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Let's Connect Program

Dear all,

I hope this topic finds you all well. My name is Gorana Gomirac and I am a part of the Let’s Connect working group. We are a team of 8 who represent: Latina America, MENA, South Asia, East, South East Asia, Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central & Eastern Europe, Northern & Western region. If you are interested in participating in learning clinics , I welcome you to fill out this registration form. You will gain access to our monthly newsletter, our monthly learning clinics and even become a sharer where you and your community can give a workshop/learning clinic to our fellow Let’s Connectors. We look forward to include more topics about Wikivoyage so please feel free to reach out to us!

If you have any questions please email us at letsconnect@wikimedia.org Gorana Gomirac (VMRS) (talk) 12:59, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question about educational projects on Wikivoyage

First, thanks to everyone who has helped over the past few years. The class will return, as usual, in the Fall. In the meantime, I intend to collect feedback I got and revise it into a more formatted guide (at User:Hanyangprofessor2, to be moved to structured subpages), as well as into an academic paper similar to ones I've written in the past (GS). Feel free to offer any additional feedback, thoughts or comments (when the paper is mostly finished, I'll post a draft here for you to check it out). In the meantime, a question - are you familiar with any other educators running some activities on Wikivoyage? Piotrus (talk) 07:17, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I recall we had Indian students on this site a number of years ago. I think you're the only one now. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:23, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm not mistaken, the Nigeria + broader African expeditions we had were coordinated through WM Nigeria (or some equivalent group), though I'm not entirely sure how that worked. A few years back we also had an English teacher in France use Wikivoyage as a teaching tool. --SHB (t | c | m) 10:47, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I used to be a teacher, and I organized a couple of Wikivoyage editing projects for students in 2017. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:44, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Mx. Granger You stopped using Wikivoyage because job change or because it wasn't working out? Piotrus (talk) 01:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, those were French high school students, as I recall. I didn't remember your educational project, Granger. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Probably – I can't exactly remember, and don't remember who the user was to check :(. SHB (t | c | m) 01:50, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus: Job change. I think the project was fairly successful. In addition to letting the students practice using English in an authentic context, it led to improved coverage of a few destinations in Uruguay. I monitored the students' edits and cleaned up the articles a little afterwards. @Ikan Kekek: It was discussed briefly here: Talk:Uruguay#Workshop tomorrow. —Granger (talk · contribs) 04:29, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Launching! Join Us for Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025!

Dear All,

We’re happy to announce the launch of Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025, an annual international campaign dedicated to celebrating and preserving Islamic cultures and history through the power of Wikipedia. As an active contributor to the Local Wikipedia, you are specially invited to participate in the launch.

This year’s campaign will be launched for you to join us write, edit, and improve articles that showcase the richness and diversity of Islamic traditions, history, and culture.

To get started, visit the campaign page for details, resources, and guidelines: Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025.

Add your community here, and organized Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025 in your local language.

Whether you’re a first-time editor or an experienced Wikipedian, your contributions matter. Together, we can ensure Islamic cultures and traditions are well-represented and accessible to all.

Feel free to invite your community and friends too. Kindly reach out if you have any questions or need support as you prepare to participate.

Let’s make Wiki Loves Ramadan 2025 a success! → me. For the International Team 12:08, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct annual review: provide your comments on the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines

Please help translate to your language.

I am writing to you to let you know the annual review period for the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines is open now. You can make suggestions for changes through 3 February 2025. This is the first step of several to be taken for the annual review. Read more information and find a conversation to join on the UCoC page on Meta.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this information with other members in your community wherever else might be appropriate.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 01:12, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder: first part of the annual UCoC review closes soon

Please help translate to your language.

This is a reminder that the first phase of the annual review period for the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines will be closing soon. You can make suggestions for changes through the end of day, 3 February 2025. This is the first step of several to be taken for the annual review. Read more information and find a conversation to join on the UCoC page on Meta. After review of the feedback, proposals for updated text will be published on Meta in March for another round of community review.

Please share this information with other members in your community wherever else might be appropriate.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:49, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming Language Community Meeting (Feb 28th, 14:00 UTC) and Newsletter

Hello everyone!

An image symbolising multiple languages

We’re excited to announce that the next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, February 28th at 14:00 UTC! If you’d like to join, simply sign up on the wiki page.

This is a participant-driven meeting where we share updates on language-related projects, discuss technical challenges in language wikis, and collaborate on solutions. In our last meeting, we covered topics like developing language keyboards, creating the Moore Wikipedia, and updates from the language support track at Wiki Indaba.

Got a topic to share? Whether it’s a technical update from your project, a challenge you need help with, or a request for interpretation support, we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reply to this message or add agenda items to the document here.

