Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/2022

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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.

There used to be a description when hovering over links but now these appear blank, can someone fix this. I think this may have happened when the table of contents vanished. Tai123.123 (talk) 05:49, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It still works for me. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean the pop-up window with an image and some of the article text? For me, there are pop-ups, but the half that should have text is empty. I think they were not divided in that way before, so has there been some kind of change? –LPfi (talk) 09:04, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see three kinds, the ones I am used to, with or without the text, and the horizontally divided ones without text. Some versions are probably from my cache. –LPfi (talk) 09:06, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for posting this note. I've filed a bug report.
If it still works for you, then you might be using the gadget "Navigation popups: page previews and editing functions popup when hovering over an internal link". Try it in a private/incognito window to see the simplified Page Previews (what almost all readers see). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for filing the bug. I get the text on maybe a third of the links, including for pages I haven't visited for a while, so it is probably WMF's cache, not mine, that handle them. An example article and an example link from there seem to be needed at Phabricator. –LPfi (talk) 18:43, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! The ones I see have a photo but no text. Tai123.123 (talk) 19:01, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jdlrobson has gotten the bug organized. I don't know how long it will take to get things fixed, but it's starting the process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ While we're on the topic, is there a way to get the navigation popups to show a more interesting image instead of whatever happens to be in the first listing/marker in the article? It's unfortunate that when I hover over a link, the picture that comes up is often of an airport or some other unphotogenic transportation infrastructure instead of something more interesting and representative of the destination. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:06, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If memory serves, there is no clean way to do this. I suspect that @Quiddity (WMF) will be able to provide a definitive answer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can only point towards the documentation for the gadget (w:Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups#Features), which seem to indicate that it is possible to override which image is shown (see the bulletpoint equivalents of 2a and 2b). I have no experience using that particular feature, so I'd suggest testing it in a sandbox, and asking on the docs' talkpage if you have any difficulties. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Quiddity (WMF): Thanks! Copying the relevant bullet point here for others' benefit.
  • The image shown in the preview can be controlled by adding an image hint to the article, in the form of an invisible HTML comment: <!-- popup [[File:Desired_Preview_Image.jpg]] -->.
I've tried to implement this in Guangzhou but with no success – the popup still shows a boring train station from Guangzhou#Get in, not the first image in the article and not the one in the HTML comment. I'll wait a while to see if there's a cache somewhere that needs to catch up, and if not then I'll ask on the docs' talk page. —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:07, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Granger After two days, I'm also seeing the same train station when on incognito mode. However, it does work with the gadget. So likely not cache. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:02, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I take it the HTML comment fix only applies to the "navigation popups" gadget, and not to the "page previews" that are shown to unregistered users and users who don't have the gadget enabled. Is there a way to fix this for page previews (as opposed to the navigation popups gadget)? @WhatamIdoing, Quiddity (WMF): —Granger (talk · contribs) 10:55, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Other suggestion, add the file and make the size as 1px. Have never tried that out before, but I'll experiment it soon. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:59, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That also doesn't seem to work. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For the extension version (PagePreviews) that unregistered users see, it uses another extension (PageImages) to select the image. The detailed technical docs of how it currently works are at mw:Extension:PageImages#Image_choice. However, there is an ongoing discussion, and it looks like some development work from a volunteer-developer, in phab:T91683 ("Allow editors control of the page image") about making it more editor-overridable. HTH! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! It looks like there are some options for changing the algorithm that chooses images. I guess the simplest fix would be to set $wgPageImagesLeadSectionOnly to true so that PagePreviews only uses images from the lead. Then we would probably want to make sure articles have an image in the lead if possible (which is a nice thing to do anyway). What do others think about this idea? —Granger (talk · contribs) 06:52, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Many major destinations and Star articles lack images in the lead section. For articles that I've created or heavily edited, I avoid lead-section images so as not to clash/compete with banner images. I usually place the first image in Understand. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 01:28, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes a lede image (such as the one seen in Zion National Park) actually resolves the job at times. I generally like to include one in the lede, but not all the time such as the one seen in Hartz Mountains National Park (but instead you see a boring tree). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:36, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nelson Ricardo 2500: In that case, if we implement my suggestion, I think we would need to either add images to the leads of those articles or accept that their previews will not have images. To me that seems worth it for the sake of avoiding these boring images of airports and train stations in so many articles' previews. I'd say no image in the preview is better than an image of an unremarkable train station. But of course I'm open to other suggestions if anyone has any. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:28, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Closing the comment period for the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Draft Guidelines

Thank you for your continued comments and ideas on the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines. Your responses have helped to build a stronger Universal Code of Conduct.

If you have not already provided your comments, now is the time as the drafting committee has been meeting to update the enforcement guidelines. The drafting committee wants to consider all comments as they make their updates. Please submit any comments by the end of November. The Committee hopes to finish its revisions before the end of the year, and the revised guidelines will be published as soon as they have been completed.

The next steps for the Universal Code of Conduct include conversations about ratification of the enforcement guidelines. There will be a conversation about ratification on Nov 29.

The Wikimedia Foundation will make recommendations to the Board of Trustees about the ratification of the guidelines in December. The recommendations will inform the next steps in the Universal Code of Conduct process.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 15:53, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Talk to the Community Tech: The future of the Community Wishlist Survey

Hello!

We, the team working on the Community Wishlist Survey, would like to invite you to an online meeting with us. It will take place on 30 November (Tuesday), 17:00 UTC on Zoom, and will last an hour. Click here to join.

Agenda

  • Changes to the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. Help us decide.
  • Become a Community Wishlist Survey Ambassador. Help us spread the word about the CWS in your community.
  • Questions and answers

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes without attribution will be taken and published on Meta-Wiki. The presentation (all points in the agenda except for the questions and answers) will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, Spanish, German, and Italian. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

Natalia Rodriguez (the Community Tech manager) will be hosting this meeting.

Invitation link

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming Call for Feedback about the Board of Trustees elections

The Board of Trustees is preparing a call for feedback about the upcoming Board Elections, from January 7 - February 10, 2022.

While details will be finalized the week before the call, we have confirmed at least two questions that will be asked during this call for feedback:

  • What is the best way to ensure fair representation of emerging communities among the Board?
  • What involvement should candidates have during the election?

While additional questions may be added, the Movement Strategy and Governance team wants to provide time for community members and affiliates to consider and prepare ideas on the above confirmed questions before the call opens. Community members can also organise local conversations during the call. You can find more information about this upcoming call for feedback here.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Proof of age

On the pages for UK, USA and probably several others, we say you need an ID to show you are over 18/21/whatever to be let in to bars or allowed to buy alcohol.

I suppose that is true for young people, but isn't the bouncer allowed to believe the word of a 50 years old? Here most shops require people looking younger than 30 to show an ID, and I think that gives a good margin (drinking age is 18), enough to perhaps leave some non-teenager foreigners thirsty.

Should we try to say explicitly when these requirements concern or don't concern also people who don't look like teenagers? You might not want to carry your passport needlessly, and that is often your only acceptable ID. Are other IDs commonly accepted round the world?

–LPfi (talk) 16:19, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We have considered a youth travel article for the benefits and concerns that young people can meet when travelling. Can also be mentioned in travelling with children and senior travel. /Yvwv (talk) 16:21, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In the US, the law doesn't require you to show an id; the law requires the business to comply with the selling age. Therefore, each business makes its own business policy decision about how to stay in legal compliance. I have seen places that card everyone except obviously elderly people, and I have seen places that don't seem to card anyone. It is typical to have staff guess at ages and card only the people who look younger, but there is no standard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose a 50 years old would count as "obviously elderly" in this context, which would mean they wouldn't need to show IDs anywhere. It was the same here, but now the 30 years have become a stated standard, perhaps because of some campaign. –LPfi (talk) 20:58, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've been rejected entry into bars and refuse service at liquor stores in the U.S. for not carrying my passport back when I was new here and only had my Australian driving licence. Now that I have my U.S. driving licence, I can use that as my proof of age, but before I got it, it was a hit and miss as to whether my Australian licence was accepted as proof of age. I guess it might be state dependent, because I noticed that my Australian ID was more likely to be accepted in New York than in Chicago.
In Singapore they are actually quite strict about this; foreign-issued I.D. cards are generally not accepted, with the exception of Malaysian identity cards, which some businesses accept. If you are working or studying in Singapore you will be issued a work permit and student pass respectively, and that can be used as your I.D. card, but if you are a tourist, you have to bring your passport. The dog2 (talk) 21:08, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are plenty of bars in New York that require proof of age from everyone, regardless of how old they are. Anyone who wants to go to bars should bring a picture ID with proof of age, just to avoid the possibility of being refused entry. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:09, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
LP, I know of one restaurant where the standard was "white hair". A 50-year-old would probably be carded there. (That restaurant usually hired teenagers for the serving staff, and you probably don't want your business to depend on whether a 16 year old guessed right.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This was a while back (like 2011?). In Atlanta, a bar accepted my Canadian driver license as proof of age ID. OhanaUnitedTalk page 22:41, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm 56, and it's not at all uncommon for me to be carded in New York, although now, all bets are off because you have to show ID and proof of vaccination, anyway (and furthermore, I haven't been inside a bar in several weeks for safety reasons). Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:50, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Canadian licences are different from other foreign licences because of the close relationship between the U.S. and Canada. In much the same way, New Zealand licences are more likely to be recognised in Australia than other foreign licences. The dog2 (talk) 06:39, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Loves Folklore is back!

Please help translate to your language

You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 28th of February.

You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.

You can also organize a local contest in your country and support us in translating the project pages to help us spread the word in your native language.

Feel free to contact us on our project Talk page if you need any assistance.

Kind regards,

Wiki loves Folklore International Team

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Community Wishlist Survey 2022

The Community Wishlist Survey 2022 is now open!

This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 23 January, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 28 January and 11 February.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Call for Feedback about the Board of Trustees elections is now open

The Call for Feedback: Board of Trustees elections is now open and will close on 7 February 2022.

With this Call for Feedback, the Movement Strategy and Governance team is taking a different approach. This approach incorporates community feedback from 2021. Instead of leading with proposals, the Call is framed around key questions from the Board of Trustees. The key questions came from the feedback about the 2021 Board of Trustees election. The intention is to inspire collective conversation and collaborative proposal development about these key questions.

There are two confirmed questions that will be asked during this Call for Feedback:

  1. What is the best way to ensure more diverse representation among elected candidates? The Board of Trustees noted the importance of selecting candidates who represent the full diversity of the Wikimedia movement. The current processes have favored volunteers from North America and Europe.
  2. What are the expectations for the candidates during the election? Board candidates have traditionally completed applications and answered community questions. How can an election provide appropriate insight into candidates while also appreciating candidates’ status as volunteers?

There is one additional question that may be presented during the Call about selection processes. This question is still under discussion, but the Board wanted to give insight into the confirmed questions as soon as possible. Hopefully if an additional question is going to be asked, it will be ready during the first week of the Call for Feedback.

Join the conversation.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

XTools EditCounterOptIn

There's a useful tool named XTools that can show you data about your or someone else's editing, such as what pages you've edited the most, how many edits you've made in a month, and several other interesting stats. It's helpful for a lot of things, such as knowing if an editor is active or inactive, seeing if someone is more focused on mainspace or projectspace, and keeping track of what the quality of the articles you've made the most edits to is.

For many projects (including most of the largest), every XTools statistic is opted into by default. However, on Wikivoyage, most of the stats require manually creating Special:MyPage/EditCounterOptIn.js, which makes it a lot less useful. Would there be any interest in making XTools opt-in by default on Wikivoyage? Vaticidalprophet (talk) 17:51, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer the current system, which I think maintains more privacy. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 19:14, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a strong view for myself, but I do think that whenever someone expresses a preference for privacy, then we should support that as much as we can. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Those who want to see the stats about themselves can opt in. Seeing the stats about others can be useful, but I think privacy concerns have a higher weight. I am really worried about how much one could figure out about and through your activities on Wikipedia and related sites, but at least not everything is made easily available. Most people don't understand the issues, so we cannot expect them to opt out from anything. –LPfi (talk) 12:50, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd favour the current system. Whether someone's made edits to mainspace or projectspace can already be seen, it's just which articles they've contributed to the most needs the authorization. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:43, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(after one month), I now favour @Vaticidalprophet's proposal because I'd like to know which articles have been internally copied without attribution by a certain editor (includes both pages they have created and pages they haven't created but improved). I won't mention the name of the editor, but I'm happy to tell which one thru email. Similarly, there's another editor who has added hundreds of listings that are in the wrong article – both the pages they created, and ones that they have improved. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:55, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Talk to the Community Tech

Hello

We, the team working on the Community Wishlist Survey, would like to invite you to an online meeting with us. It will take place on 19 January (Wednesday), 18:00 UTC on Zoom, and will last an hour. This external system is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy. Click here to join.

Agenda

  • Bring drafts of your proposals and talk to to a member of the Community Tech Team about your questions on how to improve the proposal

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes without attribution will be taken and published on Meta-Wiki. The presentation (all points in the agenda except for the questions and answers) will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, Spanish, and German. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

Natalia Rodriguez (the Community Tech manager) will be hosting this meeting.

Invitation link

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subscribe to the This Month in Education newsletter - learn from others and share your stories

Dear community members,

Greetings from the EWOC Newsletter team and the education team at Wikimedia Foundation. We are very excited to share that we on tenth years of Education Newsletter (This Month in Education) invite you to join us by subscribing to the newsletter on your talk page or by sharing your activities in the upcoming newsletters. The Wikimedia Education newsletter is a monthly newsletter that collects articles written by community members using Wikimedia projects in education around the world, and it is published by the EWOC Newsletter team in collaboration with the Education team. These stories can bring you new ideas to try, valuable insights about the success and challenges of our community members in running education programs in their context.

If your affiliate/language project is developing its own education initiatives, please remember to take advantage of this newsletter to publish your stories with the wider movement that shares your passion for education. You can submit newsletter articles in your own language or submit bilingual articles for the education newsletter. For the month of January the deadline to submit articles is on the 20th January. We look forward to reading your stories.

Older versions of this newsletter can be found in the complete archive.

More information about the newsletter can be found at Education/Newsletter/About.

For more information, please contact spatnaik@wikimedia.org.

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony (Talk), Monday 23:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 5

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 5, January 2022Read the full newsletter

Welcome to the fifth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News (formerly known as Universal Code of Conduct News)! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board elections and other relevant MSG topics.


This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly or bi-weekly to subscribers. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive these updates.

  • Call for Feedback about the Board elections - We invite you to give your feedback on the upcoming WMF Board of Trustees election. This call for feedback went live on 10th January 2022 and will be concluded on 7th February 2022. (continue reading)
  • Universal Code of Conduct Ratification - In 2021, the WMF asked communities about how to enforce the Universal Code of Conduct policy text. The revised draft of the enforcement guidelines should be ready for community vote in March. (continue reading)
  • Movement Strategy Implementation Grants - As we continue to review several interesting proposals, we encourage and welcome more proposals and ideas that target a specific initiative from the Movement Strategy recommendations. (continue reading)
  • The New Direction for the Newsletter - As the UCoC Newsletter transitions into MSG Newsletter, join the facilitation team in envisioning and deciding on the new directions for this newsletter. (continue reading)
  • Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about MSG on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 08:21, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikivoyage influence

If you are interested in design, I encourage you to spend a moment at the Main Page at the Sudanese Wikipedia. It looks to me like they have adopted Wikivoyage's carousel system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's really interesting. One thing I felt that English Wikivoyage has done better than the English Wikipedia is have a more modern and better looking main page. The current English Wikipedia main page was designed in March 2006, an eternity ago in internet time. Gizza (roam) 03:48, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The English Wikibooks' main page looks like it was designed a long time ago, much more old-fashioned than Wikipedia's. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 03:51, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tangential, but while on the topic of front page design, w:nv: has rainbow gradients that I always liked, even if they are probably not attractive to everyone. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:19, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
w:se: (Sami language) got a professional redesign and now incorporates culturally relevant elements. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's interesting because it looks to have some responsive design that I don't recall seeing on any wikis. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:42, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Desktop Improvements update and Office Hours invitation

Hello. I wanted to give you an update about the Desktop Improvements project, which the Wikimedia Foundation Web team has been working on for the past few years.

The goals of the project are to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. The project consists of a series of feature improvements which make it easier to read and learn, navigate within the page, search, switch between languages, use article tabs and the user menu, and more.

The improvements are already visible by default for readers and editors on 24 wikis, including Wikipedias in French, Portuguese, and Persian.

The changes apply to the Vector skin only. Monobook or Timeless users are not affected.

Features deployed since our last update

  • User menu - focused on making the navigation more intuitive by visually highlighting the structure of user links and their purpose.
  • Sticky header - focused on allowing access to important functionality (logging in/out, history, talk pages, etc.) without requiring people to scroll to the top of the page.

For a full list of the features the project includes, please visit our project page. We also invite you to our Updates page.

The features deployed already and the table of contents that's currently under development


How to enable the improvements

Global preferences
  • It is possible to opt-in individually in the appearance tab within the preferences by unchecking the "Use Legacy Vector" box. (It has to be empty.) Also, it is possible to opt-in on all wikis using the global preferences.
  • If you think this would be good as a default for all readers and editors of this wiki, feel free to start a conversation with the community and contact me.
  • On wikis where the changes are visible by default for all, logged-in users can always opt-out to the Legacy Vector. There is an easily accessible link in the sidebar of the new Vector.

Learn more and join our events

If you would like to follow the progress of our project, you can subscribe to our newsletter.

You can read the pages of the project, check our FAQ, write on the project talk page, and join an online meeting with us (27 January (Thursday), 15:00 UTC).

How to join our online meeting

Thank you!!

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Updates on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines Review

Hello everyone,


The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines were published 24 January 2022 as a proposed way to apply the Universal Code of Conduct across the movement. Comments about the guidelines can be shared here or the Meta-wiki talk page.

There will be conversations on Zoom on 4 February 2022 at 15:00 UTC, 25 February 2022 at 12:00 UTC, and 4 March 2022 at 15:00 UTC. Join the UCoC project team and drafting committee members to discuss the guidelines and voting process.

The timeline is available on Meta-wiki. The voting period is March 7 to 21. See the voting information page for more details.

You can read the full announcement here. Thank you to everyone who has participated so far.


