else
An even simpler bot only highlighting the articles whose banner is also used someplace else, but only if it is not one of the default banners.
PS. Actually, I've got a better idea! It seems that many Wikivoyage articles are NOT linked to their respective Wikipedia articles, even if the connection is obvious. Perhaps a bot could run a search for such pages by category to help us link those before HazardSJ's bot is in full swing?
PrinceGloria, thanks for pointing me to Hazard-Bot 22, you just saved me hours (days?) of duplicated work! I will give the "better idea" a try;-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:17, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Social Media Policy
Now that we have both Facebook and Twitter accounts up and running is it worth re-evaluating and eventually implementing this policy? There are a few points that perhaps need tweaking, but it's probably worth having something written down on the subject. --Nicktalk20:35, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So why the quick reverts?
I attempted to create a pagebanner for White Sands National Monument, but it was reverted almost immediately. The aspect ratio of the photo used was roughly correct, but it wasn't the exact recommended size. Since the images get scaled automatically, I have a hard time seeing that my edit needed to be immediately reverted. --Footwarrior (talk) 21:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't have to be 2100 x 300, just larger than 1800px wide and with a ratio of 7:1. Unfortunately the images don't scale 7:1 automatically at present, so we have to do that bit, but thanks very much for joining in! You can find out more here: Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition.:) --Nicktalk21:25, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully these categories may help us spot regions which need work and/or have been prematurely over-regionified. Texugo (talk) 17:53, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually it seems they changed it so that Wikivoyage link is only displayed if the article's Wikidata contains a parameter declaring it as a geographic feature, which I think is wrong on many accounts - not only seems like the Wikidata is unreliable (the national park would qualify as "geographic feature" to me), and we have topics covered here which are not "geographic features" (like Hotels and Flying). I believe we should express this on the template's talk page. In the meantime, we can use the standalone Wikivoyage template to interwikilink. PrinceGloria (talk) 21:42, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The intent was to only show it by default if the Wikipedia article is a geographic feature. That is, if the Sister Projects template has no "voy=" parameter, what is the behavior? Originally, the behavior was "don't show a Wikivoyage link", which makes sense for the vast majority of articles, but makes it much harder to get links to us. So we asked for and got it change to "show a Wikivoyage link", which was great for us but looked dumb on a lot of articles. So the intent of the change was to change that to "show the link only if it's a geographic feature as defined by Wikidata" -- but all this only applies if the voy parameter is omitted. If the voy parameter is present, it should use it regardless of what Wikidata says. LtPowers (talk) 01:23, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Either way, we should always try to make manual, direct links, rather than default ones. The default links use "Special:Search/" which I believe does not help us in terms of Google juice. The manually-inserted "voy=" do add to our incoming links and help increase our ranking. James A ▪ talk05:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage Logo
Hi!
I was just messing around a bit and thought I'd have a go at making a Wikivoyage logo. I've created a new symbol (right) and wordmark. You can see the full selection, with (rather pretentious!) explanation here. There's also a mock-up of the site's portal using the logo here. Any comments or suggestions would be very welcome! --Nicktalk22:29, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's a little bit of discussion about this at User talk:LtPowers#Logo. I'll happily say I'm a big fan of this! It suggests a V for Voyage, flight, a compass, and even a bit of ocean waves, while being very simple and sleek. --PeterTalk22:32, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I like it, though I think the color is just a shade or two bright. But please start a thread at the meta lounge. Texugo (talk) 23:08, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Cool. Since you've got the files and fonts all ready you might want to make mockups for the folks from Wikiviajes to evaluate (es: renamed itself). Texugo (talk) 23:19, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great. I've posted about it in the pub on pt: and will do so for es: as well. You might just post about it in English on the other versions to give them a heads up. Texugo (talk) 23:44, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What kind of problem is there with the current logo that requires it to be changed, and what makes it a priority over other issues. I have just seen Pullman Hotels decide to change their logo as a possible distraction of themselves and investors from their true problems, and am perhaps quite wary. PrinceGloria (talk) 00:02, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Something's come up and a logo change is now necessary; keeping the current iteration of our logo is not an option. Either way, the "contest" to decide our logo was poorly run and many Wikivoyagers feel the result was not fair, due to a huge proportion of Wikipedians voting even though they never even bothered to contribute here. Just as a note to all, further comments should be posted at the Meta lounge which is where a decision will ultimately be made. JamesA>talk10:20, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah -- like what I said in some of the previous different-related discussions, I think we should keep creating logos and other things until they are perfectly nice. curtaintoad | chat me!10:37, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I was just coming over to announce this. If there's a better place than this to get the word out to the Wikivoyage community, please let me know. I want to be sure that as many people as possible can take part in refining the process and also selecting a new logo. --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think it's good to do that during the discussion of the process, or to do it when the process begins officially, around June 10th?:) --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to do a CentralNotice, you have to add it in advance to m:CentralNotice/Calendar. Not sure if it should be before the contest or just during it. Jamesofur is more experienced with CentralNotice, you can ask him about this if you want to. Sitenotice is an okay solution as well, but it needs to go on every Wikivoyage. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:20, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What about the message delivery system to add a statement in the Travellers' Pub equivalent of every Wikivoyage version? That seems enough until the contest is ready. AHeneen (talk) 19:00, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a good idea. Thanks. I'll get that going now and talk to James Alexander about sitenotice when the contest (by whatever name, in whatever form) gets going.:) --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think that blue clashes a bit with the logo's blue, which is purer and has less green. But really, we should discuss the logo in a more central location. LtPowers (talk) 18:57, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While some Wikivoyagers don't like the contest proposal, I think I would be better to wait until the contest to begin discussions like this in earnest. The reason is that the contest allows us to get a large number of proposals to comment on and then concern ourselves with aspects like color shade. The problem with a lot of discussion before the contest is that a lot of Wikivoyagers will get predisposed to the couple of designs that have been worked out and less open to other, new proposals. If we spend the next two weeks fine-tuning one or two designs, it will be harder to be open to a new design where the color or edges aren't quite right and need spruced up. While there are concerns about the contest being over-run by non-Wikivoyagers, I'd rather wait and see the variety of designs proposed before working to fine-tune a design...there are many people over at Commons who could produce a great logo design, despite their outsider status. There are better things to do over the next couple of weeks than work too hard on a couple designs. AHeneen (talk) 19:00, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Having had a good discussion with Maggie, it looks like the WMF would be prepared to let us run this selection process with a vote or consensus process open only to Wikivoyage editors after the submission and discussion stages. If this is something that we would want, we need to demonstrate that there is a clear consensus on this issue by posting here. Whatever your opinion is, your input would be very welcome. I would hope that, if this particular system were implemented, it would go some way to addressing the concerns of Peter (above) and others, whilst keeping the whole thing open and accountable. --Nicktalk10:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We don't know yet. Most likely, anyone who's made any non-trivial contributions to any language version of Wikivoyage would be eligible. LtPowers (talk) 13:13, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A reasonable criterion, so long as we can decide what is non-trivial... I would suggest anyone who was registered before the news of the new logo requirement was announced, and anyone who has made at least N mainspace edits if they register after the announcement, where N is a number suggesting that they take WV seriously, though I would prefer to see some sort of non-trivial content contribution from anyone who wants to be part of the process. Cheers, •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 17:19, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think any attempt to exclude people is a good idea. Of course some things that have the effect of restrictions are natural and inevitable — most people with no interest in WV will exclude themselves, anyone who has been on the net a while can recognise trolls and knows not to feed them, and most people will give more weight to opinions from regular contributors than from random visitors or unidentified IP addresses. Beyond that, we should not go. There may well be people outside the "usual suspects" list with useful contributions to make. Examples that occur to me are people with expertise in relevant areas of graphics or law, or people with some sort of global interest in WMF sites that includes WV; no doubt there are more that I have not thought of. Pashley (talk) 17:48, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Pashley, you don't think that people who can actually demonstrate they participate on Wikivoyage should have more of a say in the logo we see every day? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The last logo contest has already proven that if we don't limit it to people involved with WV, we get completely overrun with Wikimedians, who will be happy to overwhelm any consensus among Wikivoyagers, make the decision for us, and move on and forget about WV. Happened before, and will happen again if we don't guarantee more weight for the people who actually care about and contribute to this place. Texugo (talk) 22:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that regular contributors should have more influence than others, but I'm suspicious of setting up policies and procedures to ensure that. For one thing, I think it is inevitable anyway. More important, I have spent enough time at Citizendium (main pagecritical appraisal) to be deeply suspicious of rule-making and bureaucracy as methods for improving a wiki. Pashley (talk) 22:28, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage logo issues; logo selection procedure
Hello, all.
Earlier today, I posted an announcement by the Wikimedia Foundation's legal department on Meta (m:Wikivoyage/Logo_announcement) about the Wikivoyage logo - unfortunately, for legal reasons, we're going to have to choose a new one.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks, we will need to select a new Wikivoyage logo, but first I'm hoping to get feedback and assistance in making the best process for that possible. We had been considering ways to optimize logo selection by the community, with the idea that we would have plenty of time to talk about the process before needing it. Unfortunately, we now need something quite quickly. Accordingly, I'd be really grateful for feedback on the process, which has been posted here: m:Logo contest procedure. You can read a little more about it here: m:talk:Logo contest procedure. I hope you will share your questions, comments and suggestions there.
I'm truly sorry for the complication with the existing logo and hope that you will help with creating and selecting a new one, as well as helping to refine the process itself. --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there! I've already posted some of this in Wikivoyage talk:Tourism Bureau Expedition, but I thought it would get a wider audience here. There are also a few updates since that was posted that I'd like to include.
So far both The Hague and Eindhoven have expressed an interest in tweaking our guides, and the former in particular seems keen to help out. I have now sent both of them my email address and am now in contact with Maurice at Den Haag Marketing (The Hague). He's sent me a link to some great photos on their Flickr page that are CC licensed, but only for non-commercial use. Is there any way we can get round this issue or do I need to ask if they'd be prepared to change the licence?
Copenhagen said that our guide to their city was 'lovely and informative', whilst Pittsburgh retweeted the fact that their city was our destination of the month. Meanwhile, Cleartrip appears to be considering changing to using WV as their source material, though I've not weighed in as I wasn't quite sure what we'd want to do; see their tweets here.
Hopefully the above should herald the way for many partnerships formed through the social network. A quick reminder: if you'd like to see a particular article mentioned on Twitter or tweeted '@' a particular tourism organisation, please post here. Thanks! --Nicktalk13:59, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's wonderful news! I guess we cannot really "work around" the non-commercial thing, but then again most of the photos is this gallery are of current events, and we are more after photos of landmarks, interiors, maps and such. Perhaps Maurice could procure some free ones? I guess that could be easier, as the event pics might be restricted for commercial use due to the parties appearing in the photos.
More importantly, it would be great if Maurice could ask somebody from VVV Den Haag to peruse the listings (see, do, sleep, eat, drink, buy) and update them with all the details, plus add the ones we missed. And if either Maurice and/or other people from DH Marketing or the VVV could become contributors to the article, it would simply be most dandy.
PS. While the Twitter presence is a smashing success, I can smell a problem in that we are not quite regular, pun not intended.
Yes, sorry it's not a regular as it might be. I'm a little rushed off my feet at the moment with work and things, but after next week things should calm down a bit and I'll be able to provide a more stable tweeting schedule. At present I try to do it at least once a day, though I know this doesn't always happen!
I've invited Maurice to join our ranks and let him know about the issues with the images. He's provided me with links to their lists on Foursquare which provide lots of listing details:
Our regards to Maurice! It would be good, however, to make it clear to tourist bureaus and such that we do expect of them to take the lead and plunge forward in updating listings. This is what they are pretty much paid for, and WV is just as good and important medium for that as any other they use. I believe we might start talking to them about potentially integrating our listing systems with their software, so that it could be easier to exchange data, but this is still the number one thing I would expect the tourism bureaus to help us with, otherwise our guides will remain pretty sketchy. Few people (except for myself) find pleasure in listing all of the hotels or restaurants in the city, and we are then only limited to the knowledge imparted upon us by fellow travellers who decided to edit and article and share, for the most part, a particular experience. It might take years before the sections get filled with reasonably large and diverse, as well as representative number of options, by which time half of them might be outdated. I believe a tourism bureau might do a much better job of it. PrinceGloria (talk) 21:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's all great news, Nick. Thanks so much for your work on this. I might have the Twitter credentials, but my contribution to it is sorely lacking! Regarding the photos, they will need to be changed. I recently made a similar mistake; a conversation about NC images can be read here. If you asked him for specific ones that could be helpful, he could possibly change the license just on those images.
It's great that some tourism bureaus, like The Hague's, are very responsive and enthusiastic. I send emails to ones about towns near me, and I don't even get a reply. I guess they just assume I'm "spam". Phone calls to enquire about the lack of a response just lead to "we'll look into it". To convince difficult bureaus about our benefits, I suggest highlighting examples of successes and current bureau's we're working with. For example, when a country town like Bendigo continually ignores me when I offer to help them with Wikivoyage, I plan to later respond informing them that I'm already working with the Victoria (state) tourism department, a much larger organisation that Bendigo can ever hope to be. James A ▪ talk06:57, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's no need to thank me; I enjoy it!:) Maurice has said that he's paid for some of those photos, so he'd probably prefer to leave the licensing as it is, but we should be able to find alternatives.
I agree with you that it's really nice to hear from people who are so keen; I've been in the same situation and it is difficult! I think you're right about mentioning other organisations as well - hopefully where one has gone, the rest will follow! --Nicktalk13:53, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can confirm that Cleartrip is indeed pulling from Wikivoyage and not WT, as they reported via Twitter. But they are not attributing properly. Obviously, they need to change the WT logo to be a WV logo (which is problematic at the moment, but never mind). But that alone is not enough. They need to link to the original source here on WV, preferably the history page, to provide proper attribution. LtPowers (talk) 01:22, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is good news that they're using our content, though as you say, the logo situation is a bit of an issue at the moment. Do we need to send them an email asking that they attribute the content properly? It looks like the situation is the same with Wikipedia as the link there just takes you to the portal. --Nicktalk13:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If that's the case, we might want to coordinate with WMF. I have no idea what the proper forum for that would be; we can try asking Maggie Dennis, the WMF's community liaison, and see if she can point us in the right direction. LtPowers (talk) 18:11, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is anybody pursuing this? I believe this would be absolutely crucial to upping our PageRank with Google. Is there a tool that would allow sites porting out content to automatically link back to WV? PrinceGloria (talk) 07:01, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am happy to inform you all that Cleartrip now indeed DOES link to Wikivoyage - they were quick to implement the change, kudos to them. They also removed the Wikitravel logo, but did not replace it with any Wikivoyage logo - we could use one badly now, how is the selection process going on? I somehow lost track of it...
At any rate, this means that our content DOES get reused, so we'd better double the efforts on quality control and standardization so that those who decide to import it en masse don't end up with it en mess. Also, if you see a site that does use what looks like our content, do remember to kindly remind them to link back as per our license, and if they are using older versions of Wikivoyage content, it may be worthwhile to inform them that newer versions are available at Wikivoyage.
Right, I've posted a fairly bland tweet with a link which you can find here. It would be nice if we could agree on a 'standard response' to this sort of question as I imagine it will come up many times, both on Twitter and Facebook. --Nicktalk15:28, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's a question we do get, and will get, asked a lot. It really needs to be a place that (passively and fairly) touts Wikivoyage as the better site. I think it may be a good idea to redesign that page to make it more visual and intuitive, with less text. A column format with Wikivoyage on one side and Wikitravel on the other may work. Furthermore, sourcing our remarks would ensure we don't get challenged for various claims. For example, a claim like "More active involvement" should have links to the number of active users on both sites. But that may be a discussion for its talk page. James A ▪ talk05:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're right; that's definitely worth doing. This question is going to come up again and again and we want an answer that definitively supports WV, but not one that could be considered unfair. I'll take a look at that page later on and see what I can do. --Nicktalk06:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've separated this topic out and created a copy of the page here to work on, I hope you don't mind! Please feel free to edit it. --Nicktalk18:34, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Looks pretty good to me. In the "Can I copy" section, though, I would mention explicitly that WV content cannot be copied to WT since they don't allow mention of WV and thus it is impossible to give due credit. Texugo (talk) 13:03, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What about 2-column frontpage for wide screens? I mean two travel destinations next to each other. Currently they are all placed under. --Olli (talk) 15:43, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That would be really good if we could make it adapt to the user's screen size: vertically stacked (as it is presently) for smaller screens and 2 columns for wide screens.:) --Nicktalk18:21, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Position of edittools on the page
WP has the edittools immediately below the editing window, which is very handy. Any chance we could do the same here? Nurg (talk) 09:39, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If we made it into a drop-down list like Wikipedia's, it might work better. A lot of rubbish in edittools can be removed anyhow. James A ▪ talk10:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Help with mysterious TOC change
I apologize for posting this here rather than at Meta, but I figured I might get help quicker here than there.
This doesn't seem to have affected en:, especially because of the page banners, but on pt: today, suddenly all TOCs are appearing fully expanded, making a huge TOC on many pages, and the text no longer flows around it (see pt:São Paulo for example). No settings have been changed recently in this regard, and I don't really have any idea how to trace the root of the problem. Can anyone offer any help with this? Texugo (talk) 18:53, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Folks, I have a serious problem if we're going to allow silly templates like Template:Done to proliferate. We have always tried to keep template usage to a minimum, and now I see that being thrown out the window for no good reason aside from "some people might expect us to have this template". Now it's another thing we have to keep track of, another layer of complexity added on top of our site that removes people another step from the process of writing travel guides, which is what we're all here for, isn't it? LtPowers (talk) 02:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, despite the fact that (exactly) two weeks passed, I feel like the vfd was ended a bit hastily as I don't think there was a clear enough consensus to keep. I also do not believe "some people might expect us to have them" is a good enough reason to start allowing things we have always tried to avoid. There are lots of other things that people might expect us to have too (refs, montages, etc.), but that doesn't automatically mean we should stop discouraging them. I refuse to believe any worthwhile editor is going to stop coming here once they figure out that we discourage little discussion page decoration templates. Texugo (talk) 03:27, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the reason that process went south is because there isn't supposed to be a vfd. The proper process is described at Wikivoyage:Using MediaWiki templates#New Mediawiki Template proposals. Per policy, the template should have been tagged as experimental, should not have been added to more than one article, and any decision of whether to use it should have been discussed on the template talk page. I don't really care enough about this instance, but I think we should be more careful to follow the prescribed process. --PeterTalk03:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for introducing the VfD, then. They were both tagged experimental, but for utility templates like that I don't know if the one-article restriction makes sense. (Though, strictly speaking, it wasn't in use on any articles, as it was only used on talk pages.) Should I have reverted uses of the template rather than start a discussion? LtPowers (talk) 14:25, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think so, although you're right that we hadn't applied this policy yet to talk pages—that hasn't come up before. --PeterTalk17:38, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If VfD is not the right place, how do we catch a template that has already jumped the fence and started running? Have we already lost the status quo of not using talk page ornamentation, just because some people used to them from other wikis created them and started using them without due process of discussion? Texugo (talk) 17:55, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the right process is to revert their addition to more than one article, and bring it up on the template talk page. --PeterTalk18:28, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We've generally done that with mainspace templates, but have (rightly, IMHO) been less strict with non-mainspace templates. My understanding was that the template creator should argue for the template's merits on the template talk page (per Template:Experimental), but objectors also need to raise their concerns on the template talk page so that they can be addressed. -- Ryan• (talk) •18:56, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, my concern with talk page templates like this is that they introduce unnecessary complexity into what are routine interactions, and that makes working on our site (even just asking questions) more intimidating for people unfamiliar with any sort of code/markup. Many potential contributors are scared off by things like brackets and colons, and that's something we should always keep in mind—travel knowledge and computer knowledge often do not go hand in hand. When I first started editing Wikipedia in 2004, I was bewildered by this sort of stuff, and it made me less inclined to add information because I was worried I would be doing something wrong. --PeterTalk19:29, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To the point about wiki markup, the visual editor will be here very soon, which will completely eliminate the need for new editors to deal with wiki markup: . -- Ryan• (talk) •19:44, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Last I tried it, Visual Editor was not able to edit templated content. That's another factor to weigh in deciding which templates make Wikivoyage more usable and which less. --Rogerhc (talk) 22:02, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It actually does on the latest version on the English Wikipedia... but Wikipedias are being given the priority as other WMF sites may have compatibility issues. That being said, if I had to guess, Wikivoyage would be high up on the list as there's no unusual namespaces or functionality here (as shown by Wikidata's choice to focus on us next). --Rschen775422:35, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please, please let's not get Visual Editor here until it's finished. I'm pretty annoyed with WP inflicting it on me when it is not finished and very problematic. Nurg (talk) 00:24, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure, James? I did see someone propose adding it here just a few days before it showed up (though I didn't know what it was at the time), and it hasn't magically appeared on the other language versions.
I'm not sure how much I like wikilove, as it encourages people to waste time exchanging more frivolous things, pictures of kittens and hamburgers, etc. When someone wants to express appreciation, I don't necessarily think it is too much to ask for them to make the effort to go to the barncompass page and find the appropriate code or find their own unique image. I don't think our community is so huge that this will or should be used every day or even every week, and if the little heart icon up there encourages people to share silly little pictures just because it's fun to decorate each other's pages, the whole barncompass idea is kind of cheapened. I think the bright icon may also encourage trolls/newbies exploring the site to play around with it, and premature barnstarring from people who barely know what's going on kind of causes some of the special meaning to be lost. I think wikilove was implemented rather too quickly and without enough input from the community and should probably be uninstalled until a wider consensus is reached. I personally find it pretty cheesy and MySpace-like.
Wikilove aside, I do have a couple of ideas for barncompass variations:
Cartographer's barncompass - for work on mapmaking
I have proposed it in passing a few times, but never made a tech request, nor did anyone else I believe. Last I saw, WikiLove was one of those "bundled" extensions of MediaWiki that all Wikimedia sites get. As for whether WikiLove is worth implementing/keeping, I'd like to see a discussion. As for more barncompasses, a few more would be good. Some that Wikipedia have won't be necessary, though. I'm not sure we have enough active admins to warrant an admin's barncompass. James A ▪ talk12:36, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it has never been automatically enabled on pt: or es: at least, and was apparently turned on at it: before it was ever brought up here, so I assumed someone here subsequently did something to specifically enable it. How would we go about disabling it until there is consensus for it? Texugo (talk) 13:06, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Texugo, I personally don't liked to receive images of kittens and food as barn-stars, I've stated here that we can delete the kittens and food interface entirely. --Saqib (talk) 10:52, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am still not really convinced our community is big enough that it can and should give awards often enough to warrant always having the little red heart icon at hand, and even if were were, I'm not convinced we need an extra special function to automate the small handful of barncompass variations we are likely to have (and we only have the one right now). I am also concerned they will start being handed out more lightly. I think the greater point, though, is that it should be brought to everyone's attention and consensus reached before implementing it. I am not sure why it was not felt important enough to bring up in the pub from the beginning or, indeed, whether it was somehow automatically enabled here and not on other versions or whether someone plunged forward and did something to enable it, but I feel it should be undone and we should discuss first about whether and exactly how to implement it. Those including myself who do not necessarily like the new feature should not be put in the position of having to fight to remove or change something which was implemented without wide consensus and which therefore already has inertia on its side. Texugo (talk) 11:21, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Texugo. I think its better to spread WikiLove and share barncompasses rather than not at all. I guess we've always ignored barnstars in the past here. I don't see any big harm if we start giving barncompasses to even new Wikivoyagers as long they're contributing constructively here, everyone likes to feel appreciated for their good contributions and barncompasses will only encourage the recipients. If you're afraid of extension misuse, maybe we can set a criteria. And btw, yes I feel sorry for not getting enough consensus first and requested to install the extension on this wiki without well informing the community. --Saqib (talk) 15:59, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not suggesting that barnstars not be given at all, but that's not how barnstars have traditionally been used here, and if you are proposing to cheapen them by encouraging them to be given to any new user who added a few paragraphs, I am not really on board with that. I think that in those cases, a few kind words of thanks and encouragement will suffice, and we usually save barnstars for greater more sustained achievements. I am not very interested in changing that with a cheesy pink heart on every user page. I'd really like to hear more opinions from other long-time or heavy contributors and discuss this first. If there is indeed a landslide of support for introducing it, I will gladly concede the point, but I would appreciate it if you would remove the extension for the time being, or at least make it opt-in, until such time as we have a clear sitewide consensus for introducing it. Texugo (talk) 17:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While the discussion maybe could have been moved to a more prominent location, there was no objection to installing the extension over several months at Wikivoyage talk:Barncompasses#Installing the WikiLove extension, so disabling it at this point without further discussion seems like the wrong approach. While I may not personally use this new functionality, I think the argument that it will make it easier to provide encouragement to contributors (whether new or old), combined with the fact that this approach will be familiar to users of other wikis, is a compelling argument in its favor, barring a better alternative. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:17, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There was no objection there exactly because it was not discussed at or pointed to from a prominent location. I don't think that is a good justification for dropping the need to get wider consensus first. Texugo (talk) 18:29, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well in response to your point above, there's nothing stopping people from giving out barnstars whenever they want, even without the extension. And regulating when barnstars can be given out is a bit of instruction creep... --Rschen775408:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not calling for regulation, but I definitely don't want to encourage trivialization by putting a glowing pink heart on every user page. Texugo (talk) 16:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Google ranking improving
FYI, I have noticed a few of our locations appearing after normal searches (re: "Town travel") on the 1st page of Google results. They are places that I added information for, so wherever those discussions are about us not showing up, things are changing. As some had mentioned in those discussions, we will appear on the results when we have original guides. Just thought I'd mention it as a tiny bit of encouragement for those who have been worried about it. Cheers. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:45, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Town travel" doesn't show any Wikivoyage results on the first page for me, even with personalized searching turned off. It does show WT's Cape Town article. LtPowers (talk) 14:21, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly didn't mean that it is widespread and much of the high-content guides here are the same high-content guides on the other site, so they still don't show. Has Cape Town had a lot of work done recently on it?