Also, we wanted to highlight that the sixth edition of the Language & Internationalization newsletter (January 2025) is available here: Wikimedia Language and Product Localization/Newsletter/2025/January. This newsletter provides updates from the October–December 2024 quarter on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects and support efforts, details about community meetings, and ideas for contributing to projects. To stay updated, you can subscribe to the newsletter on its wiki page: Wikimedia Language and Product Localization/Newsletter.

We look forward to your ideas and participation at the language community meeting, see you there!

MediaWiki message delivery 08:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Universal Code of Conduct annual review: proposed changes are available for comment

Please help translate to your language.

I am writing to you to let you know that proposed changes to the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines and Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter are open for review. You can provide feedback on suggested changes through the end of day on Tuesday, 18 March 2025. This is the second step in the annual review process, the final step will be community voting on the proposed changes. Read more information and find relevant links about the process on the UCoC annual review page on Meta.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this information with other members in your community wherever else might be appropriate.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) 18:52, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Loves Bangla 2025 is on—Come Join Us!

Hello All,

Greetings from the Wiki Loves Bangla Team!

We are excited to announce that Wiki Loves Bangla 2025 is coming soon! This year, the contest theme will focus on Birds of Bengal, inviting participants to capture and share stunning images of Bengal's diverse birdlife.

Contest Details

📅 Dates: 1 – 31 March 2025
📍 Theme: Birds of Bengal
🎯 Organized by: Bangla WikiMoitree

Wiki Loves Bangla is an international photography contest hosted on Wikimedia Commons to document Bengali culture and heritage worldwide. As part of the Bangla Culture and Heritage Collation Program, it is held annually with a specific theme, inviting participants to contribute their photographs to Wikimedia Commons to expand free knowledge. Through this campaign, you can become part of a community dedicated to preserving and showcasing the beauty, behaviour, and biodiversity of Bangla’s birds. This initiative aims to highlight the richness of Bangla’s natural heritage to the world.

How can I participate?

The contest runs from 1 - 31 March 2025 on Wikimedia Commons. To take part, simply:

📷 Capture photographs of Birds of Bengal.
📤 Upload your images to Wikimedia Commons under the Wiki Loves Bangla 2025 category.
📖 Learn more about contest rules and guidelines on the contest page.

Why participate?

By contributing, you help in documenting the rich birdlife of Bengal, making knowledge accessible to all. Plus, there are exciting prizes to be won!

Prizes

1st prize: BDT 50,000, crest, and certificate.
2nd prize: BDT 25,000, crest, and certificate.
3rd Prize: BDT 15,000, crest, and certificate.

If you are interested in participating in the photography campaign, start photographing and get ready for the photo campaign happening on Wikimedia Commons. For more information about the rules and prizes of the contest, refer here. For any questions, email us or join our telegram group here.

Warm regards,
Wiki Loves Bangla Team.
~ Moheen (keep talking) 13:44, 13 March 2025 (UTC) #WikiLovesBangla[reply]

Your wiki will be in read-only soon

MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a reminder that these events are "for up to an hour", but in recent years, it's usually been "for less than five minutes". Most people won't notice this at all, but if you do, just wait a couple of minutes and try your edit again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Final proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter now posted

The proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and the U4C Charter are now on Meta-wiki for community notice in advance of the voting period. This final draft was developed from the previous two rounds of community review. Community members will be able to vote on these modifications starting on 17 April 2025. The vote will close on 1 May 2025, and results will be announced no later than 12 May 2025. The U4C election period, starting with a call for candidates, will open immediately following the announcement of the review results. More information will be posted on the wiki page for the election soon.

Please be advised that this process will require more messages to be sent here over the next two months.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata and Sister Projects: An online community event

(Apologies for posting in English)

Hello everyone, I am excited to share news of an upcoming online event called Wikidata and Sister Projects celebrating the different ways Wikidata can be used to support or enhance with another Wikimedia project. The event takes place over 4 days between May 29 - June 1st, 2025.

We would like to invite speakers to present at this community event, to hear success stories, challenges, showcase tools or projects you may be working on, where Wikidata has been involved in Wikipedia, Commons, WikiSource and all other WM projects.

If you are interested in attending, please register here. If you would like to speak at the event, please fill out this Session Proposal template on the event talk page, where you can also ask any questions you may have.