Sincerely,

Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Script error on Airport articles

Happy new year to everyone. From Brisbane down, the information is replaced by a script error with red text reading: "The time allocated for running scripts has expired." Does anyone know what's causing this and how to fix it? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:51, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be a Lua problem where there are too many modules in one page. Do you know if it ever worked? Were a bunch of new entries added? Did a template used on this page get changed so that it calls multiple modules? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:57, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Justin. In answer to your questions in order: Yes, no (both with certainty). I don't know.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. Weird that it just started then. As someone who doesn't know a lot about modules, I would recommend that a quick fix is to split the article by continents and file a ticket at phab:. Someone smarter than me may know more (but that's always true about everything :/). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:01, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me now. Perhaps there were some temporary load issues spilling over on the processor time measured (or changing the limits)? Anyway, it might be good not to push the limits. Wikivoyage is quite heavy on processing; are there ways to optimise the listing templates, or other ways to avoid certain pages be very processing-heavy? –LPfi (talk) 13:33, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's also working for me too. We can always file a Phabricator ticket if it becomes a recurring problem. I think we're 14 airports away before we have to split in some way, either by using different colour markers or separate sub-articles.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:03, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like the PEIS limit, if anyone is curious. I asked around after it a little while ago but couldn't find anyone who would admit to fully understanding how the devs decided what the limit should be. The workaround is straightforward: split large pages, and optimize templates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Most time is used for fetching the Wikidata datasets, as you can learn it from html code. It contains a NewPP limit report. Getting the entities takes about 6 seconds which is a huge value which is maybe attributed to the complex airport datasets (and which increases by time because of software additions). The total Lua computing time is near the 10-seconds limit, i.e., sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't work. I made a copy to the German Wikivoyage at de:Benutzer:RolandUnger/Flughäfen. It confirmed the huge computing time for getting the entities. But it also shows that the listing scripts can be optimized because it takes only 8 seconds computing time at all which is less by 2 seconds compared to the English Wikivoyage. This shorter computing time prevents any Lua time errors.
Under normal conditions, in locations articles can be fetched up to 250 different Wikidata sets as can be seen from de:Halle (Saale). Surely, the computing times of Scribunto_LuaSandboxCallback::getEntity and Scribunto_LuaSandboxCallback::callParserFunction should be reduced. And sometimes I made a bug report on phabricator but only minor changes were made removing the bugs. --RolandUnger (talk) 16:46, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since getting fundamental changes to the amount of memory we have is difficult and relies on developers, I propose that we split this article preemptively. We can locally control how many templates and scripts are on a page, so we should be on the lookout for pages that we think may fail. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:27, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it's failing for me around New York City now. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone check this article again? -- Matroc (talk) 04:07, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nevermind -- I republished the article with no changes and I could see the article. Once I looked elsewhere and came back it was showing errors. One can get page to appear if they ?action=purge (Purge article) - This points me to think in the direction of memory as well.. -- Matroc (talk) 04:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • We could remove the Wikidata calls from that article without doing much harm. Every airport listed has a wikilink to its Wikivoyage article, so the Wikidata and Wikipedia icons are not really needed. We may as well encourage readers to click on the internal link and read our article instead of going to Wikipedia or Wikidata. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Take a look at Airport articles/Sandbox. This article is based on Module:Marker (currently through Template:Listing/sandbox and Template:Marker/sandbox) instead of Module:Map.
If you compare the LUA profile of Airport articles vs Airport articles/Sandbox, you'll see that the first one download 85 Wikidata instances while the second zero. That's why the loading time has been dramatically reduced. To properly compare the loading time you should purge the articles, opening at the same time the following two links:
  1. https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Airport_articles&action=purge
  2. https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Airport_articles/Sandbox&action=purge
If there is a consensus to go in this direction I'll complete the new module to allow to retrive the coords when missing, BUT take into account that anytime the coords will be downloaded from Wikidata (because not written explicitly into the listing template), this will affect again the performance (less than they do today, but still affect). --Andyrom75 (talk) 14:10, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Justin, ThunderingTyphoons!, LPfi, WhatamIdoing, Matroc, Granger: what's your feedback between:
  1. use the current template (coords -and potentially other info- are always downloaded from Wikidata regardless what's written in the wikicode)
  2. use the new module as it is (no coords from Wikidata)
  3. use a new revised module (that will download the coords from wikidata, only when not provided within the listing).
Let me know and I'll proceed accordingly, --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think #3 should be just fine, especially if a bot checks coordinates and imports them every [x] days from Wikidata. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto as Justin. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to go with anything that works.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:09, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If #3 is easy to implement and not too heavy, I think that's the ideal solution. We should copy most coords to the listings – at the latest when the templates time out – but there will be new listings from time to time, and coords are not always listed for them. A bot importing coordinates would be nice, but I think new airport articles are created seldom enough that it can be handled by hand, if we get into the habit or are reminded when there are too many listings lacking them. –LPfi (talk) 10:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer #3 without a bot. Sometimes I don't want the coordinates from Wikidata (e.g., when I want coords for the entrance but they want coords for the center of the attraction). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer #3 with a bot which only downloads the co-ordinates if they are missing from the article. Sometimes our co-ordinates are deliberately quite different from WD, listings for large features like rivers are an extreme example.
On other articles, an additional benefit of having the co-ordinates in the article is that this displays the markers on the full screen map (from the icon at the top right of a destination article). Wikidata co-ordinates aren't displayed on the full screen map. AlasdairW (talk) 23:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've just updated the module, now it retrives the coords from Wikidata if not present in the listing.
The effect in the article (where are present 80 listing with coords and 5 without) is that now just 5 Wikidata entities are queried for coords. As anticipated this cause a loading time increased that is difficult to estimate because too many factors affect it (that's why sometimes the original article was perfectly rendered and sometimes got LUA error in its bottom part), but roughly I would say at least 1 second more.
Before put it into "production", feel free to perform some test using "Template:Listing/sandbox" instead of "Template:Listing" and let me know when and if you are confident for the switch.
After put it into production we should monitor this category to be sure that no further article will converge here. Any page of that category needs to be fixed. PS There are already few articles there... --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:21, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've just cleaned all the "Pages_with_script_errors". The remaining two are there for different reasons.
  • User:Buzzy: uses 291 markers with 291 wikidata parameters without coords; using the module and adding the coords the issue will be solved
  • User:Pbsouthwood/Dive_sites: uses 553 markers; too much. I suppose the only way to solve the problem is to split the page in two or more subpages.
--Andyrom75 (talk) 23:42, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Without any further feedback, I've boldly put into production the new revised module. Please, promptly highlight (& ping) me any issue you may notice. As expected User:Buzzy page has been automatically fixed, although it takes almost 8 seconds to elaborate the code (very close to the 10 seconds limit). The other one will keep on failing randomly as previously explained. --Andyrom75 (talk) 20:02, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that #3 is a viable solution.
  • Consider changing the editor to automatically supply the missing lat/long coordinates from Wikidata if needed. (Chop format them up to 6 numbers on right of period). Otherwise enter lat/long manually?
  • Airport articles will soon hit the infamous 99 limit. Perhaps use color markers to avoid numbering issue?
  • Maps - Perhaps use group and show. 1 main map for all (with a legend pointing to each area) - individual maps for groupings ie. Africa, Asia etc. or a page link to the main map centering on the area of interest. This might reduce mapbuilding costs as well. If time permits I will see if I can make an example. -- Matroc (talk) 06:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Example I made - this will remain for a few days if interested - Example -- Matroc (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Matroc, if you are talking of the listing editor in your first point, I can say that the wikidata sync is possible but shall be explicitly requested by the user (it's not automatic) and regarding the coords, it already round the number with just 6 decimals. --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:22, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Great! Thanks for input! -- Matroc (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Image parameter does not work anymore

In listings like {{see ..., image=name.jpg, ...}} the image does not show anymore on the mapframe map. --FredTC (talk) 06:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that on Tasmanian national parks today. I simply ignored it because I thought it was a single-article issue and there were already images listed below but it seems that it's happening sitewide. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Andyrom75: needs to test his changes to {{Marker}} again/better :) The version before the change works OK. -- andree 07:13, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FredTC, SHB2000, as said by andree, I confirm that I need to work on that. Currently I focused my attention on coordinates. Sorry for the temporary disservice.
Just one thing. To show the picture passed through the "name" parameter is relatively easy and won't affect the performance, but to download the image from Wikidata may have an impact on page loading time (see above discussion about coords where the community decide to go for solution #3).
I can follow the same approach, but let's keep in mind the collateral effect. --Andyrom75 (talk) 09:37, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay sure. Whichever one works is fine for me. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:39, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FredTC, SHB2000, now the manually input image is shown in the map. To use the Wikidata image I would like to hear more feedback. Although I've noticed that module:map already did it, so I exclude to achieve worse performances. --Andyrom75 (talk) 10:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's no way we can exclude image fetching from WD, short of running a bot, which will do the sync WD->WV Articles regularly. That would require non-trivial logic to not overwrite manually entered images... IMO if a page is giving timeout errors, it's time to split it or optimize the software/increase limits. But this particular functionality is my personal favorite of the markers, I very very very strongly oppose removing it! ;-) -- andree 11:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Andree, just implemented the Wikidata image retrieval. Roughly it has an impact of 10% on performance (clearly it depends on the number of listings/markers that require such service). User:Buzzy page reenter into the Category:Pages with script errors :-( Let's monitor that category to be sure that no other article will flow down there. --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:17, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Right now there is no indication of an image at the "mouse over" event for the map markers. --FredTC (talk) 11:01, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FredTC, I'm not sure I got your point. Could you tell me which article and which listing/marker are you looking at? --Andyrom75 (talk) 11:42, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The affected articles have to be refreshed (e.g. do an edit+don't change anything+press 'publish'), probably it will happen automagically, in time. -- andree 11:51, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I tried it with Rome/South. At the left side see-22 has an image, nearby see-19 has no image. The "mouse over" info does not show a difference; only if you click the marker, you get the picture (22) or the text becomes bold (19). I did a few chages in the article, but that did not change the "mouse over" behavior. --FredTC (talk) 12:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I cannot even get a mouse-over with older marker template (but the problem could be also my settings, or that something further changed... in any case I never used this, was only clicking on the markers in the map). While we are at it, also the external links aren't highlighted now in the markers. -- andree 12:31, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FredTC, honestly I don't recall such behavior inside the map. A similar behavior happens when you stop over a blue wikilink inside the text and you have activated the "Navigation popups" gadget. However, this is something managed server side by the map extension, hence we shouldn't be able to alter it client side. --Andyrom75 (talk) 16:20, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia icon on listings and markers

In Southwest National Park and Tasmanian national parks, I noticed that the Wikipedia icon has changed. Any reason to this? I preferred the old one. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be the caused by the same as above... -- andree 07:40, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Andyrom75:? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:42, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
SHB2000, fixed. I forgot that the en:voy icon is different from the it:voy icon. --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:37, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the fix :-) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:39, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NA creates coords at 0,0

Per template:see when NA is added to a see listing it should create no marker but if you look at Swedish Empire "Skattkammaren" which has coords of NA has a marker at 0,0 when it should have none. How do you fix this? Tai123.123 (talk) 01:58, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyrom75:, did you accidentally do something? Yosemite National Park is also another example of where coords are concentrated at 0,0.
All I would say is to omit the coords altogether. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:00, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tai123.123, SHB2000, I can fix it but I was wondering why inserting "NA" in place of leaving lat/long parameters just blank? --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:15, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure. I usually just leave it blank, but a lot of articles use "NA" for some reason. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Andree, since in the past you worked on on both Template:Marker and Module:Map maybe you can tell me which is the reason to adopt the "NA" coords approach instead of leaving them blanks. This issue can be fi in two ways: restore the "NA" approach or to bot-clean the "NA" occurrences. In it:voy we never use "NA", here there are around 250 articles that use it and checking some of those I tend to suppose that is a wrong use, but this is just my opinion. --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:25, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The reason for this was that sometimes listings have coords in wikidata, but we don't actually want the coords. Mostly it's stuff like festivals, which have coords (even worse if it's at different place every year) of the city where it occurs - but we don't need that. So people here decided we'll use NA to force-remove the coords from the listings, even if they have some in WD. :) -- andree 08:51, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Andree, sorry for late answer but I was out during this sunny Saturday :-P
I would say that if the WD coords are wrong shall be deleted or updated, at least that's what I'm used to to do. If a festival change place is an information that shall be regularly updated like the prices, opening time, etc. I still don't see the need of those "NA" coords. Do you think it worth to reopen the conversation? --Andyrom75 (talk) 19:19, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In some cases the need might need to be discussed, but I don't think there always should be a marker. The typical example I have stumbled into is where the festival (or whatever) is at a venue which already is listed. I think pointing to the venue in the directions parameter is better than having two markers on top of each other. –LPfi (talk) 20:29, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If it's a listing and you specify WD, it will become a marker automagically... -- andree 20:34, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't NA there exactly to avoid that? –LPfi (talk) 20:38, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yep... -- andree 21:57, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sunny Saturday? I don't know what you are talking about - it's been raining, snowing and windy all day! :-D
Check Template_talk:Marker#Coordinates being created without being manually set and Template_talk:Marker#Wikidata lat/longs. There will probably be another discussion somewhere, but the bottom line is that WD and WV have different target. So coords WD has may not be of any interest to WV, but it may be interesting e.g. to wikipedia, or for some data mining. IMO there's no "shame" in sometimes only picking data we need from WD, so NA is okay for me (but in the end, I never used it nor don't I particularly care)... And mainly, I don't really want to be involved in re-discussing the topic - since you opened the Pandora's box by touching this thing, you'll have to do the argumentation... :-P -- andree 20:33, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Andree, sorry to hear that, so I would avoid to tell you that I was walking barefoot on the forshore ... a bit unsual for January here as well, but why not :-P
Coming back to point.
Inside the conversation that you linked I've found the following points:
  • The listing could be linked to the wrong Wikidata entity (e.g. association that organize an event in place of the event itself), hence I would say that the wikidata parameter shall be deleted
  • The information on wikidata are wrong (not only relevant to coords), hence I would say that the wikidata info shall be updated/corrected, to grant such benefit to all the WMF projects that use Wikidata — however let's recall that WD info are just a fallback when local info are missing
LPfi, if I got correctly your point, you are describing a situation when two or more listing have the same location. In the affirmative case I would say that is fine. Let's think on Asian shops that are located in different floor of the same building, or maybe western malls where different restaurants can be found in it.
Notwithstanding this, if there is a real consensus on re-establish the "NA" feature, I'll do it, although I think is a good idea. --Andyrom75 (talk) 09:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Shops on different floors is of course a possible situation, but I think it is rare, except when they are in the same mall, which could be pointed at instead of giving coordinates to individual shops; people aren't navigating by GPS indoors. Overlapping markers are problematic, as you don't get to see the individual ones without zooming in. This is of course a trade off; we would have markers for a listed shop and an adjacent restaurant (except in the mall case).
A different scenario is when a festival is all around the town. You might want a marker on a ticket office or similar, but sometimes that would be a stretch or even misleading. And you wouldn't want markers for half a dozen events at the tourist office, or at the stadium.
–LPfi (talk) 09:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
LPfi in Asian metropolis is quite common to have shops, restaurants, etc, in different floor of the same building (not a mall, just an Nth floor commercial building), and since all of them are advertised (generally in local language), it's very complicated to understand where you have to go :-D
A festival in my opinion it's similar to a huge airport. Lets' consider JFK or CDG. We have reference coords to locate it "in the world", then if we want to point out specific things (e.g. terminal, car rentals, parking, shops, etc.) we can still use markers typically not associated to Wikidata.
That's said, I'm still not in favor of "NA" feature but I'll follow community's will. --Andyrom75 (talk) 10:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the coords are useful in a specific case, of course they should be included, as I said about adjacent shops. NA is useful if there are (enough) cases where the marker makes more harm than good. I have seen it as useful in several cases, so I tend to think it should be available. One more case: for festivals that move around, you said the coords should be updated. Yes they should. But next years location may be somewhere I cannot easily find coordinates to (such a venue called on the web site by a local term unknown to me), and removing last year's misleading ones, I'd just get the headquarters' from WD, in another town. –LPfi (talk) 10:54, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A case where NA is useful is where the WD lat/long is that of an office which is closed to visitors. A festival may sell tickets from the tourist office, but be "based" in an industrial estate, because that is where they store the equipment between events. WP still wants tha address of the office in the industrial estate.
Another example is England#Preservation_trusts where English Heritage has the lat/long of an office but travellers are intersted in the castles etc that they run, and should not try to visit the office. AlasdairW (talk) 10:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
LPfi, AlasdairW, in my opinion if the coords in a festival entity are the one of the association that organize the festival, the coords are wrong and should be moved from here to the association entity (if any).
However, in the meanwhile I'm going to work to restore this functionality, but I still hope the community's decision will go in the other direction :-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 14:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just adding my voice to the chorus – I think the NA functionality is important for cases like those stated above. Thank you for working on this, Andyrom75. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:16, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also support NA, which I've used in the past in some cases, such as when multiple points of interest are found at approximately the same coordinates. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 18:47, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I should have restored the NA feature. Please check and let me know. --Andyrom75 (talk) 23:24, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fine now, Thanks Tai123.123 (talk) 23:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Andyrom75:. Some articles use N/A. Is it hard to get also that variant working, or should we search for such articles? I haven't seen n/a, but that is the correct spelling according to Wiktionary, so it might have to be checked also. –LPfi (talk) 12:07, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
LPfi, I would suggest to use just one single way to avoid the use of Wikidata. This way will go into the template manual and the articles that already use "NA" will be a clear example of how it should work. Because of this I suggest to find & replace all the other similar occurrences. --Andyrom75 (talk) 13:14, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A search of insource:"lat=N/A" returned just one article. I have taken care of a few earlier. Is that the way to find them or may I have missed some of them? (I tried also n/a and spaces around the equal mark). LPfi (talk) 13:53, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think you changed them all. --Andyrom75 (talk) 14:43, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks. –LPfi (talk) 18:38, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Elements not showing on Helsinki/Central

Something is wrong with the map at Helsinki/Central. When the page loads, the map initially shows all the locations of the elements in the article, but then they all immediately disappear and there is no way to get them back. Individual elements can be viewed by clicking on the element in the article text, but there is no way to seem them all at once on the map. The maps on other subpages of Helsinki seem to work OK, it's just Central that is broken. What is causing this? JIP (talk) 19:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maps in other articles have the same issue. /Yvwv (talk) 19:44, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have edited several pages today Faversham and Sittingbourne they are displaying on both my computer and phone without mapframe elements showing. --RobThinks (talk) 20:37, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The problem seems to have gone away now. The map elements on Helsinki/Central, Faversham and Sittingbourne work OK now. JIP (talk) 23:38, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
JIP, sorry for the yesterday temporary disservice (almost a couple of hours) but I was working on the previous topic. As you can see, 10 minutes before your last post, I solved it. --Andyrom75 (talk) 09:20, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

With the new module I took the chance to categorize all the article that has at least one marker/listing with conflicting information, hence with an external link (url parameter) and with a wikilink name in place of a plain text one (name parameter).

In such case, I've simply ignored the url parameter waiting for any volunteer that would fix.

However, I'd like to know if this choice is fine for the community or if there is a different opinion on how to treat these cases. --Andyrom75 (talk) 14:39, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have just seen that Denver is in this category, because there is a wikilink in the listing name of Denver International Airport. I don't think that this is a problem, but others may disagree. AlasdairW (talk) 23:15, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
AlasdairW, regarding Denver you can compare the followings:
--Andyrom75 (talk) 12:08, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I have removed the wikilink. I recognise that this is the best approach for consistency. However I am still not 100% convinced that this is the most useful for readers in the particular case where we have a dedicated article on the airport. The external link is now more prominent than the internal one. When the wikilink was there, the external link was still reachable by clinking on the icon after the wikilink. AlasdairW (talk) 22:28, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
SHB2000 reverted the edit on Denver, and may wish to comment here.
A stronger case for saying wikilinks are ok in listing names is Castles. Here several of the castles have wikilinks as part of the name. In this case the castles don't have external links, and it seems verbose to say "Nuremberg Castle, Nuremberg" rather than "Nuremberg Castle". AlasdairW (talk) 23:08, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts are that if we have a link for that POI, then we don't need to include the external link – the external link should be in the linked article. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:25, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
AlasdairW, SHB2000, on it:voy, as you can see for example on it:Aeroporti in Italia, I've used a different approach, starting from the assumption that originally the listings were not supposed to have a wikilink in the name parameter (so we normally remove those wikilinks).
Basically, if on it:voy, exists an article associated to the provided wikidata parameter, the template shows automatically the Wikivoyage icon with the relevant wikilink, so the name will be free to accomodate the URL.
Do you think that this approach would be suitable for en:voy as well? --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:22, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly, if we have an article we want to link that, and the external link should be found in the article in question. I have used internal and external link mostly when the internal one is a redlink. –LPfi (talk) 08:37, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto as LPfi. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:40, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Page views last year

The sitewide page views showed a slightly strange pattern last year. We had two big spikes. The first spike, however, didn't correlate with a spike in unique devices (the second did).

To get a clearer view, it may be helpful to click the option for "Begin at zero" on the graph. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The first spike in February and March was similar to a spike in February 2018. For many of us it was during a time of near lockdown, and so was prob1ably caused my armchair travellers, unlike the second peak in August which was when travel was easier for many. From May 2020 onwards, the average monthly page views is about 2/3 of months before. The trends for other languages have some similarities.
Looking at individual articles, Around the World in Eighty Days has grown in popularity from being the 65th most popular page in September to the 4th most popular last month. A BBC TV series very loosely based on the book started showing in late December, which has obviously caused this. AlasdairW (talk) 00:42, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Related pages links at the bottom of the page

Hi all, Can anyone point me to where the explanation for the related pages links displayed below articles can be found? Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:07, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Confused should be wrapped with noexcerpt span

In response to my question at the Wikimedia support desk, TheDJ explained that the problem was caused by Template:Confused not being wrapped in <span class="noexcerpt"> ... </span>. I propose that we do this, as it seems costless to readers/editors and would improve compatibility with the Wikimedia API. (Other templates, e.g. Template:Other uses, are already wrapped.)

I apparently have rights to do this myself, and it looks simple enough, but I don't particularly want to, given that I have zero experience editing Wikimedia templates and I don't know their pitfalls. If we agree that this should be done, I am hoping that somebody with a bit more experience in this area could make the change. Brycehughes (talk) 13:52, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It seemed to be a no-brainer, so I did the change. If somebody sees any pitfalls, please check or undo. In the bug discussion, also "role=note" was recommended, but I am not sure what that does, so did not add it. –LPfi (talk) 14:11, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Weirdly, the API call's "extract" value is just a \n character now. Wondering out loud... would your change propagate that fast to the API? Damn, I should have tested it immediately before posting here. I guess I'll give it a few days and try again and if it's still being weird I'll follow up somewhere. Brycehughes (talk) 14:26, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I moved the image out of the way in the article just in case that was causing any weirdness. Will see what happens. Brycehughes (talk) 14:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I first tried to include everything in the <span></span>, but that made the ":" not work. Seems it uses the first paragraph, and the ":" line is interpreted as that first line. Extension:TextExtracts does not tell how to get around this. Adding a blank line? But span shouldn't span paragraph breaks. HTML for the ":"? –LPfi (talk) 15:17, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think the ":" is what TheDJ was referring to in the second half of the response? I think he might be saying we shouldn't use the ":" for indentation and instead use the CSS styling he suggests – this might allow us to kill two birds with one stone, but also seems to relate to a larger issue with our use of ":" in templates. I wonder if that CSS styling is documented anywhere. I could ask him in my MW support thread (though I kinda hate pestering those guys). Brycehughes (talk) 16:55, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Probably yes, to all of those. MediaWiki should have rendered ":" as <span ...> to begin with, but I suppose it is too late for that. I don't know what side effects changing the ":" to something else in all templates would have, but perhaps some of the technical folks here could comment. –LPfi (talk) 20:22, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay I followed up on my MW thread. Will report back. Brycehughes (talk) 22:35, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi LPfi, TheDJ responded and kindly implemented some fixes over here. The extract for Sun River works now, but it is a bit of a naive solution and in his response TheDJ notes a couple points of action: 1) He provides an example of using CSS styling to implement the indent, rather than using the ":"; 2) Noting the weirdness with the Template:Page banner in interacting with the extract parser, he suggests we "definitely add 'noexcerpt' to the hidden span with country data". I'll admit that (1) is a bit over my head and (2) I don't really understand, although it seems it might be a quick fix for somebody who knew what they were doing. So, a couple questions... do you understand both (1) and (2)? And do you think there is any fierce urgency to pursue these fixes now? One benefit that TheDJ mentioned was improved Google indexing, which might be a win for the site as a whole. Brycehughes (talk) 18:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take a look later. Ping me if I haven't commented here in a week. –LPfi (talk) 18:24, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Will do. Thanks. Brycehughes (talk) 00:39, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi LPfi, as promised. Personally, I'm not too fussed about this. If you feel like taking a look at TheDJ's suggestions, fantastic. But I'm not really sure of their importance and if you don't have the bandwidth right now I'm happy to shelve this to potentially bring it up again if I notice any weirdness in the future. Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 19:35, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I think I am going to do it at some time – not knowing how this works bugs me – but I think I'd better save it for another time. –LPfi (talk) 19:58, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Survey: Help improve Kartographer

Do you create interactive maps with Kartographer (mapframe)? If your answer is yes, we would like to hear from you. Please take part in our survey and help improve Kartographer! Where do you run into problems using it? Which new features would you like to see? Editors of all experience levels and with all workflows around Kartographer are welcome to participate.