I was trying cities that I had recently added content to, and to be honest the content isn't even that great but it is enough to make them show up. The cities are Imabari, Kasaoka, and also Japan's Top 100 Cherry Blossom Spots shows up on the first page of results (at least for me). My point is that it seems things may be starting to change. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just tried, for Kasaoka WV is before WT, but opposite for Imabari. Google adds some randomness so we should not take exact rank that seriously, but I am glad meticulous content enhancement starts proving to be a good strategy! Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:08, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I've stated before, it may be a reason to put a small group of users together to collaborate in making significant wording changes to our most popular articles. I know some in the past have been resistant, especially modifying our stars. But, as some of the above shows, it's proven to work in ensuring people are actually reading our content. It may also give us a chance to improve some of our popular articles that are severely lacking (eg, Trekking in Nepal, which I just recently wrote a new lede for) James A ▪ talk07:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Major cities
We now have a list at Wikivoyage:World cities/Large showing the world's 50 largest cities (at least by one measure:-) and the status of their WV articles. Many of them need help of various sorts; some things need local knowledge but others, such as finding banner images, do not. Pashley (talk) 19:48, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I kept looking at this and wondering how the heck only one of them is a star. Then it dawned upon me that for some reason we haven't starred Bangkok;) --PeterTalk03:55, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My main worry is that more than half of them, including 8 of the top 12, are only at usable status & in many cases getting them to guide would be hard because that requires all district articles to be at usable. Pashley (talk) 06:42, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nice list and lots of work to be done:-) It would be interesting to see a list of the most visited cities in the world. I wonder if that would be more favourable in terms of our coverage... I imagine and hope it would be?:-) JuliasTravels (talk) 12:26, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it would be. Population is far from the ideal criterion for us; data is easy to get, but If you lose your keys it is not a good idea to walk 20 m from where you dropped them to look under the streetlight because the light is better there. Also, it is a bit ambiguous depending how you define "city"; WP gives three different lists for three definitions.
I do not know where to find info on visitors per year for cities. WP has w:Lists of tourist attractions and that has dozens of links, but I see no statistics. w:World Tourism rankings has rankings by number of visitors and by tourism receipts, but those are by country.
There are other criteria that might be added to determine the most important cities; they might be put into the table as extra columns, but all the ones I can think of have odd biases. Does it have an international airport? But in China, fairly important cities like Suzhou or Dongguan don't, though there are others nearby. Does it have high-speed rail service? Most European or Chinese cities do, but nothing in Africa or North America. Do major bands, say the Stones, include it on tours? They go to many cities in Europe and the US, only a few of the biggest in Asia. Pashley (talk) 13:27, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I added columns for national rankings by number of visitors and by tourism receipts. Also increased it to 104 rows so Spain, Italy, Australia & Macau, which all rank in the top ten by at least one of those measures, would be in the table. Pashley (talk) 16:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry folks. I am going to make the appropriate announcements in due time and will give you all the necessary information as soon as I have it confirmed. These days are not set in stone yet. Please let me know if you have any pressing questions until then. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:04, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good, but there are some things that should be considered:
Although Commons and Wikipedia interwikis will be transferred, how about the numerous guides with dMoz (Open Directory) links? Personally, if dMoz isn't willing to help us get links up en masse on their site, I'm all for removing them completely.
Some of our guides like New York City can be automatically added to current Wikidata entries. But what about some traveller-themed districts/regions that are unique to Wikivoyage and do not have Wikipedia equivalents?
Will the interwikis still be displayed under RelatedSites, or will they be moved?
(Edit conflict) We could perhaps have one on Sightseeing bus tours, but I'd be against having one on any particular company: I'm not sure that's really in the spirit of WV. There are many different companies offering similar services and, whilst 'The Big Bus Company' may merit a mention, I doubt its services are so much different from those of other operators that it merits its own page. --Nicktalk14:08, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think an overview article on this type of tour would be fine, which could touch on the advantages and drawbacks. Maybe making it even broader would be better though. Something like Guided city tours, which could give advice regarding bus tours, walking tours, segway tours, bicycle tours, and what have you. We discourage listing these things in destination guides per Wikivoyage:Activity listings#Tour listings, so it would be nice to have somewhere to discuss them (if not list them). --PeterTalk19:38, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Automatic updates by sites reusing our content
One of the ways Wikivoyage is great is that other travel sites can reuse our quality content under the CC license. This is also great for us, because it means they have to link to every article from every article they reuse, which in turns boosts our Google PageRank.
That said, I was recently in touch with Cleartrip, with whom I discussed why they would not update their content regularly, as our articles have moved many versions forward since their last dump. The answer was that they had some issues with changing markup that made it require a lot of manual corrections after each update, so they've given up on that. I was wondering what can they be referring to and whether the issue is resolved (I have not experienced changes in Wiki markup, but I guess they are referring to how the HTML / whatever pages behind the wiki are coded).
It all boils down to another site downloading the Wikivoyage content en masse, either all of it or selected destinations (e.g. all that is in Category:Austria and descendants, or fitting a predetermined list of article names), and later updating it to the newest versions available. I do not mean people using specific pieces manually, this, I believe, is quite rare and does not require any instructions. I do believe folks using our content in a massive, automated way, like Cleartrip does, could use instructions and facilitation, as this is what is going to give us the most links.
Secondly - does our markup change behind the scenes, or might it have been a thing of the past? If so, is there a handy guide on how to handle the current mark-up if the target site is not a Wiki? PrinceGloria (talk) 07:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If it is to be loaded onto a site with the same version of Mediawiki software and the same extensions and setup as WV there should be minimal problems, but if any of these things differ it may open a major can of worms. I don't know enough to make predictions. That is if they are using dumps with wikimarkup. I imagine it is possible to gather the html which should be more resilient. •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 10:17, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I do not mean other Wikis, that's simple (and I'd rather no other Wikis used our content anyway, it's better to wikiedit all content in one place). It is about those sites that convert to HTML using our Wikimarkups, but not in the Wiki way - i.e. bold is bold and section headings remain so (not to mention tables, images, listings et. al.), but not displayed via the MediaWiki engine. And I know it is a can of worms, but we need to open and resolve it, especially that I have been asked personally by a very cooperative partner/recycler of our content. PrinceGloria (talk) 16:32, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if someone is downloading a content dump for use on their own site, they are responsible for importing that content. It is most definitely not our job to provide guidance for converting wiki markup to HTML; anyone needing to do so can find tools online to help out with that work, but it is way outside of the scope of Wikivoyage to provide that information. -- Ryan• (talk) •16:39, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite, because by reusing our content they are linking to our webpages (while we are not linking to those), majorly boosting our PageRank, which we need dearly. BTW, the ability to reuse the content freely (but with appropriate attribution) is one of the founding principles of all MediaWiki project, so I believe we should make it easy and think about it as one of the ways our content is being used (because it indeed is). We could have just as well said we don't care if people can't navigate through our articles, because it's free anyway and we don't care. But we do. PrinceGloria (talk) 16:51, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think that they are asking whether our wikimarkup will change dramatically again anytime soon so they can at least fix their own parsing issues. Using the HTML would have been far more resilient, but in this case they may be referring to the major change in May when we switched from tags to templates, I don't think there has been any other major change nor anything else in the pipeline. They may have run into trouble with that (they should have been checking for template code anyway, hard to tell). We have Wikivoyage:How_to_re-use_Wikivoyage_guides, which could do with some additional technical hints such as the use of hCards and Geo microformats, though that itself is covered mostly in Wikivoyage:Listings. -- torty3 (talk) 17:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PrinceGloria - what you're asking for is way, way outside of the scope of a travel guide. You or anyone else is welcome to start a project to develop tools to easily convert a Mediawiki XML site dump to HTML, or PDF, or any other format, or detailed instructions could be created on Meta to explain how to do so with existing tools (if such information doesn't exist already), but developing or defining a process for doing so on Wikivoyage itself isn't something we should be worrying about. -- Ryan• (talk) •18:35, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So Wikidata is finally starting to get real with this sister projects thing. We'll be starting with Wikivoyage since this is comparatively similar to Wikipedia. We'll take it easy at the beginning and just go for the language links between the different language editions of Wikivoyage.
On July 18th we will change test.wikidata.org to be able to store links to Wikivoyage in addition to Wikipedia. You can test it there then and make sure there are no huge issues we have not noticed yet. On July 22 we will enable this on wikidata.org and the Wikivoyages.
Some things to keep in mind:
This is only for links between Wikivoyages for now. More will follow later.
Access to the other data like timezones, airport codes and so on will not be enabled yet. That will follow later as well.
There will be no automatic links to/from Wikipedia for now.
Some specific things about the language links:
It'll no longer be needed to keep them in the wikitext like it is currently.
It'll still be possible to do so however but this will overwrite the links coming from Wikidata.
With the magicword noexternallanglinks links from Wikidata can be turned off on an article either for all languages or only specific ones.
A page on Wikidata has been created where you can find someone to help you in case of issues and as usual I am available to answer any questions you might have.
With respect to the transition to Wikidata, is there anything people here should be more involved with? My understanding is that bot writers are going to be launching bots to move interwiki links to Wikidata, and our job is basically just to make sure things don't go haywire - is that about right, or should we be joining in discussions or actually updating our articles in some way? I think everyone has just been passively observing this transition, but if there is more to be done please let us know. -- Ryan• (talk) •03:20, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the main issue will be resolving any interwiki conflicts that come up, since different Wikivoyages tend to split articles up into different ways, and Wikipedia does as well. The deployment was delayed until Tuesday, due to the VisualEditor launch (that was subsequently delayed until Wednesday). --Rschen775404:57, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I notified them on Sunday, and we should block them if they keep restoring links - all other wikivoyages are global sysop wikis so we can get stewards or GS to block there. --Rschen775420:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Universal Language Selector will be enabled on 2013-07-09
On July 9, 2013, Universal Language Selector (ULS) will be enabled on this wiki. The ULS provides a flexible way to configure and deliver language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings). Making it available here is the last phase of making ULS available on all Wikimedia wikis.
Mates, are you having problems to export maps from OSM as well? In the last two days almost all times i only had an error message that the server is over capacity. Does anyelse experienced that? jan (talk) 09:28, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for late response Jan. Was travelling from Dubai to Karachi. Anyway, I've sent you the map by e-mail. --Saqib (talk) 20:59, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We need to select a new Wikivoyage logo because our current logo too much resembles the World Trade Organization's logo. How should we select a new Wikivoyage logo? Please see the proposed selection procedure--it needs final touches--and give your input. Especially, we need community consensus to establish who our Wikivoyage community is and if we will limit newcomer voting to 50%; otherwise we may risk our community identity, and logo selection, being swamped by newcomers. We need your input at m:Talk:Logo_selection_procedure#Proposed_changes. (Please talk about it there on Meta, not here, as it affects all language versions of Wikivoyage.) Thanks! --Rogerhc (talk) 05:11, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Urgent--it is proposed that we start the actual logo selection process this week! Your input on the voting procedure is urgent now. Especially, we need community consensus to establish who our Wikivoyage community is and if we will limit newcomer voting to 50%; otherwise we may risk our community identity, and logo selection, being swamped by newcomers. Failure to reach consensus now on this vote weighing will drop it from the procedure; it obviously cannot fairly be added after the vote. So it is urgent that you weigh in on this at m:Talk:Logo_selection_procedure#Proposed_changes now. Sorry for not making that clear yesterday. --Rogerhc (talk) 19:19, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As a certain other page prides itself on being the "original, reliable etc. etc. etc. travel guide since 2003", I went and looked when exactly it has been launched. According to the revision history of its main page Evan created the Main Page on July 24th 2003 (presumably the first page), which means exactly ten years ago after a couple of weeks. Would it be a good idea to observe/celebrate it somehow? ϒpsilon (talk) 17:59, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd noticed this too, though it is a somewhat sensitive point. It'll be interesting that we'll have a 10th birthday this month and a first birthday next January! If were to mention it, might it be best to say 'It's 10 years since our community began'? --Nicktalk22:43, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Evan created his user page 3 hours before the main page. The oldest edit of mine that I can find (before I created account) was on 5 Oct 2003. Any active WV editors go back further than that? Nurg (talk) 11:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If so, do we want a message on the Main Page or in the site notice? Perhaps 'Celebrating 10 years of the Wikivoyage community'? --Nicktalk01:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Am I the only one who feels a little strange about celebrating this as the 10th anniversary of Wikivoyage? It just feels awkward to me. I think it might be better if it's phrased as "Wikivoyage celebrates 10 years of sharing free online travel information" or something like that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:57, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree - it is a little odd. That's why I've been keen to emphasise that it's our community that's 10, if we do mention it at all. Maybe we keep this occasion for editors only and wait until next January for our big, public celebration? --Nicktalk02:28, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Ikan - a ten year anniversary is an exciting milestone, but I think publicizing that fact is likely to lead to another pissing match with WT, and the fact that we would again have to deal with that takes the fun out of it for me. -- Ryan• (talk) •02:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Let's celebrate this occasion with a quiet 'pint' in the Pub, but bring out the bunting and party poppers for the Wikidata tie-up: a real cause for celebration. We can have a proper birthday party next January, when hopefully this project will be bigger and better than ever!:) --Nicktalk03:17, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. 10 years since Evan and Maj founded the community is an important milestone. And the project is already bigger and better than ever, so why wait? LtPowers (talk) 17:22, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to celebrate the WV 10th anniversary with my family today during Iftar dinner. Congratulations to everyone! --Saqib (talk) 13:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That cake is fantastic! Your wife has done an amazing job!:) Should we tweet about this anniversary or (as above) are we keeping celebrations in-house? --Nicktalk15:33, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's a seriously awesome looking cake and I'm sure it tastes good as well! I'm celebrating by testing out a couple of articles in practice and updating them. Today I saw that infamous WTO logo at the gates of their head office here in Geneva... ϒpsilon (talk) 18:32, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WT is celebrating by displaying a "Happy birthday" banner on their main page, where we can celebrate this day by adding some more value content to Wikivoyage. We still have some time to celebrate this day even in a better way than them. --Saqib (talk) 20:00, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! We've just received this tweet, but it's about what I'd think to be a pretty technical issue - is there anything could do and what should our response be? --Nicktalk20:36, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we need to respond to every tweet - if it's important the requester can make a request here or on Bugzilla. As to what the tweet is about, the user appears to be asking us to make it easier to convert a site that was previously using URLs of the form "www.oldsite.org/language" to "language.newsite.org/wiki" by setting up redirects on Wikivoyage so that "www.newsite.org/language" will work here. To do so someone would have to open a bugzilla request and someone from WMF would need to set up redirects, which I don't think is warranted. -- Ryan• (talk) •22:16, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, not for nothing, but we have the same attribution requirements as WT. If this fellow isn't keen on following them, switching to WV doesn't really resolve his problem. LtPowers (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It shouldn't be difficult to convert anyway. I assume he wants to change all instances of "wikitravel" to "wikivoyage". Instead, why can't he change "http://wikitravel.org/en/" to "http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/"? Either way, it'd be great to have his wiki using our superior content, but we would want to remind him that he'd need to attribute as well by adding a link in the footer. James A ▪ talk03:19, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi folks! I'm the original tweeter. About the original tweet: meanwhile I fixed all links with a bot. There might be a couple of other sites linking to wikivoyage.org/en/ though, and possibly not. Would be worth to look into, could be quite some link juice there.
re attribution. I'm not so happy with giving attribution to a project that is being milked by a company that is keen on taking people to court. I prefer simply removing whatever content they have an issue with. I'm okay with attributing friendlier projects like WV. But overall I don't think WV content should be copied to couchwiki in the first place. It makes more sense for general travel info to be here on this wiki.
There were many links to WT though (not related to attribution), and I replaced almost all of them with working links to WV. Guaka (talk) 09:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds all good to me. Thanks for your support of our project, Guaka! You are welcome to edit here when you have the time. James A ▪ talk09:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was just looking at some of the historical pages and noticed that Wikivoyage talk:Internet Brands is rather confusing. I know that the notice at the top states that I should not assume content on this page is still correct or up-to-date but with the change of very occurence of wikitraval with wikivoyage, it has lost all it's original meaning. That edit should either be undone or the page should be deleted. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've fixed it so it once more makes sense. I had thought we already tracked down the couple instances where that bot change made everything nonsensical, but we clearly did not! --PeterTalk04:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This would need to be tested first, but I believe that you can edit the file by hand to split it into smaller chunks and import it that way. Each chunk will need the <mediawiki> and <page> elements copied from the original (huge) file, but you can then split up the <revision> elements:
<!-- EVERYTHING BETWEEN THESE TWO COMMENTS MUST ALWAYS BE PRESENT - START -->
<mediawiki xmlns...>
<siteinfo>
<!-- trimmed for readability... -->
</siteinfo>
<page>
<title>Page name</title>
<ns>0</ns>
<id>1507255</id>
<!-- EVERYTHING BETWEEN THESE TWO COMMENTS MUST ALWAYS BE PRESENT - END -->
<revision>
<!-- trimmed for readability... -->
</revision>
<revision>
<!-- trimmed for readability... -->
</revision>
<revision>
<!-- trimmed for readability... -->
</revision>
<!-- EVERYTHING BETWEEN THESE TWO COMMENTS MUST ALWAYS BE PRESENT - START -->
</page>
</mediawiki>
<!-- EVERYTHING BETWEEN THESE TWO COMMENTS MUST ALWAYS BE PRESENT - END -->
Note that the above is for illustration only - copy the actual <mediawiki> and <page> elements from the (huge) pub export file. Again, you would need to test this, but I think that should work. If it doesn't, bugzilla might be the best option as they could temporarily disable the import limits and import the file for you. -- Ryan• (talk) •04:59, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I figure that could work, but wouldn't we then need to somehow merge the pages that were imported as chunks of the larger page history? --PeterTalk08:09, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe page merging is possible by putting page A at the intended destination, then deleting. Put page B at intended destination, then delete. Rinse and repeat with as many separations as necessary. Then you will need to undelete/restore all of the page revisions which will now appear together. That's the pagehistory sorted, but there may be a need to fix how the actual page displays. It definitely works in smaller cases, but this is a big job so couldn't be certain. James A ▪ talk09:31, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding was that if you split up the file and then import the pieces to the same page name that the histories would be merged. From :
If a page name exists already, importing revisions of a page with that name causes the page histories to be merged
I'm working on an entry for Hartstine island however it appears that the correct spelling should be Harstine Island, I'm sure there is an easy way to correct this, but I'm not sure what it is. There is some debate over the correct spelling, but it seems that Harstine is the most widely accepted spelling. --Lumpytrout (talk) 13:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have started meta:Wikivoyage/Summit, per the discussion at meta:Wikivoyage/Lounge#Interlingual liaisons. It will be a place to share goings-ons from individual language versions with the entire Wikivoyage community, in the hopes of fostering more cross-wiki coordination, cooperation, and creativity. I wrote an initial [en] report, which hopefully serves as a decent example of what we want to share. If others would help publicize this idea on other Wikivoyage versions, I'd much appreciate it! --PeterTalk20:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Peter, good report! The bugzilla issue is really an issue and if you hadn't read your report some good articles would be missing. Regards, jan (talk) 20:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great overview, Peter. I was missing one thing: there was some social media activity recently involving facebook and twitter, which is rather trendy and important in a sense of promoting WV, but I can't say how serious the progress is, because I am rather asocial myself. Perhaps this can go to the next month:) Danapit (talk) 20:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Process for hacked account reports
Does anyone know what to do if there is a report of a hacked account? We have had our first such report, but I can't find any documentation anywhere about how to follow up. I tried emailing a few stewards, but have for whatever reason been completely ignored. Where else should I try asking this question? --PeterTalk21:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As announced in May, a new logo needs to be selected for Wikivoyage. After several weeks of process discussion, the submission period for the logo selection process will be opening today, Wednesday 10 July, with the first round of voting set to launch on 24 July. The final logo should be selected and announced by 31 August. All contributors are welcome to submit their designs for a new Wikivoyage logo before 24 July, to discuss design proposals, and (if registered by 31 May) to join in on voting for the logo at each stage. Please see the 2013 Wikivoyage logo selection page for details. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Stunningly, the Russia article makes no mention of GLBT travelers at all. From what news reports I've read, the situation is indeed as stated; the Kremlin in the last week has taken an extremely hard line against homosexuality. LtPowers (talk) 23:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Greek islands = regions or cities?