I hope to see you at the event, in the audience or as a speaker, - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:18, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vote now on the revised UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ("UCoC EG") and the UCoC's Coordinating Committee Charter is open now through the end of 1 May (UTC) (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review of the EG and Charter was planned and implemented by the U4C. Further information will be provided in the coming months about the review of the UCoC itself. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vote on proposed modifications to the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter closes on 1 May 2025 at 23:59 UTC (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community in your language, as appropriate, so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C --

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 03:41, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Commons Notification Deletion bot revived

I am pleased announce, thanks to the rockstar that is @Taavi, the Commons Notification Deletion bot is finally back up and running! You should start seeing new talk page notifications soon (for eligible deletion discussions that are started after roughly 15 minutes ago).

Pinging @Ikan Kekek @SHB2000 @WhatamIdoing and @LPfi who have been asking for this for a very long time. I apologize for the two years of downtime. I am making efforts to ensure the bot stays running and something like this won't happen again.

Cheers and happy editing! — MusikAnimal talk 09:07, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome – I've been looking forward to this for a very long time and I'm very glad you and Taavi have made it possible! Thanks again. :) //shb (t | c | m) 09:09, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really relieved to hear this and look forward to decreasing my participation at c:Commons:Deletion requests. Thank you, and many thanks to Taavi! Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:06, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is great news. Thanks for letting us know. Taavi, you're awesome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We will be enabling the new Charts extension on your wiki soon!

(Apologies for posting in English)

Hi all! We have good news to share regarding the ongoing problem with graphs and charts affecting all wikis that use them.

As you probably know, the old Graph extension was disabled in 2023 due to security reasons. We’ve worked in these two years to find a solution that could replace the old extension, and provide a safer and better solution to users who wanted to showcase graphs and charts in their articles. We therefore developed the Charts extension, which will be replacing the old Graph extension and potentially also the EasyTimeline extension.

After successfully deploying the extension on Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedia, as well as on MediaWiki.org, as part of a pilot phase, we are now happy to announce that we are moving forward with the next phase of deployment, which will also include your wiki.

The deployment will happen in batches, and will start from May 6. Please, consult our page on MediaWiki.org to discover when the new Charts extension will be deployed on your wiki. You can also consult the documentation about the extension on MediaWiki.org.

If you have questions, need clarifications, or just want to express your opinion about it, please refer to the project’s talk page on Mediawiki.org, or ping me directly under this thread. If you encounter issues using Charts once it gets enabled on your wiki, please report it on the talk page or at Phabricator.

Thank you in advance! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone remember whether we're using any of these? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:44, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we've ever used charts on this site – like, ever. //shb (t | c | m) 22:23, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing, SHB2000: We do have {{Climate}}, but it probably never used the Graph extension. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 03:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks.
@Sannita (WMF), I notice that mw:Extension:Chart/Project#Deployment Timeline only list mw.org and Wikipedias. What's the schedule for the non-Wikipedias? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:04, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @WhatamIdoing, thanks for the question. The deployment for non-Wikipedia wikis will happen this week, along with most of the Wikipedias that are not scheduled for the next two weeks. It is up to you if the extension will be useful for your work or not. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe it is useful for making a remastered version of the existing {{Climate}} template. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 11:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing and the others: there's a correction to my last message. There's been a change in the schedule yesterday for scaling purposes, so all non-Wikipedia wikis will be addressed after the deployment will be completed on all Wikipedias. This means that all non-Wikipedia wikis will have to wait until the end of the month at least. Sorry for the delay. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:06, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I think that just uses some very complex css but never the formal MW extension. //shb (t | c | m) 09:39, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Call for Candidates for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C)

The results of voting on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter is available on Meta-wiki.

You may now submit your candidacy to serve on the U4C through 29 May 2025 at 12:00 UTC. Information about eligibility, process, and the timeline are on Meta-wiki. Voting on candidates will open on 1 June 2025 and run for two weeks, closing on 15 June 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

If you have any questions, you can ask on the discussion page for the election. -- in cooperation with the U4C,

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:08, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

33,333 articles

33333

In some mildly optimistic news, we've finally reached 33,333 articles with the creation of Nassarawa. Thanks to everyone who has made this happen! //shb (t | c | m) 08:35, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good achievement, but it also tells us about our obsession with arbitrary patterns, like round figures (30,000), strings of the same digits (33,333), and so on. These are meaningless to many other number systems, like 30,000 and 33,333 are 7,530 and 8,235 in hexadecimal, respectively. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 09:36, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Haha definitely true – but I also think the fact that article count milestones on this project tend to be several years apart has something to do with this too. I expect 40k articles by 2034 and there's not a whole lot apart from 35k in between. //shb (t | c | m) 09:54, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We have 36,00010 = 𒐞 * 𒐕^𒐖 (10*10060) – that's quite a round figure (and in an important base) – or 2⁵·3²·5³, the first prime numbers (in any base) raised to the previous of the numbers (with overflow rotation).
:-)
–LPfi (talk) 22:33, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
True, that's another worthy milestone for a project of this size. //shb (t | c | m) 02:19, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This milestone makes me happy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RfC ongoing regarding Abstract Wikipedia (and your project)

(Apologies for posting in English, if this is not your first language)

Hello all! We opened a discussion on Meta about a very delicate issue for the development of Abstract Wikipedia: where to store the abstract content that will be developed through functions from Wikifunctions and data from Wikidata. Since some of the hypothesis involve your project, we wanted to hear your thoughts too.