Here is the survey: https://wikimedia.sslsurvey.de/Kartographer-Workflows-EN/

  • The survey is open until March 31.
  • It takes 10-15 minutes to complete.
  • The survey is anonymous. You don't need to register, and we will not store any personal data which identifies you, such as your name or IP address.

Unfortunately, the survey is only available in English, but we have tried our best to use simple English and to add visual examples. If English is not your native language, it might help to use a translation tool in your browser.

Some background: Wikimedia Germany's Technical Wishes team is currently working on the Kartographer extension. Over the last few months, we have been working on a solution to make this software usable on wikis where it isn’t available yet. In the next phase of the project, we are planning to improve Kartographer itself. Because Kartographer is used quite a lot on this wiki, we would love to hear about your experiences. More information on our work with Kartographer and the focus area of Geoinformation can be found on our project page.

Thank you for your help! – Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Who are our best map people? What problems are we having? This is a really important opportunity to ask for what we need, and we should not miss it. We've got 10 days. What can we do, to help them understand what we need? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who likes experimenting with dynamic maps, if there's two thing that I'd like, it's that we have
Isn't that about using a different map projection (such as a "polar Azimuthal equidistant projection"? Do the underlying tool's provide that as an option? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Andyrom75, @JIP, @Matroc, @FredTC, you all mentioned map problems and templates above on this page. Would you please click on https://wikimedia.sslsurvey.de/Kartographer-Workflows-EN/ and tell Johanna about it? The survey has several questions (e.g., are you mostly a reader, an editor, a template maintainer?) and the third page is all about problems. There are places to add your own text, and links to prior discussions are helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:48, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Thanks @WhatamIdoing for the ping. Andyrom75 (talk) 16:35, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah rats. I only saw this survey just now. I remember that there was an issue with this extension if the points cross over the 180th meridian. The points don't show side by side if it crosses this line, but rather wrapped around the prime meridian. You can see that in Taveuni in Fiji. (Others like the Kiribati, Aleutian Islands in Alaska, Chukotka in Russia and Antarctica are also susceptible). OhanaUnitedTalk page 14:36, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Join the Community Resilience and Sustainability Conversation Hour with Maggie Dennis

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

The Community Resilience and Sustainability team at the Wikimedia Foundation is hosting a conversation hour led by its Vice President Maggie Dennis.

Topics within scope for this call include Movement Strategy, Board Governance, Trust and Safety, the Universal Code of Conduct, Community Development, and Human Rights. Come with your questions and feedback, and let's talk! You can also send us your questions in advance.

The meeting will be on 24 March 2022 at 15:00 UTC (check your local time).

You can read details on Meta-wiki.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:38, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification voting is now closed

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

Greetings,

The ratification voting process for the revised enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) came to a close on 21 March 2022. Over 2300 Wikimedians voted across different regions of our movement. Thank you to everyone who participated in this process! The scrutinizing group is now reviewing the vote for accuracy, so please allow up to two weeks for them to finish their work.

The final results from the voting process will be announced here, along with the relevant statistics and a summary of comments as soon as they are available. Please check out the voter information page to learn about the next steps. You can comment on the project talk page on Meta-wiki in any language. You may also contact the UCoC project team by email: ucocproject(_AT_)wikimedia.org

Best regards,

Movement Strategy and Governance

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:11, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Shan Wikivoyage is live

shn: is being imported as we speak: a pretty incredible achievement for that community, as its 3.3 million speakers are localized in Burma and there is not a large Internet presence there as well as some serious internal difficulties with different ethnic populations, so congrats on all their hard work and တွၼ်ႈ (ကြို+ဆို+ပါ၏) to our comrades who are spreading free knowledge and culture for the world's benefit. (Sorry to all of my new Shan friends: I am too ignorant to use the interjection "welcome" and only know the verb...) —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:58, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Extracts broken

Extracts for a huge number of Wikivoyage articles on the V1 Rest API seem to suddenly be missing. For example, France (empty string in the "extract" field) and NYC (just a newline character). Did something change here recently? Thanks. Brycehughes (talk) 16:41, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Brycehughes, could you check again? Andyrom75 (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Andyrom75, still seems to be the case. I asked over at mw too. Brycehughes (talk) 16:56, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For comparison, London still works, but comparing the London vs. New York City articles I don't see anything that looks like a salient difference. Brycehughes (talk) 17:04, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Update: it's the page banner template. I tested it on Fada. Removing the page banner template restored the extract in the REST API summary call. But London has a page banner template as well, so I'm really not sure what is going on. Brycehughes (talk) 17:13, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see the following output:
X
France
X
London
Is it ok? --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:27, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Compare the "extract" field on those two. Notice the France one is empty (""), while the London one has the extract ("Noisy, vibrant and truly multicultural..."). The extract field is what websites (like Google with en.wp) use to create page summaries in their results. For some reason this seems to be missing in a ton (maybe the majority) of wv pages now. The mediawiki extract parser is choking on something. Brycehughes (talk) 17:32, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, how's this for a crazy idea? I'd like to minimize the problem, and right now I am assuming that the problem, or at least the code that is choking the parser, lies somewhere in the Pagebanner template. What if I created a new, temporary template (not entirely sure that I have the permissions to do this), and I copied the Pagebanner template code to that new template. I then pick some obscure page, let's say Fada, where I replace the Pagebanner template with my own copy. I can then start deleting components in my own template until I find the line that is breaking the parser. Armed with that information (assuming my plan works), I can then approach the MediaWiki parsing team and say, "hey, I believe this code is breaking the parser". With luck they'd be able to tell me whether it is a problem on our end or on their end and perhaps even what to do about it. Does this sound insane? If it does, anyone have a better idea on how I can sandbox/start tackling this? Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 15:40, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not a crazy idea. The approach is often used for finding a software bug: try to find the simplest code that triggers it. There are bugs that are hard to find this way, especially those that appear in a quasi-random fashion, such as often when race conditions or exhaustion of some odd resource are involved. If this started to happen recently, without changes to the template, it can easily be something odd. –LPfi (talk) 18:08, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh... yeah... I think we got ourselves a Heisenbug. Added my test template to Fada, extract returned properly. Then rolled it back to original page template banner and the extract is still there :facepalm: Brycehughes (talk) 18:53, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Freaking bizarre. All it takes to restore the extract is to delete the Pagebanner template, save the page, and then restore it. Seems like this is definitely one for the Mediawiki folks. Thanks all. LPfi, perhaps you could delete Template:Test1pagebanner when you get a chance? Brycehughes (talk) 19:24, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for trying it out. I leave the test template for the time being, we might still want to do some experimenting. –LPfi (talk) 19:40, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, cheers. Brycehughes (talk) 19:43, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Looks like there's a bug report out for this (or at least a very similar issue)... since November :/ Brycehughes (talk) 19:06, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Importante message from WikiSP

Important Message

Help us!

We, Wikimedia Small Projects in Spanish, as an official affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation watch over all the small projects of the movement and carry out initiatives for the communities to benefit. Today we have made a request for general support to fund our annual action plan.

What will we do?

  • DataVoyage in Commons: An editing workshop on how to collaborate with Wikidata, Wikivoyage and Commons (eswikivoyage only),
  • Wikivoyage 10: A contest celebrating Wikivoyage's ten years as part of the Wikimedia family (all communities),
  • Wikivoyage Asian Month: A contest in which you can write guides related to Asia (all communities),
  • Wikivoyage mobile app: A prototype that will allow mobile access to Wikivoyages
  • Small Projects Conference: A conference where we talk about all the small projects of the Wikimedia movement, as well as agreements and ideas to implement in the future.

What can you do?


We are here to change course and it is only possible with your support!


Learn more

21:28, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikivoyage's 10th anniversary is already coming up?! It feels like the 5th was just a little while ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't here back in 2018, but time really has flown since then. It seems that the museum piece (aka The Other Site) is only getting worse day by day based on a weekly check I do. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 20:52, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is what I can do for the upcoming 10-year anniversary of Wikivoyage. A video to put on the YouTube channel. Video- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b4EJKWyB9bZDibAEmDgGQ0wfPsYCsw-q/view . It took about 2 hours. Suggest some changes or correction and feel free to criticize Cheers! :) 2006nishan178713t@lk 19:41, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@2006nishan178713 Nice video – don't think there's anything criticise, even if you go extra nitpicky ;-). The only thing I'd say is that the 31000 could become 32000 soon (we currently have 32,812, and if we manage to create a little over 700, it may become 32000 soon). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:14, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes! 2006nishan178713t@lk 12:44, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And, of course, it's been around since 2003, but was only adopted later. It was a very early MediaWiki wiki. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:08, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If we count since the first wikivoyage was migrated would be Sep 23. If we count since the first wikivoyage accepted, Jan 07 (eswikivoyage). But our birthday is Jan 15! Galahad (sasageyo!)(esvoy) 23:50, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I remember @GVarnum-WMF saying something about trying to make a list of the birthdays-as-celebrated a while ago. I assume that the Wikivoyages are on the list for January 15th. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:01, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @WhatamIdoing, have you seen this List of Wikimedia Birthdays? MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 20:16, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link, @MPourzaki (WMF). It looks like all of the Wikivoyages are on the "needs verification" list, and only English and German are listed separately. @RolandUnger and DerFussi, can you check the German "birthday" on that page? English is correct, as far as I know. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: There are two Wikivoyage birthdays: On Dec. 10, 2006, Wikivoyage went online in Germany as a new project forked from Wikitravel (so Wikivoyage is now 15 years old). On Jan. 15, 2013, Wikivoyage officially became a Wikimedia project. On this day, the Wikipedia turned 12. On Nov. 9, 2012 Wikivoyage was available from Wikimedia servers. On Sep. 23, 2012 the English Wikivoyage was started, in October, 2012 the Netherlandish, French, Swedish and Russian ones followed. In the list mentioned above I added the Italian Wikivoyage which was started on the 1st Wikivoyage birthday. --RolandUnger (talk) 05:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
English Wikivoyage at the Wayback Machine. --RolandUnger (talk) 05:34, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understand it's inconvenient, as the original name has changed hands, but shouldn't we also keep in mind the date when the project was started as a private initiative on a private server? I think that for the early contributors the unfortunate things that happened in-between is a parenthesis that doesn't mean the origins are to be forgotten. –LPfi (talk) 06:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think this particular list is only for "official birthdays", which may or may not have much relationship to first edits. Whatever date each Wikivoyage (or other) community prefers to count as their anniversary is the one that belongs in this list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:01, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a good idea to write down the history, but that would belong on another page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:02, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(Aside) Has anyone tried to make 'travel' video content? I am thinking more in the viewn of the Holiday shows the BBC used to have as opposed to "Since the dawn, Time-Life has been presenting it's majestic hyperbole across screens globally. Seldom have the eyes..." type travelouge. 88.97.96.89 14:35, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
m:VideoWiki lets you make a sort of narrated slideshow. You can include both video and still images. The machine-generated voice option is not impressive, but recording a real voice means that you can't change the text later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

LintErrors

Thanks to some efforts earlier, I am reasonably satisfied that the 'content' side of English Wikivoyage has been de-linted as far as I am able to without additional expertise.

What remains unlinted is User pages, and what are essentially Talk and discussion namespaces, but a consensus has emerged that these should not be adjusted (even in good faith.)

Congratulations. It only took 4 years to de-lint English Wikivoayge :).

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:54, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Where's the discussion about delinting user pages? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:00, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have the specfic discussion to hand, but it was what I had been advised off wiki by a number of contributors (not necessarily directly on Wikivoyage though). In any event non account-holder changes to userspace pages are now generally considered bad practice I've been told. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:29, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you have admin/custodian status and want to resolve the few remaining LintErrors in User and various talk namespaces (most likely signatures that were accepted under previous versions of Mediawiki/HTML/CSS etc.) , I can't stop you obviously. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:31, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't care about this kind of stuff, but I was asking because I didn't remember seeing a discussion on this topic. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:57, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, some consensus on another Wiki does not apply to Wikivoyage. So if you really want to know what people on Wikivoyage think, you have to actually ask them... Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:03, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but what we care about and what we should care about are not necessarily the same thing. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:08, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the work in mainspace was good, as broken syntax may result in broken pages for some readers. For user space, more discussion would be needed. For some users it is no problem – many like other contributors fixing things on their user pages – for others it may be problematic, especially if the fix breaks something else and they aren't here to revert or complain. –LPfi (talk) 07:36, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is a table of the lint errors at fireflytools. For things such as the obsolete font tags, if those were to be fixed by updating them to span tags, then I think that should be done by via a bot account. -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:17, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See also Special:LintErrors. The "high priority" items are generally things that have the potential to make a page look visibly broken. Ideally there would be none of those in any namespace, though obviously many people will decide that it is not worth their own time and efforts to fix problems in low-traffic user pages. I wouldn't be inclined to stop anyone from fixing errors anywhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:01, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that a dive site template has "bogus file parameters" of (NNNpx). This seems to be explanatory text in examples. How do we normally handle that? –LPfi (talk) 17:16, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A popular article writing competition CEE Spring (about Central and Eastern Europe; now with special subcategory about Esperanto) is happening on the English Wikipedia until the 31st May 2022. I warmly invite you to participate, write some article and win a valuable prize! If you have question, I will happily answer it on the competition page talk.

Also, for more wide outreach, I have just asked for a CentralNotice, which should appear also in this project. If you have a comment on the request, you are welcome to write it on the request page. --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 18:30, 3 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Better still for this wiki, write Wikivoyage articles about Central and Eastern Europe. Nurg (talk) 05:06, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 6

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 6, April 2022Read the full newsletter

Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.


  • Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
  • Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
  • Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
  • Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reach out to us! (continue reading)
  • The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
  • Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
  • Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about Movement Strategy on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:27, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Join the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan conversations with Maryana Iskander

Hello,

The Movement Communications and Movement Strategy and Governance teams invite you to discuss the 2022-23 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, a plan of record for the Wikimedia Foundation's work.

These conversations continue Maryana Iskander's Wikimedia Foundation Chief Executive Officer listening tour.

The conversations are about these questions:

  • The 2030 Wikimedia Movement Strategy sets a direction toward "knowledge as a service" and "knowledge equity". The Wikimedia Foundation wants to plan according to these two goals. How do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should apply them to our work?
  • The Wikimedia Foundation continues to explore better ways of working at a regional level. We have increased our regional focus in areas like grants, new features, and community conversations. What is working well? How can we improve?
  • Anyone can contribute to the Movement Strategy process. Let's collect your activities, ideas, requests, and lessons learned. How can the Wikimedia Foundation better support the volunteers and affiliates working in Movement Strategy activities?

You can find the schedule of calls on Meta-wiki.

The information will be available in multiple languages. Each call will be open to anyone to attend. Live interpretation will be available in some calls.

Best regards,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:49, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements

Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 29 April 2022 at 13:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 88045453898. Dial by your location.

Agenda

  • Update on the recent developments
  • Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Italian, and Polish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is this about Vector 2022? I won't be at the meeting, but I certainly don't like the development. Luckily, Monobook is still there for me. I made a comment at their feedback page, but last I checked (long after I made the comment) nobody had answered. My primary concern is that the layout is miserable unless you have a wide enough browser window (I like narrow ones), and that many important links are hidden to have a "cleaner" look (mostly in a drop-down menu; I even cannot just type in an article name, I have to either maximise the window first, or go to the search page, or just edit the URL in the browser's address field). –LPfi (talk) 10:01, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @SGrabarczuk (WMF). LP, it sounds like your screen is narrower than the header, with the result that the search box (which AIUI is meant to be both bigger and centered than in the 2010 version of Vector) is missing/collapsed/unusable. Is that right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone wants to see the options, click these links:
These links won't change your preferences. They'll only load the skin for this one page/one time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:14, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. My browser window is narrower than the header. Not my screen though, but I use several windows, e.g. to see a Wikipedia page and a map while I am editing a Wikivoyage guide. I have yet to understand why people keep to the one-application-at-the-time style from before windowing systems were introduced. The alt-tab function helps a bit, but that I used (shift-control-^, if memory serves) already with the VT220 text terminals of the 1980s. Thanks for the skin links. –LPfi (talk) 16:31, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And it's not only the header. The left-margin menu pushes down the content, so that I have to scroll down every time I load a new page. Very frustrating. –LPfi (talk) 16:34, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @LPfi, I'm sorry for not answering! Let me answer your questions here.
  • As for the left-margin menu, if you collapse it, it should stay collapsed and not push down the content.
  • Regarding the question you asked on the project talk page ("does the empty space to the right of the margin menu really give the best possible experience") we are still building the new interface, one feature improvement at a time. The empty space you have referred to is temporary. Now, we're working on page tools which will make a clear distinction between wiki-wide links (like Recent changes) and page-related links (like Related changes) and bring balance to the space on both sides of the content area.
  • The narrow screen... I'll talk about that with the team. Generally, we are aiming to make the interface usable on narrow screens or vertical screens (although not mobile). We're trying to keep the minimal threshold of the default experience as narrow as possible.
  • In this context, that thing with the left-margin menu and other things... I think it'd fit to the last phase of the project when we'll be working on aesthetic refinements to the entire interface (as opposed to improving individual features).
SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the tips on collapsing the menu. I didn't notice that possibility. However, when I tested it now, I had to collapse it separately on any new page when following links.
  • Nice that you'll get rid of the empty space. When I tried the skin, I did not find any discussion on unsolved problems or on which deficiencies were about yet unimplemented aspects and which were intended features. I might not have looked deep enough. Separation between page tools and other links seems a good goal; I hope the links will still be easily available to users like me, who know the links and can disregard those not needed at the moment (a need you seem to acknowledge).
  • Really nice. As of now I got some of the problems with my default window width, while others surfaced with width I use only occasionally. It is important though, to be able to get a narrow window in certain situations, and being able to get rid of the left margin is then an immense help. I hope the suggested new placement of the table of contents won't infer with this.
    (I think it is important to make the distinction between window and screen size explicit in any design discussion, as common or realistic widths of the former aren't restricted to those of the latter, and I have seen web pages that adjust to the latter, more or less ignoring the former, which should be the relevant one.)
  • OK, you know better when and how to do those things, they just should be fixed before general roll-out.
–LPfi (talk) 09:02, 27 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah! Now the collapsing worked. I hadn't enabled Javascript for the Mediawiki site, and enabling it did not have immediate effect. Hm. I have enabled Javascript for all Wikimedia projects I visit regularly, but I am a regular contributor. Is the casual visitor with Javascript disabled (for all or some of the domains) a use case you take into consideration? –LPfi (talk) 09:07, 27 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

2022 Board of Trustees Call for Candidates

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

The Board of Trustees seeks candidates for the 2022 Board of Trustees election. Read more on Meta-wiki.

The 2022 Board of Trustees election is here! Please consider submitting your candidacy to serve on the Board of Trustees.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. Community-and-affiliate selected trustees and Board-appointed trustees make up the Board of Trustees. Each trustee serves a three year term. The Wikimedia community has the opportunity to vote for community-and-affiliate selected trustees.

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Zuz (WMF) (talk) 12:53, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Next steps: Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines

The Community Affairs Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees would like to thank everyone who participated in the recently concluded community vote on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC).

While the Enforcement Guidelines did reach a threshold of support necessary for the Board to review, we encouraged voters, regardless of which way they were voting, to provide feedback on the elements of the enforcement guidelines that they felt needed to be changed or fixed, as well as why, in case it seemed advisable to launch a further round of edits that would address community concerns.

Foundation staff who have been reviewing comments have advised us of some of the emerging themes, and as a result we have decided as Community Affairs Committee to ask the Foundation to reconvene the drafting committee and to undertake another community engagement to refine the enforcement guidelines based on the community feedback received from the recently concluded vote.

Further, we are aware of the concerns with the note 3.1 in the Universal Code of Conduct Policy. We are directing the Foundation to facilitate a review of this language to ensure that the Policy meets its intended purposes of supporting a safe and inclusive community, without waiting for the planned review of the entire Policy at the end of year.

Please visit here to read the full announcement.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:53, 28 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Make working with templates easier: One more improvement coming soon.