Just doing some work on Skiathos and can't quite decide if it should be classed as a region or a city. Wikivoyage:Region_article_template says "Regions are somewhat nebulous organizational groupings we use on Wikivoyage to organize all the many cities in a country into some kind of navigable and comprehensible hierarchy." On Skiathos, and many other Greek islands, there is no way the individual settlements would warrant their own city guides - there's simply not enough to fill a page and the distinction between the settlements is practically non-existent. So by that logic, Skiathos should be classed as a city guide, right? Is there a policy for islands like this, or has there been a similar discussion for other Greek islands? --Tsandell (talk) 09:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I feel all city names should have the state in parenthesis after them, some do and some don't. When I've added cities to the Go Next section, I never know if the link has to have the state name after it or not like this edit . I thought oh - there must be only one Bainbridge then in the United States but there are several worldwide. What do others feel about this? Like I said, I believe all cities should have the state name after them and that Bainbridge should be renamed Bainbridge (Georgia) and a disambig page created. --Mjrmtg (talk) 12:54, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What for? The breadcrumb trail identifies the geographical associations of each city. Do you think this is inadequate? If there are more than one article of the same name a disambiguator is technically necessary as only one article can be identified by any one name.•••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 13:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Peter. There is no need to disambiguate in the vast majority of cases, and I think simple and clean titles are far more preferable when possible. Adding extra disambiguation where it is not necessary will only make the breadcrumb looks more convoluted, and the info is already contained there anyway. Texugo (talk) 14:27, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So, you're saying I shouldn't bother asking Bainbridge to be moved to Bainbridge (Georgia) so a Bainbridge disambig page could be created so other Bainbridge cities can be created off of that disambig page? --Mjrmtg (talk) 18:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, they're saying that disambiguations should not be used when not necessary. If Bainbridge does need a disambiguation page, you don't need to ask, just move it yourself - that doesn't require any special account permissions here. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 18:28, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone see a method of identifying broken breadcrumbs due to a page being moved? For example Winter sports in Switzerland no longer working because of renaming of Winter sports. There are also cities and regions in this state, which I have correct when come across but have not found a method of identifying either in a template or via a bot. --Traveler100 (talk) 11:16, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I could add some coding to the {{RegionCat}} template to check if the related page is a redirect and then add that category to a maintenance category to then be sorted out. Can't do it this minute though but will look soon and then you can see if it would be useful. -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:08, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome, did not know about that invoke function. Actually brings up more things to fix that I was expecting. More work for the gnomes. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would say yes, absolutely. Empty categories outside the breadcrumb trail are completely useless. I don't think we need to go through vfd discussions everytime a link in the breadcrumb chain is renamed. Texugo (talk) 17:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
X is a redirect is likely only a usable category in the one oddball case where a redirect has breadcrumbs of its own, for instance "Russia isPartOf Europe" and "Russia (Asia) #REDIRECT Russia isPartOf Asia" was a trick to get "Asia > Russia (Asia) > Siberia" into the breadcrumb trail. Otherwise, if these are empty they should be shoot-on-sight as useless. K7L (talk) 18:10, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Related sites title appearing large
I noticed it first on pt:, but it appears to happen here too: On pages with links to wikipedia, commons, etc. (including this page, scroll up), the title for the "Related sites" section in the sidebar is now big, black, bold, and uncollapsable, unlike the titles for the other sections. Anyone know what happened to change it? Texugo (talk) 17:18, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But yep, definitely needs bugzilla request, maybe to change RelatedSites heading to <h3>. Not that I'm volunteering to file it. -- torty3 (talk) 04:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't a clue, but we're going to need to do a bugzilla request for it one way or another because it affects all language versions and that fix, if it worked, still wouldn't make it collapsible like the other headers. I've never done a bugzilla request before, so I don't really know what it entails. Is it really so complicated that no one wants to do it? Texugo (talk) 20:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The CSS works fine for me, maybe have to Ctrl+R to clear cache. Looks like Rillke at de filed and fixed the bug, Bugzilla: 51517. It's been merged but might take a while to filter through. -- torty3 (talk) 04:05, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing any difference here, even after clearing the cache. Both "Related pages" and "Related sites" headings are different from the others. Texugo (talk) 14:05, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I put it back in, but still have yet to see any results. I'll be really happy when I get to flip that switch of yours, btw;) --PeterTalk04:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Mediawiki software got updated yesterday to 1.22wmf12 with the fixes for RelatedArticles and Insider, so that's about two weeks which is not too bad. RelatedSites was fixed last week. I also noticed that mw:TocTree is also outdated now that the TOC is now a div instead of a table, so the glitch with banners with no third-level headings may have returned. -- torty3 (talk) 09:12, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Supersized headline in left sidebar
The headline "Related sites" used to be written with the same text size as "Get involved" and "In other languages" and indeed the rest of the text in the left sidebar but since yesterday I've noticed it's grown bigger and bolder and now looks like this:
Related sites
on all pages having that headline, including this page. The same goes for at least "Destination docents" and "Related pages" (click on Melbourne to see all three). I can see this in Safari, Firefox and Torbrowser. Has anyone else noticed it or is it just me? Is someone somewhere "experimenting" on the Wiki software or what? ϒpsilon (talk) 15:59, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have a question regarding the official interpretation of our policies and guidelines regarding listings.
User:Sapphire, in a very long-winded argument about the distrification of Warsaw (which is turning rather ugly, but you can read it at Talk:Warsaw if you really want a nasty bit of Wikivoyage) is using a variety of arguments, but I got a real double take when I read this:
simply remove the places that we wouldn't recommend (actually, it's a policy)
and this:
Subjectivity is the foundation of Wikivoyage guides and the beauty of this wiki is that if Person A adds a restaurant or a do listing and Person B comes along a few weeks later and used this guide and had the worst time ever at that place, he/she can delete it.
Is this how we're supposed to roll? If so, what I am seeing is a big loud invitation to endless edit warring. Please correct me if I am wrong, or if User:Sapphire is wrong, I would love for him to stand corrected, as I do not want to work on Wikivoyage where listings are constantly being deleted. PrinceGloria (talk) 18:22, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The two most relevant policies are probably Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews, which User:Sapphire noted, and the "not a yellow pages" part of Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals#Non-goals. That said, listings are not generally deleted unless lists get long or a place is truly objectionable (in which case it is common to leave a note on the talk page indicating why the listing was removed). With regards to the Warsaw discussion, everyone involved would be better served by a more civil discussion - for example, describing someone's argument as "long-winded" seems unnecessarily provocative. -- Ryan• (talk) •18:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would appreciate a note on my personal talk page, if you plan on quoting me elsewhere on Wikivoyage. And, I would like to clarify that I never once said that I would remove someone's listings in this discussion. -- Sapphire (talk) 19:31, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I think that Sapphire is fundamentally wrong here. Contentious places should be described as such, according to the Be fair policy. Another policy, Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews, is quite vague, because it leaves a lot of freedom to post negative descriptions of places that are "prominently located" or "widely advertised". The original discussion concerned the central part of Warsaw, where nearly every place is prominently located, so Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews does not even apply here. --Alexander (talk) 19:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As a side note: I meant "argument" as in "quarrel" (and not as "arguing one's case"), and long-winded referred to all of our writing there, both mine and other users' involved. It is very emotionally loaded and full of unnecessary verbosity in general, my posts included. But I find it hard to distance myself therefrom at this moment and suddenly become composed and balanced. I am not picking on Sapphire.
I am not a native speaker and quite emotional at this moment, I guess I am not expressing myself as well as I would want to. Apologies to anybody who might have felt offended. PrinceGloria (talk) 20:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Chin up, I find that district and region discussion has to be amongst the most drawn-out, contentious and personal, given that it has to be carried out by people who know the area well enough and if not careful, a head-on dispute implies that either side doesn't have a clue. Yet a great division gives a lot more context and understanding of an area than any other place like TripAdvisor or Wikipedia could. I do wonder if this will worsen with more users, since there'll be more home ground and it will get emotionally loaded. -- torty3 (talk) 04:24, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can everyone please stop linking to my user page? I also have no idea how my opposition to two proposed guides has gone this off topic. The only reason I was mentioning it was because I thought not everyone understood that we shouldn't be listing every possible listing. Please note that I never said anything about the be fair policy. I used a hypothetical situation about Person B deleting Person A's entry to demonstrate what this wiki is about. From what I've read here, I am afraid that my words are being misconstrued and that some words have been put into my mouth. -- Sapphire (talk) 20:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What on Earth is your issue with other folks linking to your user page, Sapphire? It's not only harmless, but it's common practice on Wikivoyage talk pages and always has been. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Preference only. Normally, I wouldn't give a damn, but, as I noted, I think my comments are being misinterpreted and I would rather not have my user name called out so blatantly when I think there is a discrepancy between what I was saying and what is being presented as what I was saying. -- Sapphire (talk) 21:26, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the polite, diplomatic and elegant vote of thanks you delivered there, Peter, on behalf of all of us here. Let's try and make sure we're worth all that loot and effort. --W.Franke-mailtalk22:17, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Line numbers in diffs
When one views the difference between revisions, there is a line number displayed above each change. Is there any way that one can use this number to find the change in the article? • • • Peter (Southwood)(talk): 10:58, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Undead WTS
So I've finally finished importing the last of the pages I meant to from wts-old. You can find them all via Wikivoyage:WTS archive. Three requests for all:
Are there any more pages that really need to be imported and added to this archive?
Would you like me to import your WTS user talk page (like I did for myself)?
The third request is more complex. I created dummy (WT-shared) accounts here so that we could keep contributions histories intact after importing the articles (like this one). That means we'll be able to UserMerge (WT-shared) contributions into new, real accounts. I only created accounts here for (WT-shared) accounts that made edits to imported pages. If you think I missed you, let me know, and I'll create one for you. After tasks 1 & 2 are complete, I will do the user merges upon request. —in a nutshell, I'll be able to merge your old WT-shared accounts to your new ones, if your name is on that list.
I was about to explain that yes, CentralAuth isn't counting mergeduser stats (stats.wikimedia does), but then I see that you haven't had your old (WT-en) account merged into your new one! Do you want me to do that now? --PeterTalk07:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that we should strive to make our Manual of Style as clear and simple as possible in the advice it offers to editors.
I'm a bit worried that our Wikivoyage:Currency page will grow into a huge list and become rather unwieldy and difficult to understand.
There are more than 100 different countries that don't really have a commonly recognised or well known symbol or abbreviation that is consistently used in the destination country and I don't think we should list them all on this page.
I have made a proposal for simplifying our policy somewhat (but preserving the existing exceptions, since I know many editors are loathe to re-visit articles related to those countries that already have a consistent use of different currency formats implemented).
The simplification I'd propose is that Except for the countries that we have already specifically listed on the $ policy page, we should prefix currency amounts with the three letter ISO 4217 code for the currency in block capitals and no intervening space, like this example:
AZN100 in Azerbaijan, not ман 100, 100AZN nor 100 Azerbaijani New Manat
Hello, Sorry for English but It's very important for bot operators so I hope someone translates this.
Pywikipedia is migrating to Git so after July 26, SVN checkouts won't be updated If you're using Pywikipedia you have to switch to git, otherwise you will use out-dated framework and your bot might not work properly. There is a manual for doing that and a blog post explaining about this change in non-technical language. If you have question feel free to ask in mw:Manual talk:Pywikipediabot/Gerrit, mailing list, or in the IRC channel. Best Amir (via Global message delivery). 13:07, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't the conversion to Wikidata be done using 'bots and the data extracted from the existing interwikis? That's how this was handled on Wikipedia. Doing this by hand is ridiculous, slow and repetitive. K7L (talk) 04:11, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just wanted to let you know that the first part of Wikidata has now been enabled here. This means you no longer have to store interwiki links in the article's wiki text but can do so via Wikidata. This also means that it no longer has to be kept in sync across all the languages but is only stored and edited in one place. Please keep in mind that if you keep local interwiki links in the wiki text they will overwrite the ones on Wikidata. You can now start migrating the links or wait for one of the bots to come and do it for you. Access to other information on Wikidata like timezones, airport codes and so on is not enabled yet. This will follow in the future. Please do let me know if you encounter any issues or have questions. d:wd:Wikivoyage migration has a list of people who are additionally willing to help with any problems you might encounter. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 21:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Lydia. I don't fully understand how this works. Do we still need to include links to Wikipedia and Commons, or are those also in Wikidata? Also, is Wikidata automatically linked to every article, or do readers have to know to surf to that site in order to find interwiki links? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:21, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia and Commons links still need to be included for now, but the eventual goal is to not require this. Wikidata links will show up automatically on every article, when the article and the Wikidata item are linked (and bots are going around right now trying to link them). --Rschen775422:29, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes what Rschen said. For the reader nothing changes with this. For the editors it should be less work and less fighting with bots (and in the future access to all the other information that is in Wikidata). --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 22:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For example, San Diego now has all interwikis coming from Wikidata. When the next language Wikivoyage comes out (Vietnamese according to the rumors) then we add the interwiki to Wikidata, and it is updated automatically on all other Wikivoyages. --Rschen775422:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let me explain: Take Manhattan/Lower Manhattan for instance. It's properly linked to de:Manhattan/Financial District and a couple of other languages. But the Wikidata page is d:Q11253 (titled "Lower Manhattan"), which refers to the entire lower third of the island (below 14th Street) while the English and German articles cover only the tip of the island (below Chambers St and the Brooklyn Bridge).
So how should this be repaired? Should I delete the Wikivoyage article links from d:Q11253 ("Lower Manhattan") and add them to d:Q1050048 ("Financial District")? Or is there a better way to handle it?
I just briefly checked what you've encountered and I suspect a bug. This time you will have to update the item per hand as it seems. The next time you move a page with a Wikidata item assigned, could you please let us/ me know whether you had success? If not, I would like to know if the interface told you to update the item per hand or whether that will happen automatically. Cheers, Hoo man (talk) 13:28, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I will try to remember to do so. I can tell you that this time, the interface said that the Wikidata data would be migrated automatically after a bit. LtPowers (talk) 13:50, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
10th anniversary?
Hi, an IP address has just informed me that it's the 10th anniversary of WV, wanting this mentioned in the Signpost. Is this true? Tony(talk) 15:00, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, the editor in chief may agree to put this in an "In brief". I wish we'd known about it before. If there's a potted history, please link me to it. Tony(talk) 15:11, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to just briefly let you know that submissions for the Wikivoyage logo proposal are now closed, and the images are open for community review for obvious copyright issues or other disqualifications. The current batch of logos are located here: m:Wikivoyage/Logo/2013/R1/Gallery. The time between now and 00:01 UTC, 26 July 2013 is set aside for the community to review those submissions for obvious copyright issues or other concerns that would prevent their being eligible for selection. Please place any comments at m:Talk:Wikivoyage/Logo/2013/R1/Gallery. I will announce here when the first round of voting begins (scheduled for 00:01 UTC, 26 July 2013). For more about the process, please see m:Wikivoyage/Logo 2013.
I also want to thank Rillke for making all this work, and all the Wikivoyagers who have submitted logo designs and helped to guide designers so far.:) --Mdennis (WMF) (talk)
Wikivoyage logo voting
Hello. The first round voting for the Wikivoyage logo selection procedure is now open to all contributors active on any Wikimedia Foundation wiki prior to 31 May 2013. Please visit m:Logo selection procedure for the general rules and m:Wikivoyage/Logo 2013 for a few specific notes. Follow the link in the header to "show proposals and vote". You may vote for up to three logos. If you vote for more than one logo, please vote for them in order of your preference. The first one you choose will be counted as your first choice; the second one, your second choice, and the third one will be your third choice. Thank you once again to Rillke for all of his assistance, and thank you for helping with the logo selection. --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 01:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Edit what page? Where are votes being recorded? Oh, at bottom of the respective logo's info page? (Which you can get to by clicking on the "i" icon at right below each logo on the Round-1 vote page, and then clicking the "Votelist" link in the little pop up box?) Rogerhc (talk) 06:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I am often using read statistics to determine usefulness of information to readers. Tools are easily accesible for Wikipedia, but I cannot locate any for WikiVoyage. Is there any? Brg --ModriDirkac (talk) 12:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please update the sitenotice to reflect that voting has opened; technically, it starts at 00:01 UTC, but I don't expect a response before then. Have the other Wikivoyages been notified as well? I'll post to the Lounge. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:54, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No. It is not permitted as w:Fair use. The logo is only used on Wikipedia specifically on the page for the 2014 World Cup because the logo is relevant to the event for scholarly/research purposes. The Wikivoyage license allows commercial use and the use of the logo in such a template would not be covered by any fair use defense. AHeneen (talk) 21:29, 29 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Someone renamed the page Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex (the hyphen became an en dash). While I agree that the en dash is more correct, it broke the breadcrumbs of 26 pages. Is there any policy about such changes? Should we just fix the 26 broken pages? Fractal (talk) 14:24, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say just revert the change. The hyphen is also correct and I imagine the typical editor is far more likely to type it than an ndash; many are probably not even aware of the difference.
This is a wiki, not a typeset book; I do not think ndash should be used at all. I'd like to revert all such changes, but that strikes me as more trouble than it is worth. Pashley (talk) 14:48, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is no ndash on my keyboard. I will always use a hyphen for a search.
If you could fix the broken pages in these cases, that would be good. But as for the change to the en dash in the first place ... it's the preference of most style guides in that instance, although if the metroplex itself consistently uses a hyphen, it's probably best to stick to that. I'd google it, but better still look through Amazon books for instances. And I think if it had been me, I'd not have bothered to change that one.
Pashley, it's disturbing to see the anti-typography attitude. That's the way the language works—you can't write proper English without dashes. Tony(talk) 15:53, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just for the record, I have done all of Teaching English, technical writing, and editing professionally at various times, and I can be remarkably pedantic about niggly little usage points that change meaning. For example, I have written letters to the editor or phoned radio stations about things like a claim that some crooked politician "refuted the allegation" (No, idiot, he only denied it, which is completely different.) or that "the suspect entered the bank with a gun" (No, the thief did that; the suspect is innocent until proven guilty.)
I am not anti-typography, and I do know how to use dashes in formal writing. I just do not think en dashes are worth the trouble here. Pashley (talk) 16:20, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"I just do not think en dashes are worth the trouble here"—Pashley, that is anti-typography. I'm going to repeat here what I've just said at the spelling talk page, because it involves wider issues that need discussion at this central location.
I've observed a certain anti-professional-writing attitude on this site—not among all editors, but among some who've been here for quite a while and who appear to resist the notion of updating and improving the site. This is very disappointing. Wikivoyage cost the WMF nearly a million dollars in legal and administrative expenses, not counting the engineering impostes. The Foundation has taken on a site that is a great idea but that is now losing its market share of readership: the model is falling behind, and it needs to rethink the quality standards of its style, structure, and presentation. It desperately needs more copy-editors, gnomes, text-maintenance editors, since much of the content will be added by visitors on the go. And you know what: you guys aren't keeping up, and you won't attract these people if you insist on bad standards.
It's going to be a tough enough struggle to keep WV competitive even if the long-standing regulars are on-board with change, modification, adaptation. When I hear the stock argument "it's too much trouble", I really wonder whether this is fair to the site, the existing editors, and the potential editors, and the Wikimedia movement that has rescued WV from commercial pulp. Tony(talk) 16:25, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, we are writing a typeset book. It’s among the goals of Wikivoyage to care about printed articles, and the best travel guide shouldn’t allow typographic errors. The only issue I see is that if someone creates a new page which is part of Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, the breadcrumb will probably be broken, unless the user knows about dashes. Maybe the breadcrumb code could be changed to take care of redirects? Then the problem would not be so bad. Fractal (talk) 16:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On the record by email to the Signpost, but not published, WMF CFO Garfield Byrd specifically referred to a $914,000 cost, not including engineering and integration. I found the discounting of this cost ("is not going to happen" because it's set against other savings in the relevant WMF departments) most unconvincing: a cost is a cost, and is money that could have been spent elsewhere or allocated to the reserve fund, irrespective of cost-savings in other budgetary categories.
"The $914,000 projected variance is not going to occur due to cost savings that have significantly reduced this projected variance from budget. Also, this projected number was never just for the cost of the Internet Brands litigation, but included other one time cost. The current variance from budget for Legal & Community Advocacy, Communications, Human Resources, Finance and Administration is $296,661 as of May 31, 2013. The Internet Brands litigation was tracked as a special cost item and was just under $350,000 and is part of the projected variance from budget that was mitigated by cost savings. We do not have cost for Engineering for the Wikivoyage integration, as it was not tracked as a special cost item in Engineering."
A pre-emptive comment: the only reason I have not reverted the change from hyphen to en dash in the title under discussion — which seems to me quite obviously the correct thing to do — is because I want to let this discussion run its course before taking action.
I see comments like "If you could fix the broken pages in these cases, that would be good.", which is fine as an expression of opinion. However, if anyone were to act on that without waiting for discussion to complete, I would be absolutely furious. Pashley (talk) 16:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Well, I had already moved the page back, because in addition to breaking 26 breadcrumbs it also breaks four common redirects. That's a lot of collateral damage to leave sitting around while we argue it over; I'd rather not do that.
Page titles are necessary for searches. We can display them however we like in articles, including overriding the display defaults quite easily, but the titles themselves need to be something people can type into the search box without trouble. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 16:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note that renaming the page created a redirection from the page with an hyphen to the page with a dash, so that’s not an argument at all. Fractal (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hyphens and dashes are a problem on this site, in that most keyboards have only the - and _ characters, whereas there's some weird-looking code that I see used (but don't take the time to use myself) that creates hyphens. So if we care greatly about what kind of dash or hyphen is used, we need to find a way to make it more user-friendly to type such characters. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:15, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I see that now. But it sure would be a whole lot easier if we just used single and double dashes, as typists on typewriters often did. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You could get away with it on a typewriter because typewriters use a fixed-width font. If you want to change the site's default font to Courier New, then maybe using nothing but hyphens (-) would fly. But in a proportional font, the difference between - and – and — is significant -- especially if we expect our guides to look professional in print. LtPowers (talk) 01:32, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I get that printed guides are one of our goals and the en-dash is typographically correct, but our content is created on-line and used by third party apps -- and in those cases, the hyphen is much more useable. Third party apps using our content (that I've used) don't always pick up the redirects and don't necessarily provide a box with non-standard characters. In that case, Dallas en-dash Fort Worth wouldn't be searchable. I guess we can tell developers to make their apps better or I can download a different keyboard for my cell phone that has non-standard characters, but I'm not convinced we should be making the way we title our articles other peoples' problems. I think there are trade offs between perfect typography for a print guide and being a web-based resource, and in this case we should keep to standard keyboard characters for ease of web-use, particularly since titles are important for searches. -Shaundd (talk) 23:38, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I take the opposite view: the deficiencies of third-party apps (no redirects?!?) are not our problem. We cannot accommodate every quirk of said apps, and we certainly should not sacrifice our print version in an attempt to do so! Do we want to be competitive with Lonely Planet or not? LtPowers (talk) 01:16, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Of course we don't expect casual editors-while-travelling (a rich source we'd like to tap into more, yes?) to spend a couple of hours reading and absorbing the style guides before they edit. It's a natural pattern on all wikis (that "anyone can edit") for there to be a continuous push and pull between (valuable) text added in whatever style people know, and a steady gnoming program by regular editors to clean this up, harmonise it, and professionalise it; a lot of people like doing the latter—myself among them—and they too need to be recognised and nurtured as a major category of editors. It's like weeding a beautiful garden. This is the case for all WMF sites; and nowhere is this more obvious than on en.WP, where the production values are higher than anywhere else. In the increasingly competitive online travel-info marketplace, en.WV needs to position itself now to protect and increase its share, and weeding that garden is one of the underlying challenges in that task (along with deciding how the structure might be updated to compete, and getting the WMF to help or to fund such updating).
So back to the humble dash: this push-and-pull process pertains to proper typography, just as for article macro-structure formatting, linking, grammar, and other aspects of style and functionality. Many people lack dashes on their keyboard—itself a weird disjuncture with the rules of English style as promulgated by all major authorities. That is why there are three alternate methods (two of them less convenient than for those who have dashes on their keyboard, but no big deal, frankly). I urge all editors with Windows keyboards to record a macro for en and em dashes, which will enable them to write proper English in all contexts, not just here.
If we're to make it easier and more practical for editors to sift through professionalising whatever articles they can manage, I urge colleagues here to consider that an article-consistent rule for stylistic choice (and, ahem, variety of spelling where there's no clear real-world predominance of a variety) be the norm; it's already the norm for 12- vs 24-hour time format.
To conclude, en.WP has an excellent script for introducing dashes – as interruptors of either acceptable type—and for numerical ranges and day and month ranges, of which WV has a huge number. It would make a lot of sense to import this script, but it would need an editor with the right skills to do it (I suspect some tweaks might be necessary). The script produces a false positive in about one in a thousand articles (but you have to watch aircraft nomenclature and correct back manually ... 747- needs the hyphen. Tony(talk) 02:20, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am pretty sure search ignores dashes and hyphens, so using the proper character would be better indeed. How about this: When someone steps in and pledges to port the script and fix the dashes from time to time, we change the convention; until then we stay as is for consistency. When Wikivoyage gains more volunteers, I am sure one of them will take this as their pet task. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:50, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Judgement of Solomon, Nick!
It's difficult for me to put in to my copy edits these unusual varieties of dash and hyphen when using my notebook (and indeed I've recently put forward a proposal to reduce the use of non-breaking spaces ( ) to make it easier (or less daunting) for casual editors), so this certainly isn't a task that I will be undertaking. --W.Franke-mailtalk14:59, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think Nick was probably referring to our own internal search facility, Tony, but yes you are right that this will have a very minimal effect on external search engines such as Google or Bing. --W.Franke-mailtalk14:59, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Evolving Wikivoyage—should there be a centralised page for brainstorming and refining ideas?
I refer to the thread above concerning the Wikimania presentation. Thinking of the larger picture here (which may well have a bearing on the Wikimania presentation), does anyone think it would be a good idea to establish a section or a page on en.WV specifically devoted to working through editors' ideas for technical improvements to the site? Would it be a practical course of action to encourage editors to survey what else is evolving on analogous sites, in terms of tech and content and process, with a view to putting on the table where we stand and where we'd like to be over the next few years?