We want to make the decision process clear: we do not yet know which option we want to use, which is why we are consulting here. We will take the arguments from the Wikimedia communities into account, and we want to consult with the different communities and hear arguments that will help us with the decision. The decision will be made and communicated after the consultation period by the Foundation.

You can read the various hypothesis and have your say at Abstract Wikipedia/Location of Abstract Content. Thank you in advance! -- Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Sannita (WMF): may I ask how this affects Wikivoyage when you say "some of the hypothesis involve your project"? TIA, //shb (t | c | m) 02:28, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The proposed solutions mention the Wikivoyages in several places. The main issue is that an abstract article about Someplace shouldn't be rendered the same in Wikipedia and Wikivoyage. This affects also the technical solutions, such as where to store statements and functions. –LPfi (talk) 07:21, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you explain further how we have abstract (vs. concrete?) articles on Wikivoyage? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have any abstract articles at the time being, and I assume Wikivoyage in English may choose never to have them. For smaller languages, though, it is unrealistic to cover all interesting places with proper articles. The mission of Abstract Wikipedia is to provide a framework for creating articles in a way that allows automatic translation into something at least half-way decent. It's like having listings fetch key information from Wikidata, but scaled up to complete articles (or less complete – at least lively language on personal impressions will certainly be missing for the foreseeable future). –LPfi (talk) 07:43, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see – I still don't understand how this will fully get (even after reading the hypothesis), but I suppose it's something for smaller language projects. //shb (t | c | m) 09:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @SHB2000, it seems that @LPfi covered most of my arguments here already, so I would just repeat them at this point. The part that interests your project refers to the hypothesis that abstract content might (but it's still not sure at the moment) be stored in a dedicated namespace of your project. But again, this might happen, and you're free to refuse to store/use abstract content to further your development. This is entirely in your right, and we do not want to force any adoption of the project without consensus. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:01, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And yes, Abstract Wikipedia is primarily intended for projects that have so far developed a small number of articles, in order to help them accelerate their growth and hopefully provide more knowledge to their communities and recruit a higher number of volunteers. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:03, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds perfect. Thanks to both of you for explaining! //shb (t | c | m) 10:10, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seconded. I understand. We should discuss in a separate thread whether it would be better to encourage, allow perhaps without comment, or disallow abstract listings on this site. I think we probably don't want abstract articles, but we should discuss that, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:22, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can see abstract listings being useful for more obscure parts of the world for English speakers for this site at least, but overall sounds like it's something to help smaller language Wikivoyages benefit from us rather than the other way around (which is also great). //shb (t | c | m) 13:30, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mentioned listings as we already use Wikidata for them (coordinates) and have discussed e.g. opening hours (too complicated to be workable). I don't think "abstract listings" are an option at this point – somebody needs to decide a listing is wanted and would include some manual language when adding it. We still might have some valuable insights in how – and how not – to design abstract Wikivoyage articles for them to be useful. –LPfi (talk) 14:04, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have two thoughts about this:
  • We need some way of separating a block of text that works for Wikipedia from a block of text that works for Wikivoyage (or another sister project). That suggests not using the English Wikipedia as the storage place for everything. The Wikipedias might all want "Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. It is the fifth planet from the Sun", but if Wikivoyage were to have an article on the planet, it would probably sound a lot more like "Jupiter isn't a viable destination, but travelers interested in astronomy and navigationby the stars may be interested in the Big Museum of Jupiter and the Annual Jupiter Festival".
  • I think that the English Wikivoyage could benefit from Abstract content. It's obvious that we could 'translate' our Star articles into Abstract, and thus other Wikivoyages would benefit. However, imagine how much we could benefit if @Sannita (WMF) brought it:Roma up to Star status, and then translated it for us to copy whatever bits we wanted in Rome. Keep in mind that while Abstract is set up to do dynamic autotranslation (e.g., always giving the latest population estimate, if the sentence says "the population of Rome is ___"), you can actually copy and paste the results as plain old text into an article.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand correctly, Abstract Wikipedia works with programming that could have been done in the 1980s, more or less like Lsjbot's articles, although not confined to info found in already existing datasets. "Not a viable destination" would need to be an item to insert and translate. That article on Jupiter would have very little in common with the Wikipedia one.
For Rome, population statistics etc. would be easy to write in abstract form, but an abstract star article would need a lot of article-specific functions, which need to be translated to get a version in another language – and lively language is hard to translate automatically (think "blind and therefore insane"). Copying over listings would work, and a good abstract article should have a good selection of those.
I think an abstract Wikivoyage article should focus on being reasonably complete by having information: roads and trains for getting in, listings with coords, contact details and Wikidata link, and suggestions in Go next, but quite little running text, mostly identical across articles except data values (…is a village/town/city in X…), and likewise a dry list of facts in the listing "content", not like the lively writing in Wikivoyage:Listings.
–LPfi (talk) 17:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As Wikivoyage has generally has more structured articles than Wikipedia, I think that we could make use of an Abstract Wikivoyage. Two areas look like possible starting points: listings and the phrases in phrasebooks.