Hello, one more change from WMDE’s focus area “Templates” is coming to your wiki soon: In syntax highlighting (CodeMirror extension), you’ll be able to activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme with a user setting. (project page)

Deployment is planned for May 10. This is the last set of improvements from WMDE’s focus area “Templates”. We would love to hear your feedback.

Thanks for being one of the first wikis to get the improvements from our project, and for giving valuable feedback! – Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:55, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: Relevant social network/app

https://travelfacets.com/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:33, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Editing news 2022 #1

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

New editors were more successful with this new tool.

The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at the 20 Wikipedias that participated in the test. You will be able to turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

Whatamidoing (WMF) 18:55, 2 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Template for approval: Template:ColonialEmpires

Didn't create the template, but submitting it for community approval anyway (per our controversially strict policy on templates). Helps readers navigate through our colonialism articles and currently produces the following output: Template:ColonialEmpires

Don't see any reason to oppose this template. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:28, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To what extent were the Ottoman and Austrian Empires colonial? Weren't they mostly more traditional multi-national empires? Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:33, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Should the template then be renamed to Template:Empires, and the "Colonial empires" line be replaced with "Empires"? But then we'd also have to include the Tibetan Empire, the Mongol Empire and so on. @The dog2:, any suggestions? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:38, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Do we really need the template? Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:48, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We have Template:NordicCountries, and this is similar to that one, so why not? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:52, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not, because it's very clear what the Nordic countries are. My suggestion is, if you think it's really important to have an article that simply links all the articles about empires, create it and link everything there, with 1-liner listings. I'm going to oppose the use of this template. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:03, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't we just discuss an article on colonialism above (see #"Article" on colonialism)? Also, the template is in use for all the articles linked, snd I'm not sure if it's worth removing them tbh. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:22, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I decided to create this template as an alternative to actually creating an article that would have hardly any travel content. Ikan Kekek is mostly right about Austria-Hungary, but they they had a concession zone in China, which for all intents and purposes was a colony, albeit a very small one. I think we can restrict inclusion to just European-style colonial empires that arose out of the Age of Discovery. Japan is included here because even though it is not a Western country, Japan adopted its model of colonialism from the West. I don't think the Ottoman Empire had colonies, which is why I originally did not include it, but I could be wrong. The dog2 (talk) 14:53, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's a possible solution. I'd like to say, though, that there is no need or call for creating an article about empires, because there's already a Monarchies article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:26, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The United States has always been a republic since its founding, but it had (and some would argue continues to have) overseas colonies. So in that sense, it could loosely be considered a colonial empire, even if it did not technically have an emperor in charge. And likewise, there were periods of time that France and the Netherlands had colonial empires even though they were republics. The dog2 (talk) 17:32, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, from a traveller's perspective, I think the question would be if there are any listing of places overseas where you can go and see the legacy of colonial rule. In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there are colonial buildings in Tianjin that you can still go and see today. And likewise, there are lots of Russian colonial buildings you can see in Harbin and Dalian. The dog2 (talk) 17:43, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The usual traveller's perspective of the Austrian/Austro-Hungarian Empire is that it left a huge mark on Central Europe. It's much more unusual to look for the relics of their much briefer presence in Tianjin. And Russian colonialism was mostly focused on capturing and settling eastward and incorporating all that territory through annexation, just as the greater part of U.S. colonialism was focused on doing the same thing westward. It's the complexities of these situations that make the oversimplification of a template problematic. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:13, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, let's see what others say. My view is that we can loosely consider the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires to be colonial empires, since it is a fact that they had overseas colonies, regardless of how small or few they were. I'd remove the the Ottoman Empire because it was a classical contiguous multi-ethnic empire with no overseas colonies (Yvwv was the one who added it, so maybe he can comment if I'm wrong on this), much like China and the Mongol Empire. The Philippines was an American colony, so I'd consider the U.S. to have been a colonial power, perhaps still one if you consider the likes to Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to be colonies. The dog2 (talk) 20:41, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to have a more general conversation about whether we want any navbox-style templates at all. If we don't want articles to contain a one-size-fits-all set of links to other articles, then there's no point in talking about whether we want this particular collection of one-size-fits-all set of links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't much like the navboxes even on Wikipedia, and I think it is sufficiently easy to link related articles in context, in the running text. However, I have understood that some people like them, so I haven't been fighting them too hard. This specific grouping has additional problems: what articles are related isn't well defined, and not all of the listed articles tell about the colonialist aspect of the empires (is listing a few destinations and sights really enough?). –LPfi (talk) 07:16, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also not convinced this grouping makes sense for travellers. If someone wants to travel to places related to the Japanese colonial empire, does that mean they're also likely to be interested in the Swedish colonial empire? Other navigation templates I've seen serve travellers with a certain interest – Template:Asian cuisines and similar for foodies, the one at American Civil War for US history buffs, the one at Australasian wildlife for wildlife enthusiasts. Are there empire enthusiasts who would find this template useful? —Granger (talk · contribs) 09:44, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure to be fair, but it's definitely better than having an article on Colonialism. I could see that happening on the encyclopedia, but find it hard on a travel guide (or even Wikibooks to be fair). (also, for the cuisine one, maybe Template:Asian cuisines is a bit of a misleading template, but Template:EuropeanCuisines has a similar purpose, but doesn't have anything misleading in it, but same thing...). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:59, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I still think that a travel guide to colonialism could make sense, if well-written. I don't see that any of us would write that article (lack of time, skill or interest). For Wikibooks, I can very well see such a book written. Why not? That too would be hard (I don't know which is harder), but if you are a history teacher, you might want that book for your pupils. For travellers it is much more of a niche topic. –LPfi (talk) 11:27, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing For what it's worth, de.voy also uses these navboxes in destination articles, such as the one seen in de:Piton des Neiges#Weblinks, de:Südamerika or de:Southland#Weblinks. We could follow de.voy, but I'm not a fan of de.voy slapping it into nearly every single region article. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:05, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I don't know how a travel topic on colonialism in general will work. I don't think there are any monuments to colonialism in general. But on the other hand, there are numerous historical monuments and buildings in distant lands from their respective metropoles that are a reminder of that legacy of colonial rule. If you go to Hanoi for instance, there are so many French colonial buildings, and likewise, there are so many British colonial buildings if you go to Yangon. The dog2 (talk) 15:09, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that people travel for the purpose of seeing monuments to colonialism, so I'm not sure that it's a pointful page to create. I'm not aware of any monuments to the general concept of colonialism, but there are many, many monuments to the local history of colonialism. See, e.g., all the statues of Christopher Columbus in the Americas, or the bells along El Camino Real in California. The length of w:en:Colonial empire#List of colonial empires makes me suspect that "history of colonialism" overlaps substantially with "history of the world since Alexander the Great". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:17, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely. Which I would say we should limit inclusion in the template to only European-style colonial empires that developed starting from the Age of Discovery, in order to keep this to a manageable size, and because that is what people typically think of when we talk about "colonies". That means that the only remaining empires to be added, if an when their articles get created, are the American, Belgian, German and Italian empires. I know that the Russian Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire were primarily contiguous multi-ethnic empires, but they did have overseas colonies, so they can stay. On the other hand, I'd get rid of the Ottoman Empire because it did not have overseas colonies. I think this template helps with ease of navigation, as someone who is interested in exploring the legacy of the colonial age might learn from our article that Russia had overseas colonies too, for instance, and plan a trip to see the legacy of Russian colonialism. The dog2 (talk) 18:19, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We're getting into complexities here. I've mentioned before that Russian and American colonialism was primarily directed at contiguous land to the east and west respectively that was settled by members of the ruling ethnicity and annexed, and the Austrian Empire was known for being a multi-national empire in the center of Europe; its overseas possessions are a very minor, almost incidental point and didn't exist for most of its history. So I don't like a one-size-fits-all treatment of these powers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:34, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I took note of that. The United States had Liberia and the Philippines though, which were overseas colonies in the traditional European sense. Russia had a few colonial possessions in China which also fit that bill (and I'm not counting the likes of Vladivostok here, which was Chinese territory that Russia annexed, and is today part of Russia). The dog2 (talk) 18:39, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Northeastern China is contiguous with Russia, so that fits the pattern of colonialism in Siberia, and concentrating on former or even current overseas colonies of the U.S. distorts the overwhelming history of U.S. colonialism that has primarily consisted of settling territories with white people and incorporating them as states. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:42, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's true of Northeastern China, but Russia also had colonial possessions in Tianjin and Hankou (today part of Wuhan), although those were much smaller than the one in Northeast China. And I think the Russians also had a small short-lived colony in Africa before they were driven out by the French. The dog2 (talk) 18:52, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding Russian colonialism, what about w:Russian America? There are also Russian colonial sites that travelers can visit, such as w:Russian Fort Elizabeth. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:05, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The template might help those who want to read about colonial empires. But what about those who want to read about empires in general? Should there be another template for that? Perhaps a third for European empires, a forth for European history, and so on. I don't see colonialism as the focal point of Swedish Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire or Russian Empire. The empires might have been colonialist, but our articles are mostly about other aspects. –LPfi (talk) 19:33, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
They're not the focal points, but the overseas possessions are also listed. It would not make sense to create articles to specifically cover the overseas colonies of Austria-Hungary and Russia given that there weren't many, and those that existed were small. However, they should be and are listed in the respective articles about those empires. Similarly, the article on the British Empire should cover Ireland even though Ireland was never technically a "colony", but regarded as part of the UK (although any fair-minded person can't deny that the Irish were treated as colonial subjects and not citizens during the Great Potato Famine). The dog2 (talk) 19:42, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The more we talk about this, the more I think we should delete this template and replace it with only the relevant links, in normal sentences, in articles. That means that instead of (not "in addition to") sticking Template:ColonialEmpires in the eleven articles linked there, we write sentences in places like Sweden#Understand and Wismar#Understand that link to Swedish Empire, and even sentences in articles like Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire to explain that they were rivals. What we wouldn't do is assume that people reading a travel guide want to compare see a list of all articles on empires, including empires that have no connection to each other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:17, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Readers who want to read about empires in general should go to Wikipedia. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:30, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose since it is not very travel-related & the topic is too complex for the template to work well.
It does not have the German or American colonies. What about various Islamic Caliphates? Weren't there once Empires in sub-saharan Africa?
It omits Imperial China, Alexander the Great's empire, Roman Empire, Persian Empire & the Mongol Empire, all of which conquered other nations. One could argue that those were contiguous land-based empires, so not in this category, but then the Russian, Ottoman & Austro-Hungarian empires were mostly like that too.
What about Russia's control of Eastern Europe in the Cold War period, CIA support for various coups, US invasions in Latin America, recent Chinese land grabbing such as Spratly Islands? Those all look like rather nasty imperialism to me, but not like topics that belong in a travel guide. Pashley (talk) 08:04, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Those empire articles you linked are not colonial empires. Also, we're not handling individual colonies in this template, only the various travel topics about colonial articles. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:06, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with WhatamIdoing on this: "The more we talk about this, the more I think we should delete this template and replace it with only the relevant links, in normal sentences, in articles." Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:14, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
These are not articles about imperialism in general. These are articles that have listings of where you can go to see the legacy of having been ruled by that empire. Articles about imperialism in general do not belong on Wikivoyage unless there are monuments to imperialism that are tourist attractions. The dog2 (talk) 15:09, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And with regard to American, German, Italian and Belgian colonies, my plan was to add them to the template once the articles on those empires are created. The dog2 (talk) 19:16, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts are with The dog2 on this one, but if we cannot agree to what should be included, then we should only include what can be found in the "Colonial" section of the Modern Empires section in w:Template:Empires. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 03:27, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there is a consensus to support the continued use of this navbox. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:24, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To The dog2: Sure, a good travel article about the Russian colonial legacy in the U.S. could be written. If it is written, I don't think Russian America is a good title, because there have been several waves of immigration from Russia/the U.S.S.R. that do not relate to Russian colonialism in the Americas. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:37, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In view of the lack of approval of this template, I've nominated it for deletion. Please participate in the discussion in that thread. Thanks, everybody! Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:41, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not opposed to this template by any means. Omitting the whataboutism that is half the discussions above, I think this template could better be renamed something along the lines of (modern) imperialism instead of colonialism. As others have said, not all of these are strictly colonial, but all of them are imperialist in nature. The articles are mostly interlinked in both the articles themselves as well as the "See also" sections, and I can see a template being useful because of that. Strong support from me for this template as {{ModernImperialEmpires}} or similar, and somewhat milder support as-is.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 22:00, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If so, what would you do with Mughal Empire? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:44, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That would depend on the scope of the template. If it's modern imperial empires only, I wouldn't include it. Modern imperialism is generally a term reserved for just European empires. The Ottoman Empire also is debatable for that reason. Ideally, I'd class the Ottoman and Mughal Empires, as well as some others as the w:Gunpowder empires, either in a sister template, or as a second grouping within this template (the scope of which would then be Modern Empires). My own grouping would look like such:
Modern Imperialist Empires1
Austria-Hungary • British • Danish • Dutch • French • Japanese (colonial) • Portuguese • Russian • Spanish • Swedish.
Gunpowder Empires
China2 • Mughal • Ottoman • Japan (pre-modern) • Safavid
(1) One could call this European Empires, but the inclusion of Japan would be strange in that case. Its colonial empire however, largely formed as a response to European imperialism, so the name wouldn't be wrong, just not intuitive.
(2) I am not well-versed in Chinese history, but I believe this mostly includes the Ming and Qing dynasties.
If there's any other empires that could be included, let me know and I'll update this list. Wauteurz (talk) 10:55, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you are talking about empires that have existed since 1200 AD, the Mughal Empire can't be excluded (and I have no idea what you mean by "modern imperial empires": it was certainly a huge empire that conquered a lot of territory and threw its weight around), but it's an empire that was victimized by colonialism, not a colonial empire. Moreover, there have been empires in Africa since then, too. And I would observe that what we have right now is an absurd situation, in which there is a consensus or near-consensus in this thread against using this template, but a consensus in Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion#Template:ColonialEmpires to keep this template and use it for...something. So anyone who doesn't want us to use a navbar for some more or less arbitrary grouping of empires should please participate in the Votes for deletion thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:46, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If there's something that will always annoy me, it's people taking my words to imply a message that I do not stand behind. Though I appreciate your input, I'd also appreciate it if you didn't do that again. Going point by point for the sake of clarity:
  • 1200 AD is an arbitrary point I set for the sake of illustration. It isn't set in stone. If you want a better boundary, might I suggest the Age of Discovery up to the Age of Decolonisation (i.e., ±1450 - ±1950). I am willing to consider any other boundaries for the template's scope if you have any to bring forward.
  • Modern Imperial Empires are empires that practise modern imperialism; they are generally speaking European (excluding Japan post-1850s and some others) and were created with colonialism and exploitation of said colonies for benefit of the homeland in mind.
  • Mughal Empire: I never said the Mughal Empire was not a victim of colonialism, nor that it was a colonial empire. This part of the discussion is my attempt to take what's useful of this template, and to suggest ways in which it can improve. The template's current scope around colonialism has proven to be controversial with some, so my proposal omits that basis. Therefore, anything I have said in this part of the discussion cannot be taken to represent my opinions on colonialism. Please take that context into account when next paraphrasing me.
  • African empires: This entire discussion is filled with whataboutism (why include X and not Y?), which I am trying to move away from. I am not saying that there is no place for African, or any kind of empire within my suggestion for an improved scope. I don't include them as they haven't been raised yet, and since I want to move away from the "what to list"-discussion, and into an actual discussion about the usefulness of this template.
  • Consensus: Here, the arguments against the template are arguments predominantly against what it does and doesn't see as colonialism, as well as concerns about how travel-related it is. The latter it isn't on its own, but it supports articles that all revolve around historical travel, thus being useful to the site. The former meanwhile isn't an argument against this template being useful, which is what template approval discussions ought to revolve around. By illustrating what it can be, I am trying to shift the conversation more into a nuanced "what can be"-discussion than a black-or-white "use it or trash it"-discussion, as I believe the second to be less fruitful.
I truly believe in this template's usefulness, and I am trying to seek a way in which it can work for more people. The way I see it, most of this discussion is off-the-rails and missing the point of a template approval discussion.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Modern Imperial Empires are empires that practise modern imperialism" is a circular definition. Explain what that means and, for example, how it could include Russia but exclude the Mughal or Songhai Empires. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:25, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pointing out why something might not make sense is not "whataboutism." To begin with, I subscribe to User:WhatamIdoing's thinking about this template as per se not useful to travelers, but I am also seeing, so far, that is isn't very useful to try to classify empires in any general sense in regard to travel. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:28, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And we should not use Eurocentric terms like "gunpowder empires." From the Wikipedia article about the term that you linked, read w:Gunpowder empires#Recent views on the concept. Besides, it's an obscure term that I managed to avoid knowing for 57 years while knowing and even teaching plenty about history. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:33, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the first, refer to the sentence after it: "They are generally speaking European (excluding Japan post-1850s and some others) and were created with colonialism and exploitation of said colonies for benefit of the homeland in mind." Mughal and Songhai are not included for a difference in technologies available to them compared to modern imperialist empires. Russia is included, due to it functioning similar to Austro-Hungary when it comes to imperialism: Expand into adjacent lands, make them core territory, and repeat. I am oversimplifying, but categorisation requires generalisation of some sort.
The template isn't useful to every traveller, but doesn't need to be. It is instead useful to a historically interested traveller, as many individual colonies belonged to more than one coloniser during their existence.
I cannot stress enough that nothing in the example above is set in stone. I used Gunpowder Empires as an example, not as what should be implemented. Feel free to come with better alternatives if you have them.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 19:26, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the differences in technology of armaments are very relevant to travelers. My suggested alternative is to include a section of links to articles on empires in the Monarchies article, with a 1-liner listing for each. That way, no navbar is needed and no agreement on any kind of classification is needed, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:29, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Again, simplifying here, but clubs and spears have a different appeal than rifles and muskets for many. The first can be seen as primitive, while the second can be more advanced. I think you're underestimating the technological differences there. To some with historical interest, they have very different appeals. The link with Monarchies, as I pointed out in the VfD thread, is too forced to work well.
Honestly, I can get behind not having a navbar, but a suitable replacement definitely can benefit the traveller for the reasons I listed in the VfD thread. An underlying general article on colonialism, empires or imperialism can definitely be of benefit, albeit for a somewhat niche audience, but niche articles we already have plenty of, so that shouldn't be an issue, right? Wauteurz (talk) 20:10, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the differences in technology have an effect on the impressiveness of the sights travelers can see that come down to us from the empires in question. To be honest, there's probably nothing more impressive than the Sphinx and pyramids of ancient Egypt, but I haven't seen them in person. I have seen the Taj Mahal, the Red Forts in Delhi and Agra, the Great Wall of China and the temple complexes in Prambanan and Borobudur, not to mention the Parthenon, Pompeii, Herculaneum, the Roman Forum and the Maison Carree in Nimes. But I digress. You'll see that I'm warming to the idea of a carefully circumscribed and aggressively travel-related article about colonialism in the Vfd thread. I'd be OK with it if it starts with the ancient Phoenicians; has disclaimers that the topic is controversial but as this is a travel guide, we are being merely descriptive; and stipulates that we are concentrating on overseas colonization. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:30, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

[outdent]
I don't think the articles on empires were written as a series on colonialism. I am not very happy about a template making it seem they were. If we want a template, why is it not about empires in general, or about historic realms? I think people reading about historic empires are likely to be interested in historic realms (although perhaps not all of them). Assuming they are interested in colonialism is to jump to conclusions. Of course some are. But as many of them are probably interested in some other aspect of the empire they are reading about: its languages, its modern successors, its cities, its arts, you name it.

My impression is that the template is there because somebody wanted the article on colonialism, and this is what they thought they'd be able to get. I think I prefer the article Colonialism. It seems nobody is going to write a good thorough travel article on the theme in the foreseeable future, but what about one with a paragraph or two on colonial empires, linking those and related articles, such as European history and Age of Discovery, and then going on to tell about destinations where it is easy to see (or study) heritage of several colonial empires – checking that those aspects are covered in the destination articles?

–LPfi (talk) 15:25, 11 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just so people know, I've moved a draft of the deleted American colonialism article to my userspace, which I am happy for others to edit too. I guess we can expand the scope to also including the westward expansion of the United States, and sites that commemorate things like the genocide of the Native Americans. I'm trying to add listings of sites that actual remind people of the legacy of American colonial rule so it can be reinstated into articlespace. The dog2 (talk) 15:17, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Who's your audience for that page? What traveller do you imagine would be using that guide? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's aimed at people who want to see the legacy of American colonial rule in various different parts of the world. Something along the lines of the articles of the other colonial empires. But as Ikan Kekek mentioned, a large part of American colonialism was expanding Westward by genociding the Native Americans, settling their lands with white people, and later granting statehood to the the colonies once the white population was large enough. So while we already have an Old West article covering that aspect of American colonialism, I guess that aspect should at least be mentioned in an article about American colonialism, but with the focus of the article being the listing of overseas sites where you can go and explore the legacy of American colonial rule. The dog2 (talk) 17:12, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Do many such people exist?
I can easily imagine someone wanting to understand a specific country's history. For example, if you are interested in the Philippines, then you would be interested in Spanish colonization (16th to 19th centuries), US colonization (first half of 20th century), and Japanese colonization (a couple of years around WWII). I'm having trouble imagining a person who says "My goal is to see every place in the world that <this country> colonized". Without a mental picture of the traveller, it's hard to form a hypothesis about what kind of information might be useful or relevant in the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Call for Election Volunteers

The Movement Strategy and Governance team is looking for community members to serve as election volunteers in the upcoming Board of Trustees election.