We need at the very least to establish a wish-list, then filter it through to the viable, by consensus, and determine what might become a more official request to the WMF. What do people think? Tony(talk) 04:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sure would. But it would need to be advertised widely on the site, I think; and perhaps it should be re-organised into different sections. At the moment, it starts with improving articles, listings, patrolling, which is a bit vague. I'm keen to establish the technical possibilities, which will have a bearing of course on the goals of getting more editors in, but crucially, keeping up with the needs of travelling readers. Tech costs money and has a long lead-time. I was struck, in prepping for my own trip to Europe in September and therefore for the first time wearing the user's hat, at how inadequate to my real needs much of WV's information is. Sure, there are patches where it's really good; but it misses the spot in key ways. Tony(talk) 05:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Postscript: I'm just reformatting the roadmap page now (no real changes, but adding some prompt questions ... feel free to change anything I've done). Is it possible to have a notice on key pages visited by regulars, perhaps linking a program to brainstorm and refine new ideas with the 10-year anniversary of the community? Tony(talk) 05:11, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey guys, not much for you to do but I did want to point out this change in our web setup. We have owned 'voyagewiki.com/org' last June (as a defensive move once we knew we may be taking WV/WT as a WMF project to avoid domain squatters) and it was forgotten about (it didn't lead anywhere if you went there) so the obvious place to redirect it was the corresponding wikivoyage page which is what it now does thanks to one of our lovely ops engineers:). Jalexander (talk) 22:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I previously redirected all pages on jamguides.com (the content repository that eventually became English Wikivoyage) to wikivoyage.org. I'm assuming that this won't cause any sort of SEO penalty to Wikivoyage, but if anyone has any definitive info that indicates this hurts Wikivoyage SEO please let me know and I'll take down that redirect. -- Ryan• (talk) •06:01, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Finalist review:Wikivoyage logo
Hello.:)
I just wanted to stop by and tell you that we have narrowed down the first round finalists to the top three vote choices that passed legal review. (See meta:Talk:Wikivoyage/Logo_2013#Finalist_review for more information). To see the finalists and join in discussions of any potential last minute modifications, please review meta:Wikivoyage/Logo 2013/Finalist review. The discussion period is set to close on 17 August with the final vote to begin at 00:01 UTC, 22 August 2013, after the Wikimedia Foundation has had the opportunity to review any modifications.
Sort of bumping this. I took what lessons I thought there were from the poll I started (summarized at the top here) and added three variants to the balloon submission. I'd appreciate it if people would take a look and vote for whichever ones they want to show up in the final voting round. I highly recommend doing the same for the other two submissions too: three points & flying plane.
Remember, the modification period finishes today (closing at August 17, 2013 UTC), so be sure to vote before the deadline! (Also, if you mean to submit variants, do so ASAP.) --PeterTalk06:54, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I understand, 3 variants of each of the 3 logos can be submitted for the final by tomorrow? When exactly? How exactly? By whom? And today is the last chance to make some small changes to logos (color schemes, fonts, favicons). Danapit (talk) 09:16, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unless I'm mistaken, it's two variants per logo + the original submission (except AleXXw's submission, where there will be three new variants, as the original was disqualified per Legal). The new variants will be selected to run in the final vote according to the number of votes they have received. --PeterTalk17:55, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just to let you know, on User:Peterfitzgerald's quite properly pointing out that this is a little rushed, the legal team has agreed to shorten their review time. Closure is now set for Monday 19 August (late in the day, UTC time). This will allow two more days for people to talk about variants and submit them, if they like. He is quite right about the process - variants are chosen simply by the amount of support they receive. A bureaucrat on Meta will make the call, but it should be pretty straightforward. Please visit m:Wikivoyage/Logo 2013/Finalist review and show your support for the modifications you like by placing * {{support}} ~~~~ in the "Votes" sections. You are welcome to discuss the logos and what works and what doesn't with others there, and you are certainly allowed to change your mind if you would prefer to support other options. --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage logo: final vote
The final vote for the Wikivoyage logo selection procedure is now open. Any contributor registered on any Wikimedia Foundation project prior to May 31, 2013 is eligible to vote. The process will be using weighted voting to ensure fair representation to Wikivoyage contributors. Wikivoyage contributors include anyone who has made 50 mainspace edits to Wikivoyage prior to May 31, 2013.
Eight logo proposals take part in the final round of voting. Every voter has one vote per logo and may vote for up to three logos in total. If you vote for more than one logo, please vote for them in order of your preference. The first one you choose is your first choice; the second one, your second choice, and the third one is your third choice. Your votes will be tallied in that order.
This is not a secret ballot. Your choices are recorded in your contributions and are consequently publicly visible.
The vote is set to close at 23:59 UTC, 29 August 2013, with the winner to be announced at some point on 31 August 2013.
Yet another reason NOT to vote for the balloon, but for one of the two other actually good logos that are not cabbage, yay! Remember that if you voted for the balloon, you can always rectify your vote! PrinceGloria (talk) 07:04, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not a great compass if it only points 3 ways :D I personally preferred the balloon as it actually felt like going on a voyage like Around the World in 80 Days. Del♉sion23(talk)15:06, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can't help thinking this has something to do with your username. Perhaps this is due to the cabbage-flavoured fumes from the obviously LPG-powered balloon? (no offence meant, just being jocullarly friendly) PrinceGloria (talk) 15:26, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, you can accuse IBobi of a lot of things, but not being an interested and successful marketeer is not one of them!
He is just so glad we're not going to choose a modern, memorable and evocative logo like the one displayed here and instead are going to saddle ourselves with one of the three failures. He just wants to do his little bit to make sure we end up with some spiky device more appropriate to handicapping the charge of the heavy horses bearing knights in armour.
Look on the bright side: at least we've made at least one person in the world VERY happy with all those thousands of google-juice enhancing free links we're kind enough to provide for his employers. If he's got shares in InternetBrands, he must be laughing all the way to the bank... --W.Franke-mailtalk19:06, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Help needed: Add latitude/longitude to destinations
Looking for a way to make a big difference? 6361 articles don't have latitude/longitude.
How to help: Open any destination in this list, search it on GeoMap, (choose the template Geo*), click on the city, zoom in or out and centre the map display to get the best view, copy the latitude/longitude that appear, and add it as {{geo|35.660000|139.730000|zoom=15}} or similar at the end of the article.
It takes 30 seconds per destination and will help a lot for dynamic maps and for Wikivoyage-based apps. It can't really be automatized because sometimes different cities have the same name. Thanks a lot! Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:59, 6 August 2013 (UTC) * Mey2008 (talk) 10:04, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tips: Duplicate names can be specified. Dover, OH or Dover, England looking for the appropriate city. - Before clicking, zoom to the best view. Click on the green cross in the center. The data for this view exactly will be displayed. -- Mey2008 (talk) 10:41, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tips: As sometimes the GeoMap comes up with surprising locations with the same name, suggest addressing the list by regions. In the Category field add an additional line with a region name (say state or country), set depth to say 10, in Combination switch off Union and switch on At least and number 2. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:16, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, wouldn't it help to have a bot do this for all destinations which already have an interwiki to Wikipedia? The bot could just go to the WP article and pull the geo info from there and insert it in the article here. That would probably take care of a good chunk of these pretty quickly. Texugo (talk) 12:21, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am all for writing a bot, but this task is very tricky for non-humans, so writing a bot might take more time than doing the task manually. To be reasonably reliable, a bot would have to differentiate between cities with the same name (which is quite common actually), using the breadcrumb info, which unfortunately is often not understood by geolocalization APIs. Districts is also a special case which might confuse these APIs. No to mention that does not give us the zoom level (though we can live with a default zoom level, it is better than nothing). Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:31, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am a great fan of Wikidata, but there seems to be no plan to merge {geo} info with Wikidata. I just proposed the idea here. Rschen, could you please include this in the scope of phase 2 for deployment on August 26? Thanks a lot! By the way, would that automagically make Wikipedia-extracted coordinates available to each Wikivoyage article's templates? Of course, manual geolocalization will still be needed for destinations that do not have a 1-1 mapping with a Wikipedia entry. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:31, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think what I suggested would be difficult for a bot at all:
Bot finds a page with a WP link but no geo/parameters
Bot follows to that corresponding WP page and copies the lat/long from the corresponding template there
How many articles have or not "Geo" and "Wikipedia" as of the latest dump (20130726) according to my small tr/sed/grep:
"Geo" present
"Geo" absent
"Wikipedia" present
13260
6424
"Wikipedia" absent
791
31457
It seems that I don't master CatScan2 yet, so 6361 was an underestimation. Also, linking articles to Wikipedia should be a priority, in particular to prepare the ground for Wikidata.
Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:47, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tip to find great big reusable images (for instance for banners)
You can easily find big (width>2100 pixels) images by using this search query (replace "Paris" with the article name). It helps a lot when illustrating articles or creating banners, especially when the Commons category contains few images, or contains tons of images that are too small to use. All of the images are "labeled for commercial reuse with modification". You can restrict the search to Commons by adding "site:commons.wikimedia.org". Happy illustrating! Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:41, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Events and festivals
What should sections about events and festivals look like? I've looked through some star articles and they have very different ideas about what such a section should look like. Chicago#Events & festivals details some of the most important events in prose. San Francisco#Events, on the other hand, gives a long list of events that take place in the city. What are we looking for? Globe-trotter (talk) 13:44, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind that those are huge cities, so the detailed bulleted listings are in the district articles in both cases. I think the Chicago section is a bit short, but the San Francisco section is probably too long for an overview. LtPowers (talk) 15:53, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the SF example will apply to most articles. Chicago in my experience trails only New Orleans in its festival culture—in the summer you could probably go to a unique festival-type event most days of the week! So it made sense to just mention the enormous ones, while describing the rest in district articles to avoid overload. In general, though, I think it's best to have festivals information in the main article of a districted city, since a festival happening while reading is a compelling reason to pick a district to visit. --PeterTalk17:09, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
1050 URLs missing http:// prefix
I analyzed the latest Wikiwoyage dump, we have 1050 URLs missing an http:// prefix. These cases always result in broken links and wikicode getting half-displayed, which is bad.
Have you an quick way to list which pages these are as links or add the articles to a category? Could then easily run a bot over them. Alternative is to scan all pages but that would take a good number of hours on line for my machine and longer to proof check. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:46, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately getting the article link is not more complex than my simple "grep" tricks... the article name is written higher in the huge XML file... probably doable with awk, or even with a few "tr/sed" commands to first make each article take one line. I modified my greps and detected a few hundreds more, so automation becomes necessary indeed. Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:56, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The one with www addresses I have done with a bot, but the other are incorrect for various reasons, would take longer to write automation and check the logic than to edit manually.--Traveler100 (talk) 07:08, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I manually fixed some of the 57 (verified url at same time) - marked a few questionable urls.. on your talk/syntax page... I can do some more tomorrow if you want... Matroc (talk) 07:21, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Finished the 57 - some have been fixed by a 'bot' - left notes for some oddities I fixed.. Other user(s) have edited as well... Have a great day! Matroc (talk) 16:05, 8 August 2013 (UTC) -- started on 1050 broken links[reply]
Keep in mind that the "http:" may not be necessary; the syntax [//www.sample.com] produces a link that uses either http: or https: depending on how the user is currently browsing Wikivoyage (that is, it produces a "protocol-relative external link"). The double forward slashes are necessary, however. And of course, this should only be used for sites that accept the https: protocol! LtPowers (talk) 14:05, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I am finished! --Over 1000+ broken links edited by hand... - there are 5 questionable entries to be look at and finished. Cheers! Matroc (talk) 08:02, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like it's a Wikipedia attribution template, ie articles built from Wikipedia info. I've seen some attribution in Talk pages and some in Article pages, so is there a fixed place for them? -- torty3 (talk) 08:09, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia attribution should have a vertical bar rather than a semicolon, right? {{Wikipedia|Wikivoyage}} creates the following:
This article contains content imported from the English Wikipedia article on Wikivoyage. View the page revision history for a list of the authors.
They should be placed on the article page, since they may not necessarily be seen (and therefore attributed properly) if the content is reused and only article and the CC copyright tag with a link to the edit history is provided by the reuser. I've used the template a handful of times as there have been a few instances where WP content is brief and written well enough that it was easier to just copy, paste, and minimally edit the WP content on an article, esp. sections like "history" for smaller towns/cities and descriptions of attractions; there have also been cases where a "tourist attractions" section was present in a WP article & I just copied the content (before it disappears on WP since it is against their MoS) to a WV article I had little interest in developing. AHeneen (talk) 15:33, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Noob question, but what are the [[Wikipedia:xxx]] tags for? They do not appear to work as sister project links in the same way as {{Wikivoyage|xxx}} works in English Wikipedia. Del♉sion23(talk)22:07, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It works more like an interlanguage link; it places a link to Wikipedia's xxx article in the left sidebar under "Related sites". LtPowers (talk) 23:16, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly: Soooo sorry, I absolutely forgot to place our report for de: I will do it during the conference... The Wikimania has started. If you have any questions, wishes, whatever concerning Wikivoyage, Wikidata .... please drop me a line on my user talk page. I have the change, to address everything to the right person. -- DerFussi04:00, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Editor Retention
In my (fairly) short time as part of Wikivoyage I've seen many stalwarts of the community lead the site through difficulties and triumphs, however, I've also seen lots of newer editors disappear after fairly short periods of time. We are rightly concerned about attracting new people to the site, but we do seem to lose people fairly regularly, particularly members who are pretty new to WV. To a degree, this will always be the way: the novelty factor wears off and some editors will inevitably move on. We should not, however, stand back and let this happen. As a starting point I might suggest posting 'Please come back: we miss you!' messages on the Talk pages of some people who've made a few constructive edits and then disappeared, but it would also be good to discuss how we can get people through the door and keep them here. Any thoughts or ideas welcome! --Nicktalk21:53, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If we are to send "we miss you" message, I suggest we don't use much templating, otherwise this will be seen as spam (I hate receiving automatic "we miss you" messages from websites I register on). I suggest really looking at the enhancement the editor made, and write something like "I noticed your great work adding museums to the Antananarivo article on Wikivoyage, blabla, if you have any question just ask me and I will answer personally". That requires some workforce though, so probably best for editors who have shown a great potential. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:18, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Directed. I noticed you did a good job adding a get in information to foo, however, we have no information on how to make phones calls in foo, or how to get there from bar. Can you help? --Inas (talk) 04:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest more constructive edits of new users' entries. I have seen edits by new users simply deleted as not to Wikivoyage standards. Although it takes more effort, long standing users should assume good faith and lack of knowledge of conventions here. Correct the entries and advise the editor on their talk page of what and why the change was made. Educate not discourage. --Traveler100 (talk) 04:59, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Really? I've never seen much of that. But if it happens, I think it should be surely frowned upon. If I ever had to resort to reverting the edit of a (non-touting) editor, I'm sure I'd leave them a note welcoming and explaining why. That's the same sort of behaviour I've seen from others too. --Inas (talk) 06:25, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever I see a new editor making good edits, I try to make a point of thanking them with some words of encouragement. But I haven't noticed whether that's helpful, and perhaps it doesn't work in the longer run anyway. When I have noticed that an editor has dropped off, and I then try to contact them to let them know they're missed, that actually isn't too well received. On the other hand, if you miss an editor for a specific reason, asking them for their help/expertise on a specific task is a pretty surefire way of getting them editing again.
The one thing I have noticed can help lead to long-term participation is saying thanks coupled with very concrete suggestions of how to move forward in advancing a concrete goal, like article status improvements (just one example), and then follow up to help answer questions/provide guidance about how to meet such a goal. Making improvements in isolation as a new editor is a confusing and lonely experience—it's important that we are able to reinforce a sense of shared effort and purpose. I don't get to do this too often, though, since I don't patrol as much anymore.
As I type this, it seems kind of Machiavellian, but these two suggestions make sense independent of the question of editor retention. --PeterTalk06:49, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
GoogleRank on Bugzilla
Have talked with Daniel (WMDE staff) about the Google Rank and asked one or the right person, who can have it fixed (sorry forgot her name) So we were asked to place a bug. We've just done it. Please follow it here Bug 52688 -- DerFussi08:49, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Section on parking?
Never come here before; my only knowledge of this website has been a tiny bit of Wikivoyage use several years ago. I went to the St. Louis page, looking for information on parking (garages, meters, etc.) and found nothing. Is this something that shouldn't be included in a page, or is it something that should be included on a page and just isn't included on this one? Nyttend (talk) 18:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OxygenGuide is Wikivoyage in the form of simple HTML files. No images. Must-have on your smartphone or travel laptop. Whole world in 90MB.
I created an Android app but haven't much time to maintain/improve it, I am looking for a new maintainer, anyone interested? It can be a fun project for someone who is starting to learn Android development, so don't hesitate:-)
I suspect that list's functionality was built into an older version of MediaWiki (1.4?) and removed in 2005; it originally provided a special: page which would list all articles which contained one or more of the mispelled words. This may be obsolete? 66.102.83.6120:01, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Will there be a bot that checks for misspellings in future? I have been doing minor spelling edits and doing corrections article by article. As I do corrections I write down any suspect words and check for articles containing those words. Most recently, I found an interesting one which I don't know if I should attempt to correct... "truely" appears in 1408 articles and should be "truly" which appears 1005 times. Matroc (talk) 04:17, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There was a previous discussion about enabling the mw:Echo (Notifications) software above. This is the same notifications software that is now used on the English Wikipedia and Meta. While this will eventually be rolled out to all Wikimedia sites, they are rolling out the extension in phases to sites that are interested. According to mw:Echo/Release Plan 2013, we are tentatively scheduled for September 17th, if we want to proceed with it. Is this something that we are still interested in? --Rschen775422:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, we would be the first non-Wikipedia content wiki that would get Echo! (It has been deployed to Meta and Mediawiki.org, but those are not content wikis...) --Rschen775400:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A start was main to reorganise the regions of Bulgaria. The country page has been updated and the new region definition pages started. However most of the city pages have not been redefined under the new regions and the old region pages still exist. Anyone willing to finish the job started by a contributor who appears to have stopped editing? --Traveler100 (talk) 11:13, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Cimaja is described as a small town, which would lead me to believe that a visitor there would have a high probability of coming into contact with the individual in question. The traveller comes first here, so the warningbox should most definitely stay. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:49, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Did you read the edit? Unless dealing with a difficult owner of a scooter shop is likely to result in death, then no, it's not a warningbox issue -- even assuming there is any truth there. Whenever a single user adds an edit that both extolls one local business and attacks another, we tend to recognize that for the self-promotion it most likely is. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 18:00, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Actually, the thrust of the BLP policy I was referring to is that we should tiptoe around anything that could be construed as libelous. That is, we would be more likely to apply Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews in the case of individuals, and only consider doing otherwise if we have rock-solid references to back up claims, like reputable newspaper articles. --PeterTalk06:16, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday when looking at recent changes I came across this article which includes quite a few warnings about individuals. Is there anything that should be done about it (except updating the prices to Euros)? ϒpsilon (talk) 11:27, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The parts that dealt with specific people were problematic, because of libel concerns and the fact that it could be written dishonestly by someone with a personal history with them, but I've kept all relevant information about touts and scammers. It's usually pretty easy to depersonalize advice like this. --PeterTalk20:16, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Without a sea change in our culture, I don't think that we can delete libellous material on clear public view in our current pages. To introduce such a "play nice" rule so would mean that editors would not be able to make ad hominem attacks on user talk pages and article discussion pages that they could not justify by veritas. --W.Franke-mailtalk16:38, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Progress
Lest anyone should think I've dropped the ball on my primary project here at Wikivoyage, I've completed the fourth Buffalo district article - for North Buffalo - and moved the finished districts to mainspace. You can expect to see major changes at Buffalo soon as listings are expunged from the main article and the district map gets tacked on to the page nice and prominently. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:56, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
After a caching mishap all XML listings and extlinks have been updated successfully using the same bots that have run against mainspace in recent months. -- Ryan• (talk) •17:24, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Need your help in increasing the number of participants significantly by linking to all our destination articles from parallel articles in the English Wikipedia
In my opinion it is vital that all of our 24,868 destination articles be linked to from their parallel articles in the English Wikipedia (including links to our poorly written stubs which desperately need significant expansions). These parallel Wikipedia articles get a particularly significant exposure on a regular basis thanks to their high ranking in the Google search engine, and I'm sure that the existence of 24,868 links from there to us would bring us hordes of new readers and participants on a regular basis which would tremendously help boost our efforts.
So far I have created a list containing links to all 24,868 Wikivoyage destination articles which I saved on various sub pages in my user account on the English Wikipedia. This list is of course meant to assist us in the very tedious work involved in manually adding the links to all these articles. I have already started adding these links manually one by one (for each link I add I also make sure to write "added link to parallel article in Wikivoyage (please help improve and expand it)" in the edit summary, hoping that by doing so a large amount of Wikipedians would initially become aware of the parallel article which exists in Wikivoyage about their hometown and thus they would decide to help expand it a bit and/or improve its existing content). Since this is a very time consuming task (that could take a very long period of time to complete by myself), I am hoping that a much larger group of Wikivoyagers would be willing to help me complete this task - I believe that a group of 20-30 users can finish this task in circa a week or two weeks if each of us focuses on adding the links to a different group of articles.
Not every article has a counterpart on Wikipedia. Many of our articles are regions that have no official definition and were created only for our own organizational purposes. LtPowers (talk) 18:37, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, that would be a very good moment to start getting rid of many of them.
As to the task at hand - there is a bot in development on Wikipedia to handle that. We may safely focus on other important tasks for the time being. PrinceGloria (talk) 18:59, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)
Isn't this the sort of task that can mostly be done by a bot, leaving only a much more limited number of articles that need manual work?
And isn't it far more general than just English WP to English WV? Don't we want similar links for other languages?
To reiterate what I said before, increased interwiki linkage is the wrong answer to the problem of lack of participation in Wikivoyage. Some articles do have links to their counterparts on Wikipedia, and if what you say is true, we ought to see significantly more edits on those articles than on those that have no such links. But sadly, with the exception of the pet projects of our small group of dedicated editors i.e.Buffalo, Wikivoyage is a ghost town pretty much right across the board. I cannot shout it to the high heavens enough: SEO is the solution.-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:02, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As we are e.g. discussing @ Talk:Germany now, there are many "regions" artificially created just to fulfill the overly literally applied 7±2 principle that failed in practice, i.e. their article contains no real content that would add value over the next level of hierarchy, so they are just confusing and making the breadcrumb trail longer. This applies both to country-level divisions and lower levels of hierarchy. It would be good to review those and see whether they worked or remain empty or repetitive. PrinceGloria (talk) 19:27, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS. Again for those who might have not registered this information as we're veering off topic as usual - there is a bot in development at Wikipedia to automatically link parallel articles to Wikivoyage. No need to do it by hand for the time being.
PrinceGloria, you said there is a a bot in development on Wikipedia that is going to add all those links.... as far as I understand it, that would be technically impossible to accomplish automatically since there is currently no indication as for what the parallel article in Wikipedia is, and in addition, the fact that the article names are not identical makes this even harder task for an automated bot. Either way, please refer me to the user whom is developing this bot so that I could get a better idea on what is being developed exactly and to when it would start running. In the meantime, since it is most likely that such a bot would never exist, I want to emphasize again that I'm certain that the existence of 24,000 + links from there to us would bring us hordes of new readers and participants on a regular basis which would tremendously help boost our efforts and therefore, I am begging you all to consider helping me accomplish this milestone. Anyone willing to help? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:37, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PrinceGloria, the solution cannot be to simply "delete them" because we don't want to have gigantic city lists everywhere, and the solution cannot be to limit ourselves to only administrative or official division that have WP articles either. Look at New Mexico, for example. Look at the map, how it neatly divides the state up into 6 manageable areas without gap, without overlap. Now forget that and try to come up with another way to divide up the state without gap or overlap, using only what you find at w:Category:Regions of New Mexico. It is quite literally impossible. There is much reason to the way things have been done. Perhaps it was overdone in Germany's case, I don't know about it, but I certainly don't think you can say it would be reasonable to throw out all regions that don't correspond to an article on WP. More often than not, we have done it that way to reduce the number of intermediary regions needed versus the available official divisions. If I hadn't invented a division scheme for São Paulo state, for example, we'd be forced to either a) not subdivide it, and have a list of more than 200 cities, or b) subdivide it into 15 official mesoregions.