If a tool could create an abstract version of a listing that exists in another language, then the listing could be offered when editing the same section of an article here - "Would you like to add a listing for the Lawnmower Museum?". Some parts of listing could be updated in all languages when edited in one - we would show the last updated entry price for the museum whatever language it was edited in. A difficult part is identifying when listing elements are language specific - we may use a different url from another WV to point to a page in English, and we don't care that the museum has labels translated into Spanish.
In English WV we have a standard set of phrases for phrasebooks, and most phrasebooks keep fairly closely to this list. This list is also the basis for phrasebooks in some other language WVs. It would appear to be reasonably straightforward to scan the existing phrases to create an abstract phrasebook, but inconsistencies would need to be reviewed. There are about 300 phrasebooks in English, 50 in German and 20 in Polish. Maybe we can use this to offer over 200 phrasebooks in Polish. AlasdairW (talk) 22:44, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For listings, yes, the abstract versions would be easy to create. For the name, we only need to identify the native name, its romanisation, and the language of translated names. There are already structures for all this in Wikidata; also "official URL" has a language attribute. Amenities of hotels can likewise easily be described. Nothing will be automatically fetched, so no worries about info irrelevant for English speakers. What is hard to do is the lively language of the examples I linked above.
For phrasebooks, I am not sure it is that easy, or rather whether creating an abstract phrasebook helps compared to just translating the template and using a dictionary (or whatever way you otherwise use for getting translations). Grammar and pronunciation sections needs to be written with the audience's language knowledge in mind, and translations of phrases need to be done with some understanding of the context, thus mostly manually. For a good phrasebook, you also need to note peculiarities in the relation with the target language, such as the liberty/liberté etc. now added to the French and Italian phrasebook and warnings for specific false friends.
–LPfi (talk) 04:57, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think phrasebooks is one of those things (along with travel topics) where it's more or less impossible to create an abstract version of. //shb (t | c | m) 05:23, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think that?
We can already write things like "hello, a cup of coffee, please" by invoking Wikidata. It would require expansion (e.g., to add "a" and "an"), but it doesn't seem impossible in principle, at least for simpler sentences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The question is whether there is any point of doing that. If every phrase has to be purpose-translated, then why not just write the non-abstract phrasebook? The point with the abstract articles is that there are standard phrases that can be used across articles, such as words for amenities you will find in many hotels. For the phrasebook phrases, the question is whether the same Sámi phrase would suite the phrasebook in English and the one in Latvian (or whatever).
When the English phrase is translated differently depending on context, some commentary needs to be added (formal/informal, feminine/masculine). This commentary is redundant or awkward in languages that make the same distinction, possibly treating the two (or more) forms as totally unrelated (the person is deceased, the cow is dead).
For the cup of tea, you may need to word that differently depending on whether you are a man or woman, and whether the one you are asking for the cup is a waiter, the café owner, your host or your host's young child.
–LPfi (talk) 20:59, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps an example would show what I was thinking of:
In French phrasebook, we have:
How much is a ticket to _____?
Combien coûte le billet pour _____ ? (kom-BYAN koot luh bee-YEH poor)
One ticket to _____, please.
Un billet pour _____, s'il vous plaît. (ung bee-YEH poor ____ seel voo pleh)
On Polish WV there is pl:Rozmówki francuskie, their French Phrasebook.
Ile kosztuje bilet do...?
Combien coûte le billet pour...?
Poproszę jeden bilet do...
Un billet pour..., je vous prie.
We also have Finnish phrasebook, which has:
How much is a ticket to _____?
Paljonko maksaa lippu _____in? (PAHL-yonk-aw MAHK-sah LEEP-poo _____?)
So I think that a Finnish phrasebook on the Polish WV, could have
Ile kosztuje bilet do...?
Paljonko maksaa lippu _____in? (PAHL-yonk-aw MAHK-sah LEEP-poo _____?)
"One ticket to" is not exactly the same (translating the French used in Polish, it is saying "I beg you" rather than "please"), so this phase would require some manual adjustments when it was abstracted. AlasdairW (talk) 22:24, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that the idea with Abstract is to program in "please", but rather to swap in whichever word or phrase is used in that language to indicate politeness and respect while making a request.
We already have a software switch for gender, so this is not some miraculous future tech; this is an expansion of what has been possible for years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For Finnish, there is no word or phrase that indicates politeness, but one often uses the conditional (?) verb form instead. In some cases one would just use that word form in the phrase (in the Finnish phrasebooks and in phrasebooks for Finnish) – but here the question is instead with no sign of politeness, which is common in that language. Something like "could you" is problematic as most languages make a distinction between thou and you. I think the common cases can be handled decently, but for less well-known language families – those that benefit most from the abstract articles – the edge cases will be more common. It is likely that abstract phrasebook have to be tweaked for specific languages to avoid the odd case of very problematic renderings. –LPfi (talk) 06:02, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Malay, there are two words for "please" that have different meanings and are used in different contexts. There are also two words for "we" that have different meanings. Etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would expect all the foreign phrases to be reproduced exactly as they were in the existing phrasebook(s) that they were taken from. Ideally the left side phrases would also be exact reproductions, unless they were used to create a phrasebook to be part of a WV that doesn't currently have any phrasebooks; but it is less of an issue if the left side doesn't read perfectly. I am assuming that an Abstract Wikivoyage would have some mechanism for handling quoted text, as this is essential for reproducing the exact words used in famous speeches etc, and will be required for abstract Wikipedia and Wikiquote etc. AlasdairW (talk) 14:06, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: LPfi's basically explained why I don't think abstract phrasebooks will work. //shb (t | c | m) 23:25, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2025 Selection & Call for Questions