The idea of the Election Volunteer Program came up during the 2021 Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election. This program turned out to be successful. With the help of Election Volunteers we were able to increase outreach and participation in the election by 1,753 voters over 2017. Overall turnout was 10.13%, 1.1 percentage points more, and 214 wikis were represented in the election. A total of 74 wikis that did not participate in 2017 produced voters in the 2021 election. Can you help change the participation for this year's?

Election volunteers will help in the following areas:

  • Translate short messages and announce the ongoing election process in community channels
  • Optional: Monitor community channels for community comments and questions

Volunteers should:

  • Maintain the friendly space policy during conversations and events
  • Present the guidelines and voting information to the community in a neutral manner

Do you want to be an election volunteer and ensure your community is represented in the vote? Sign up here to receive updates. You can use the talk page for questions about translation.

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Summer of Wikivoyage 2022, Kosovo and Albania

Hi everyone!

On May 20-22, 2022, the Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group is hosting the Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon 2022 to improve the content of touristic and travel destinations of Kosovo and Albania. This year, we will focus on South-East Albania, but all improvements are welcome. Should you edit with us, feel free to join us on Jitsi, Saturday and Sunday 20-21 May, at 9:30 - 17:00 (GMT+2) Time Zone. Here are the Albania and Kosovo expedition pages. You can also edit without joining the call. Please register for tracking the contributions on the edit-a-thon Outreach Dashboard. Thank you! --Vyolltsa (talk) 08:08, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cool! I won't be around for this, but good luck with everything, and thanks to the group for making this a successful recurring event.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:43, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you @ThunderingTyphoons! Vyolltsa (talk) 09:13, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vyolltsa: I look forward to it, even though I barely know anything about Albania and Kosovo. Can you double check the Outreach Dashboard link? It appears to be broken. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:08, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nice! Good to know this is occurring for another year. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 10:54, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@OhanaUnited Hello! I am sending you the Outreach Dashboard link! Thank you! Vyolltsa (talk) 09:14, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Could somebody help us update Albania and Kosovo expedition pages with the lastest statistics. Thanks! Arianit (talk) 09:32, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I did an update on May 13 – which was last week (but forgot to update the update parameter). I'll do another update once the edit-a-thon is over. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:56, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm not mistaken, current stats seem old. We would appreciate an update so we can use the missingle sections table to address them. Arianit (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are you talking about the bottom table? The bottom table no longer works for some reason. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:31, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, ok then.
Thank you all for the support. I hope some good work has been done, and cleanup is not too tedious. We had 5-6 completely new people. Arianit (talk) 07:36, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's over already? Yes, I saw a lot of excellent new content. Thanks! Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:38, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Arianit: Did another update just now, though I'm not sure what's going on with the numbers on Wikivoyage:Kosovo Expedition. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:07, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements

Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 17 May 2022 at 12:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 86217494304. Dial by your location.

Agenda

  • Update on the recent developments
  • Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, Italian, Polish; also, only at the first meeting: Farsi, Vietnamese; only at the second meeting: Portuguese, Spanish, Russian. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 05:02, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Disclaimer: Szymon (aka User:Tar Lócesilion) is one of my teammates at work. I haven't talked to him about this, and he doesn't know I'm posting this.
I've been thinking about this change to "new Vector" (Vector 2022). I think the Wikivoyages should make this change. Some recent (Wikipedia-centric) market research said that readers think the old design (Vector 2010) is looking outdated. Making the switch might require a little work (obviously, we will want to double-check key features like the Page Banners), and any big change can take a couple of weeks for individuals (i.e., those of us reading this page) to get used to. But when I think about this community's values, looking like a modern, up-to-date website that is easily differentiated from competitors is one of the things we care about, and adopting this change would be a straightforward way to achieve our goals and support the group's values.
If you want to see what it looks like right now, click on https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Turin?useskin=vector-2022 If you want to see what it looks like without the new floating TOC, click on https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Turin?useskin=vector-2022&tableofcontents=0
I don't know what the team's deployment process is (I can ask Szymon, if you want), but since it's already deployed at many wikis, including the French Wikipedia, I'd guess that any community that says "We checked it out, and we want you to put us on the list for the next round" will be accepted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The left margin menus pushing down content on narrow windows is a show-stopper if it affects many people. Has the skin really been tested thoroughly enough to be put in production to "look like a modern, up-to-date" skin? Wikivoyagers may access the site from odd hardware over sketchy connections, so some thought should be put in how to check the functionality. –LPfi (talk) 17:37, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've clicked the << to hide the left margin menu (which I think is the default?), so I don't see that. I think the best way to test it is to have editors using it for a couple of weeks. We can file bug reports in phab: if we need to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it needs better testing before it gets implemented here. If I'm not mistaken, on Main Page map, anything east of Nepal or Sri Lanka gets cut off. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:26, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it gets cropped when I look at it. It's probably a consequence of their "fixed width" design. That should be fixable, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Infact"

I just edited out all instances of "infact" from this site. Please don't add more. :-) The expression is "in fact," two words, but it can usually be dispensed with. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:26, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ikan Kekek Thanks for the edits :-) I must admit that I have a bad habit of writing "in fact" as one word (and I almost did just then), but thanks for the fixes. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:10, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure thing. Not all of the edits in question were by you. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Help archiving a talk page

Could someone please help me archive Talk:Bulgaria? I've already copied the old comments to a subpage and linked the subpage in the main talk, you only have to delete the old discussions. I can't do that because I'm too new and trying to do that triggers the page blanking filter. I want to start a new discussion about regions, and the old stuff on the talk page has made it unwieldy. Daggerstab (talk) 16:59, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's done. Daggerstab (talk) 17:12, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to discuss regions, we should unarchive the previous regions discussion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:54, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Article on bridges

I wonder if there are any engineers here who would be able to write an article on famous bridges. Of course, the ones that immediately come to mind are New York City's Brooklyn Bridge, London's Tower Bridge, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but I believe there would be numerous others that could be mentioned in such an article. The dog2 (talk) 20:12, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Desktop Improvements update

Making this the new default

Hello. I wanted to give you an update about the Desktop Improvements project, which the Wikimedia Foundation Web team has been working on for the past few years. Our work is almost finished! 🎉

We would love to see these improvements become the default for readers and editors across all wikis. In the coming weeks, we will begin conversations on more wikis, including yours. 🗓️ We will gladly read your suggestions!

The goals of the project are to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. The project consists of a series of feature improvements which make it easier to read and learn, navigate within the page, search, switch between languages, use article tabs and the user menu, and more. The improvements are already visible by default for readers and editors on more than 30 wikis, including Wikipedias in French, Portuguese, and Persian.

The changes apply to the Vector skin only, although it will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Monobook or Timeless users will not notice any changes.

The newest features
  • Table of contents - our version is easier to reach, gain context of the page, and navigate throughout the page without needing to scroll. It is currently tested across our pilot wikis. It is also available for editors who have opted into the Vector 2022 skin.
  • Page tools - now, there are two types of links in the sidebar. There are actions and tools for individual pages (like Related changes) and links of the wiki-wide nature (like Recent changes). We are going to separate these into two intuitive menus.
How to enable/disable the improvements
Global preferences
  • It is possible to opt-in individually in the appearance tab within the preferences by selecting "Vector (2022)". Also, it is possible to opt-in on all wikis using the global preferences.
  • On wikis where the changes are visible by default for all, logged-in users can always opt-out to the Legacy Vector. There is an easily accessible link in the sidebar of the new Vector.
Learn more and join our events

If you would like to follow the progress of our project, you can subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the pages of the project, check our FAQ, write on the project talk page, and join an online meeting with us.

Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.
Most of our pages use the pagebanner template to display the table of contents rather than the standard method. Will this be impacted by your proposed changes? AlasdairW (talk) 18:58, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At least in the current version they seem to get along quite well. Page banner still works, but there's an additional TOC in the side bar. You can try for yourself by enabling Vector (2022) in your preferences. El Grafo (talk) 14:22, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Try it out:
WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. That looks fine.
Looking at an example page, it does appear that slightly less page width is allocated to the article and more to the left column, but I haven't investigated, and the different appearance may be an improvement. AlasdairW (talk) 20:49, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Join us on Tuesday

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 28 June 2022 at 12:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 5304280674. Dial by your location. The following events will take place on 12 July and 26 July.

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file and copied to Etherpad. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English. At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We can answer questions asked in English and a number of other languages. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org. We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have just posted a new topic here and immediately had to edit it. See:
https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage%3ATravellers%27_pub&type=revision&diff=4472722&oldid=4472721 Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SGrabarczuk (WMF),@WhatamIdoing Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This needs work-me to file a Phab ticket. Thanks for letting me know. I'm curious: could you see the <blockquote> tags in the visual editor while you were typing? Did you paste them in, or type them, or use a keyboard shortcut? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:25, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your prompt reply @WhatamIdoing,believe it or not my memory of this incident is already fuzzy in my memory. I know I originally typed in the < blockquote > tag, but I may have copy&mpasted it later (I sometimes do that if I have to go investigate somewhere else before posting a half-baked post).
I also discovered since, that this version of the software implemented on wiki-voyage (it is different on other wmf-wikis I participate on) has two alternative modes of input (undocumented?):
  • Visual
and
  • Source
I think I was originally put on Visual by default, but now I am on Source by default, and I am also seeing a preview pane which was not there before, I think? It would also be great if I could add an edit summary, which I can using the shall-we-call-it-reply software elsewhere.
I hope I am making sense in this garbled reply? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:41, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Click on the "Advanced" option above the copyright/licensing statement. Most people don't use a meaningful/custom edit summary in discussions, but you can add one if you want to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Edit summaries are very useful also for discussions, especially at busy pages like the pub. It is often the case that some of the threads have gone down some less interesting paths, and I read them only if somebody brings up a new point (mentioned in the edit summary). When there have been new posts in several threads, I might miss some of them, unless the edit summary caught my attention on the watchlist. And the most irritating of all: making an edit to existing posts without telling that in the summary – I scroll down to the end of the thread, find nothing new, check earlier pre-outdent posts, finding nothing there, search for today's date, no match, then click history and diff, to finally find that change of phrasing or whatever, which often didn't add anything of value to what I've already read. Please write "ce" or whatever. –LPfi (talk) 12:38, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Movement Strategy and Governance News - Issue 7

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 7, July-September 2022Read the full newsletter

Welcome to the 7th issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly, while the more frequent Movement Strategy Weekly will be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.

  • Movement sustainability: Wikimedia Foundation's annual sustainability report has been published. (continue reading)
  • Improving user experience: recent improvements on the desktop interface for Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
  • Safety and inclusion: updates on the revision process of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines. (continue reading)
  • Equity in decisionmaking: reports from Hubs pilots conversations, recent progress from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, and a new white paper for futures of participation in the Wikimedia movement. (continue reading)
  • Stakeholders coordination: launch of a helpdesk for Affiliates and volunteer communities working on content partnership. (continue reading)
  • Leadership development: updates on leadership projects by Wikimedia movement organizers in Brazil and Cape Verde. (continue reading)
  • Internal knowledge management: launch of a new portal for technical documentation and community resources. (continue reading)
  • Innovate in free knowledge: high-quality audiovisual resources for scientific experiments and a new toolkit to record oral transcripts. (continue reading)
  • Evaluate, iterate, and adapt: results from the Equity Landscape project pilot (continue reading)

Other news and updates: a new forum to discuss Movement Strategy implementation, upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, a new podcast to discuss Movement Strategy, and change of personnel for the Foundation's Movement Strategy and Governance team. (continue reading)

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Announcing the six candidates for the 2022 Board of Trustees election

Hi everyone,

The Affiliate Representatives have completed their voting period. The selected 2022 Board of Trustees candidates are:

You may see more information about the Results and Statistics of this Board election.

The Affiliate organizations selected representatives to vote on behalf of the Affiliate organization. The Affiliate Representatives proposed questions for the candidates to answer in mid-June. These answers from candidates and the information provided from the Analysis Committee provided support for the representatives as they made their decision.

Please take a moment to appreciate the Affiliate Representatives and Analysis Committee members for taking part in this process and helping to grow the Board of Trustees in capacity and diversity. These hours of volunteer work connect us across understanding and perspective. Thank you for your participation.

Thank you to the community members who put themselves forward as candidates for the Board of Trustees. Considering joining the Board of Trustees is no small decision. The time and dedication candidates have shown to this point speaks to their commitment to this movement. Congratulations to those candidates who have been selected. A great amount of appreciation and gratitude for those candidates not selected. Please continue to share your leadership with Wikimedia.

What can voters do now?

Review the results of the Affiliate selection process.

Read more here about the next steps in the 2022 Board of Trustee election.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee</translate>

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

alternative-indy culture

Anyone knows of good guide to alternative-indy culture in any Wikivoyage language? --Zblace (talk) 19:59, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Like I said in the Interlingual Lounge, I don't know of any, and that sounds like a travel topic to me, that perhaps you'd like to start, but first, what do you mean by alternative-indy culture and what part of the world would you like to cover? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:16, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ikan Kekek TNX :-) I answered there: "my plan is to cover clubs (different styles) and socio-cultural centers that are non (or even anti) commercial in Croatia. I have friend who is interested in doing it for Slovenia also. We would appreciate to see something similar done elsewhere."
@ALL here - I am interested in having this done across different language instances, but I am not aware of differences, so will likely experiment and 'innovate' in Incubator.
-- Zblace (talk) 06:50, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That seems like a possible travel topic, but it seems to me, the full listings should be in articles for the cities where the clubs are. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:08, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Vote for Election Compass Statements

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

Hi all,

Volunteers in the 2022 Board of Trustees election are invited to vote for statements to use in the Election Compass. You can vote for the statements you would like to see included in the Election Compass on Meta-wiki.

An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.

Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:

  • July 8 - 20: Volunteers propose statements for the Election Compass
  • July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
  • July 23 - August 3: Volunteers vote on the statements
  • August 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
  • August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
  • August 16: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision

The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August


Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delay of the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election

Hi all,

I am reaching out to you today with an update about the timing of the voting for the Board of Trustees election.

As many of you are already aware, this year we are offering an Election Compass to help voters identify the alignment of candidates on some key topics. Several candidates requested an extension of the character limitation on their responses expanding on their positions, and the Elections Committee felt their reasoning was consistent with the goals of a fair and equitable election process.

To ensure that the longer statements can be translated in time for the election, the Elections Committee and Board Selection Task Force decided to delay the opening of the Board of Trustees election by one week - a time proposed as ideal by staff working to support the election.

Although it is not expected that everyone will want to use the Election Compass to inform their voting decision, the Elections Committee felt it was more appropriate to open the voting period with essential translations for community members across languages to use if they wish to make this important decision.

The voting will open on August 23 at 00:00 UTC and close on September 6 at 23:59 UTC.

Please find this message translated in additional languages here.

Best regards,

On behalf of the Elections Committee

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:17, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to join Movement Strategy Forum

Hello everyone,

The Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum) is a multilingual collaborative space for all conversations about Movement Strategy implementation. It provides a great opportunity to share your Movement Strategy(MS) work, find collaborators, and get even more support and ideas for your MS projects. We are inviting all Movement participants to collaborate on the MS Forum. The goal of the forum is to build community collaboration using an inclusive multilingual platform.

The Movement Strategy is a collaborative effort to imagine and build the future of the Wikimedia Movement. Anyone can contribute to the Movement Strategy, from a comment to a full-time project.

Join this forum with your Wikimedia account, say hi here and go ahead and join or start a conversation on the recommendation you are most passionate about! Feel free to discuss your MS project ideas and plans or even reports from MS projects you have worked on. To get started, you can also watch this video.

The Movement Strategy and Governance team (MSG) launched the proposal for this MS Forum in May. After a 2-month review period, we have just published the Community Review Report. It includes a summary of the discussions, metrics, and information about the next steps.

We look forward to seeing you at the MS Forum!

Best regards,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:38, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The 2022 Board of Trustees Election Community Voting period is now open

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

Hi everyone,

The Community Voting period for the 2022 Board of Trustees election is now open. Here are some helpful links to get you the information you need to vote:

If you are ready to vote, you may go to SecurePoll voting page to vote now. You may vote from August 23 at 00:00 UTC to September 6 at 23:59 UTC. To see about your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bad travel advice

The 15 Worst Pieces of Travel Advice Ever, According To Reddit Pashley (talk) 03:20, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So they market it as worst pieces of travel advice, such that would ruin your trip, and what do they give: they told me to pack a jacket and it was hot all the time, they told me to try local food and I got diarrhoea and somebody told the town where they stayed was boring and therefore I didn't go to New Zealand. It seems the writers had a good idea, but didn't find any horror stories in the half-an-hour they devoted to the task.
Still, we might want to check a few things in Travel basics and related articles, such as on how much to pack, whether you should try to be cultural and whether to visit the main cities or the "genuine" backcountry villages. It seems people can get it really backwards.
–LPfi (talk) 06:00, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The NZ advice baffles me, particularly "with nothing to do, nowhere to go", which strikes me as ridiculous (and I dare say it's one of the world's most beautiful countries). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:13, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The redditer said the person giving the advice was a person who could be expected to say so (but they hadn't realised it at the time). Nothing was said about what town she stayed in, perhaps there wasn't much of a nightlife, and she didn't enjoy nature. Stay away from NZ because you can find a boring place over there? Perhaps the original threads made more sense, but this article is ridiculous. What to learn from it is perhaps that people enjoy different things and that you should not trust advice from a random person, especially if it is vague. It should be obvious, but seemingly it isn't –LPfi (talk) 07:08, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This article is what happens when actual journalism is replaced by scrolling through Reddit.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 07:53, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Clickbait that does not deserve attention. /Yvwv (talk) 09:31, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who spends a decent amount time on Reddit, I can confirm that posting catchy, clickbaity content just for the sake of karmafishing is very common. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:49, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The 2022 Board of Trustees election Community Voting is about to Close

Hello,

The Community Voting period of the 2022 Board of Trustees election started on August 23, 2022, and will close on September 6, 2022 23:59 UTC. There’s still a chance to participate in this election. If you did not vote, please visit the SecurePoll voting page to vote now. To see about your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page. If you need help in making your decision, here are some helpful links:

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Revised Enforcement Draft Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct

Hello everyone,

The Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines Revisions committee is requesting comments regarding the Revised Enforcement Draft Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period will be open from 8 September 2022 until 8 October 2022.

The Committee collaborated to revise these draft guidelines based on input gathered from the community discussion period from May through July, as well as the community vote that concluded in March 2022. The revisions are focused on the following four areas:

  1. To identify the type, purpose, and applicability of the UCoC training;
  2. To simplify the language for more accessible translation and comprehension by non-experts;
  3. To explore the concept of affirmation, including its pros and cons;
  4. To review the balancing of the privacy of the accuser and the accused

The Committee requests comments and suggestions about these revisions by 8 October 2022. From there, the Revisions Committee anticipates further revising the guidelines based on community input.

Find the Revised Guidelines on Meta, and a comparison page in some languages.

Everyone may share comments in a number of places. Facilitators welcome comments in any language on the Revisions Guideline Talk Page. Comments can also be shared on talk pages of translations, at local discussions, or during conversation hours. There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines; please see Meta times and details: Conversation hours

The facilitation team supporting this review period hopes to reach a large number of communities. If you do not see a conversation happening in your community, please organize a discussion. Facilitators can assist you in setting up the conversations. Discussions will be summarized and presented to the drafting committee every two weeks. The summaries will be published here.

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 13:53, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Hello, all. Work-me is here with a suggestion that some of the Wikivoyages volunteer to be a "test wiki" for one of the dev teams.

Background: Web browsers don't "speak" wikitext. They speak HTML. So we write in wikitext, but it gets transformed ("parsed") into HTML. What we see, except inside the wikitext editor itself, is the parsed HTML. The old parser is very, very old (in software terms), and it's being replaced with a new-ish parser. The old parser doesn't formally have a name, but it has traditionally been called "the PHP parser" (after the software language it was written in). The newer parser is called "Parsoid". The new one does basically the same thing, plus some extra bells and whistles, and minus a few old bugs (and presumably plus a few new bugs, but those technically aren't part of the plan ;-)).

The project: Eventually, the old PHP parser will be deleted, and Parsoid will take its place. They've been working on how it handles images recently (main Phab task: T314318). The image part is already running at mw:, and it seems to be okay. I've done some fairly complex stuff there (e.g., galleries in translated pages) with zero problems. In fact, I never noticed that they switched the parser. It is supposed to be a seamless transition, and that's how I experienced it there. They want to try it out on a few more wikis.

My thinking: I think we should volunteer. First, this is going to end up here eventually, so it'd be better if if worked for us from the very beginning. I don't want Wikivoyage, which does a few unusual things with images (e.g., page banners), to be an after-thought. Second, if something goes wrong now, we'd be at the top of the list for fixes, with a team of devs available to help (or to instantly revert us back to the old parser if it can't be fixed right away). That level of hands-on support can happen if we are, say, #3 on the deployment list, and unlikely to happen if we are in the usual deployment process when they think the work is done. Just as a practical matter, if you deploy software to 500 wikis on the same day, they can't all be the #1 priority if something goes wrong. But if you're the only one this week, then you automatically are the top priority. Third, this team is very careful with their work. They have a system that can identify changes of just a single pixel(!) out of an entire page. So I think we'll be in good hands.