ויקיג'אנקי, as far as I understand it, with our Wikidata integration, a bot can simply look at the wikidata item to find what the corresponding WP article should be. Texugo (talk) 19:42, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It may be useful to prioritize linking Wikivoyage articles with their Wikipedia counterparts if the goal is integration of wikis per se. But I reiterate that, for the same reasons I cited above, it's pretty much a waste of time if our goal is to drive traffic to our site. User:ויקיג'אנקי may be "certain that the existence of 24,000+ links from [Wikipedia] to us would bring us hordes of new readers and participants on a regular basis", but he provides no rationale to clue us in as to why he thinks so, and meanwhile the fundamental question I have about this strategy remains unanswered: why aren't we already seeing "hordes of new readers and participants" on those articles that already are linked to directly from Wikipedia? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:18, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that the short run AND the long run cumulative effect resulting from having thousands (or maybe even tens of thousands!) of users discovering our articles (both the important ones and the less important ones) as they come to us from 24,000 + links in Wikipedia would be far more powerful and lead to a much larger amount of people participating in expanding and improving Wikivoyage's content (even if a large portion of those contributions might for example be directed among other things, at less prominent destinations articles such as various districts/towns/villages in India, or Norway for example) in comparison with the immediate short run cumulative effect which those few links in Wikipedia to our main articles (for example, links to the articles France, New York, etc.) have had on Wikivoyage up until now. I have to state that I agree it is not easy to predict exactly what the cumulative effect of adding 24,000 + links would mean after one month, or half a year, or ten years, nevertheless, my vast experience in web development and in developing content on Wikipedia in particular (as well as my gut instincts) tell me this is an opportunity we do not want to miss. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 02:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Even without Wikidata, most of our articles link to a corresponding Wikipedia article; reversing that link is trivial for a bot. LtPowers (talk) 21:45, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay/Bantry Bay -> Bantry Bay
Train travel in New Zealand -> Rail transport in New Zealand
Ouagadougou sector C -> Ouagadougou
Ouagadougou sector D -> Ouagadougou
What do you think about these? For someone who is in "Ouagadougou sector C", a link to the Wikipedia Ouagadougou article is better than no link at all, I would say. What do you think about it? Do we want A) Exact 1-1 mapping? B) Link to the most relevant Wikipedia article? Solution B will make back-linking (WP to WV) a little bit trickier (choose manually for articles with 1-n mapping, not such a big deal). Also, the bot should probably only backlink to Destination articles, not Topic articles (Topic articles should be backlinked manually after checking whether they are really relevant in the WP->WV way). Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:26, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
LtPowers and Nicolas1981 – can any of you refer me to a specific expert user in Wikipedia that is capable and willing to help us implement a bot which would add links on the parallel Wikipedia articles based on the links which exist in our articles? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 02:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The user who took my request for the bot is Wikipedia:User:Hazard-SJ, and the BRFA is here. It seems that the development is for now somewhat stifled by the fact that Hazard-SJ seems to be the number one person to go to with bot requests and seems to have his hands full in the summer holiday season. I am quite convinced, however, that "our" bot will eventually be launched in a few weeks. In the meantime, if some of you guys have sme specialist knowledge that they believe can be helpful to Hazard-SJ, it would be great if you could get in touch with him.
Indeed, the bot will operate based on the assumption that the appropriate WV article does indeed link to the WP article. And for it, a 1:1 link is better to work on. We do need to ensure our BASE articles (such as country- and city-levels, and those for unambigious regions, as well as certain topics also covered by WP) do link to appropriate articles on WP. Other stuff is largely irrelevant to me at this point. If you can trim down the list to those CORE articles that don't have a WP link yet, ויקיג'אנקי, I think it might be very useful and we could start working on it (i.e. start linking from WV to WP) right away. PrinceGloria (talk) 04:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS. For the time being, I will refrain from continuing the discussion on artificially-created regions here, focusing on Germany first in its own talk page. I see I am being misunderstood here, I did not propose deleting all articles, just reviewing some of our regional divisions for levels that proved impractical and redundant. Some of them might even be those corresponding to actual administrative divisions. My general conclusion is that often we have too many levels of which at least one id largely "dead", i.e. no useful content is being developed for it. Let us be done with Germany first and then I will consider raising this issue again in a separate thread.
Hello, I went through the links:
There are 3309 entries that do not have a matching name to a WP article (now contained in a section by itself)
There are 4761 entries that do have a matching name to a WP article (now contained in a section by itself)
There are approx. 20 or so that point to a deleted WV article and some of those do have a match in WP
Am I to assume that there will be a bot to take care of the 4761 entries?
Are we to start doing the best we can with the 3309 entries by hand?
Thanks for splitting into these 2 sections! I hope a bot can take care of the 4761.
The 3309 are much more difficult. I just processed 15 of them, and I can tell you a bot would have to be REALLY smart to understand what Wikipedia article is the best one. I would love to be proved wrong, but I am pretty sure nobody can write such a bot in less time that it would to process the entries manually. So everyone plunge forward and help us fix the 3309:-) They are the entries marked "NIWP" here. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just did a few of these, and I hate to say it, but we need to add the additional step of checking/fixing the Wikidata item too. Of the ones I did just now, a couple of them were connected to the right data item which already listed the appropriate WP article, so I just had to add the [[wikipedia:xyz]] to the article here. However, all the other ones I did were linked to their own empty data item, so I had to remove it from that item, find the item for the right WP article, add the WV article there, request the first item for deletion, and then add the code in our article. This step is necessary because Wikidata will probably start handling our WP links the same way they do the interwikis, and we want the data items to be lined up with both other language versions and with WP. Texugo (talk) 12:03, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent idea. This will get the existence of WV out to the wider Wikipedia community and hopefully increase editorship. As editors grow, quality will improve and with that the google ranking and readership. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:39, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As a regular Wikidata user, I can tell you that it will be relatively easy for a bot to add correct Wikivoyage links to Wikipedia pages and vice versa using Wikidata. We are quickly going through the Wikivoyage links hosted on Wikidata and merging them into items with correct Wikipedia links. As an example, the only thing that a bot needs to do to add a link between Keremeos WP and Keremeos WV is to check Keremeos WD. This is how it knows which links to put on each English language page. Del♉sion23(talk)15:22, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WV articles without an equivalent WP article
After reading through the above, there doesn't seem to be a clear answer on how to handle situations where WP doesn't have a corresponding article. A recent edit here linked the WV guide for Alberta Badlands (a region guide part of the Alberta hierarchy) to the WP article on Dinosaur Provincial Park (a park within the region). There is no equivalent WP article for our region guide and the park is an important attraction within the region, but I don't think linking to a single attraction is the best way to go if there is no equivalent WP article. I'd prefer not to have a link at all in that case, but I'd like to know what others think. -Shaundd (talk) 22:05, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Greetings. Starting on August 21 (tomorrow), all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. More information is available at m:HTTPS.
If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on bugzilla, on IRC (in the #wikimedia-operations channel) or on meta. If you can't use the other methods, you can also send an e-mail to https@wikimedia.org.
Uh, well there is a tiny little drawback. {{Mapframe}} shouldn't be added to articles for now, as there may be problems with mixed content (secure and non-secure websites) with the embedded map, and most browsers will block the non-secure site from loading. I think the Germans are working something out to get a security certificate for the map server, but that might take a while. Anonymous users will still mostly be using HTTP instead of HTTPS, so it will mainly affect logged-in users, though there is a preference to disable it. -- torty3 (talk) 12:42, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Since nobody is submitting their credit card info or other personal info on any of our article pages I don't think the mixed content warning is a reason to remove the maps. If there are enough complaints we could revisit, but since the maps will support SSL in the near future my opinion is that it is a minor inconvenience to endure for a short time. -- Ryan• (talk) •18:58, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We can leave the maps. The worst that can happen is that the SSL lock icon will be shown as a broken lock for pages that contain any non-HTTPS content. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:47, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all! As I just updated on the meta page, we've delayed this rollout by one week. The change will now take place on August 28 at 1pm Pacific Time. Please take a look at gadgets or bots you maintain to make sure they'll continue to work; more information at meta. And if you have more information to share about what the German folks are doing to fix the map template, please share it here or on meta. Thanks! Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A few technical resources
Hi, travellers! I've just taken a skim through the travellers' pub here and I wanted to give folks here some links to some useful Wikimedia technical resources. If you follow https://blog.wikimedia.org then of course you've already seen a lot of these, but I figured it was okay to spam you a little bit.
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/18/how-to-create-a-good-first-bug-report/ is a guide you can use if you think you see a technical problem on a Wikimedia website. It shows you how to file a defect report ("bug report") in our Bugzilla site so the engineers can see it and follow up. You can also use this method to request things. It's a good rule of thumb to file a request in Bugzilla whenever you think "oh it would be handy to have such-and-such functionality" and to mark it as an "enhancement". For instance, if you want an extension like WikiLove installed, the procedure includes filing a Bugzilla request.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ee is the Editor Engagement mailing list. If you want to learn about initiatives to recruit and retain contributors, and participate in that planning and discussion, join this list. You might also want to watch the video I'm embedding here, from the WMF's monthly Metrics and Activities meeting for July. (You can watch the monthly Metrics meetings live each month via YouTube.)
http://tools.wmflabs.org/ is our Tool Labs, a home for community-maintained external tools supporting Wikimedia projects and their users. Take a skim through the directory of "Hosted Tools" and see what people have made, and perhaps get an account and try making something yourself!
I just noticed this page exists now, so a few questions come to mind:
This seems useful to the traveller on the go, so how can we make this into a more prominent feature?
Are there parameters that can be changed? From where I am sitting in São Paulo, I get the main city article, and region and the state articles, all of which happen to be centered within 2 km of here, but nothing further away shows up. That makes sense on WP where there are articles for all kind of individual things, but for us if the range is too short, it will never give you much of anything beside the one city where you already are. It might be more useful to give it a range of 30-50 kilometers so it will turn up more than just the city where you happen to be.
Why would it not be working on pt:, which has the same three SP pages mentioned above, with the same geo coordinates in them? What can I do to get it working? Something missing?
Where are the mediawiki pages for translating the associated texts? I found the special pages list description at Mediawiki:Nearby, but I can't find the page for the name displayed on that page nor the "Quiet out here..." message you get when it doesn't find anything near you.
Is there a way to test what results will be returned from a location other that where you are at the moment?
One other way this Special could be made even better is to make use of the geocoords we now have for many in-article POIs. It would be great if Wikivoyage could tell you there is a museum or arte gallery open nearby, or a cool place to go to eat or drink. I guess this might be technically possible if the Special would upload the POI geocoords from the city-level and district-level articles that themselves are nearest to the user's location, if you get what I mean. PrinceGloria (talk) 20:41, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about that, but unless/until we have full integration with Wikidata of the listings with all their fields, making them into actual objects, it still wouldn't have any way to display those individual listings anyway and would still have to just return a link to the city where you already are. Texugo (talk) 20:45, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A link from the main page and/or on the sidebar would be good. And working from other locations would be useful, maybe a link from the go next section of articles. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
pt and other language versions will need to add a #coordinates magic word from mw:Extension:Geodata to the {{geo}} template and if we want the listings to show up, then the same magic word must be added to the listing template. de.voy has actually done so for their vCards, but I haven't yet checked out how it works there. There might also be a way to directly anchor link to the listing, which was a question brought up by Nicolas somewhere on this page.
We definitely need to hash out a lot of technical things from Special:Nearby, an OSM tile server, Wikidata... though I haven't quite got the energy to do so now:) -- torty3 (talk) 12:55, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure what to do as far as medical tourism. Should it be included? If so, where and what? Because there's a major, well-known hospital in the article area I'm working on. —The preceding comment was added by 68.50.233.28 (talk • contribs)
Is there a maintenance category listing articles with event-specific or time-sensitive information in warning boxes? For instance,
WARNING: As of August 23, 2013 travellers have evacuated from portions of Yosemite National Park due to a wildfire currently burning uncontrolled.
should have a hidden category or an expiry date to indicate this box needs to be removed once the fire is out. K7L (talk) 21:15, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is an issue that has been brought up several times before, see Template talk:Warningbox sections Out-of-date Warningboxes, Review Dates, & Emergencies and Disasters. I started the "Review Dates" section and it still seems like a good proposal. I think it's a good idea to have expiration (or "review") dates attached to some warning boxes, particularly ones associated with natural disasters. Maybe action could be taken this time. AHeneen (talk) 05:18, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Baltimore star nomination
I have nominated Baltimore for a star based on the achievement of the article to reach completeness and providing a complete description of the places a tourist might want to visit from the tourist-heavy inner harbor to the seediest parts, an impressive achievement. For these reasons I think it deserves a star. —The preceding comment was added by 68.50.233.28 (talk • contribs)
Hi Alvanson! Here is a bot we really need (needed to allow Wikidata to know what data a Wikivoyage article is about): For each of the 4756 articles listed in this paragraph, do:
Check whether the Wikidata associated with the same-name Wikpedia page is a geographical feature.
Check whether the Wikivoyage article still exists (at least a few are moved/deleted each day)
If both conditions are satisfied, insert at the very end of the Wikivoyage article (or add the link directly in the Wikipedia object at Wikidata). Optionnally delete the orphan Wikivoyage-issued Wikidata object that had been created and is not needed anymore (the Wikivoyage article will get linked to the proper Wikidata object).
That will allow these 4756 Wikivoyage articles to be correctly linked to Wikidata, allowing Wikivoyage to benefit in particular from their latitude/longitude information, which is crucial for dynamic maps. Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The template works by adding a Wikipedia link to the "Related Sites" section if one exists in Wikidata and currently isn't set in the page text.
Note that they currently won't work until Wikivoyage gets phase 2 (see this).
What I'd like to do is run a bot that would add this template to every page that currently doesn't have the Wikipedia link itself, or is equal to the current link (it would be removed, that way any Wikidata updates would be applied)
My concern with this template schema is that it makes it harder for Wikivoyagers to change this association. We would no longer be able to do it simply by editing the page, but instead would have to go to Wikidata and find the appropriate change there. LtPowers (talk) 01:49, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, that's a reasonable point. Maybe we can generalize the template a bit so it would just be {{Wikipedia link}}, but if you wanted to override it, you could do {{Wikipedia link|New York City}}. The bot would convert all existing uses into using the template rather than removing, so it would still be clear to figure out how to change it. An advantage of doing it this way is that we can set up categories to track when the data in Wikipedia doesn't match Wikivoyage using something like w:Module:WikidataCheck. Legoktm (talk) 04:18, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This association gains a lot from being maintained on Wikidata rather than on Wikivoyage. Maintaining it here would just be duplicated maintenance. Right now we write them in Wikivoyage so that Wikidata can import the links, but hopefully in the future all [[Wikipedia:...]] links that have a 1-1 mapping with Wikipedia should be only on Wikidata. It is not something that Wikivoyage newcomers ever change anyway. Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:26, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say anything about newcomers. =) If you're not swayed by the hassle of having to make changes on a separate site, what about the inability to see any changes that might be made on one's Wikivoyage watchlist? LtPowers (talk) 15:37, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's quite a serious problem if edits can't be made from this site. We simply can't expect people to go to another site to make the edits, unless there is a message that prompts them to do so when they try to make the edits in question, and directs them there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, if the Wikidata item that is linked to a page is edited, it will show up on your watchlist if you enable "Show Wikidata". Legoktm (talk) 19:39, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia interwiki links should almost never need to be changed, interwiki changes aren't edits that most new users make, and this is a task that has historically been handled by bots anyhow. As a result I would disagree that having interwiki links not be editable from Wikivoyage is a problem given the benefits of centralizing things and allowing dozens or even hundreds of wikis to update automatically with a single Wikidata edit. -- Ryan• (talk) •19:49, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If this is necessary, then shouldn't it be expanded even further to other interproject links. Next time when Commons is hooked up to Wikidata, then would a {{Commons link}} be required as well? Or is it too complicated with one-to-many mapping and such? -- torty3 (talk) 13:08, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unaware of this thread, I created a combined WP/commons template on pt:, using the Wikibase module imported from voy:it:, which pulls both the corresponding WP page and the corresponding commons category from Wikidata, when they exist, and puts them in the sidebar (now in test at pt:Sorocaba). The template has wp= and commons= attributes which can override the link from wikidata if necessary. I don't understand any of the concern above about "not being able to edit from this site" - it should be no more worrying than the fact that we no longer edit interwikis from here. The WP and Commons links will almost always be equivalent to the ones listed in the data item, and as long as we have a way to override them to add a fuzzy match when there is no clear one-to-one correspondence, I don't see any problem at all here. I would love to run a bot as described by Legoktm above. (If someone is willing to help me out with that on pt:, I would be grateful) Texugo (talk) 18:53, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Who says offloading interwiki links to Wikidata isn't equally troubling? Regardless, there are clear benefits to that change because of the exponential number of interwiki links involved (e.g., if a page exists in 10 different languages, then each of those ten articles has nine interwiki links to keep up to date, and when one changes, they all change); that's not the case with Wikipedia links. LtPowers (talk) 20:31, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but I do not see what could possibly be troubling about this. It's very simple and is the same for all interwiki, wp, and commons links. There are only two possible cases:
the link we want is the same as on the data item - this has to be true for at least 99.5% of our articles. So, we drop a little template in all articles that takes care of these and automatically updates anytime something on WP, commons, or another language version is moved; or
the data item doesn't have the link we want - Exceptional cases, pretty rare. So we override it locally. Easy.
I don't have any clue who you think will cry if we don't have to maintain the vast majority of these things by hand anymore. Texugo (talk) 20:53, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I'm lacking the ability to intuitively figure out how this will work in practice. My concern is coming to an article, seeing that the Wikipedia link is wrong, and having to jump through hoops to fix it. Or, worse, not noticing that the link is wrong because it's not explicit in the wikitext. LtPowers (talk) 00:48, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I know how to do a simple page move but I want to move a page to a location that is occupied. I assume an admin has to delete the target location then do the move if the history of the page is to be kept (i.e. not doing copy paste). Is there a processes/page to request such admin tasks? --Traveler100 (talk) 06:31, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you are moving over a redirect with no history, then you should be able to do it. If there is a page history, you can ask an admin, or I think posting here works fine too. (I think an admin noticeboard might be helpful for stuff like this, but it's not absolutely necessary). --Rschen775407:32, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Traveller100, Is this the move of Travel topics/sandbox to Travel topics? I think that might have to be a merge, so that the history of both is retained, or a move of Travel topics to something like Travel topics (old), then move Travel topics/sandbox to Travel topics. Something similar will have been done with the main page. •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 07:56, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Was planning to move the current Travel topics page to Travel topics index as it will be referenced in the new page so there is still a page with a list of all travel topics and that the history is kept. Then move the sandbox to the main page. If it is possible to write over a redirect that has no history then I will do the moves latter today. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:05, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One way to merge history (so that every revision of both pages appears as if they were one article) is to delete the old version, move the new one over it, then undelete the deleted revisions. That definitely requires an admin, and is advisable only if the histories don't overlap in time (for instance, X/sandbox to X, or fixing a copy-paste move). Just moving a page over a redirect with no history doesn't require an admin... this is by design to allow anyone to undo page-move vandalism. K7L (talk) 13:25, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The histories overlap and it seems that both pages will be used with different names, so Traveller100's plan is good. If there is a problem with overwrite let me know. •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 13:53, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Overwrite does not work. Have done the move of the old page but cannot overwrite the redirect. Get message
You do not have permission to move this page, for the following reason:
A page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid. Please choose another name.
The final round of voting for our new logo is underway, and will continue until the 29th. You may vote for three submissions, and they will be weighted in the order in which you vote them (i.e., vote first for your favorite, then for your second favorite, and then for your third favorite). Please vote! —The preceding comment was added by Peterfitzgerald (talk • contribs)
Wikivoyage logo: final selection
WV-Logo Proposal AleXXw 3.0 var4 (Icon)
This may be my last contact on this subject.:)
The final vote for the Wikivoyage logo selection procedure is complete. The tallying is complete, and after the weighting and the runoff, the logo selection is WV-Logo Proposal AleXXw 3.0 var4 (Icon).
Thanks to all of you who took part in this, voting or submitting or helping with modifications. And thanks especially to User:Rillke, who made the whole thing work.
The new logo should be in place within the next few days.
Frank's comment is out of line. Thanks to everyone who submitted logos and participated in the logo contest. Mdennis (WMF), your patience and perseverance in accommodating a wide range of opinions is much appreciated, particularly given the legal constraints imposed.-- Ryan• (talk) •21:59, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It one both by overall number of supporters and number of WVers who supported it. I would have more highly considered the balloon if it was in MediaWiki colors. Thanks to all involved. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:07, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Who cares if IBobi voted for it? His was one unweighted vote out of 277 total votes. In the end, it wouldn't have made a shred of difference whether he voted for it or not. Let's not do guilt by association here. PerryPlanet (talk) 02:49, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You have no way of knowing how many InternetBrands people voted for it, you do not know how many accounts they have, so quoting 1 out of 277 is at best misleading at worst playing right into their game81.178.175.23311:44, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations everybody, those were three very strong entries in the final and many more really good ones in the first round of voting. It was indeed a tough choice, and this shows the strenght of the community and the commitment to and importance of Wikivoyage.
The chosen logo is perhaps not ideal and everybody who voted otherwise will lament the loss of their favourites (I personally can't help thinking it was not helpful to have three versions of the plane logo competing against each other), but I guess we really can't complain and will be well off in the long run. This logo works well in most applications and has potential to become instanly recognizable as both a travel project and a Wikimedia project, and makes a nifty icon:) The only bad thing is that when the text is removed in the full-scale version, it looks only so-so, but I guess we won't be seeing it in that version often (or at all).
We owe massive thanks to the entire team behind the elections, including the legal staff who reviewed the entries post-haste, the people who set up the whole voting procedure and technology behind it, the meticulous vote-counters and of course Maggie, who took care of the process with extreme patience, thoughtfulness, openness to the needs and voices of the community, ideal communications and still managed to get us to the finish line on time and without a major controversy. Hats off! PrinceGloria (talk) 11:00, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This Logo is highly like the WikiTravel Logo, It would not surprise me if they to were to take a similar course of action to that of the World Trade Organization 81.178.175.23311:50, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It means that there is no evidence that you have ever done anything on this project other than complain about the logo, so I for one will not take your comments too seriously. This is something that happens if you edit anonymously from an unfamiliar ISP. Since you appear to be criticizing the competence of the WMF legal staff, it leads me to be suspicious of your motives. More ad anominem than ad hominem if you will excuse the dubious Latin. I would be happy to retract my comment if you can sign on or show evidence of significant editing on Wikivoyage in any language.•••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 13:12, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is completely ad hominem then (dubious Latin aside that can't be taken seriously). It really doesn't matter how many times I have edited, what should matter is the content of any contributions. I have posted what I consider to be a big flaw in this logo, you seem not to be able to refute that. "appear to be criticizing the competence of the WMF legal staff" I have no idea if they have even considered this. It is apparent that with lack of a credible counterpoint so you need to focus on an appeal to authority and personality attacks, I guess if you have no real argument that is the level you have to take. 81.178.175.23313:30, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
81.178.175.233, I am not sure I can follow your arguments. There can only be a counterpoint in case a point is there. So what is your point? What makes you think our new is highly like the other logo? And what makes you come up with the idea right now and not during the long selection process? Your cries can't really be taken seriously. Danapit (talk) 13:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Danapit "What makes you think our new is highly like the other logo?" Well it's some arrows pointing in opposing directions and it's heavily text based, the only real difference is the colour scheme. That was the sort of reaction I could have expected, 'how's it similar?' what I got was ad hominem attacks which makes me think people know exactly what I'm talking about. "what makes you come up with the idea right now and not during the long selection process?" Here you have a point I guess I didn't think I'd be taken seriously then either, but does the fact I didn't share my concerns earlier mean my point is not valid? I'd say that's not so. Ad hominem attacks say more about the people making them then anything else 81.178.175.23313:54, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't find them to be at all similar, and any attempt to claim that they are confusingly similar would be laughed out of court. Texugo (talk) 14:49, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to claim I know anything about what would happen in a court, all I say is that they are very similar, if the logo had no colour it would certainly be confusingly similar 81.178.175.233
IB does not even have a monopoly on compasses or 4-pointed stars, much less "pointy things in general". I think you are just trolling. Texugo (talk) 15:07, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No but they are in the same business and it's a combination of both prominent text and how it relates to the arrows, if the two logos were reproduced on a monotone screen or printer it would be hard to decipher the difference. Accusations of trolling are besides the point, doesn't make an argument less valid 81.178.175.23315:12, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You needed to learn from me the other logo had arrows? I'm surprised to say the least but also a bit skeptical of this claim, I learn from you how you interpret two arrows as a butterfly, again I am surprised but can't be expected to imagine how every single individual would interpret something 81.178.175.23315:41, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd visually characterise the InternetBrands site's logo as two paper planes crashing head-on.