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Dear all,

This year, the term of 2 (two) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end [1]. The Board invites the whole movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.

The Elections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff [2]. The Governance Committee, composed of trustees who are not candidates in the 2025 community-and-affiliate-selected trustee selection process (Raju Narisetti, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Lorenzo Losa, Kathy Collins, Victoria Doronina and Esra’a Al Shafei) [3], is tasked with providing Board oversight for the 2025 trustee selection process and for keeping the Board informed. More details on the roles of the Elections Committee, Board, and staff are here [4].

Here are the key planned dates:

  • May 22 – June 5: Announcement (this communication) and call for questions period [6]
  • June 17 – July 1, 2025: Call for candidates
  • July 2025: If needed, affiliates vote to shortlist candidates if more than 10 apply [5]
  • August 2025: Campaign period
  • August – September 2025: Two-week community voting period
  • October – November 2025: Background check of selected candidates
  • Board’s Meeting in December 2025: New trustees seated

Learn more about the 2025 selection process - including the detailed timeline, the candidacy process, the campaign rules, and the voter eligibility criteria - on this Meta-wiki page [link].

Call for Questions

In each selection process, the community has the opportunity to submit questions for the Board of Trustees candidates to answer. The Election Committee selects questions from the list developed by the community for the candidates to answer. Candidates must answer all the required questions in the application in order to be eligible; otherwise their application will be disqualified. This year, the Election Committee will select 5 questions for the candidates to answer. The selected questions may be a combination of what’s been submitted from the community, if they’re alike or related. [link]

Election Volunteers

Another way to be involved with the 2025 selection process is to be an Election Volunteer. Election Volunteers are a bridge between the Elections Committee and their respective community. They help ensure their community is represented and mobilize them to vote. Learn more about the program and how to join on this Meta-wiki page [link].

Thank you!

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Results

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Committee:Elections_Committee_Charter

[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Committee_Membership,_December_2024

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Roles

[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/FAQ

[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Questions_for_candidates

Best regards,

Victoria Doronina

Board Liaison to the Elections Committee

Governance Committee

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:08, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: Planning a Trip? AI Will Do That For You

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/ai-travel-apps —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:04, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder whether we can design an AI tool that can fetch info from Wikivoyage and make a summary for you. That can replace the burden of manual summary writing by Wikivoyagers. Of course, Wikivoyage articles should be curated by humans, with AI summarizing them. I want to suggest this to Wikipedians as well, but I have been blocked there since 2021, and I mostly work on the Bengali Wikipedia. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 07:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vote now in the 2025 U4C Election