So I'm asking you: Are you willing to have us at the front of the line? If you all think it's okay, then I can officially ask the team to consider us. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:49, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support. We don't generally use many images per WV:IP, so a significant change wouldn't really many pages. It's nice that the developers put this wiki as a priority, and given you've convinced me that, I'm all in favour of this. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:15, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Despite the "minimal use of images", we do have images on virtually every page of the travel guide, so if anything major went wrong it would affect a lot of pages. But if it does, better to have the developers' full attention, right? Since it's coming for us regardless, it makes sense to support the proposal to be a guinea pig.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:36, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@ThunderingTyphoons!: Sadly most outline articles lack images (and sadly most of en.voy's articles are outlines) but agree that it'll affect a lot of pages. Maybe we should all go and add heaps of images to every single article to make the travel guide more colourful... ;-) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:16, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it is probably better to get the problems now than to get them later. Anything major affecting all wikis will probably be noticed by the devs before rolling out the change, while what will affect us are probably minor glitches or pagebanner related stuff, things that either won't be a catastrophe or won't be noticed before it is turned on for Wikivoyage. But I don't support heaps of images on every article, we have enough for noticing problems, unless it is about unusual use of images, which I think the Wikipedias or Wikibooks will take care of. –LPfi (talk) 09:32, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Every article with a pagebanner (so, basically all articles, including those with non-custom banners) has at least one image, so I stand by my statement. But any issue with images is unlikely to compromise the body of an article, so is a 'risk' worth taking.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:43, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, how could I forget the pagebanner. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:44, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@LPfi: I said "Maybe we should all go and add heaps of images to every single article to make the travel guide more colourful... " as a joke to lighten up this discussion – it was supposed to be sarcastic. Did you actually think I was being serious when I said that? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:44, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, not really. Sorry. I have just developed an allergy to the actual building of image heaps in short articles (by some on wp-sv), so couldn't take the joke. –LPfi (talk) 10:15, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No need to apologise. Rereading my earlier comment, it does seem a bit satirical in some ways, but I too have been fed up with one user who thinks filling up entire articles full of images is a good thing or galleries that don't add a lot of meaning. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:19, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Whatamidoing's argument is very convincing. Vidimian (talk) 22:39, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting changes

Thanks for the support. It might be helpful / expedient if I had the privileges necessary to edit any interfaces that may be broken by the change. For example, I've requested the following change in preparation, Template_talk:Banner#Prepare_for_T314318. But I'm happy to work with any editors who can facilitate the changes. Arlolra (talk) 21:54, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Arlolra is Arlo Breault from the mw:Parsoid team. I say this without exaggeration: These are the folks who know, better than anyone else in the world, how wikitext gets turned into what readers see on their screens. We really ought to take him up on his offer to fix things for us. I think admin rights will be enough, but it's possible that interface_admin will be needed at some point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, WhatamIdoing for the much-needed introduction. Would you like to nominate Arlo at WV:URN? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 20:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Does that feel like it would be a conflict of interest? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Since there were no further comments, I have posted Wikivoyage:User rights nominations#Arlolra. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Deployed

The change was deployed and is now live on wiki https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/830707 Please let us know if it causes any disruption. Thank you Arlolra (talk) 13:24, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

InternetArchiveBot

InternetArchiveBot has started editing pages here. I think that some of this is useful, but in many cases the dead link may be of more use to readers than an archive page. A dead link for a restaurant warns that the place might of closed, and I expect most readers would make other checks before visiting, but if they don't notice the archive banner, they will see last year's menu and assume that the place is open.

It probably is worth archiving links in Understand and similar background information, but not those in Eat or Sleep. It might also be useful to provide the archive page after the dead link, with an explanation: eg: timetable (dead link, archived page). AlasdairW (talk) 22:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alasdair, I agree with you about the risks, and I've disabled the bot for now. Ocaasi, Cyberpower678, Harej, why are you running User:InternetArchiveBot here? Are you running it on any other Wikivoyages? See Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians#Style differences: "Wikivoyage articles use no references." There are consequently no sources for the bot to rescue on this wiki. I don't think that the bot should be adding archive.org links at any of the Wikivoyages.
If, on the other hand, you were willing to add {{dead link}} (which places the article in Category:Articles with dead external links), then I imagine that some editors might think that was useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:30, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I went through the first five edits by the bot. All of them were suboptimal. Some needed removal (e.g., ferry service that appears to have shut down); some needed a correct link (e.g., new domain name or re-arranged website). None of them were edits that the bot could have made correctly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've indefinitely blocked the bot as an unauthorized bot and will rollback all the bot's edits. The bottom line is, there's simply no need to run a bot like that on a travel guide. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:12, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Reverted all. I will also add that this bot has also been removing dead link tags and supposedly replacing them with archive.org urls which is worse than nothing. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:29, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not necessary for the bot to be blocked. It has a built-in system for disabling it on any wiki. You don't even need to be an admin to do this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:46, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: We didn't realize that the act of adding archive URLs was actually doing Wikivoyage a disservice. Since the bot is approved as a global bot and enwikivoyage is listed among the wikis that allow them, we simply deployed to this wiki. This of course is in contrast to what SHB2000 (talk · contribs) is claiming, since they blocked the bot as unauthorized. Either way it seems the act of marking links as dead is much preferred over adding archives to them. We can modify the bot to accommodate this.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 12:49, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: I thought Wrh2's bot already did the same thing (though it's not currently running). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:30, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that these edits are not appropriate. Thank you for reverting them, SHB2000. It's useful for a bot to tag dead links for human review, but automatically replacing them with archived copies allows out-of-date information to remain unnoticed. This is a big difference between a travel guide (full of practical advice that needs to be updated often) and an encyclopedia (full of factual exposition that is often historical in nature). —Granger (talk · contribs) 09:34, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If Ryan's bot isn't currently running, and IABot could do this now, I think we should unblock the bot and let them tag dead links for us. And to forestall any potential confusion, I mention now that if a website is down for an hour, then anyone (bot or human) might mistakenly believe that it was a dead link. We should always expect a small percentage of false positives in this kind of work.
@Cyberpower678, I think you'll want to use tag-only mode at all the Wikivoyages, and be careful about the namespace for Wikisources. Also, I don't think the local template technically supports the |date= parameter, but I think it would be a good idea to include a date anyway. I believe that's how the bot is already set up anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:55, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The bot is generally very flexible with how it should behave. The only thing I need to do is actually add an option to reconfigure the bot to do tag-only work, since the bot was designed around the principle that archives are better than dead links. This shouldn't take very long to implement. I have opened a phabricator ticket to track this work at phab:T317553. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 17:00, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I think that would be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes: thank you. –LPfi (talk) 11:12, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see that InternetArchiveBot tag only feature is now being tested - see User:Cyberpower678/sandbox. SHB2000, I think that the bot can now be unblocked, but I would ask that the bot only tags a few pages per day until it has been further discussed. AlasdairW (talk) 23:13, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@AlasdairW: Yes Done. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:34, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Vector 2022 skin as the default in two weeks?

The slides for our presentation at Wikimania 2022

Hello. I'm writing on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team. In two weeks, we would like to make the Vector 2022 skin the default on this wiki.

We have been working on it for the past three years. So far, it has been the default on more than 30 wikis, including sister projects, all accounting for more than 1 billion pageviews per month. On average 87% of active logged-in users of those wikis use Vector 2022.

It would become the default for all logged-out users, and also all logged-in users who currently use Vector legacy. Logged-in users can at any time switch to any other skins. No changes are expected for users of these skins.

About the skin

[Why is a change necessary] The current default skin meets the needs of the readers and editors as these were 13 years ago. Since then, new users have begun using Wikimedia projects. The old Vector doesn't meet their needs.

[Objective] The objective for the new skin is to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. It draws inspiration from previous requests, the Community Wishlist Surveys, and gadgets and scripts. The work helped our code follow the standards and improve all other skins. We reduced PHP code in Wikimedia deployed skins by 75%. The project has also focused on making it easier to support gadgets and use APIs.

[Changes and test results] The skin introduces a series of changes that improve readability and usability. The new skin does not remove any functionality currently available on the Vector skin.

  • The sticky header makes it easier to find tools that editors use often. It decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%.
  • The new table of contents makes it easier to navigate to different sections. Readers and editors jumped to different sections of the page 50% more than with the old table of contents. It also looks a bit different on talk pages.
  • The new search bar is easier to find and makes it easier to find the correct search result from the list. This increased the amount of searches started by 30% on the wikis we tested on.
  • The skin does not negatively affect pageviews, edit rates, or account creation. There is evidence of increases in pageviews and account creation across partner communities.

[Try it out] Try out the new skin by going to the appearance tab in your preferences and selecting Vector 2022 from the list of skins.

How can editors change and customize this skin?

It's possible to configure and personalize our changes. We support volunteers who create new gadgets and user scripts. Check out our repository for a list of currently available customizations, or add your own.

Our plan

If no large concerns are raised, we plan on deploying in the week of October 3, 2022. If your community would like to request more time to discuss the changes, hit the button and write to us. We can adjust the calendar.

Also, if you'd like ask our team anything, if you have questions, concerns, or additional thoughts, please ping me here or write on the talk page of the project. We will also gladly answer! See our FAQ. Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 03:19, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Questions for the devs

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Thank you for the presentation of the new skin, and for this period of consultation. There's a lot to take in.

I have a question: on most desktop versions of Wikivoyage (though not the one you tested on - de.voy), the table of contents of all mainspace articles appears in the pagebanner (Template:Pagebanner) at the top of the page. As I crudely understand it, the presence of a pagebanner on a WV page overrides the current default table of contents. Will this feature still work with the new, 'sticky' TOC? Your FAQs suggest they might not be compatible. (mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Frequently asked questions#How can I get both the old and the new table of contents?). As far as I know (I'm not active on every project), the Wikivoyages are the only wikis to use pagebanners in this way. Have you tested the new skin on a wiki with pagebanners? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 07:38, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I switched to the new skin and it looks like both the pagebanner and sidebar TOCs work under the new skin. I do have a few observations:
  • The new TOC can be hidden but I can't find a way to unhide it without reloading the page.
  • The "sticky header" doesn't seem to work here -- the screenshot shows the search icon, page title, and other icons remaining at the top of the screen, but I don't see that here on Wikivoyage. Possibly because our page titles appear superimposed on our pagebanners?
  • The reduced content width negatively affects the appearance of our pagebanners. In particular, the TOC text on them is now too small, but the banners themselves also appear too short (vertically); aesthetically they would look better taller.
  • If there is *any* way we could get the pagebanners to stay at the top of the page as people scroll (the way the new TOC does) it would be awesome. If that could be done we could hide the new TOC by default.
  • The new skin doesn't play well with the experimental Mobile Sidebar Preview gadget.
-- Powers (talk) 13:10, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I gave it a quick try and I think that I generally prefer the old skin.
  • The larger left margin and some extra stuff at the top results in the page (at first) displaying less of the article - I prefer the old width of margin.
  • I liked the way that the left margin disappeared (into a button) when I reduced the browser window size.
  • I didn't like the language links now appearing as a drop down at the top of the page - this take up space and I have to click on the link to see what languages are available.
  • The Wiki Love Monuments banner now displays across the full width of the page.
  • The pub TOC (this page's TOC) now has a scroll bar. Many entries which were one line in the old skin now spill into two.
  • When I scroll down in the pub, "Add Topic" is displayed on the static bar at the top, but not other editing tools. I wonder if this might result in new editors adding new topics when they just wanted to add to an exiting one.
I note that some other wikis have very high opt-out rates of active editors. Has any investiagtion been done as to why it is so high (90%) on viwikibooks? AlasdairW (talk) 14:40, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've been using the 2022 for awhile and generally find it a vast improvement.
  • 2022 Header is "sticky" on the pub, but not on article pages. Would be great to have it working everywhere.
  • 2022 ToC is missing an "unhide" option as powers mentioned, but for me it's not a big deal.
  • WV pagebanners have some display issues with the new theme which I have addressed for myself here and here. I got consensus to make some of these changes awhile ago, but not permission to edit the global CSS file. I'd be happy to apply any updates people want. Let me know if interested.
  • The "stickyness" of pagebanners isn't important to me. The new ToC handles it well and takes up less screen real estate.
  • Thank you for all the hard work putting vector 2022 together!
ButteBag (talk) 15:01, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@ThunderingTyphoons!, @LtPowers, @AlasdairW, @ButteBag, thank you for your comments. You've shared a lot of good feedback to address! I very much respect that. It's a pleasure to see this much constructiveness. 🙇 Allow me to only address some points now, though.
  • "Can't find a way to unhide it" - that may be a problem indeed. There are different situations:
    • In some namespaces, like Wikivoyage or Talk - there is the sticky header; when you collapse the ToC, the ToC icon appears next to the page title or in the sticky header.
    • In some namespaces, like main - there's no sticky header; the icon appears next to the page title or in the bar where the page title would be. So you need to go all the way to the top of the page. But if there's no page title, the icon is on the right side of the screen, next to the language switcher. Right now, I'm not sure if this is the best solution. I'll be happy to talk about that more.
  • The appearance of our pagebanners - that's an interesting point. Any ideas what could improve this?
  • Get the pagebanners to stay at the top of the page as people scroll - this is a bit beyond the skin itself, but let's keep talking.
  • Mobile Sidebar Preview and other gadgets - we provide support to adjust gadgets, update their compatibility with API, and make them more future-proof.
  • Banners being displayed at the full width - while limiting the content width helps readability, banners are "consumed" differently. There seemed to be no reason to change their width.
  • High opt-out rate - we haven't done that. The results are relatively new, so we haven't had the opportunity to do that yet.
SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So part of the issue is that we hide the page title and then use it superimposed on our pagebanners. So the fancy "keep the page title at the top" magic of Vector 2022 doesn't work right. Is there any way to identify the breadcrumb trail and pagebanner as parts of the page that should be kept at the top? I'd even be fine dropping the TOC from our pagebanners since the new TOC is off to the left, out of the way. Powers (talk) 22:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Meanwhile the wikis are burning in my eyes due to the white background, because most software and systems support a dark mode nowadays, just the wiki world does not. As a workaround I wrote some dark mode styles which works almost fine on the most wikis here especially my home wiki voy/de. You can take a look there. If somebody is interested, there.., but your system has to be set to dark mode. My styles use a media query - and I use the nice timeless skin.

But anyway, I would recommend to you to remove all color and designs statements from your templates and use classes instead. we did it on voy/de and besides we use a voy- Prefix to avoid crashes with other classes. So you are prepared for future developments and the user have a better chance to create some own styles. I got the message here recently with color statements in the box and had no chance to read it. Drop me a line, if you need some help. Winter is coming and maybe I have some time. -- DerFussi 18:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A bit concerned about the lack of discussion here, given the imminence of the change and the disruption to our page formats. Powers (talk) 21:35, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the alert. I didn't realize this change was in the works because I haven't scrolled through the pub in a while. I've just switched to Vector 2022 and I think it looks cleaner than the previous style. I'm noticing some quirks with the spacing that need changes, but given the near date of implementation, I'd suggest we implement the new style first, and then focus on ironing out the minor quirks? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:55, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To me, the worst problem with the current skin is the waste of screen real estate for the left column. I do sometimes need that stuff but do not want to pay what I see as exorbitant cost to get it. The new skin not only does not fix that, it makes it worse by widening the column. Pashley (talk) 01:52, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are you concerned about the collapsible side bar (e.g., links to RecentChanges)? I tend to just collapse it and only open it when I need it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I use the skin on de.voy whilst reading and I quite like it. However, one of the key issues is that our main page map doesn't cater the new skin. If someone can fix that, then I might use it. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I can take a look it as well and do some tests. I have switched to the new vector on this wiki and will look around everywhere. -- DerFussi 07:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Should we postpone the implementation? From my reading above, the issues aren't marginal, and having them fixed before implementation would avoid disruption (re-adjusting to some features being moved around is very frustrating). I don't have much to say otherwise, as I haven't been playing around much with Vector 2022 (and not at all on this site) and don't use legacy Vector, so comparing is difficult. –LPfi (talk) 08:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support postponement. I'm still trying the skin out, and am pleased to see my concerns about the TOC in the banner were unfounded, but have noticed other issues that irritate:
  • The listing template is H U G E, like the dialogues on an early 2000s PC game.
  • Sister project links are absent.
  • Interlanguage links are two clicks away instead of one.
  • Essential sysop buttons like other users' contribution history and user rights tucked away god knows where.
Clearly many of those won't affect new or logged-out users, but the narrow pagebanners and weird listing editor definitely will.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:41, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also support postponement. As I mentioned earlier, the main page map gets cut off – you can't see anything east of Kerguelen / Heard Island and McDonald Islands. I don't have an issue with the not so large listing template, but maybe that's on my screen. Like tt!, I also have an issue with the narrow pagebanner. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:48, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, never mind, the listing editor is really huge. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:49, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I assume the sister project links are in the "main menu" together with the toolbox etc. also for you.
The rest of the left menu is less relevant for casual readers, but the language links (now in the top right corner) and the sister project links really add to what we are trying to serve readers. Moreover, while you can click the menu button for things like the permanent link or the Travellers' Pub when you need them, and the current menu icon placement may be natural for them, the sister project links are intimately connected to each article and you don't want to click the menu on and off for them. Should they be placed with the language links? ("2 languages<br/>3 other projects")
–LPfi (talk) 10:21, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The listing editor seems to be about 150% zoom on my laptop. I don't entirely dislike it, but it is definitely big.
Sister links (e.g., Wikipedia) are in the collapsible left sidebar. Interlanguage links (e.g., German Wikivoyage) are at the top of the page. The top-of-page button gets used more, so if your goal is to increase traffic between the Wikivoyages, then the new location is better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:23, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata & al are hidden away together with entries that mostly interest regulars. They should be moved to be together with the language links. Especially Wikipedia is of interest for most readers, but I think all of the sister project links should be available without having the main menu visible all the time or clicking it on (and off) for every guide visited. –LPfi (talk) 15:36, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:58, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like the language links being separated from the sister project links. The language links are now in the same place as on many other websites, but we are different from other websites which usually have the complete website translated into another language. We don't - we have a different website with different content. I think that occasional readers will come here, start reading the article on a major destination like London, choose their preferred language from the 20 available on that page, and then conclude that we don't have an article on Berwick-upon-Tweed because they haven't chosen one of the 3 languages that has a page for there. Keeping the language links next sister projects makes it clearer that they are different pages. AlasdairW (talk) 22:49, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone. Thank you for these comments. I see that you're having a nice discussion, and you'd like to have more time. I'll definitely address your ideas for fixes. First though, I wanted you to know that we decided to start with a smaller number of even smaller wikis, Wikipedias only. I'm sorry for confusion! According to the current plan, we could make the change here in the week of October 17.
If you're interested in the project, I'm encouraging you to subscribe to the newsletter, and keep an eye on the timeline of deployments.
Thank you again. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We are back (student assignment in Asia)