My objection (which is too late and ultimately fruitless) to our sad new logo is not because it is going to be the victim of intellectual property disputes.
It's because we did have a great new logo proposed (even before the WMF thought there was a legal necessity to change it, as I recall) and the movers and shakers on this site failed to recognise it for the graphic star it was!
The sad new logo does work well as a 8px or 16px icon, but that's it.
The nauseous colour combination is melancholic for most cultures and evokes feelings of conflict and indecision. To cap it all, at medium sizes, the empty hollow in the centre is reminiscent of the (intellectually brilliant) Wankel engine"leave Wikivoyage and go to Wikipedia's article on Wankel Engines" commercial failure. --W.Franke-mailtalk15:56, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have a suspicion the so called "movers and shakers" on this site have had too much influence in the legal decision making, firstly not to challenge the WTO as they didn't like the original logo anyway and then for allowing the selection of this logo I was accused of "criticizing the competence of the WMF legal staff" when I could have had no idea that such staff had even considered the similarity. To me it seems evident that these "movers and shakers" have little respect for the views of the everyday user or fair process 81.178.175.23316:10, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this topic is suffering from a severe case of sore loser.
Look, the logo that was ultimately chosen was not my favorite, either. But everyone here had more than enough time to discuss how the selection process would work (and there were plenty of reminders on this very page) and I don't recall anyone objecting to the idea that the logo to get the most votes from Wikivoyagers would be the one selected, barring any legal issues. And that's exactly what happened.
Now W. Frank, I actually agree with a lot of your criticisms of the new logo. But I also recognize that I was in the minority on this one, and I accept that my choice was not the popular choice. Any suggestions that this logo was chosen as a result of some sort of cabal on the part of IB is not only patently absurd but also an insult to the hard-working Wikivoyagers who did vote for this logo. (And on a side note, that arrow logo did in fact get support from many of the movers and shakers on this site. Go look at the Round 1 results and you will find the names of several administrators who voted for it, among them such prominent users as Peterfitzgerald and LtPowers. It was not a popular choice, so it did not advance to the second round. C'est la vie.) PerryPlanet (talk) 17:31, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"I think this topic is suffering from a severe case of sore loser." This still dosn't address concerns about it being too similar to WT's logo and is yet another ad hominem based criticism
"barring any legal issues. And that's exactly what happened." So you are implying that the WMF legal teem already considered the logos being too similar, that is interesting in itself, My objection was not that the "movers and shakers" did not vote for this logo, close to the reverse, they have had too much influence in legal matters, deciding to hold a logo contest and deciding what is eligible based on personal preference 81.178.175.23317:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What I find mildly amusing is that you find it necessary to get involved in this discussion at all, as it would appear that you have never found it worth the trouble to actually do anything useful on the site. I am led to the conclusion that you are trolling and are not actually worth the trouble of responding to, However, I make this final challenge to you to provide some form of evidence that you have been a useful member of the community at some time and in some way, failing which I will probably just ignore you entirely. •••Peter (Southwood)(talk): 19:34, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your appeal to authority and ad hominem attacks are irrelevant, so is how much I have or have not contributed. None of this makes the logo less similar to WT's logo. You can't argue the actual point so you need to appeal to authority. I suspect your some kind of admin, so it is basically a do as I say kind of thing. Even if I am ignored the point about the new logo being very similar to WT's remains 81.178.166.6119:46, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Very smart, יקיג'אנקי and I'm rolling on the floor!
Seriously though, Ryan was correct in intimating that I should have kept my (strongly held) opinions to myself since it may be too late to do anything about us continually shooting ourselves in both feet about the big strategic issues such as our name, logo, search engine optimisation and reader friendly appearance/functionality. Let's look on the bright side: a perpetually low readership means less vandalism and shock of the new.
It might also be a good idea to abandon this dangerously liberal stuff about distinguishing between unwanted edits and unwanted editors. Let's just block anyone whose opinions a vocal majority disagrees with, eh? Why on earth should Wikivoyage be open to anyone who has knowledge to share, wants to help us reach our goals, and is willing to work with other contributors to get there? Isn't it all just so much sanctimonious claptrap to preach that the lifeblood of any Wiki Web site is the ability of any reader to add, edit, and delete information here? Anyone who has been tarred with the Sockpuppet brush or is editing from an IP should just be blocked, eh? isn't it untrue that Wikivoyage "absolutely depends on a large pool of casual readers to share their knowledge about places around the world", when this place has managed with a low readership just fine and dandy for nearly a year now? --W.Franke-mailtalk14:06, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes well said, it was demanded earlier that I log in with an established account, then my concerns would be taken seriously (or at least that was the implication) In reality anyone disagreeing with the administrator's opinions would be pounced on as a target for ridicule, ad hominem attacks and accusations of trolling. That account would basically be shot and unusable in future81.178.160.11100:17, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
All right, folks: cool it.
First off, this is not the best place to complain about the logo. We all know its deficiencies, and although I remain baffled at the attachment some Wikivoyagers have to the RGB color scheme, the fact is that that attachment exists and was enough to make this the favorite choice. Remember, this is not the English Wikivoyage logo; Wikivoyagers from all of the language communities voted, and it's clear that strong pluralities like the RGB scheme. If there are issues, they should be discussed on Meta-Wiki.
Second of all, accusing users -- IP addresses or no -- of trolling, editing in bad faith, and lack of contribution to the site is extremely bad form and contrary to our longstanding site procedures. If you think someone is blowing smoke, cynically looking to get a reaction, or just plain stupid, don't tell them that. Just ignore them, please. This thread is Exhibit A for why ignoring trolls is good policy.
Finally, sarcasm doesn't work well in print form. I encourage everyone (not for the first time) to speak plainly rather than cryptically, and to be direct with legitimate criticism rather than oblique.
I would ask, but cannot require, that we leave this as the last word in this thread -- for our sanity if nothing else.
Why do users want a logo that apes Wikitravels so much though? The fact that the arrows were redesigned to be slightly different seems to show that it was considered just how similar the arrows could be to the ones in WT's logo and still get away with it if it was required to argue a case in court. The logo is arrows arranged around prominent text, just like WT's the scale of the arrows compared to the text is about the same as on WT's logo. All it takes is to print it in black and white and it would be hard to tell the difference. I would be surprised if WT did not take action on a logo that is so very similar to theirs given they are in exactly the same business sector. 81.178.162.7820:36, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well if there was no case that the logos were similar lawyers would not get involved, still doesn't answer why such a similar logo is wanted? 81.178.160.11100:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What part of "this is not the best place" did you not understand? We, here, at the English Wikivoyage, did not choose this logo. Some of us may have voted for it, but it was not solely our decision, so asking us, collectively, about its implications and complications is misguided. You've brought the issue up on Meta-Wiki; let's keep the discussion all in one place. And that's not here. LtPowers (talk) 00:26, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but anyone really making a claim that the two logos are in any way confusingly similar is simply trying to drum up some drama. Texugo (talk) 02:48, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree - they're utterly different; it was 'Job well done' that caught my eye. It's slightly depressing that WT appears to see it as a cold war that has to be won. --Nicktalk03:34, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No one argued that the WTO's logo was "confusingly similar" to the previous logo. that construct selectively only applies to this logo. The current logo is far more similar to WT's then the previous logo was to the WTO's. I have no ides what 'Job well done' means, wasn't the topic moved to meta? or is posting also selectively applied? 81.178.161.9302:23, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the icon on the internet browser tab on a black background when the supposed democratic voting process opted for a white background, it does look very odd 81.178.175.4811:00, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest it's a mistake and the icon with a transparent background has been used erroneously. For me, the icon remains the old WV logo. --Nicktalk11:43, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're right, it's a transparent background (I changed it, I just sort of took the file we had and charged ahead). I'll try to adapt it tonight and get it changed ASAP. Regarding it being the old one it's just cached that will clear (if you force refresh the page it will probably clear now). Jalexander (talk) 01:40, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wiki Loves Monuments on Wikivoyage
Logo Wiki Loves Monuments
Wiki Loves Monuments: Historic sites, photos, and prizes!
This month it is the 4th year that volunteers from Wikipedia and Wikimedia organize Wiki Loves Monuments, an international photo contest focused on monuments, the cultural heritage the world has. In 2010 it was organized for the first time in the Netherlands only. That was big success and was in 2011 expanded to 18 countries in Europe. In 2012 it went worldwide with 35 countries around the globe. In 2012 the Guinness World Records recognized the 2011 as the "Largest photography competition" in the world. Last week we received the message that they recognize the 2012 as the largest now, but has to be updated on their website, see: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-6000/largest-photography-competition/
Yesterday on 1 September the 2013 edition started with more than 50 countries. On the first day already more than 14.000 new images of monuments have been uploaded. All these images will enrich the lists of monuments on Wikipedias and the articles about specific monuments, so that our cultural heritage becomes visible to the public. Many of those images can be used for articles in Wikivoyage as well to illustrate what can be seen on that voyage there.
To inform visitors of Wikipedia and Commons that Wiki Loves Monuments is going on and everyone can participate, we have set up a notice on top of every Wikipedia or Commons page if the visitor lives in a country where the photo contest is organized. If the Wikivoyage community wishes, it is also possible that this notice is shown above Wikivoyage pages to inform visitors and users of Wikivoyage that they can participate.
Each participating country has a national team that organizes the competition, with a jury, prizes, lists of monuments, website or landing page. The winners of each country (the ten best pictures) will also participate in the international contest and can there win prizes as well.
You can participate as well in this contest! If you ever made a photo of a registered monument, you can participate by uploading it in September through the special upload campaigns.
Terrific! Wonderful project, and thanks for letting us know. I definitely support including this notice on our pages, to encourage travellers to photograph the monuments they see. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:23, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, i second above, we should let our community and visitors knew about this contest. I was also working on organising WLM in Pakistan this year but because of my accident, we had to cancel it. --Saqib (talk) 04:52, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I most certainly support this. One of Wikivoyage's biggest problems is a lack of images, and an increased selection at Commons can only help. Also, I see that notices are now visible on the mobile site, too. Thanks for that! Nick1372 (talk) 03:23, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikimedia Foundation and the Individual Engagement Grants Committee invite you to submit proposals for grants of up to $30,000 to support 6-month projects that improve the Wikimedia community. These grants fund individuals or small teams to organize, build, create, research or facilitate something that enhances the work of Wikimedia’s volunteers.
On [wikivoyage.org], the international landing page, something's off with the layout of the circle. At the top "English Wikivoyage" seems to not be centred properly, sticking to "Português" on the left. Also the bottom two are stuck together. Is this my browser or has it something to do with the new logo? JuliasTravels (talk) 18:19, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would however say that we should change it ASAP to the new logo with text. As discussed above, the new logo looks a little odd without the text and Lenka isn't an official part of our identity any more. --Nicktalk21:52, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note that I started a discussion about this when I changed the logo on meta. I personally prefer the with text too but didn't want to leave it that way without asking since the old one didn't have the text. I'm happy to change it tonight if that seems to be what people want. Jalexander (talk) 01:38, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Much better with the text in the logo. The layout for me is still a bit off though. It looks find on other browsers I can check, but on Firefox 23 it's not quite right. Don't know how important that is though, as I don't really know which browsers people use most. JuliasTravels (talk) 08:51, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. It has to be implemented in each language version. In fact, they've been so busy with the many non-English Wikipedias, we're the first non-Wikipedia content wiki to get it! As far as I know, there aren't any other Wikivoyages slated to get Echo anytime soon (see mw:Echo/Release Plan 2013 for more details). mw:Echo has details on how you can get your language on the waiting list. Nick1372 (talk) 20:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've just set a Global message delivery up. Now we can drop messages and announcements about running expeditions and important discussions at all lounges. If you want to receive these messages on your user page as well you can subscribe to the list by adding your talk page to the list by following the link below. Thanks. -- DerFussi
Hello community,
this is to inform you about the (re)start of a discussion in which you might be interested. In short, myself and a few other Wikimedia editors decided to oppose the registration of the community logo as a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The history of the logo, the intents behind our action and our hopes for the future are described in detail on this page; to keep the discussion in one place, please leave your comments the talk page. (And if you speak a language other than English, perhaps you can translate the page and bring it to the attention of your local Wikimedia community?) I’m looking forward to hearing from you! odder (talk) 10:00, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
P.s.: You can check whether the WMF protects the logo of your project by seeing if it's listed as "registered trademark" on wmf:Wikimedia trademarks.[reply]
First, I’d like to apologize for the English. If you can, please help to translate this for other members of your community.
The legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation would greatly appreciate your input on the best way to manage the "community logo" (pictured here) to best balance protection of the projects with community support. Accordingly, they have created a “request for consultation” on Meta where they set out briefly some of the issues to be considered and the options that they perceive. Your input would be invaluable in helping guide them in how best to serve our mission.
Where to put detailed traveller info on visiting attractions? (wiaa)
I'm new to Wikivoyage and I've been busy getting my feet wet with the Calgary article. I hope I can bounce a question off the more experienced folks here.
I don't fully understand the policy on What is an article. It seems that there is no middle ground for giving detailed tips and information on large attractions that you can't actually sleep at. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the style for destination articles (like Calgary's) is to just give one or two paragraphs on attractions. If it's a recognized huge attraction like Disneyland or the Louvre, it can have its own article.
But there are places that people spend a full day enjoying that aren't as well-known. If I want to write more than a quick paragraph or two on Calgary's Glenbow Museum or Heritage Park, I can't figure out where I can stick it. Have I missed something? Thanks! —The preceding comment was added by Country Wife (talk • contribs)
That is a very good question. You're right in thinking that we generally limit information on attractions to one or two paragraphs (usually less, in fact). Most attractions don't really need more than that. Also, once you start getting three or more paragraphs per attraction, then you start getting into the walls of text that just end up scaring people off. If you have more than a paragraph or two of information, I would say to first have a discussion on the talk page about whether it merits its own article (I myself know very little about Canadian attractions, so I couldn't help you). I don't know what you'd do after that, though. I'm sure someone with more experience will come along and help you out. Nick1372 (talk) 01:37, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, Country Wife, kudos for all the good work you've been doing on the Calgary article!
You are in fact missing something, in regards to what is an article on this site. An article on the Louvre would never be approved, because it is a sight in the centre of a city. The reasons Disneyland has its own article are: (1) you actually can sleep there; (2) it's a huge and multi-faceted attraction that is a destination in itself (and, for example, can use a map). The Louvre's own website is quite adequate for detailed information about the attraction.
I am not familiar with Calgary, but an article about a museum wouldn't be appropriate - just summarize what there is to see there and provide a link to their website for anyone who wants more information. A city park in exceptional circumstances (e.g., Manhattan's Central Park) can be its own district, but usually, an entry in "Do" is sufficient. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:04, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome to Wikivoyage, Country Wife!
I don't have a whole lot to add to what Nick and Ikan have already said, but let me say that I sympathize with your plight: if Wikivoyage has taught me anything, it's how to fit a lot of descriptive power into a minimum number of words. I tend to be loquacious in my own writing - our article on Buffalo of all places, written almost entirely by me, was until recently the longest article on the site by far! - but that really doesn't jibe with our preferred style here at WV. I guess the best advice I can give to you is, always feel free to ask the assistance of one of our experienced editors, who can help you summarize what you have to say. (I'd offer my own assistance, but I don't know how much help I'd really be - I'm still working on it myself!)
To address what Nick said upthread: There are some unusually large and important museums that get several paragraphs of coverage. For example, in the aforementioned Central Park article, the "See" listing for the Metropolitan Museum gets its own subsection with 4 paragraphs that represent a brief and quite intentionally incomplete summary of its wings and holdings. If it really is necessary to use more than one paragraph to cover a museum, I think you can use the format of that listing as a model. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:34, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, everyone! I still feel like there should be some way to have more of a middling level of detail on attractions, something in between a couple of paragraphs and an article as big as the one on Disneyland. On the other hand, TripAdvisor at first allowed "Traveller Articles" (wikis) for all individual attractions, but after a couple of years, this was stopped. (The old Traveller Articles on individual attractions are grandfathered - here's an example, for anyone who's curious: ) The reason that they were stopped was because there was too much touting going on, and many of these articles sounded like ads rather than traveller-oriented info.
Also, Country Wife: don't forget that there is a lot of leeway built into our system already. We have far more in the way of general guidelines than hard-and-fast rules. If I were you, I'd go ahead and write the longer descriptions anyway, and if anyone questions it, just explain the reason why you did it that way. We understand that every place is different and should be treated differently - we're travellers, after all!
To give you an example, the Wikivoyage article on Nevyansk has an attraction, the Leaning Tower, whose description is three paragraphs long. Not only was this not a problem, but Nevyansk is considered one of our best articles - it's a Guide-level article, the second-highest level on our scale, and it was even good enough to be featured as Off the Beaten Path earlier this year. Calgary is obviously a much larger city than Nevyansk, so if you think the Glenbow Museum and Heritage Park are really major attractions, I don't see why it would be a problem to write long descriptions for one article and not the other.
While Andre is correct that every destination may have different requirements, do remember that Wikivoyage is not Wikipedia: it is meant to be traveller oriented, and that means that nearly all information should be practical, sometimes even technical (prices, opening hours, etc...). When you elaborate on a certain site or attraction, it's advisable to put enough information so that the reader can get the falvour of the place, but not to burden them with over-extensive background info, however interesting that may be. They can go to the relevant Wikipedia article for that. Happy editing!:-) Tamuz (talk) 18:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Tamuz. I do feel those Wikipedia urges at times, but so far I've been able to squelch them. As you say, travellers are a different audience.Country Wife (talk) 15:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Urgent: US government shutdown could affect our readers
Hi. If you're a citizen of the United States, you've probably heard of the situation in Congress. It's really complicated, but the part that applies to us is that if a deal is not reached by 12:01 am EST (about 3 hours from now, so it's probably going to happen), funding will be cut off to most government services not deemed "essential". Some of these affect travel. It is imperative that we inform the traveller of the implications that may affect their journey into/around the United States. The main points we need to tell our readers are: (source)
National parks are closed. All parks maintained by the National Park Service are included in this. No one will be allowed into these parks. All entrances will be closed. Campers who are currently in a national park have two days to get out.
U.S. citizens can still apply for passports. However, if the shutdown goes on for an extended period of time (unlikely, but possible), the Department of State will exhaust its reserve funds and passports will no longer be available.
Museums that are funded only by government support will close. This is mainly free museums located in the District of Colombia, including the Smithsonian, the National Zoo, and the Holocaust Museum. The National Archives and most of the post-Herbert Hoover presidential libraries will close.
Flights should continue as usual, with possible minor delays, but that's on an airport-to-airport basis.
I'm certain we need to warn travellers about this, but I'm not exactly sure how. I'd assume we'd use {{Disclaimerbox}}? What would be the extent of its usage, then? Would it be just on United States, Washington, D.C. and the articles for each national park? Could we have a bot assign it to every US article? Now I'm just shooting off ideas. What do you guys think? I need your opinions.
This is tricky. Since we don't know how long the shutdown will last, it's hard to say what the best option is. Putting disclaimer boxes on every U.S. article is quite excessive, putting a disclaimerbox on every affected article (ie.where there is a park/museum that will be affected) isn't feasible (especially if the shutdown lasts only a day or two). I think it is worth putting a disclaimerbox on just the United States page. A mention could be made in the site banner, but that should only be reserved for wiki-related info. I don't think it's worth mentioning the passport or flight issues. AHeneen (talk) 02:19, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a disclaimerbox to the United States page that is short and to-the-point. I don't think it's worth mentioning that people camping in NPS sites will have 2 days to leave (those people should be aware or have been notified...not important for WV) and that passport applications/processing will be affected (most Americans are aware of the shutdown and people affected will likely learn of the situation from other places, not WV). I cannot determine if any parks will remain open through other funding....according to this article the south rim of the Grand Canyon remained open during the last shutdown (1996) because the state of Arizona picked up the tab for operations. It might be worth putting a similar disclaimerbox on the Washington, D.C. page since the city has so many sites affected and since the city has the unique status of being funded by Congress, some city services will be affected as well. AHeneen (talk) 03:03, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest we err on the conservative side. Anyone already in the US likely has heard what's going on, and anyone using our guides for travel planning probably won't be visiting a park for at least a week. If it appears that the shutdown will last more than a couple of days then widespread warnings would be called for, but it might be a bit reactionary to put them on articles beyond the USA article only to have to pull them down tomorrow afternoon. -- Ryan• (talk) •06:07, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I do think DC should have a mention; not only does it have all the memorials/museums, but a lot of that city is run by the federal government. --Rschen775406:35, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, the mayor of D.C. declared all city workers "essential" employees of the federal government so that city services could continue to operate, so the only impact in D.C. (so far) is the shut down of the museums/memorials. Anyway, as for the question at hand, I think this story is big enough news that no one is going to be reliant on Wikivoyage to find this out. If it drags on, though, then we should revisit this topic. PerryPlanet (talk) 15:18, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think you are taking this too seriously? In the past week alone there have been events in countries all around the world far more serious than this (particular in relation to travel). This is relevant, but hardly apocalyptic and definitely not urgent. —The preceding comment was added by 116.247.111.2 (talk • contribs)
Although the event has passed, I think the implications of the awful Westgate mall attack should be covered. Nigher Kenya nor Nairobi have had any updates with relation to traveler safety or impact to travel.
Yes, this should use Template:Infobox since it is not a disclaimer. If it is not sorted out, then at some point it might change to Warningbox but I do not think we are anywhere near that point yet. Pashley (talk) 20:04, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, everyone. I've adapted AHeneen's box and added it to a few articles (mostly just ones in the areas where I usually edit). It would be nice if everyone could do that—just add a tidbit to articles that you know you'd see again and remember to take it down when the shutdown's over. We wont need more than that for now.
Latest news is that the House of Representatives tried to push a bill to fund some of the services lost (including the National Park Service), but it dissolved into an argument about who has the right to decide which services get funding. So, typically, it looks like we're in this mess for a while.
As for 116's concern about more important things we haven't covered: Just because we didn't cover them doesn't mean we shouldn't. We should strive to tell the reader every single thing that may affect their journey that they didn't already know. Does the Nairobi article have a docent? I'm sure that person could be able to find/add to the page the information you want. Nick1372 (talk) 20:41, 2 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't seem that any of you American amateur sleuths would even qualify as assistants to Dr Watson. Isn't it obvious that many of these edits require local knowledge? And who do we know that has been to all of Malaysia, Indonesia and Ethiopia in the last few months (as evidenced by their IP edits from all three locations)?
I really think that you are completely paranoid about this poor guy, Frank, who has provided real life identities, always seems to edit from SCOTTISH IP's and seems even willing to provide blood samples as IkanKekek (humorously) suggested above! --203.173.201.11122:58, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Frank's alleged sockpuppet, Alice, claims to work in the airline industry, and anyway is known to login her own account from IP addresses in various different countries. And even if that's not the case, spoofing software is available that can mask the true IP addresses of network users. The anonymous user or users may or may not be Frank, but nothing is proven or disproven by the mere fact that the countries to which the anonymous IP addresses are registered don't coincide with the one that Frank usually logs in from.
Meanwhile, the circumstantial evidence – similar writing styles, similar combative attitudes, conduct that would come dangerously close to vote-stacking if it were proven that the accounts were the work of a sockpuppetteer – continues to mount.
Oh no, here we go again with these endless, unresolvable, futile allegations about sock puppetry. Please, please, prove sock puppetry or stop mentioning it. Here's what I think:
Frank and "Alice" are two different humans (maybe even more than two).
Frank and "Alice" are longstanding friends who share similarities in their editing.
Frank and "Alice" may be deliberately cooperating to push certain policy agendas etc.
Frank and "Alice" may or may not have edited from some of the same IP addresses.
Frank and "Alice" may or may have edited while logged into the other's account.
Frank was blocked for a short time this year because of his editing behaviour.
"Alice" was blocked for a short time this year for allegedly being a sock puppet. That was unwarranted, in my opinion (but I understand why strange things were happening at that time).
An editor at 118.93.47.31 expressed a preference that his/her edits be assessed on their intrinsic merits. In accord with that, they were blocked for a day this week for incivility in an edit.
Continue to judge accounts and IP addresses on the merits of their edits and block them when it is warranted.
Frank put himself on a good behavior bond. "Alice" and anyone else in their group should act similarly, continue with the many very constructive and valuable contributions they make, and desist from the policy breaches, incivility etc.