Please help translate to your language

Eligible voters are asked to participate in the 2025 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee election. More information–including an eligibility check, voting process information, candidate information, and a link to the vote–are available on Meta at the 2025 Election information page. The vote closes on 17 June 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

Please vote if your account is eligible. Results will be available by 1 July 2025. -- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Surprised this was sent very late. I made a guide on all the candidates on Meta at m:User:SHB2000/U4C guide 2025, for those interested. //shb (t | c | m) 03:13, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Commons RFD notifications

While the Commons bot that alert us to images about to be deleted was revived, images are still being deleted without notification, namely those (I assume), that were nominated before 4 May. The issue was told in the linked announcement, but I did not realise its implications. So, expect some imgages to be removed with no notification on the talk page. If they might be valuable, they should be temporarily restored for local upload, like when the bot wasn't working. –LPfi (talk) 11:51, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2025 - Call for Candidates

Hello all,

The call for candidates for the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection is now open from June 17, 2025 – July 2, 2025 at 11:59 UTC [1]. The Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's work, and each Trustee serves a three-year term [2]. This is a volunteer position.

This year, the Wikimedia community will vote in late August through September 2025 to fill two (2) seats on the Foundation Board. Could you – or someone you know – be a good fit to join the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees? [3]

Learn more about what it takes to stand for these leadership positions and how to submit your candidacy on this Meta-wiki page or encourage someone else to run in this year's election.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair of the Elections Committee

On behalf of the Elections Committee and Governance Committee

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Call_for_candidates

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Bylaws#(B)_Term.

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Resources_for_candidates

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sister Projects Task Force reviews Wikispore and Wikinews

Dear Wikimedia Community,

The Community Affairs Committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees assigned the Sister Projects Task Force (SPTF) to update and implement a procedure for assessing the lifecycle of Sister Projects – wiki projects supported by Wikimedia Foundation (WMF).

A vision of relevant, accessible, and impactful free knowledge has always guided the Wikimedia Movement. As the ecosystem of Wikimedia projects continues to evolve, it is crucial that we periodically review existing projects to ensure they still align with our goals and community capacity.

Despite their noble intent, some projects may no longer effectively serve their original purpose. Reviewing such projects is not about giving up – it's about responsible stewardship of shared resources. Volunteer time, staff support, infrastructure, and community attention are finite, and the non-technical costs tend to grow significantly as our ecosystem has entered a different age of the internet than the one we were founded in. Supporting inactive projects or projects that didn't meet our ambitions can unintentionally divert these resources from areas with more potential impact.

Moreover, maintaining projects that no longer reflect the quality and reliability of the Wikimedia name stands for, involves a reputational risk. An abandoned or less reliable project affects trust in the Wikimedia movement.

Lastly, failing to sunset or reimagine projects that are no longer working can make it much harder to start new ones. When the community feels bound to every past decision – no matter how outdated – we risk stagnation. A healthy ecosystem must allow for evolution, adaptation, and, when necessary, letting go. If we create the expectation that every project must exist indefinitely, we limit our ability to experiment and innovate.

Because of this, SPTF reviewed two requests concerning the lifecycle of the Sister Projects to work through and demonstrate the review process. We chose Wikispore as a case study for a possible new Sister Project opening and Wikinews as a case study for a review of an existing project. Preliminary findings were discussed with the CAC, and a community consultation on both proposals was recommended.

Wikispore

The application to consider Wikispore was submitted in 2019. SPTF decided to review this request in more depth because rather than being concentrated on a specific topic, as most of the proposals for the new Sister Projects are, Wikispore has the potential to nurture multiple start-up Sister Projects.

After careful consideration, the SPTF has decided not to recommend Wikispore as a Wikimedia Sister Project. Considering the current activity level, the current arrangement allows better flexibility and experimentation while WMF provides core infrastructural support.

We acknowledge the initiative's potential and seek community input on what would constitute a sufficient level of activity and engagement to reconsider its status in the future.

As part of the process, we shared the decision with the Wikispore community and invited one of its leaders, Pharos, to an SPTF meeting.

Currently, we especially invite feedback on measurable criteria indicating the project's readiness, such as contributor numbers, content volume, and sustained community support. This would clarify the criteria sufficient for opening a new Sister Project, including possible future Wikispore re-application. However, the numbers will always be a guide because any number can be gamed.

Wikinews

We chose to review Wikinews among existing Sister Projects because it is the one for which we have observed the highest level of concern in multiple ways.

Since the SPTF was convened in 2023, its members have asked for the community's opinions during conferences and community calls about Sister Projects that did not fulfil their promise in the Wikimedia movement.[1][2][3] Wikinews was the leading candidate for an evaluation because people from multiple language communities proposed it. Additionally, by most measures, it is the least active Sister Project, with the greatest drop in activity over the years.