Hello Wikitravellers! After a few years break, I am back to unleash a bunch of students (mostly Korean and Chinese) on some topics (you can find some old annoucements of mine and accompanying discussions in the pub's archives). Interested editors may also want to check our syllabus (tinyurl.com/wikivoydata) and/or dashboard (tinyurl.com/dashwikivoydata2022). The student list in the dashboard as well (account names). I expect most activity to be concentrated in the topics related to South Korea and China; I'll do my best as usual to ensure the editing is constructive and so on, and I apologize in advance for any extra work. Hopefully, just like in the past, we will end up with several new or improved articles for those regions. For results of past projects see the list I maintain at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus/Educational_project_results (CTRL+F Wikivoyage). Thanks for hosting us :) Piotrus (talk) 10:44, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh another expedition – that sounds nice. I'm willing to do any cleanups if necessary, but thanks for hosting this expedition :-). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:53, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome back, Piotrus, and welcome to your students! Is there any type of editing you'd like us to hold off on for a particular period of time while your students work? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:02, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ikan Kekek @SHB2000 Thanks! No, carry on as usual :) Ideally, when reverting students, it would be best to leave them explanation on their talk page or edit summar AND ping me so I can notice this and provide my own explanation of the problem, in class or otherwise. My past experience is that most students don't expect constructive, or any feedback from wiki volunteers, so some don't even realize they've been reverted, and if they do, they don't know why (particularly, please note, most students won't notice comments in edit summaries, not until I individally point that feature out, or show it in class numerous times). On a side note, do note that most of my students will have issues with English proficiency (despite taking an English-language university class, which is what I am teaching), so expect that some edits will need routine copyediting for grammar/vocabulary (more than if I was teaching the class in a country of native English speakers). Piotrus (talk) 03:06, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure thing. I usually try to abstain reverting edits made during an expedition unless it’s a serious copyvio and/or if it’s out of scope. I’m willing to try making the text more idiomatic if needed. ——SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:38, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus: you make a good point, not just with your students but newbies more generally, that communicating with them via edit summaries is often a pointless exercise. I've seen experienced editors do this on all wikis and they often link to policies using jargon and acronyms, which a new editor would have no clue about. It won't make them learn about the rules and policies here if 1. they don't know what edit summaries are and where to find them and 2. the policies aren't explained more clearly and simply (e.g. even if a new editor reads the edit summary, reverting an edit and typing WV:MOS is not going to make the editor read the manual of style). It's something I try to avoid to do when I copyedit a newbie's edits. Best of luck to your students! Gizza (roam) 06:12, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@DaGizza Indeed. Whatever we write in an edit summary is a message to other experienced editors, but expecting a new editor to notice it is futile. If one wants to communicate with a newbie, leaving them a message on their talkpage is the only reasonable approach. In other news, students are startign to select their topics. 1/3 of the expected list (2/3 haven't decided yet) is Jeju, Sokcho, Daegu, Jiaxing, Damyang, Gunpo (will need to be created, see :wikipedia:Gunpo), Xishuangbanna....if anyone feels like watchlisting them early until the end of the year :) I'll report other topics in a week or so. Piotrus (talk) 08:49, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nice. Just a heads-up, your tinyurl link (tinyurl.com/wikivoydata) is broken. Would be interesting if they wish to expand Korean and Chinese Wikivoyage articles after the course is over. I know it's out of the scope of your class, but those wikis are in worse shape than English. OhanaUnitedTalk page 06:07, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@OhanaUnited My bad, it shoul be tinyurl.com/wikivoydata2022 (I can't link url as tinyurl and google docs are blacklisted as spam links or such at media wiki level, sigh). Note there is no live Korean Wikivoyage project. In my Wikipedia classes, I have students edit Korean and Chinese Wikipedia, but due to no Korean WIkivoyage, we just focus on English Wikivoyage for the WV class. I'd love to see Korean WV started one day, maybe by one of my students, but so far it hasn't happened yet... Piotrus (talk) 08:57, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus: btw, there's a Korean Wikivoyage currently in the Wikimedia Incubator – see incubator:Wy/ko/위키여행:대문. It still needs quite a lot of expansion, though. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:09, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SBH2000 Right, I did find it before, but incubator is not "live"; I gave up trying to explain to my students how to use it (I don't think pages there can be connected to wikidata, for example). Frankly, I think we are doing a disservice to everyone keeping stuff hidden there - it should be live and then it could grow (for example, with the help of my students, whom I could get to write or translate a dozen+ articles every year). Piotrus (talk) 12:32, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SHB2000 Ooops, pinged a wrong user... Piotrus (talk) 12:32, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
URL shorteners are blocked everywhere because they tend to be favored by spammers. I thought you could like directly to full URLs for Google docs, though. Yours is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tdHX3H7_fQZSthOXGAXYWbVlVBPbkIyorXvjIa1rgaQ/edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot - some of you may find it fun to check out my Prezis about Wikivoyage (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus/Sociology_course_prezis#Wikivoyage_and_Wikidata). I may develop some more (ideas are welcome!). --Piotrus (talk) 13:58, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@User:SHB2000, User:OhanaUnited, User:Ikan Kekek. Updating with list of articles chosen to improve by students for those who would like to watchlist them: Daegu, Damyang, Dongducheon, Gunpo, Hwaseong Fortress, Jeju, Jiaxing, Jinzhong, Jirisan National Park, Laiwu, Lianyungang, Pohang, Rivierenland, Sokcho, Tongren (Guizhou), Weihai, Xishuangbanna, Yeongdeok County, Zhangjiajie, Zhoushan. --Piotrus (talk) 06:50, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for providing us with the list of articles. I'll definitely be putting at least some of them on the watchlist. Feel free to let your students create new articles if they meet WV:WIAA. Small towns are welcome if they are adequate tourist destinations as well. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:40, 3 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this list. Also, for the regulars: Edit conflicts are really difficult for newbies to handle. Please try not to jump on the article until the students have stopped editing. I don't know what to expect from this specific group, but the rule of thumb from some enwiki research is that if someone hasn't saved an edit in the last half hour, they're probably offline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 3 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Open letter to WMF to improve Wikimedia Commons

There is an open letter to WMF about Wikimedia Commons. If you are interested (or frustrated about commons as I am) take a look: Think big - open letter about Wikimedia Commons -- DerFussi 11:25, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Was it just a coincidence that I just so happened to be reading that letter halfway before I stumbled across your message? Anyway, I've signed the doc and hope more people from this community will sign it. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:46, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I just wanted to post a message here. :-) Thank you @DerFussi, and thanks everybody for your support! Ziko (talk) 19:51, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ziko: I have mass message rights. We should have draft a message and send it to all Wikivoyage pubs. Too late - next time. :) -- DerFussi 20:00, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

UCoC EG Community review period closed

Dear Wikimedians,

Thank you for participating in the review of the Revised Enforcement Draft Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). The UCoC project team and the Revisions Committee appreciate you all taking the time to discuss the guidelines, suggest changes, and ask questions.

This community review period lasted from September 8 to October 8, 2022. Over the past four weeks, the UCoC project team has collected valuable community input from various channels, including three conversation hours sessions, where Wikimedians could get together to discuss the revised UCoC Enforcement Guidelines. The Revisions Committee will review community input when they reconvene in the second week of October 2022. The UCoC project team will support them in providing updates as they continue their work and will continue to inform the community about all important developments and milestones as the Committee prepares the final version of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines that is currently scheduled for a community-wide vote in mid-January of 2023.

On behalf of the the UCoC project team,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Formalised rollback policy

Given the recent saga on whether one admin has been misusing rollback, I've decided to draft out a formal policy on User:SHB2000/rollback. It's mostly summarised off Wikivoyage:User rights nominations#Misused rollbacks and various other formal rollback policies on other wikis, but it mostly outlines when RB should and shouldn't be used, the consequences of misusing it, and a bit about fingerslips. Feel free to copyedit it, but what does it need before it becomes policy? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:49, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should have a policy like this.
I think that we should, in fact, consider not worrying about most forms of "misuse" of rollback at all.
The primary differences between rollback and undo are:
  • whether it is possible to add a custom edit summary, and
  • whether you can mass-revert every edit (very convenient for someone who vandalizes a lot of pages).
That's it. The second (which is why the tool was created) is almost never the source of disputes.
The proposed policy is literally trying to make a huge deal out of the difference between clicking a button that produces this:
and clicking a button that produces this:
I think it would be silly to believe that the difference between "Reverted edits" and "Undo revision", or between "Tag: Rollback" and "Tag: Undo" actually makes much difference, then I'm guessing that the problem with misuse of rollback is actually: sometimes people don't add a custom edit summary when we think you should.
Related to that, I suggest that we consider a comment posted in a very different context above: "particularly, please note, most students won't notice comments in edit summaries, not until I individually point that feature out, or show it in class numerous times".
So: the wording isn't that different, plus newbies won't see the wording anyway. I think we should remove the claim in Wikivoyage:Administrators' handbook#Rollbacks that it's "potentially insulting" to use rollback (no more insulting than the Undo button, as far as I can tell) and perhaps adjust our view to place rollback in the same category as w:en:Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars – something that might upset a few experienced editors who have picked up enwiki's cultural baggage around this tool, and occasionally a missed opportunity for direct communication and strengthening social bonds, but not actually a problematic behavior per se. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the only issue is whether a message is posted to the user's user talk page when that's appropriate to do. Using the rollback tool routinely for first-time offenders of rules on touting that most new users won't know and then not informing them of what they did wrong is bad. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:59, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. It's why I think we should have some policy that prohibits these kinds of rollbacks (keep in mind that {{tout}} was not placed on this user's talk). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:33, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So we have two issues: when a notice must (?) be placed on the user page, and when you must (?) leave an edit comment other than the default one. I haven't bothered with the former when the touting is in an obviously wrong context, like this (it might have been spam, but I don't bother to check that either, other than concerning other edits on WV by the same user/IP). The latter is a bigger problem when the edit isn't a formal rollback or undo (which give you an alert), but a regular edit that is part of an edit war across articles. Sure, a rollback is an insult in that context, and not constructive, but it is at least obvious. –LPfi (talk) 05:17, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@LPfi: The page isn't complete, so please plunge forward and expand the draft as you feel so. I would say the warning is only a must when rollback is used against touting in namespace 0 (i.e. mainspace). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:48, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think this is a useful piece to explain to admins when and when not to use rollback. It is basically an elaboration of this cursory advice from Wikivoyage:Administrators' handbook:

"Rollbacks are a hard (and potentially insulting) measure, and should mostly be used for vandalism and spam. Good faith edits should be undone with an explanation in the edit summary."

I have had my edits rolled back by admins in content or style disputes. I felt it was abuse of admin editing privileges, but without any detailed advice, it comes down to an unwritten sense of what is "appropriate" and what is not.

I understand the aversion to having a lot of policies to tell us how to behave, but when I was a new contributor, I was very frustrated when what I thought was a legitimate edit was reverted by an admin without comment. When I questioned the revert, I was told (paraphrasing) "that's not how we do things here; you have to spend time here to observe how our little community behaves". There was no policy, just an unwritten consensus. That really made me feel like I had stumbled into a private club where I was tolerated, but not welcome.

I think that SHB's piece, with some edits, would make a useful addition or addendum to Wikivoyage:Administrators' handbook that would help new admins, particularly, not abuse this awesome power with which they have been entrusted. Ground Zero (talk) 08:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'd favour a separate page because patrollers also have the ability to misuse this tool; I think we all know that one user who was rightfully stripped of their patroller privilege in 2020 for blatantly misusing it to revert legitimate good-faith edits (one that routinely had a crusade against GZ's edits) and is now indeffed on enwiki. This would also bring the English Wikivoyage in line with most other WMF-wikis per Q5148465 (Wikipedia:Rollback). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:09, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
GZ, is the problem "using the Rollback button in a dispute, without any detailed advice"? Would "using the Undo button in a dispute, without any detailed advice" have felt good? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Using the Rollback button is harsher, because it is done by an admin with one click, saying "this is so wrong it doesn't deserve consideration". But we would do well to provide advice on using the Undo function politely, too. Ground Zero (talk) 18:47, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I only have to click the Undo button once, and I'm not even an admin. How is it harsher to click the Rollback button once than to click the Undo button once? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to argue against this addition to policy until I started reading the comments. I've changed my mind: I think we should formalize that rollbacks are only to be used in cases of obvious vandalism, but we should add this to the handbook, not a new policy page. We have enough policy pages, but many of them are short, so for specific policies I think it would be best to add the information to the policy pages that are already in existence. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 18:15, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Having a separate page because of patrollers makes sense, but I am not entirely sure we need more advice than currently. I don't think there is any big problem in the use of the tool, except for a few persons, and reminders on their talk pages might suffice. However, it seems we have some disagreement about when the tool should be used. Should the discussion be at Wikivoyage talk:Administrators' handbook? –LPfi (talk) 19:22, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would have also favoured an addition to the admins' handbook, but that would exclude patrollers. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:12, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that a tool-agnostic change like this would be sufficient, and it actually addresses the real problem:

Tool-agnostic change
Current version Suggested version
Rollbacks are a hard (and potentially insulting) measure, and should mostly be used for vandalism and spam. Good faith edits should be undone with an explanation in the edit summary. You can't add a useful edit summary when you use the Rollback button, so it is mostly useful when no explanation is needed (e.g., obvious vandalism and spam). No matter which tool you use, if you are removing good-faith edits, you should normally provide an explanation somewhere. If you don't explain your reversion in an edit summary, then explain on the talk page or on the other editor's talk page. Most newcomers will never see edit summaries or use article talk pages, so even if you explain in an edit summary, you may need to repeat that explanation on the newcomer's talk page.

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I like it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:29, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to replace this current version with the suggested version, in addition to the rollback policy I've proposed above. Remember, patrollers also have the ability to misuse rollback.
I know I've been told countless times that I'm trying to make this site more bureaucratic, but I really think this site should be more bureaucratic (though not like Wikipedia). The lack of policies regarding admins misusing their tools creates a system open to abuse. I don't know which user Ground Zero is referring to, but on most wikis, that user would have been desysopped by now (if they were a patroller, they'd have lost patroller privileges). However, if we did have this policy, then it is crisp clear what's acceptable and what's not, and the consequences for misusing it. This ultimately makes Wikivoyage a friendlier place to edit. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 01:31, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I like some though possibly not all of what's in your draft, too, but I think WhatamIdoing is right that the main issue isn't whether simple reversion, a hard revert or a rollback is used, but whether information is provided to a user that is not a vandal or a bot, either in the form of a user talk page message and/or an edit summary, that explains the reasons for the reversion by any of these methods. I also think that a pattern of reversion by any method without informing users who are not strictly vandals or bots why their edit was reverted should be grounds for a desysop nomination, but neither patrollers nor admins should be expected to be perfect, just to avoid making a habit of not communicating. In other words, I think you are overemphasizing the method of reversion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:02, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
> The lack of policies regarding admins misusing their tools creates a system open to abuse.
No. Our reliance on humans creates a system open to abuse. It does not matter how many rules you write, or how crisp and clear they are. What matters is whether humans are allowed to use their judgement. If they are, there will be errors of judgement, and sometimes those errors will rise to the level that we might call abuse. Writing down rules doesn't solve the problem.
I also disagree with the idea that telling experienced editors exactly how they'll be punished (let's avoid the euphemism "consequences" here) for having a different viewpoint about whether a reversion needed an explanation in the edit summary is a way of making Wikivoyage friendlier.
> on most wikis, that user would have been desysopped by now
No. On a handful of wikis, that user might have been considered for desysopping, depending on a lot of factors, including whether that community feels like they have plenty of admins to spare, and how many enemies the admin has made. Most of the time, at most wikis, the only response (if there is any response at all) is a reminder that it can be helpful to provide an edit summary. The official page at the German-language Wikipedia, for example, says this:
  • "Sollten andere Benutzer dennoch unwissentlich oder häufig für normale Wiederherstellungen „rollback“ nutzen, so kannst du sie beispielsweise mit dieser Vorlage {{subst:Hinweis Zurücksetzen}} oder mit einem eigenen Text auf ihrer Diskussionsseite darauf hinweisen, dass die Rollback-Funktion nur für die Zurücksetzung nach Vandalismus genutzt werden sollte."
  • ("If other editors nevertheless inadvertently or frequently use "rollback" for normal reversions, you can post the [reminder] template or write your own comment to their talk page, to tell them that the rollback function should only be used after vandalism.")
There's no mention of any punishment specific to using rollback, rollback is widely available to experienced editors, and they don't seem to have a big problem with it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:22, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ikan Kekek: I've rewritten part of the abuse section, so now there is an emphasis on communication more so than removal. Here's my new wording:

If you find a user misusing rollback, start a discussion with them about their use of rollback, or at least give a formal warning. If the user reforms their behaviour and their use of rollback, then you've made progress. However, if repeated discussions fail to make a difference, make it firm that desysop or removal of patroller privileges is always an option. If the user still continues to misuse rollback, you may start a desysop request if that user is a sysop, and let an uninvolved admin know for patrollers.

As you'd probably know by now, I have a tendency to interpret policies like interpreting the law. I've tried to avoid writing this without it sounding like a legal document, but it might still sound like one. To @WhatamIdoing:, I've adjusted it so that desysop/removal of patroller privileges are a last resort. Does that work out? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 03:36, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the main question is whether we need a formal document. We try to avoid policies. Without a formal policy users can use their best judgement, which should be enough and sometimes better than rules. If that judgement isn't enough, we can discuss any issues, also then more flexibly than using a rules document. We have had problems with some users using the rollback tool sloppily, but has there been unsolvable problems with agreeing on what is sloppy use and what isn't? It is useful to document best practices, but that is different from a policy. –LPfi (talk) 05:48, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is another example of "how we do things" that new users can't know about if it's not written down. I didn't know that "we try to avoid policies", but I've only been here since 2016, so I guess I haven't learned that lesson the hard way yet.
The reason for proposing this policy or adding it to the Administrators Handbook is that we have example of users' best judgement not being very good, and causing problems. Writing this down makes it easier to have those discussions on user talk pages. It allows someone to say "There is already a consensus on this -- it isn't just your best judgement against my best judgement", rather than, "this isn't the way we do things around you, and you'll learn this after you've spent more time here". Ground Zero (talk) 07:09, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ground Zero perfectly sums up possibly why Wikivoyage's editor base is (significantly) smaller than it's potential. Every policy requires editors to use their judgment. From WV:TTCF to WV:TONE to WV:TOUT, many policies and guidelines are subjective. There isn't a clear line between what's useful for a traveller and what's not, there isn't a clear line between what's an acceptable tone and what's not, there isn't a clear line between what's touting and what's not. Having a formal policy does not necessarily mean that editors cannot use their judgment. A policy makes it clear if a certain use of rollback is unacceptable or not; honestly, the English Wikivoyage should be ashamed of itself for allowing or not taking much action against rollbacks like this or this. Editors can still use their judgment for borderline cases. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:42, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't think the issue is the misuse of rollbacks per se as much as it is using them and then making a habit of not attempting to communicate with good faith or potentially good faith users who were rolled back to tell them why you did so. I accept that rollbacks can be more insulting to some users than other forms of reversion, because some of you have said they are to you, but I maintain that the lack of communication is a bigger issue. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:09, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Adjusted per your comment. See Special:Diff/4542376. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:22, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is good to document best practises, didn't I make that clear? Thus I support adding to the advice on reverts, rollbacks and communication in the Administrators' handbook, but not adding the page as a formal policy as suggested. One can easily point to the relevant section as "there is consensus on this", without saying "you are violating policy". The two examples given by SBH are obvious examples of abuse and sloppy use of rollback, respectively, and handling them doesn't require pointing to a policy. Indeed, I think that pointing to a policy in cases like those is derogatory to the community: instead of saying "please don't do that" (assuming good faith) one would say "be warned!" (relying on punishments). –LPfi (talk) 11:58, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of "another example of "how we do things" that new users can't know about": How many new users have a rollback button? I assumed that the number was zero, and that therefore it wasn't something that new users needed to know about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure what GZ is referring to in "that new users can't know about" is how experienced users are supposed to use rollback. Keep in mind that a vast majority of users have their start on the encyclopedia before editing Wikivoyage, and I guarantee that most reasonably-experienced Wikipedias (i.e. users who've maybe made more than ≈2000 edits) know what rollback is. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:20, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: actually what I was referring to was LPfi's comment that "We try to avoid policies." I didn't know that after more than 6 years here. Maybe it is written down somewhere and I haven't read it, but it sounds to me like an unwritten consensus amongst thise who were here before me. Ground Zero (talk) 19:29, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One of the things that most fascinates me about this community's formal structure is its desire to not have any hemi-demi-semi rule pages. Until a couple of years ago, it was either a mandatory policy, or it was some unofficial good advice. There no in-between state; we had no guidelines, supplements, or other hierarchy in the rules. I think it was remarkably functional and served this group well.
Now that we have Template:Guideline (there is no Template:Policy, and Template:Essay is unused except by its creator), it seems the temptation to tag pages is not resisted as often as it could be. Once you can slap labels all over pages and sort them into ever-finer categories, there will be someone who finds that work deeply satisfying.
As an example of this, Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals, a page that predates w:en:Wikipedia:Five pillars and seems similar in purpose and style, was boldly declared to be a guideline a while ago. Does it need to be tagged? I'd argue for w:en:WP:NOTAG, just like I've long (and successfully) argued for no tag on 5P at enwiki. If it needs a tag, is that the right one? I'm doubtful about that. But it's been tagged. The only practical way to stop people from doing that would be to delete the tag.
But the tag was discussed and accepted, because someone wanted to import a page that's tagged as an essay at the English Wikipedia and make other people follow its advice. They seemed to feel that the tag was an essential component of that last bit, so now we have the tag, and since we have the tag, we have it creeping on to other pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Do new users need to know how experienced users are supposed to use advanced tools?
If you were trying to help someone make their first edits here, would an explanation of how other people use tools that this newcomer has no access to make the top 10 on a list of things newbies need to know? Would it even make the top 100? Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians contains 106 sentences, and yet does not mention rollback once.
IMO what the newcomer needs to know is that we have people who will explain problems and encourage contributions. Since edit summaries are neither the only way to explain things nor the most effective way to explain anything to a new editor, explaining problems is not actually incompatible with "bad" uses of rollback. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Philosophy of policy writing

I like to write policies and guidelines; I even seem to be fairly good at it (although editors who are bad at it are frequently unaware of this, so perhaps I'm just unaware of my limitations). I have my own notions of what works best, plus my own preferences and biases, and I've seen more approaches to policy in wiki-based communities than most. I give this background to say that the rest of this is kind of philosophical, and if that doesn't interest you, then you don't have to read it.

Different folks like different approaches. Almost everyone believes that their view is the middle ground, and everyone believes that their view is the best. So I'm telling you that these are mine, not that they're the only options.

One rule of thumb that I've recommended at the English Wikipedia, and which I think applies everywhere, is this:

➤ Never make a written rule for any situation unless there have been at least two separate incidents (=not involving any of the same editors and not involving the same page/content) that could not be resolved through any of the normal, existing processes (e.g., asking other editors to join a discussion).

Another principle that I think is universal is:

➤ It is usually better, and sufficient, to establish positive "norms" instead of "violations" and "punishments".

This means that we say "Here's how we do this" or "This is a popular choice", but we don't say "If you don't follow this rule, then we will punish you for violations". There are exceptions, generally involving obvious matters (e.g., we punish spammers and vandals by blocking them) and legal matters. However, in everyday editing, the goal is to have interactions that are free of threats. Threats are intended to produce fear. Threats don't say you should do it because it's good and right and fills the world with rainbows and butterflies; threats say you should do it because I'll punish you if you don't. Fear produces bad experiences, bad relationships, bad behavior, and bad communities.