We can never have ironclad proof of anything; you know that. Even the WP checkusers who originally deemed Alice and Frank to be the same user might possibly be mistaken. (In fact, that possibility of error is the only reason Frank and Alice still get the benefit of the doubt at all around here.) So if absolute proof is your standard, then we might as well not have a policy on abusive use of multiple accounts at all. LtPowers (talk) 01:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What is the purpose of discussing this again? I thought that the community had a painful discussion around this and had moved on. We shouldn't have another painful discussion for no reason Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We really need to shut up about this. Judge every user by their behavior, period. I'd like this discussion to end, and never start again. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:14, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to express a mea culpa here. I'd pointedly stayed out of the dispute over Frank pretty much until my comments on this thread, but in following it loosely, the stances some editors took led me to assume that our policy on sockpuppets was similar to Wikipedia's, where sockpuppetry is a HUGE no-no. Instead, I noted that our policy is that sockpuppetry is discouraged but not prohibited outright, and generally penalized only when it's used for disruptive purposes, which community consensus holds not to be the case here. I want to express that my personal feelings toward Frank are much the same as Ikan's: I find him amusing and witty far more often than annoying, and I enjoy a constructive working relationship with him on-wiki. I'd like to retract my above comment and offer my apologies to Frank, if he's reading this, and to anyone else who may have been offended by it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know whether Frank is reading this or not. One thing I do know from studying all this sideshow (it's a sideshow because one thing everyone should be able to agree on is that it is scandalous - oops, there's that naughty word again - yes, truly scandolous that "Frank's action plan" for an order of magnitude change in readership has still not been acted upon) is that Frank - unlike EVERYONE else here, has offered DNA samples, fingerprints, police clearances, passports, bank accounts and a legally binding affidavit signed under penalty of imprisonment for perjury, that he has never edited using any account on Wikivoyage other than his own: User:W. Frank. Another thing that I do know (very obviously!) is that I'm not Frank.
Now Nurg seems to write some sense. I can agree unequivocally with his points 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11 (and with the spirit at least, of 10). Personally I'm as convinced as I'll ever be that 4 and 5 are just plain wrong. Why the heck would a sockpuppet risk imprisonment for perjury and fly around the world for - what exactly? What is this alleged sockpuppetry supposed to achieve? What's the motivation? The only motivation that I can see that stacks up is the Dreyfuss scenario. The guy's been grievously wronged and falsely maligned and denied every logical, feasible and rational way of clearing his name. Try and put yourself in his shoes - he's in his seventh decade on earth, in poor health (unless that's another lie) - would you just lie down and take all this shit? Personally I think he's been very tolerant, patient and understanding - perhaps that comes with age. Now getting back to Nurg. He can help put this nonsense to bed. We're in New Zealand (I presume). Why don't you e-mail Alice with your phone number, Nurg and we'll have a meet. I'll bring my driving licence, passport, police comms control ID card, etc along with some Ethiopian memorabilia, etc and you can tell everyone that I'm not a German called W..n.. Frank B....o.z born in the 40's in Dresden. You can't tell anyone my real identity (except that I'm not Frank) and (especially when you realise my professional history) I'm sure you'll accept my reciprocal promise of confidentiality about YOUR identity Nurg.
AndreCarrotflower: Put up or shut up please. Where can we learn about this mystical "spoofing software (that) is available that can mask the true IP addresses of" editors so as to appear that they are editing using the Vodafone network in New Zealand when they're not even in NZ? Again, if it's top secret, e-mail Alice with the details and she can pass the details along to the New Zealand Police because, if it really exists, then there are some child pornographers and fraudsters that have been wrongly convicted using IP addresses and corresponding data from New Zealand ISP's and are languishing in jail serving long sentences and a real injustice has been done to them!
Alice: If you do receive such a detailed e-mail from AndreCarrotflower, please come out of hibernation again and vindicate AndreCarrotflower so that I can publicly apologise to him for doubting the existence of such ""spoofing software" and get in touch with Crown Law promptly about possible miscarriages of justice this year. --118.93.91.1406:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why and how all happened
Hi all, first of all, sorry my English is very bad and second, this is a long message and will take time of your to understand well what i want to say. So as you may aware of the recent incident after which I resigned or those rights were taken back from me through a nomination if I had not voluntarily given them. At first, I didn't thought of giving any explanation or justify myself or in my defence because I know it was a mistake on my part and I do admit it, but I want to clear something why I used revision deletion and so you all know why and how it all happened. Since I joined WV and even after getting admin privileges, I always tried to not involve my self in discussions whether they relates to policy, or block nomination, related to W. Frank case or anything else and I always focussed myself on contribute to articles and improving the existing content. But after two of our best editors Peter and Jan left WV. I very much realised that this wiki is very welcome and hospitable to those who like to game the system and to those who wish that good editors leave the project and they rule here but still I didn't bother to throw myself in it because it was so controversial and I self assured myself that the community is here to take care of everything. But After that WP Signpost story, I felt so pity for WV. I think that story was a big insult of WV and the WV community but still the community had no courage to take a strong action against the editor who wrote that story and he's still around among us. I don't know whether to say it's very strange or interesting. This was the time when I realised maybe our community is nearly failed to address serious issues. And then when I read Ypsilon's note, I couldn't bare anymore, and I decided to get myself involved in the mess. And my first attempt was this on November 22. I admit that I decided to declare war on this anonymous guy since then and I will call here that guy as anonymous because he's anonymous even though he's known among us as W. Frank/Alice. This anon guy is not new in wiki world, he joined WP back in December 2006 and since then he's making and creating problems and thats why he got blocked there (and who knows this anon guy still edit there with another username) so no doubt he became very expert now with the wiki things and gaming the system and thats why even a recent CU was inconclusive and I'm sure many among us still have doubts that this is a not single guy using diff accounts but this is another story.
Before 22 November 2013, I can say very well that I was very friendly with this anon guy even after I noted this guy have created a new user account "118.93nzp". I become very frustrated, and I decided to react strange and become uncivil with this guy (only this anon guy and not with anyone else and If anyone can tell me that I had made any problem or misbehave or act strangely with anyone else or even if someone feel i tried to, then I would like to know it. ) incase he try to play with me. And until 22 November 2013, my correspondence with this anon guy was very gentle. His messages on my talk page as User:118.93nzp. Yes, previously I had accused him of sock of Tony but I apologies for that, but this guy like to talk/argue/implement his policies so much and love to fill the talk pages. In this discussion one can see, I tried to end/finish the discussion but he was not interested so I deleted his comments from my talk page. (and that was the first time I ever deleted comments of someone). This guy said later on many occasions that Saqib delete what he don't like on this talk page. But I want to know what was wrong in this discussion especially under the "Mohenjo-daro" subsection and even though I removed it because I don't wanted to talk or see his messages on my talk page anymore under this new account. I was tired and sick of him because he created a new account and now again gaming the system which was not accepted to me at-least. Some days after, we again encountered each other at Talk:Karakoram Highway but I tried to remain civil and friendly and I did changes to the article as he suggested on the talk page. But this guy is so nipping or micromanage and want to show to the whole world of the very minor mistakes and what was the reason of THIS? I by mistake clicked on rollback and his edit was reverted but as I said earlier he wanted to show to the whole world the mistakes of others and love to argue and fill the talk pages.. He's not boss here then why he try to become one? I want to know if anyone have an answer of this? I also reverted his edit because the name of the location was not clear to me (it seems strange to me, unclear and not English as well ) and this is recently being discussed somewhere on wiki (but i dont remember where).
Now back to Tony link, yes, I did a big mistake after I posted the link which only and only reveals Tony's his real name and previous job details (where Tony worked and until when Tony worked in that organisation .. Thats all and no "more information" was there in that link Rschen. Are you Agree with this Rschen?). and rather than deleting Rschen warning message, I replied but then eventually I thought of that anonymous guy and I immediately asked Rschen on IRC whether he will delete/remove his warning message from my talk page otherwise that anon guy will pick the issue and start a new long topic but he's just like that. Is that correct Rschen that I've asked you to remove it first and gave you the same reason? I must say here that I swear that I deleted the warning message because I was afraid of this anon guy. If you guys believe it or not but thats truth. But Rschen was already fall asleep and it was too late when I asked Rschen on IRC so I started to delete the revisions myself but I was not able to to hide it properly, it was not deleting and in result, it created a long list. which was picked up by this anon guy as I expected. Please note here that I started to delete the warning message at 11:02, 24 November 2013 UTC but after 3 hr 40 minutes at 14:41, 24 November 2013 UTC, I myself reverted those revisions on my own which I previously deleted. because this anon guy already read that warning message and no other editor had asked me of that revision deletion until then. In this link, you can read messages from this anon guy as well. I was expecting the same long messages from him when I thought of deleting warning message. But well, now He already had got a new topic of his choice so I was afraid that he will start filling my talk pages with his more and more long messages so i decided to go uncivil I removed his comments from my talk page and told him to NOT comment on my talk page again and thats why he said everywhere now that Saqib don't want to see anything he don't like on this talk page but thats untrue and a strong reason why I wrote this comment. I never deleted, removed or even altered anyone's message left on my talk page not even messages left by this guy before 22 November, what is more, I always replied to this guy in very friendly and civil manner before 22 November. I've still many messages on my talk page which I don't like and I want to remove them but I never removed or even altered them.. For example this, this and this. then how can one say Saqib remove what he don't like from his talk page.. but yes I don't want to see messages from you (anon guy) anymore even if you will send me lovely friendly messages or barn compasses or flowers. I still have messages left by you as User:W. Frank and User:Alice, and i never deleted them. because they were not from your new username , so I won't allowed any message from you on my talk page until you not write message using your previous accounts.
As for tony link, yes, posting the link of Tony was actually due to the provocation of recent correspondence with the anon guy and then in huff of that Singpost story, and the fact I noticed Tony revealed privacy of Ryan as well and Frankly speaking, I had no idea leaking such information is not allowed at all because Tony did too with Ryan (but that was another case i realised now). Otherwise I'm not that kind of guy who like to harass people and leak their personal information if don't wish to reveal themselves. If i had 1% idea that this is called harassment or doxing, I would never ever posted that link. I just thought of help Ypsilon gathering some more info of our story maker users. That's all I wanted to say. I had decided already to leave the project because I've a lot better things to do in my real life, but my love for travel writing and my passion for improving articles of Pakistan, and when I thought of the the time I stayed here, i really enjoyed it. I changed my mind to stay here for some time and contribute. Offcourse I will miss my admin tools, because i utilised them almost every day from deleting spam pages, to closing Vfds etc etc and I must say I never abused my tools. the deletions of warning message revisions was because I was frightened of this anon guy (I've told already above) and nothing else. I don't care whatever posted on my talk page weather a warning message or insulting words So yes I will continue to contribute here as editor and unlike peter and jan, i will not walk away which I am sure make this anon guy become very happy and this anon guy will win once again. I always assumed good faith and still I do but i must say that I am very very disappointed because how the community reacted over this incident. I admit it was serious case but I am also disappointed to see how few of our editors supporting that anon guy. and I don't wanted them to support me either BUT anyway, thats it. --Saqib (talk) 15:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Saqib:. Thanks for taking the time to offer what strikes me as a very fair and accurate summary of your feelings and motivation.
I do understand how annoying and frustrating it must feel to be genuinely convinced that the same person is using several accounts to game the system or to deliberately annoy and provoke others. In the same spirit of frankness and openness, I offered to phone you from New Zealand (at my personal expense) to a landline (presumably in Pakistan) and in confidence. Had you taken me up on my offer, you would have then become apprised (in confidence) of some details of myself and my family and career circumstances that would have put to rest for ever any lingering doubts in your mind that I was a named and documented superannuant German living in Glasgow, or a professional writer living in New South Wales or Alice from Singapore.
It's difficult for me to conceive what more I can do without totally surrendering my private life, but I'm very open to proposals.
May I say very clearly again that I have never edited using any of those user accounts you mentioned - apart from the one that appears in my signature here.
I will respect your wishes not to message you on your User talk page (unless you do something so diabolical that I have no alternative) and bend over backwards to be both civil and accommodating when I interact with you on other discussion pages.
I know that this may be difficult to accept, but I would encourage you to try and concentrate on edits made rather than worry too much about who or what made them.
You may not believe me, but I really do wish you well and I'm very glad that you will continue to edit here constructively and I prophesy that the keys to the mp cupboard will be offered to you again quite soon. --118.93nzp (talk) 19:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As an aside, you might note that repeated offers for offline personal contact to "prove one's identity" are one of the hallmarks of the nebulous possible sockpuppeting/tagteaming entity(ies) you are sometimes accused of being a part of. Texugo (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Innocent parties who wish to preserve their privacy have very few and obvious alternatives, so it's hardly surprising that they react in a similar fashion.
If you have some alternative proposals to make as to how the accused can establish their innocence, then why don't you be constructive and propose them at a relevant page? Give me the link, please, if you do decide to become part of the solution...--118.93nzp (talk) 20:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think many users probably suspected that is what happened. I am glad to hear that you will stay. You have been a great contributor and I have confidence that you will continue to be an asset to the project. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 17:57, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, please do stay. I'm a little sceptical about the motives of a user who demands administrators resign over an issue but then responds to a proposal to address the issue directly with "I'm afraid not. If you're quite explicit on a WMF site about your real name, you can't expect people to ask your permission to use it. And I repeat, where were the objections last year?". Seriously, if this is such a problem, I'd expect the user to favour a clear editorial policy at the Signpost, asap. K7L (talk) 18:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you will stay. And please feel free now to focus on content and ignore the drama. I'm hopeful that with the recent developments in the admin role here that we can separate the vandalism and content management tools, like rollback, etc, used for managing content - much like they have on WP.
Reflecting on Peter and Jan's departure, I think if I could say anything to them (and as an aside to you) it would be that good people get taken in by the trolls too. If it weren't possible to do so, then they would have no game to play. Every internal dispute, and everyone who walks away is a victory in their game. So, we have respect that sometimes it is the best and most accepting of people who get taken in. We can't make them the target, or we'll self destruct. We just need to keep going, because we're an open site, and there is little we can ultimately do, except ignore, revert, and move on. --Inas (talk) 20:06, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think there are some improvements we can make to limit the drama and enhance our decision making procedures, Inas. If I get the Christmas leave I've put in for, I'll try and write an essay with concrete proposals in my User space. --118.93nzp (talk) 20:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Many of us might remember that this user has quite a history of conflict with our community (here, here, here, and elsewhere). This is very clearly a hit piece, and the circumstances under which this article was written should be brought to the WMF's attention posthaste. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please, if you do comment on this story only point out factual issues and do not make this personal. A point worth mentioning is that the quote from Amsterdam was cherry-picked to remove context - it is three sentences in the signpost article, but six paragraphs in Amsterdam#Cannabis and other drugs. If comments on that article focus on factual issues that makes it clear that something is amiss, but dredging up the author's past history here is likely to just make everyone look bad and be counter-productive. -- Ryan• (talk) •21:54, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly disagree with Ryan. In point of fact, in one of the "here"s that I linked to above (I'm on my mobile phone now and don't really have the patience to scroll back and figure out which one), this user stated as a thinly veiled threat he was an editor for the Signpost and therefore we should not cross him. There's no way this article complies with the Signpost's standards of journalistic ethics. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:59, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost has long been known for attacking sister projects (such as Commons recently, and I believe Wikinews has been attacked in the past). I for one have no issues calling the conflict of interest what it is (though others may disagree), though the factual errors should definitely be mentioned. --Rschen775422:00, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's a deliberately misleading article that uses photos acknowledged not to be on Wikivoyage in order to attack Wikivoyage. The fact that he's following through with a threat based on an unimportant argument about spelling that he was a jerk about, and due to that, finally induced to leave this project, is a useful context for readers. The links should be given, with people invited to make up their own minds. It's also hardly of no use to prospective travelers if a potential destination is indicated as primarily visited by sex tourists. That's factual information, and can be used by people wanting to avoid such an atmosphere just as easily as it can be used by sex tourists, who were more likely to know this already, in any case. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:17, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Rschen added a comment with a link to the user's block nomination here, which is hopefully sufficient to provide background on the personalities involved. I'm very concerned that people will respond to this article with attacks against the author rather than the author's message, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do and only makes Wikivoyage look bad - please, please, please be sure to respond civilly. -- Ryan• (talk) •22:19, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we should let the link to the nomination speak for itself, and not add any commentary about it then - that seems like a fair solution. --Rschen775422:22, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In my estimation, attacks against the author are 100% valid given the background and the context of the situation. We should remember that larger wikis like Wikipedia, which I imagine that the signpost draws most of the readers from, are far more used to problem users like Tony than we are at Wikivoyage. I don't think that being frank about what kind of a user Tony demonstrated himself to be will make us look bad. If it makes him look bad, hey – he has no one to blame but himself. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:40, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whether they are valid or not, I strongly believe that "attacks against the author" will do more harm than good. That said, I don't want to give the impression that I'm trying to censor anyone from speaking their mind and will bow out of this discussion after one last comment - the article was published on Wikipedia, so please be aware that a core policy on that site is w:Wikipedia:Civility (in particular, no personal attacks) and just as we expect people who contribute here to respect our policies, contributions to Wikipedia should respect that site's policies. -- Ryan• (talk) •23:04, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I acknowledge and appreciate your desire not to censor, Ryan. I think it's worthy of mention, though, that there's a difference between engaging in cheap ad hominems and addressing, in a frank way, problems that have as their root one particular person and their personality or behavior that is wholly unsuited for a collaborative project like Wikivoyage (or Wikipedia, or any wiki). And there's a way to call into question the motivations and good faith of a particular editor without being uncivil. I certainly would like us Wikivoyagers to conduct ourselves in a way that does our project proud, but let's not roll ourselves up into the fetal position either. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:08, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't commented because I'm not sure I'd adopt the right tone, but points I might like to be made - and would like second (third, etc.) opinions on (or you can post them yourself, if you like) - are (1) Tony1 was not "censored"; he merely had the weird idea that if his proposals on spelling are not adopted, Wikivoyage will die. (2) He was suspended not for "criticism," but for being a dick (insert link to policy here), which all (or most?) Wikiprojects recognize as something not to be. (3) He never took action on any of the deviations with the sex tourism policy written about in this piece when he was here, when he could have edited them or at least brought them up as an issue if he had cared about them half as much as his concerns about spelling. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:31, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, the reasons why Tony1 was blocked could have been better documented, so there wouldn't be as much debate from onlookers next time around. --Rschen775403:38, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's not truly terrible publicity, therefore it's good publicity. We're wanting to attract more readers and editors, right? Let's try to leverage it for even more benefits - whether that's leveraging the publicity, or trying to get more traction with the problems we're struggling with, like search engines. Use social media to publicise the Signpost article. Contact the news media and con them into thinking there's a scandal at WV that they need to publicise. Better than demonstrating that we're a defensive bunch who object to mild commentary or criticism, and would prefer to be ignored. Nurg (talk) 03:52, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nurg, that's really interesting outside-the-box thinking. If we publicize this, we both get more publicity and give the lie to the claim that we can't tolerate any criticism. That said, though, it's still a crap article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:03, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Surely it would have been easier for him to edit the articles where those parts are/were to be found instead of writing such an article about it. But if this is how you look at Wikivoyage that's probably asking too much. I also love how his contributions to, or in this case about, Wikivoyage always pop up exactly when a certain other user who is also interested in time formats, spelling and such is officially away. Nurg, I think that's a brilliant idea.ϒpsilon (talk) 09:18, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As for our content, I'm sure we should perhaps clean up or some info here or there (the same is true for any wiki, definitely WP), but I wonder it edits like these is what we're after now? JuliasTravels (talk) 21:18, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly don't think so. There's a line between seeming to advocate illegal actions and posting information helpful to travelers who could find themselves in over their head if they decide to indulge. The way I understand the policies on sex and drugs on this site is that we don't promote illegal drug use or prostitution but provide information sufficient to help travelers understand the nature of areas they might choose to visit or avoid, and safety information to help travelers avoid unnecessary danger. And just as it's dangerous to restrict the sex education of teenagers to a recommendation of abstinence, in my opinion, it would be irresponsible for a travel guide to just pretend that none of our readers will indulge in illicit drugs or sex. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:49, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to say that treating a slam on a site the author was induced to leave for being a jerk as valid journalism, without even stating that he checked on the backstory, reflects the editor's lack of professional journalistic ethics, but I don't know the editor, so I'm choosing not to be the one to make that statement, if anyone does. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) On a positive note, it's good that this sort of article was Tony's follow-through on his threats against Wikivoyage , rather than something that was not so easy to recognize as biased (and thus likely to actually do some damage to our project). In addition, attention from the Signpost has resulted in a number of edits that cleaned up articles that were in violation of Wikivoyage:Illegal activities policy, and has also resulted in some readers of the Signpost making other contributions here. In a perfect world the Signpost would not have allowed an article that appears to basically be a sensationalist hit piece, and would instead focus on being a tool for highlighting debates, successes, and lessons learned in different projects in order to facilitate more cross-project collaboration, so hopefully this episode can be a catalyst for moving the Singpost more in that direction. -- Ryan• (talk) •04:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I do wonder if a more global newsletter, written and hosted from Meta, might be a better solution than trying to have the English Wikipedia Signpost cover everything, and sometimes with suboptimal results like what happened here. But then I've already got enough as it is going on... --Rschen775404:53, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No it is not -> w:WP:DIVA. We spent too much time and effort feeding the egos of people (or a person?) who did nothing but effectively threw a wrench into our gearbox to have some limelight shine on them. However well do/does they/he/she/it play on our emotions, let's not let the time and stamina we have set aside for WV go astray.
We have managed to remove the link to WT in the meantime, but we still need to set up good testing methods for various SEO methods discussed. Let's focus on that (and other ways of improving WV, including simply writing articles) instead, shall we? PrinceGloria (talk) 12:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS. It would be a good idea to write about Wikivoyage for the signpost, but not as a reply to somebody wanting to cause just that, but to highlight how fun and useful it is, and how Wikipedians can help out and have fun at the same time, e.g. directing content they can contribute, but that is inappropriate for WP, here (provided it's appropriate here). We do need for it to be spaced in time enough not to draw any attention to said op-ed by our dear friend.
I'm inclined to agree with Ryan and PrinceGloria. Let's not waste too much time on this. The link to WT is not yet gone, but working on content still seems like a far better way to spend time than sinking deeper into that non-constructive discussion. People may draw conclusions of all kinds, but only a fool will still believe that article is fully true and unbiased. I hear the Signpost sadly does this kind of thing more often. Let's move on and welcome any people that have found their way here through it. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:34, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have any deep knowledge of WP policies, but I feel using real names of some wikivoyagers in recent discussions the way Tony1 started with is a huge no-go. Am I wrong? Danapit (talk) 09:38, 5 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's a questionable practice. However, if you have not disclosed it anywhere on Wikimedia and it gets mentioned, then you can ask for it to be oversighted (w:en:WP:RFO). --Rschen775410:19, 5 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@User:Nicholasjf21: Speaking as the editor of the Signpost, I'd be happy to run a Wikivoyage-written op-ed if it addresses the points raised in the controversial article. I say that because we certainly haven't declared war on all of Wikivoyage, and the article questioned only this site's sex= and drug-related policies. The ed17 (talk) 16:59, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would hope that The Signpost hasn't declared war on any part of Wikivoyage! I would be prepared to write such an op-ed, but only if others here on Wikivoyage thought it prudent. I understand the points made by the editors above and would not want to submit something without the support of the community. --Nicktalk21:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But written by a person who left this site, threatening to punish it by using the signpost as a tool in a personal vendetta. Shame on the signpost for allowing itself to be used in this way. It devalues that publication. --Inas (talk) 21:43, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I think a response would be fine. I think we've said enough about the conflict of interest issues, so anything more than a brief link to the discussion would be overkill. --Rschen775422:49, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Danapit While far too much of my personal information is unfortunately a matter of public record due to the WT lawsuits, I was uncomfortable with having my full name repeatedly used in that discussion - I don't want to have to deal with explaining the history of Tony's block to a future employer who did a Google search, or have my name attached to the erroneous statement that I'm "just fine with the price list of prostitutes in Tijuana quoted at the top of the story" - so per w:WP:DOX I've replaced all instances of my full name with just my first name . By my reading of Wikipedia's policies that seems to be acceptable, and if anyone else's personal details are being disclosed it should be OK for them to do the same. -- Ryan• (talk) •23:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Though if your name was never made public on Wikimedia sites, please contact oversight right away and let them do the removing; otherwise it will draw more attention to what your real name is before it can be hidden from public view. --Rschen775400:56, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The name is all over the place on WMF sites. To start with, two of my previous stories on the WT–WV saga use it: here and here. I see it on Meta in the WMF Report, November 2012 and at his own talk page, no less. It's also appears in several legal documents linked from WMF sites. Requesting CU on this would be a waste of Foundation or volunteer resources when you're quite happy to have it easily searchable online. I don't mind his interference to remove his surname from my and other posts on the talk page at the Signpost.
He writes: "I don't want to have to deal with explaining the history of Tony's block to a future employer who did a Google search"—well yes, that would take some explaining, wouldn't it. The simple solution would be not to issue gung-ho blocks without justification.
I strongly support the writing of an op-ed by WV editors for the Signpost; however, it cannot contain smearing or bullying or personal attacks—frankly, no personal references; if people feel the need for more personal attacks, that can be left to talk pages. An op-ed could set out another angle to the sex- and drug-tourism issue, if that is the desired theme; in addition, many people would welcome a statement by the WV community on its upcoming plans, perhaps pointing out the list of improvements (tourist office, maps) as Lt Powers has done on a previous Signpost talk page.
For anyone who wanted evidence that your signpost piece was solely written because the response to your poor behaviour on WV, rather than any actual interest in the subject matter at hand, that statement should be sufficient. --Inas (talk) 22:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I won't even bother to respond to that answer, except that it shows, sadly, that the culture here is not going to change. When I next cover this site the hope was that it would have moved on. Tony(talk) 23:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why lead in your response with "I won't even bother to respond to that answer", and then respond? The leader really is redundant.
To dismiss my opinion as part of a culture is invalid. I'm purely giving my personal opinion commenting on the way you have acted here. You had every opportunity to improve the aspects of the guide while you were contributing here, and if you wished to, you still do. But you'd rather do damage than really improve things. That's your prerogative, everyone's a free agent. I'm just particularly disappointed that the signpost would give you a forum for your disaffection, and it reflects badly on them IMO. --Inas (talk) 05:52, 8 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tony1, let me put this in plain language, Ryan DOES mind when his full name appears in these discussions, see? He said it within this thread. Therefore I changed you previous post. I am trying to assume you made the edit in good faith and urge you to avoid being personal again. Danapit (talk) 07:31, 8 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've given my thoughts at . I accept that my name is a matter of public record on WMF sites and that it is important for people on WMF projects to be able to identify me as the same person that the WMF helped to defend in the WT lawsuit, but by my reading of Wikipedia policy I'm still allowed to ask that I not be referred to by my full name in discussion threads where accusations about drugs and prostitution are being bandied about. -- Ryan• (talk) •16:00, 8 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Some thoughts on flexibility
I think I've learned something from the experiment so far in creating calendars for Toodyay. My first response to an attempt to create a separate "Toodyay Calendar" was to delete it, because we've never had an article like that before, and my understanding was that it is a bad idea and against policy to have separate non-destination articles that are purely lists of events in a particular town. And then an interesting thing happened: Someone gave a sensible explanation of how a calendar might fit into and actually be of use to this project, and someone else explained that there was a calendar template lying dormant that I had no knowledge of.
Similarly, when I first saw a bunch of templates being created with names like "People born in Delaware" or something similar, my first reaction was not to delete them but to think that they were likely candidates to be nominated for deletion because they were not destination articles. Now that I see what they look like and what their purpose is, I'm fine with them.
So what's the point of all of this? The point is that I, and perhaps we (if the shoe fits, wear it, and please don't be too annoyed at me if this doesn't apply to you), should not be overly hasty to delete things just because they're different from the way we've done things and are used to things being done. We have new, interesting contributors to this project and all of us (I think) hope there will be many more. We should really consider giving them a lot of latitude, ask them friendly questions, and see what explanation they give for how their new styles of articles, templates, and user boxes can fit into this project, either in a harmless way, or better yet, a truly constructive way that makes this site better. This site is going to grow and change based on the creativity of new as well as established users, and also through the expectations that people familiar with sister Wiki-projects have. Let's give anyone who is not vandalizing, touting, or plagiarizing an even warmer welcome than we do now, if we can. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:58, 5 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nice post. I think, if we want to be more friendly to new contributors, we should make use of the new 'thank you' feature more often, just like I did for you, Ikan. It will send the user a notification thanking them for their edit. Dale Carnegie argued that if you wanted people to learn from their mistakes, congratulate them for their successes (good edits) rather than criticising them for their mistakes (bad edits, policy violations, etc). James A ▪ talk23:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I heartily agree with both Ikan and JamesA. I confess that from time to time I may have been less than flexible - it's a character trait I have both on- and off-wiki of which I'm not particularly proud - and will try to remember this conversation in the future. I hope others feel the same way. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:44, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It should be visible when you view individual contributions or a page history. Although, I think it's disabled for IPs so you might not be able to use it. James A ▪ talk05:08, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When I first came to WV, I wanted to know how to do things, and where to put things. It wasn't until I was here for a good year before I thought I was qualified to make suggestions as to how to improve things. I think it is a nice enough response, when people come here and immediately want to change the way things are done, to ask them to settle in a bit, join the community, and make a cohesive considered change. Otherwise we'll just end up with jumble sale of half-baked ideas, that somebody came to the site for a week to implement, and then wandered off again. --Inas (talk) 05:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it takes a balance. In retrospect, I shouldn't have immediately deleted a red link to "Toodyay Calendar" in the Toodyay guide and then deleted the first attempt at starting the calendar article. Instead, I should have engaged in a dialogue with the new editor who was creating these things. But of course we don't want to go to far the other way, either. We can never guarantee people won't disappear after whatever amount of time they spend here, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of the problem is that English Wikipedians go to plenty of other WMF sites, expect things to work how enwiki does, get angry when the local people react, and then walk off, never to be heard from again.
That being said (and I hope to talk about this in my essay) I don't think that we should be fearing change because of change itself. --Rschen775406:10, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Inas - While some people observe for a while before contributing, others tend to want to dive in, and I think we need to strike a balance between reigning people in who want to completely re-make the site and giving some space to those who just want to try something different than what we've typically done. The point of the "experimental" tag was to provide a way to track new ideas so that we can clean them up later if they are abandoned. While it has mostly been used with templates, all of the latest calendar articles have been flagged and appear in Category:Experimental articles. My sense of things is that during the time between Evan leaving and the fork to Wikivoyage we became too conservative, a necessity given the work required to keep the site functional amidst the spam and technical issues, and now that we no longer have to struggle just to keep the site viable it would be nice to return to spirit of Wikivoyage:Plunge forward so that we aren't dissuading the next Nick or Torty from creating page banners or listing editors. An important caveat, of course, is that the expectation should be that not every experiment will see implementation across the site, but I think we need to at least provide room for the creator to demonstrate the viability of her idea and solicit feedback for improvement. -- Ryan• (talk) •06:14, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Don't also forget that you can never really tell from just a new IP edit whether they're completely wet behind the ears, someone who's been knocking around for years but has never chosen to register a user name, or someone that has registered a user name or names and - either for reasons of malice or bona fide reasons such as identity theft concerns or a desire to be totally transparent about their geographical location or avoid state censorship/persecution - is choosing not to use that/those account(s). Personally I think the safest course is always to concentrate on the message and not the messenger if you don't want to make crass and possibly unwarranted assumptions. --118.93.67.6609:25, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I always thought that most new ideas were fairly evaluated, although prone to over-discussion or forgotten. I feel that the term "old guard" is being used as a tired pejorative, in that if any of you rejected a new idea, then it was only because of boring conservatism and not because everybody has different opinions, which was at least clear to me over the many long discussions over Wikipedia links, Wikidata integration, dynamic maps and page banners amongst other things where long-time editors took very different positions. Even worse is that it promotes a division, an "me versus you" type of conflict which is not what I want to see at all. One should be free to agree or disagree, even as a minority. Feedback is also still very welcome at Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition, particularly ideas about too many listings.
Well, that was going to go in the essay too... suppose I better hurry up and write that thing.:) But what I mean is that stuff tends to get lost in this page. I don't think we need the enwiki-style proliferation of 10-20 noticeboards/message boards, but splitting things by topic would be helpful. Maybe one for admin-related issues, one for general discussion, and one for longer-term proposals. Or it could be divided differently. At least it would be different items showing up on the watchlist, so I don't have to go through 10 threads on this page to figure out where the new comments were posted. --Rschen775410:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with splitting the Pub, at least as a medium-term measure until we see something like mw:Flow Portal implemented. Can we actually start the splitting proposal on the talk page now and see if we can get some ideas down and consensus? :P James A ▪ talk12:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please go ahead James, even decide on a layout and all based on your ideas. Start with Proposals (?), since people keep using the Pub for it anyway. -- torty3 (talk) 00:06, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus Part II
I must admit that my heart was gladdened when I saw the edits in the main section above.
I thought that here are the first green shoots of a Wikivoyage spring sprouting.
Now I've seen an edit summary that made me more realistic about how glacially slow movement can be here.
Personally, I can't really think of a better time to assess a consensus than months after the last contribution. Surely it can not genuinely be thought better to make that assessment prematurely, when Wikivoyagers are still actively commenting and expressing their support, oppose or neutral preferences?
Or is the perceived problem that only certain Wikivoyagers are capable of assessing the consensus of a discussion? If the latter is the case, I'd personally welcome publication of a list of these specially sage individuals, if only to avoid future confusion.
The point is that you seriously misread an absence of explicit "oppose" votes as a lack of opposition. There are at least a couple of users who previously made a habit of coming by months -- not weeks, months -- after a discussion ended with no clear consensus and declaring that -- guess what -- there was a consensus, that just happened to coincide with that user's own opinion. It's a nasty habit to get into, and I wanted to discourage it.
The proper technique, if there's any question, is to re-open discussion and make sure that you're reading the consensus correctly.
Agree with LtPowers. Anybody can assess a consensus. They just can't ignore half the argument when doing so. 118.93nzp, I know you are are new to policy discussions, and I'm sure there are quite a few users here who will guide you through the consensus building process. --Inas (talk) 22:26, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Take The Ferry ☎ +64 3 539-1116 or +64 21 634 608 with Bruce to -41.26761173.257441Haulashore Island and back from -41.26318173.268581Wakefield Quay. As well as the Styx bistro, the quay has the early settlers'memorial listing the first few years' worth of ships that arrived here 1841-1850, so there is plenty to keep you occupied if you just missed The Ferry sailing. This island was formed when The Cut was blasted through the Boulder Bank to make access to Nelson's Haven easier for shipping and has a small pond and stands of wilding pines. Worldwide, one of the better legacies of being colonised by the British was the provision of public parks and toilets and Haulashore Island maintains that cultural legacy by having a single, Unisex, DoC-type long drop -41.26554173.257372toilet close by to where -41.2651173.257112seals haul themselves ashore to sunbathe and relax. In New Zealand, it is a criminal offence to disturb or move any marine mammal and you should not approach too near as they can inflict a nasty bite. The foreshore is mostly rocky or with pebbles but there is a tiny -41.26825173.258353sand beach where wind surfers and yachtsmen like to come ashore.
Or perhaps I am not clear which editor you are talking about. I don't think the add listing/edit form editor is very applicable here, but I could add a button to the set above the edit window, if you can come up with an appropriate icon to match the others. Texugo (talk) 11:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This one? It would be practical to have an icon in the editing bar, but you are right, "edit" should not appear in the article. Like you can add a photo clicking at the icon and filling a form, but later you don't edit it via the form anymore. Even clicking the Marker icon making the code {{marker|type=|name=|lat=|long=|image=}} appear at your cursor location would be helpful. Hmmm, I hope it is clear what I have in mind;) --Danapit (talk) 11:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's the thread that had me confused on the VfD page. It looks to me like we have consensus, but we haven't gotten around to and/or have been too cowed by a hypothetical IB legal challenge to get moving on it. The sooner we do this, the sooner our Google rank most likely skyrockets. I'd make the change myself if I had any knowledge of how to make and run bots, but sadly I do not. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No. The minimum is just to lose the hyperlink. A PLAIN text attribution is sufficient and there is extensive discussion of this elsewhere. --118.93nzp (talk) 03:48, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No no no no no.
To summarize the thread I linked to above, there appears to be nothing in the resolution of the lawsuit between IB and WMF that mandated that a clickable link to WT be placed in the footer of each article, rather than just mentioning it. However, on ethical grounds, WMF Legal refused to advise us on how much legal merit a hypothetical lawsuit by IB against the user altering the footer would have. Additionally, the WMF disclaimed any legal responsibility for the actions of individual editors, so it's dubious whether they'd go to bat for any user who made such an alteration—especially given the mountainous legal expenses they incurred defending Ryan and Doc James.
Peter (Southwood) posited that the link in the footer might have been added by de: during the migration as a precautionary measure to avoid provoking IB into suing us; also, he opined that, given that IB did end up filing a lawsuit that has since been resolved, there seems to be no further purpose for the link in the footer. And, he volunteered to remove the link himself as soon as he figured out how. There seemed to be consensus for him to do so if he chose to take on the risks, but for whatever reason the discussion died off without further action being taken.
Well, firstly I think we should avoid the possibility of any further exposure to our users, if we don't have the support of WMF. Especially when the links are nofollow, and we don't really know we have any benefit. Removing the outline articles seems a nobrainer. I thought this has been done. If not, I'm happy to make a list of the articles that only have headers, and we can proceed to delete them. --Inas (talk) 04:45, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion of empty articles is not complete, there are empty regions and articles with routeboxes Wikivoyage_talk:Deletion_policy#Skeleton_regions. Personally I do it for quality and attribution issues, before any black magic SEO tricks. If someone says there's nothing worth seeing, then redirect. Redirects themselves have negative aspects, since they get treated as different pages with their own page hits which is why there is inconsistent attribution, and are supposedly reduced by canonical tags, but no one really knows. The footer link was already shortened a month back. I still believe rewriting a lot of old content would be prudent, as K7L suggested elsewhere. -- torty3 (talk) 05:50, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Many of the completely-blank outlines have been removed. A few were missed (such as Rushville, currently on VfD) and many with as few as six words of text were spared as "not quite blank". This "almost blank" thing could get annoying; I'd moved a two-listing article Chicoutimi to Chicoutimi-Jonquière and expanded it to usable, rewriting the two existing listings to avoid the duplicate content penalty. It still has the WT attribution footer, even though WT contributed basically nothing to the current article. I would have been better off to create Chicoutimi-Jonquière as a new, blank page, add my new content and nominate the old article for deletion... that way IB doesn't take credit for my work here.
(edit conflict) Agreed with everything else you said, torty3, but there is clear and consistent consensus against redirecting articles merely because they are empty. q.v. the following entries in the VfD archives:
Btw, somewhere down the line Jan apparently deleted some of the above-linked articles despite the consensus of keeping them. Per Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy#Summary, which Jan cited as his deletion rationale, these articles need to be recreated without the WT attribution rather than simply deleted.
(reindent) I see nothing in Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy#Summary requiring re-creation of an article if it is indeed an empty skeleton (although the idea was discussed). If the article had a token amount of content, then yes, a case could be made for writing new content to replace the deleted article. K7L (talk) 06:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@torty3: Well and good, but there's also a clear consensus against deleting articles because, in the subjective opinion of one editor, there's nothing worth seeing. See the the VfD nomination for Nelson (England), where everyone's favorite Wikivoyager, W. Frank, argued for its deletion because "[t]here's no reason to clutter up a guide with lists of places travellers will probably never bother to go to" and was roundly rebutted.
@K7L: You have it backwards. The original proposal discussed in Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy#Deleting empty articles called for deleting and recreating the skeleton articles and received broad consensus; not recreating them was the minority idea that emerged late in the debate and was discussed a little bit. In the subsection #Summary, Peter proposed, separately, 1) deleting and recreating the articles, 2) deleting the articles and not recreating them, or 3) deleting all destination articles that have not been edited for the past year, which we already do to travel topics and itineraries. People started voting for both #1 and #2, which is nonsensical—it's a contradiction in terms to be in support of both recreating an article and not recreating it. When torty3 added the consensus template, it called for deleting the articles but did not address at all the question of whether they were to be recreated, despite the fact that the consensus to do so was clear (or, about as clear as anything could get in a scenario bungled as badly as that one was).
If the article's empty, there's nothing to recreate. The third option wasn't "delecting all destination articles that have not been edited for the past year, which we already do to travel topics and itineraries" but something more specific... all empty destination outlines which have been abandoned, empty for a year. That question (what to do if someone here creates "X is in Y. {{subst:smallcity}}" and walks away for a year) was raised but never addressed, as this is about just the imported WT pages. No one is proposing to delete usable articles, travel topic or itinerary. There is consensus for recreating imported articles which had token amounts of content. K7L (talk) 17:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It was pretty thoroughly discussed in that discussion I thought. One of the arguments is that most of those do have the correct template, geo info, IsPartOf info, data item, and possibly WP link, all parts of the page creation process that someone wanting to contribute to the page wouldn't have to go through all over again. Texugo (talk) 17:47, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most of that was applied by 'bot scripts, and the templates could be one click away if we did this... include the link to the template pre-fill in the "create a page" text. WV is not a repository for empty pages to store robot-generated co-ordinates. K7L (talk) 18:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(reindent)To tell you the truth, I'm not terribly interested in rehashing this debate; I am only explaining that there was a consensus to recreate, which was a condition for the current round of deletion/recreation, and that consensus should be followed until such time as a new consensus takes its place. If you do want to re-open the debate, it might be best to do so in a subsection of the previous discussions at Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy. Texugo (talk) 18:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely. What good is consensus if the results of a debate that's been closed and resolved can be overruled at any time by a single editor who disagrees with the consensus (and was nowhere to be found during the original debate)? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:05, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I guess some part of every wiki is a do-ocracy. We can have the strongest consensus to do something, but unless someone is willing and able it doesn't get done. Is this part currently under control? --Inas (talk) 22:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have no assets in the United States, so I'm judgement proof. Tell me exactly what needs to be done and how to do it and I'll do it - waving two fingers to Internet Brands as I do so... --118.93nzp (talk) 07:20, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No. The question is not what can we get away with that lets us make rude gestures at IB, much as many of us may want to do that. The question is what can we reasonably do while still complying with the license. Anything that complies with the license can be done by anyone, including US residents. Anything that doesn't should not be done by anyone, including non-residents. Pashley (talk) 01:45, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What purpose would that serve? The information has been removed and there is no reason to expect it will be posted again. K7L (talk) 22:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflicts) Because this site needs all the good editors it can get right now.
(And a hell of a lot more readers - but that's a separate issue...)
It was wrong to block you (and others) and it's very definitely wrong to block Saqib at this stage.
While he shows little sign of improving his attitude to trying to censor lawful, civil comments he does not agree with, he's a smart young man from a part of the world where we desperately need more - not fewer editors and I hope that he can be educated more about the "wiki way" of collegiate editing.
His wounds are raw now (as yours are surely too, Tony and for more justifiable reasons), so let's just give him a little time to think on his best way forward... --118.93nzp (talk) 23:22, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Saqib (and any other editor) should understand that it is wrong to expose personal details that the user hasn't already revealed on-wiki, but there also doesn't appear to be any indication that he did so in an attempt to "out" you, and in such a case even Wikipedia's policy allows for exceptions: "Unless unintentional and non-malicious (for example, where Wikipedians know each other off-site and may inadvertently post personal information, such as using the other person's real name in discussions), attempted outing is grounds for an immediate block." As K7L noted, a ban would make sense if there was any indication that Saqib was being malicious, or if the problem behavior continued after a warning, but a site ban for a single mistake that has since been corrected seems like a punishment rather than an effort to constructively deal with the situation at hand (as has been done by warning the user and oversight of the problem edits). The question of whether Saqib should continue to have admin rights is an open issue, however , since admin rights are predicated on an understanding of site policies and norms, and a demonstrated history of adhering to those policies and norms. That said, if you feel differently and believe that a ban is warranted please propose it at Wikivoyage:User ban nominations since, as the party who was "outed", your voice should carry significant weight in determining the severity of this incident. -- Ryan• (talk) •23:13, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I personally think that Saqib's post was an instance of extremely bad judgment. That, combined with the misuse of revision deletion, has led me to consider whether Saqib should continue to remain an admin here, or whether I can trust his judgment.
But I doubt that the consensus would support any ban or desysop at this time, and I can see where they are coming from. I have not proposed such a thing because I do not think that it would improve the discussion and would likely fail. That being said, Saqib certainly knows now not to repeat his actions, as he has been admonished by the community, and if he did, I do not think people would give him another chance.
I believe that everyone has a right to reveal, or to not reveal, as much as they want to about themselves on Wikimedia sites, and that we should not take this right away from them. No matter what they have done on this site. --Rschen775423:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I can't judge whether it was malicious, because I can't see the offending disclosure and context, can I? This person has stated in effect that s/he doesn't know the terms of use, let alone site policies. To retain as an admin would be clear evidence of a corrupt mentality here. I note that people have been blocked for simply criticising the site. I'm waiting and watching. Tony(talk) 23:20, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Two wrongs don't make a right.
The correct response would be to publicly apologise to you and others and show clear signs that strenuous efforts are being made to address the "old boys club mentality" of different standards for different editors. --118.93nzp (talk) 23:27, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I want this site to grow in readers and editors and authority and utility and I don't see that too-speedy resorts to blocking or banning (or even removing abused admin tools for other than a token one minute on first warning) where the admin shows signs (however tentative) of reform and learning are the ways to achieve my goals.
When editors at large learn that they can be outed by admins, whether through ignorance of the most basic rules, or malice (I don't know, and I don't take anyone's word for that, who will join this site? This is a clear test of just how corrupt the boys' club is here. I'm fed up. Tony(talk) 23:50, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone has a right to their own privacy. We're clearly stating what happened was wrong. We need to get on top of some of these things, and get them on the roadmap. A typical admin at WV has been someone who reverts vandalism, and is a trusted contributor. Knowledge of the WM privacy policies has never been a pre-req, but now it needs to be. --Inas (talk) 00:28, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Saqib requested that his admin rights be revoked as a result of this incident and I have done so. Given that he did not appear to have any malicious intentions, and given that the edits in question have been oversighted, I am hopeful that this addresses the situation sufficiently. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:06, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tony1, I am really sad to see your habit of dragging out personal information where completely unnecessary got back to you as a boomerang. Well, that can happen. I am sure Saqib, who read your Signpost article and discussion related to it, might have gotten the impression it is completely ok to mix wiki and real life identities seeing you doing the same. After all, your real name and locations are also publicly accessible at wikimedia.au. Off course this approach is very wrong, we all agree on that. And unlike you, he apologized to you and resigned to his adminship. I guess he learnt the lesson and paid the price. Danapit (talk) 10:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've certainly had my issues with Tony1, but I don't think that this is a productive direction to take this conversation, and will lead to more fighting. --Rschen775411:22, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"your habit of dragging out personal information"—I've pointed out twice already that Ryan associates his full name with his user name at his Meta user page, and that there was no objection to his full name being used on Signpost coverage twice some time ago in relation to the IB issue. I see that the Signpost's editor in chief, the Ed 17, has used Ryan's full name and username again in yesterday's "News and notes", but in his story on the Wiki-PR matter. I wrote the arbcom election story and one "In brief" this week, and had nothing to do with that story; I did point out to Ed after publication that Ryan's name has been raised as an issue here, but Ed didn't seem to think it was a problem. I can't imagine why Ryan would be upset, but if he is, he needs to say this on Ed's userpage at en.WP. Tony(talk) 13:35, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It might make more sense for en.Wikipedia to deal with this proactively (establish some requirement that Signpost contributors obtain permission before linking usernames to real-world identities) than reactively (by speculating after the fact about whether the subject objects, once the info is already public and the damage has been done). At the moment, it appears that they run with any two-bit hack job, which is unfortunate. K7L (talk) 16:25, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid not. If you're quite explicit on a WMF site about your real name, you can't expect people to ask your permission to use it. And I repeat, where were the objections last year? Tony(talk) 06:35, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done. We use "latest" and "earliest", Wikipedia uses "newest" and "oldest". Maybe that could be changed as well? Globe-trotter (talk) 12:06, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
icon that would lead the reader to the sum of human knowledge about this listing. What do you think about it? Nicolas1981 (talk) 07:22, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
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