By contrast, when you tell people that something is normal or popular, they usually want to do it. People want to prove their membership in the group, by behaving the way the group does. People assume that experienced editors have figured out most of it in the past, and they want to take advantage of that knowledge, rather than figuring out everything through trial and painful, time-wasting error themselves.

Here's a principle that isn't quite universal, but it's my strong preference:

➤ The smaller the community, the fewer rules you should have.

This means, e.g., that the smallest wikis should have basically no rules at all. They should just wave at the core content policies in passing and probably have a statement somewhere about copyright violations being a bad idea, or at least remove copyvios even if they didn't bother to write down locally that copyvios are against the rules. Otherwise, contributors should emulate the behaviors and contributions that they think are working, and avoid things that don't seem to be working, and mostly live and let live in the service of content. The overall level of organization and rules should be no more complicated than a group of neighbors showing up at a school or park to pick up trash some afternoon.

The mid-sized wikis should have a few rules and a few processes. These rules should address only common questions and generally aim to make things easier for newcomers. Most of the rules should be about establishing a very broad range of acceptable actions, to maximize the amount of effort spent creating content and to keep self-appointed rule-enforcers from fighting over things like whether to use the w:serial comma (even though everyone should! ;-)) or what the One True™ Way to do something is. Questions outside those common ones should be decided as they come up by folks who consider the situation in light of the group's values (e.g., Wikivoyage:The traveller comes first, being welcoming), its Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals, and their current capabilities, always with an eye to the effect of the decision on interpersonal relationships.

The English Wikivoyage generally does a stellar job on that last point. It is not a point that is easily handled by mindlessly following rules. It's a point that works best when you respond to a situation by knowing what else is going on with all the individuals. For example: Is this really a fight about that one edit, or is it a symptom of something bigger? Is someone worn down from dealing with a persistent vandal, and could this outburst be a sign that the group needs to provide more practical support, rather than a sign that we need to punish people for expressing the fact that they're overburdened and overwhelmed? The overall level of organization and rules for these mid-sized wikis should be on the order of arranging a potluck dinner for 100 people. You have to establish some roles and organize a few things (e.g., who's going to clean up afterwards? Where should we put the trash cans?), but you mostly let people do what they want and try to keep the group happy without trying to control any individual participants.

The biggest wikis should have enough rules to prevent repeated problems and enough processes to let interested people specialize. Overall, the goal for large wikis is still to have the fewest rules possible, but to recognize that the fewest possible is still a lot of rules. When you have a lot of contributors, with a typical "established editor" lifespan of a few years, there are a lot of problems that come up over and over.

IMO absolutely no wikis should have rules that settle everything in advance. The rules should leave as much room for creativity as possible. This is because most people contribute because they want to build something, not so they can follow a bunch of rules or get bossed around by a rule enforcer. You may have seen these comparisons before:

  • People like to cook, but nobody really loves washing dishes. Why? Cooking is creative. Washing up isn't.
  • People like to sew clothes, but nobody really loves washing laundry. Why? Sewing is creative. Laundry isn't.

While a certain level of organization is necessary and helpful, additional rules beyond that point tend to be counterproductive. It stops being fun. It starts being boring. And when that happens, people discover that there is a whole internet outside that wiki, and they leave.

I don't think my view here is universal. Leaving aside the build-it-and-they-will-come sorts, who naïvely believe that translating the English Wikipedia's extensive (and self-contradictory) ruleset and templates and bots and general bureaucracy into the local language will result in a large community appearing to fill all roles (it never has yet...), there are a few circumstances in which one might choose a different approach, such as:

  • A corporate wiki on a sensitive subject (e.g., human resources policies) might have an especially high degree of desire for control. Lawsuits have hinged on the punctuation in a contract.
  • A community of autistic people might value what I'd call a stifling level of rule-following. Especially if you spend much of your life wondering if you're violating some shrouded social convention, there is a comfort in knowing that you are definitely doing the right thing by clicking the blue button instead of the yellow one, even if both buttons do basically the same thing. Such a community might value predictability, conformity, and control more than creativity. (As a side note, autistic individuals tend to be tireless contributors when they find a task that fits their skills and interests.)
  • Young school children might need a very color-by-numbers approach to contributions, because they don't have the maturity needed to make good contributions otherwise.

But I wouldn't want to be part of a community like that, and I suspect that's true for most of us. We're not here to take delight in following the rules perfectly. We're here to have fun creating new information about a fun subject, with great volunteers to help us (and to be helped by us in turn).

And now, if you'll bear with me while I connect this long-winded statement back to the above dispute:

  1. IMO we don't need a rule, because this situation basically involves one dispute, and it's basically been resolved through existing, normal processes. Maybe some aren't happy with the resolution, but we did reach a resolution.
  2. If we decide to have any rules, we don't need to threaten anyone. It's likely to be sufficient to give positive statements ("If you revert anything except obvious vandalism, explain why. That's usually done in a custom edit summary or on a talk page").
  3. We are doing an awesome job of handling discussions around this, because people keep going back to core values, such as being welcoming and encouraging to newcomers by explaining why their first attempt had to be reverted.

This last point makes me happy to be here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:45, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: You make some good points; I would generally agree with many of your points. On the other hand, there are some that I disagree with, but a lot of it doesn't specificially relate to the rollback policy.
re "Never make a written rule for any situation unless there have been at least two separate incidents (=not involving any of the same editors and not involving the same page/content) that could not be resolved through any of the normal, existing processes (e.g., asking other editors to join a discussion).": it's true, but in this case, we've had various cases of different users misusing rollback, not just the two diffs I've mentioned.
I realise this is gravely off-topic, but in response to "The smaller the community, the fewer rules you should have.", the lack of policies is what makes smaller wikis defy Wikimedia norms. In many cases, a sysop on a small wiki may have been a spammer in the past, or may be blocked on a larger wiki, such as enwiki. FWIW, I believe there are two users on shn.voy who have copied various templates from en.voy without any attribution. I was thinking about warning both of these users, but one of these users is an admin on shn.voy and I feel hesitant warning both these users or fixing this attribution issue. I might eventually have to do this myself, but otherwise I might bring this up with them on meta. Unfortunately, both of their babel scales claim they're a shn-3 and a my-3, with zero mention of English. Burmese is certainly on Google Translate, but knowing absolutely nothing about Burmese, this would be an issue. The point is, communication is difficult on small wikis, especially on wikis where most users speak virtunally zero English (and back to the shn.voy issue, most people in Myanmar don't speak English).
Back on-topic, I'm not so sure about whether mid-sized wikis should only have a few rules and processes. FWIW, I'm reasonably active on en.wb, a wiki with fewer editors, has more processes (including an admins' noticeboard, an edit filter false positives page, an administrative assistance page – I could go on), but they generally have fewer issues with dealing with vandalism, spam, users with behavioural issues, and so on. In simple words, there's the policy, nearly users adhere to it, and there's no drama. Here, what's happening is users think they can use rollback whenever they want, stirring up a drama, eventually driving users away or otherwise making others feel uninvited to this "private club". If most wikis aren't having snags about the use of a MediaWiki feature and several users on the English Wikivoyage are, then who's (i.e. which wiki) at fault here?
I do agree that we don't want to go rule-enforcing, but I would encourage everyone here to have a look how en.wb does things. I'm sorry to disappoint many of you, but en.wb does things a lot better than en.voy, and it is for that reason why it's not a wiki that is easily suseptible of demise as soon as you lose a few editors (a la The Other Site). From dealing with vandalism, spam, problematic users, policies, and so on, en.wb has not had such a saga, at least not that I know of. If anything, the most controversial discussion on en.wb ever since I started editing has been whether to allow strategy guides for video games. End of ramble.
To finish this up on a positive note, in no way am I suggesting that Wikivoyage is bad at handling vandalism, spam, or problematic users; what I am saying is if we follow en.wb's model, it may no longer be a wiki only 1% of enwiki's size. Such small steps like having a basic policy that outlines what's acceptable and what's not don't necessarily make the site more bureaucratic, nor is it threatening (should we abolish WV:TOUT because it's threatening? no, we shouldn't). A rollback policy should have no bearing on how a user should (constructively) contribute.
Apologies to anyone to had to read through my long scramble and chunks of text. I'm typing this late at night, in addition to a fall when climbing up the stairs at a train station today. If anything doesn't make sense, I'm happy to clarify. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:23, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You have documented zero incidents of rollback misuse that the community has been unable to handle through its normal, everyday process of having a discussion. Therefore, writing down rules won't actually help. It will only result in w:en:WP:Instruction creep. (Note that "handle" is different from "get people to follow your orders" or "produce uniform behavior".)
You have such strong faith in writing down rules. Written rules are not magic spells. Even at the English Wikipedia, which many people would describe as being rule-bound, it frequently takes two years for a written rule to start having an effect on editors' actual behavior.
As for "I do agree that we don't want to go rule-enforcing", then why do you do so much of that? Trying to get that editor desysopped because you disagreed about the use of rollback is rule enforcement. When it didn't work, you proposed changing the rules to make the behavior more obviously punishable, so you can try to enforce them to the letter next time. If you don't want to "go rule-enforcing", then stop trying to enforce the rules on other contributors.
Wikibooks has less "drama" because it has both fewer editors than this site and much less interaction between those users. Their equivalent of this page contains one non-bot comment. This is not surprising, since the idea there is that I write my book over here and you write yours over there, whereas here, the idea is that we all work on everything to produce a single good page for each destination. Just based on those two structural elements, one would expect substantially less drama.
Other wikis have little drama over the use of rollback because nobody cares which button is used to revert people. The page about rollback at the English Wikibooks, for example, does not say that rollback can only be used for vandalism, does not say that editors must explain non-vandalism reverts, and does not even hint that desysopping is a proportionate response to "misusing" rollback, which is not surprising, because under their rules, it would be almost impossible to misuse it. I see some editor over there using rollback to revert what was probably a test edit, rather than vandalism, and I don't expect anybody to complain at him. I see an admin removing an external link. Here's another editor rolling back a good-faith clarification of a word in the text. Here's an admin rolling back a simple grammar error and a single-character typo. About half the uses of rollback at that wiki are actions you're trying to ban here. If you want us to be more like the English Wikibooks, then let's start by adopting their laissez faire attitude towards which button gets used to remove unwanted edits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:17, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is good to have these policies in mind. Many of our policy pages are artifacts from The Other Site, and might sometimes address issues that we rarely see. Wikivoyage:Listings has been brought up some times lately, with the inclusion of temples and historic buildings as case studies. Hopefully we can make the policy writing more encouraging and universal. /Yvwv (talk) 16:38, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A brief response: some of the links you've mentioned like b:Special:Diff/4195113 or b:Special:Diff/4195008 are reverts of LTAs. I'll respond to the rest of your message once I come home. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:36, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A full response:
  • "You have documented zero incidents of rollback misuse that the community has been unable to handle through its normal, everyday process of having a discussion.". Uhm, Talk:Berlin? That's just one example.
  • "You have such strong faith in writing down rules. Written rules are not magic spells." I've made my point already and won't repeat it.
  • "As for 'I do agree that we don't want to go rule-enforcing', then why do you do so much of that?". Avoiding rule-enforcing means not having a bot that warns a user every time they link a disambig page in mainspace or the alike. It does not mean not calling out users for their behaviour.
  • "Other wikis have little drama over the use of rollback because nobody cares which button is used to revert people." If that is the case, then why are rollbacks of good-faith edits basically nonexistent on other wikis. I'm not trying to advocate for using the undo button in the case of bad-faith test edits, unlike what you claim, such as b:Special:Diff/4194730 or b:Special:Diff/4194722.
So in reality, none of the uses of rollback on en.wb were a misuse and perfectly acceptable were User:SHB2000/rollback to be a policy. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:33, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Talk:Berlin happened four years ago, and was resolved through normal, everyday discussions. This discussion even included a polite apology from the person who used the rollback button. What more could you expect?
  • Calling out users for behavior is a form of rule enforcement.
  • Are you saying that changing "is Filipino-Spanish" to "is a Filipino-Spanish" is bad-faith test edit? I'd say it was a good-faith edit from someone who doesn't speak English natively. Bad grammar, but not bad faith. How do you know that this person was actively trying to harm Wikibooks? Ditto for changing "level" to "levl". How do you know that was a deliberate attempt to cause harm, rather than an accident? Note that I don't say it's against any of Wikibooks' rules; I only say that it's not blatant vandalism.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikivoyage portal (www.wikivoyage.org)

Hi, I have been updating project portals (e.g. www.wiktionary.org) to the new coding infrastructure to avoid storing them in pages in meta (m:Www.wikivoyage.org_template) among other reasons including better search experience, consistent design, better look, etc. Now every project has been migrated except wikivoyage because its portal is completely different (the picture of sunset).

I have been wondering if this is okay to change it to the standard portal design (like wikipedia.org) because:

  • This is not accessible, the contrast of the text is too low (because of the background image) for people with visual impairments.
  • The design is not following the Wikimedia standard (https://design.wikimedia.org/style-guide) for example the blue is not #36c
  • The general look doesn't follow the standard all other projects follow, that's part of the movement's brand.
  • The current design doesn't really take into account that we might have more wikivoyage languages in the future, doesn't have proper space for them (unlike the standard design)
  • The current design is completely broken on mobile.

I mentioned this in meta but didn't get any response. So I thought I bring it up here. Fixing this would take care of a lot of legacy infrastructure we have. Thanks! Ladsgroup (talk) 12:19, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What picture of a sunset? Is that only in the mobile portal? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:32, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ikan Kekek It's this page not the wiki's main page. Ladsgroup (talk) 18:43, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see. I have no great attachment to the sunset, so if the Wikimedia standard also has the virtue of being more visible on mobile phones, etc., sure, let's go with it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:41, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cool Tool

https://www.top-rated.online/ Here's another way of seeing "what the kids are talking about". Online anyway. Seems to pull data from a variety of sources. Doesn't seem to have too much data on rural places. I imagine the coverage is better where English speaking people like to go. YMMV. ButteBag (talk) 13:17, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The listings are pretty crap. I tried Montreal and top 5 includes 3 jewellery stores, 1 vape store and a dentist. Not exactly the things that tourists will need when travelling. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:27, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You can also filter and sort, which seems more helpful for big cities like Montréal. YUL top bars, for example. Click "hidden gems", etc. ButteBag (talk) 13:43, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for an old discussion about covid

I remember (very vaguely) a discussion on wiki-voyage about some sources considering covid not an issue any more, or something to this effect, but I can't find it, which is as it turns out a good thing, for me at least..

I came looking for it here first. Could not find it so decided to look in the archives. So where are the archives? At first I was slightly annoyed that the archives were not easy to locate at the top of the page as is the custom at the English Wikipedia (enwp). However since I am not in a terrible hurry as I often am, I started reading the top box and then quickly went to the box underneath it, starting with the words: "Experienced users: Please sweep the pub".

Very interesting and a different approach than any I have seen on other wmf-wikis. ( wold like to continue, but I am afraid will lose what I have already written so I won't) Ottawahitech (talk) 13:32, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is a valid point. The top of this page is cluttered and unwelcoming to new visitors to the pub. I propose:
  1. add a link to the archive in the first box
  2. move the second box (for experienced editors) to the top of the Talk page. It doesn't apply to new visitors, and experienced editors do not need to read this every time they visit the pub.
Ground Zero (talk) 13:45, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, I like this place. This was a very rapid response, AND I got notified even though I was not pinged (I used the [Subscribe] button )! Ottawahitech (talk) 13:56, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What should we do about the majority of content that is swept to other talk pages rather than archived? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:09, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Template:Swept could get a matching Template:Sweptto (Swept could get a redirect Sweptfrom, or be moved to Sweptfrom), which would replace the section content here, under the original header (which would then be kept and archived) to help people find something like this by searching or browsing the archives; if the header alone is nonhelpful, the editor who moves the talk section could append to the header a few words in parentheses to make it clear what it was about (If the header was "Question", the editor could change it to something like "Question (COVID measures relaxation)"). Twsabin (talk) 17:51, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That would be convenient for the occasional person who wants to look up an old conversation without going to the effort of looking at the Pub history, but it would add a lot of work for the few of us who sweep. Adding to the sweepers' tasks would likely result in less sweeping, which would not be good for the Pub. I'm opposed to that. I think the few who want to look up an old discussion can just go into the history. It will all be there. Ground Zero (talk) 18:11, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the section headings are unlikely to be helpful in many cases. Generally, though, the solution is: Look where the discussion ought to be. If it was a question about Wikivoyage:Where you can stick it, then look on Wikivoyage talk:Where you can stick it.
Searching generally has one clear advantage: If – as in this case – you are looking for something that has been discussed multiple times, then a search will lead you to multiple discussions, such as Talk:Main Page#Is it time to drop the COVID-19 banner? and Talk:Stay healthy#Is COVID over? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:39, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed change to the boxes at the top of the page

I didn't get much response to my proposal, so I will break it out into a separate section: Because the top of this page is cluttered and unwelcoming to new visitors to the pub, I propose to:

  1. add a link to the archive in the first box
  2. move the second box (for experienced editors) to the top of the Talk page.

Comments? Ground Zero (talk) 12:33, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds reasonable to me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:37, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. –LPfi (talk) 12:59, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:09, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to attend “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter” Sessions

Hello all,

During the 2022 Wikimedia Summit, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) presented the first outline of the Movement Charter, giving a glimpse on the direction of its future work, and the Charter itself. The MCDC then integrated the initial feedback collected during the Summit. Before proceeding with writing the Charter for the whole Movement, the MCDC wants to interact with community members and gather feedback on the drafts of the three sections: Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities (intentions statement). The Movement Charter drafts will be available on the Meta page here on November 14, 2022. Community wide consultation period on MC will take place from November 20 to December 18, 2022. Learn more about it here.

With the goal of ensuring that people are well informed to fully participate in the conversations and are empowered to contribute their perspective on the Movement Charter, three “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter" sessions have been scheduled in different time zones. Everyone in the Wikimedia Movement is invited to attend these conversations. The aim is to learn about Movement Charter - its goal, purpose, why it matters, and how it impacts your community. MCDC members will attend these sessions to answer your questions and hear community feedback.

The “Ask Me Anything” sessions accommodate communities from different time zones. Only the presentation of the session is recorded and shared afterwards, no recording of conversations. Below is the list of planned events:

  • Asia/Pacific: November 4, 2022 at 09:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Chinese and Japanese.
  • Europe/MENA/Sub Saharan Africa: November 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Arabic, French and Russian.
  • North and South America/ Western Europe: November 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Spanish and Portuguese.

On the Meta page you will find more details; Zoom links will be shared 48 hours ahead of the call.

Call for Movement Charter Ambassadors

Individuals or groups from all communities who wish to help include and start conversations in their communities on the Movement Charter are encouraged to become Movement Charter Ambassadors (MC Ambassadors). MC Ambassadors will carry out their own activities and get financial support for enabling conversations in their own languages. Regional facilitators from the Movement Strategy and Governance team are available to support applicants with MC Ambassadors grantmaking. If you are interested please sign up here. Should you have specific questions, please reach out to the MSG team via email: strategy2030@wikimedia.org or on the MS forum.

We thank you for your time and participation.

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:17, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Join the Movement Charter Regional Conversation Hours

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi all,

As most of you are aware, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) is currently collecting community feedback about three draft sections of the Movement Charter: Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities (intentions statement).

How can you participate and share your feedback?

The MCDC is looking forward to receiving all types of feedback in different languages from the community members across the Movement and Affiliates. You can participate in the following ways:

  • Attend the community conversation hours with MCDC members. Details about the regional community conversation hours are published here
  • Fill out a survey (optional and anonymous)
  • Share your thoughts and feedback on the Meta talk page
  • Share your thoughts and feedback on the MS Forum:
  • Send an email to: movementcharterwikimediaorg if you have other feedback to the MCDC.

Community consultation hour for the Sub-Saharan Africa region will take place this Friday, November 25, on Zoom. It will be translated into French language. The conversations will not be recorded, except for the section where participants are invited to share what they discussed in the breakout rooms. We will take notes and produce a summary report afterwards.

If you want to learn more about the Movement Charter, its goals, why it matters and how it impacts your community, please watch the recording of the “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter” sessions which took place earlier in November 2022.

Thank you for your participation.

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:54, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For those interested :A similar (identical?) message was posted at enWQ. I asked a (admittedly obsessive) question which was answered there by the OP. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:46, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikivoyage listings link to Wikidata - but there is no link back

I've described the problem at wikidata:Wikidata:Project_chat#Can_we_link_to_Wikivoyage_listings? - I suggest interested editors comment there. Piotrus (talk) 06:53, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

🎄 Merry Christmas to all 🎄

Or as we say in Welsh, Nadolig llawen pawb. Eat well, drink much, and celebrate time with the people you love. Thanks for being an excellent bunch of lads and lasses again. Here's to a great 2023, our 10th and 20th anniversaries! --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:39, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas everyone! Ypsilon (talk) 17:17, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Iawn, diolch: And to you and yours as well. Here's hoping for a happy, peaceful, and productive 2023. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:48, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I know I spammed Christmas cards to all regular users that I could think of on the top of my head and even tho I may be late (it's Dec 26, 08:38 where I live, as I write this), Merry Christmas everyone! SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:39, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Merry Christmas, God Yul, Happy Chanukah, etc., to whomever is celebrating! Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:06, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Same to you all! /Yvwv (talk) 11:46, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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