While the Language Committee routinely opens and closes language versions of the Sister Projects in small languages, there has never been a valid proposal to close Wikipedia in major languages or any project in English. This is not true for Wikinews, where there was a proposal to close English Wikinews, which gained some traction but did not result in any action[4][5], see section 5 as well as a draft proposal to close all languages of Wikinews[6].

Initial metrics compiled by WMF staff also support the community's concerns about Wikinews.

Based on this report, SPTF recommends a community reevaluation of Wikinews. We conclude that its current structure and activity levels are the lowest among the existing sister projects. SPTF also recommends pausing the opening of new language editions while the consultation runs.

SPTF brings this analysis to a discussion and welcomes discussions of alternative outcomes, including potential restructuring efforts or integration with other Wikimedia initiatives.

Options mentioned so far (which might be applied to just low-activity languages or all languages) include but are not limited to:

  • Restructure how Wikinews works and is linked to other current events efforts on the projects,
  • Merge the content of Wikinews into the relevant language Wikipedias, possibly in a new namespace,
  • Merge content into compatibly licensed external projects,
  • Archive Wikinews projects.

Your insights and perspectives are invaluable in shaping the future of these projects. We encourage all interested community members to share their thoughts on the relevant discussion pages or through other designated feedback channels.

Feedback and next steps

We'd be grateful if you want to take part in a conversation on the future of these projects and the review process. We are setting up two different project pages: Public consultation about Wikispore and Public consultation about Wikinews. Please participate between 27 June 2025 and 27 July 2025, after which we will summarize the discussion to move forward. You can write in your own language.

I will also host a community conversation 16th July Wednesday 11.00 UTC and 17th July Thursday 17.00 UTC (call links to follow shortly) and will be around at Wikimania for more discussions.

-- Victoria on behalf of the Sister Project Task Force, 20:57, 27 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely hate to say it but Wikinews has to be one of the most failed WMF projects. The English Wikinews is barely sustaining and I think that is fine for the timebeing, but the other Wikinews projects simply lack the editor base to actively review new news articles. It came up in tawikinews' closure proposal where their newest article dated to 2018! //shb (t | c | m) 02:56, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that we're meant to post that kind of thing on the Meta-Wiki project pages: Public consultation about Wikispore and Public consultation about Wikinews. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm aware; I just wanted to give out my 2c in short form – I have a longer list of suggestions planned which I'll do when I get a bit more spare time. //shb (t | c | m) 23:44, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

General concerns

I am not a big fan of Wikinews, but one thing about the report published by Sister Projects Task Force is concerning. This report is written in a very critical manner, namely, it does not mention that dozens if not hundreds of volunteers have spent a considerable amount of their time on developing Wikinews. The report does not mention any single good thing about their work, which does not seem fair. The report demonstrates that the current level of activity and content development at Wikinews is low (and this statement is fair), but it does not set any threshold of what would be good enough metrics for a community to deserve the resources from WMF. Moreover, the report does not attempt to analyze which steps Wikinews editors took to develop their project, and why these steps were unsuccessful. It just says: you did a bad job, so we will close you down and even deprive you of any possibility of moving Wikinews elsewhere because the name stays with Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikivoyage is a smaller project too, and it would be discouraging if a similarly critical report about our work appears. It is not completely unrealistic when half of the language versions are dormant, while many others are somewhat comparable in their metrics to the most active editions of Wikinews. I think that only English Wikivoyage is clearly above that threshold, although the actual threshold is not even defined, so almost any level of activity can be deemed "low" if one wants to say so.

What are your thoughts on that? --Alexander (talk) 09:53, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have not been using Wikinews, so my reflections are based on the closure of Wikinews in Swedish and the current discussion, linked above. One point raised in the discussion is that the metrics chosen didn't take into account the special nature of the project.
I assume the Sister Project Task Force is right in that this kind of evaluations need to be done from time to time, but also think that the evaluations should focus on whether there are paths forward, rather than on whether the project is viable according to current trends.
Wikinews has the problem that a significant dedicated editor base i needed – Wikipedia or even Wikivoyage can stay alive and stay interesting even with no edits for a year or two, while a news outlet would loose nearly all of its readers. The coverage needs to be adequate on at least some areas (geographic or thematic) for the site to stay interesting. The critical mass needed is much larger – and that critical mass additionally needs to be able to counter people with a bias (good-faith or not) or with an agenda not aligned with the project goals – keeping touting at bay is much easier. I assume new language versions should be started only if there is hope of quickly building that critical mass.
–LPfi (talk) 10:36, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I do believe that LangCom has decided to suspend the creation of all new Wikinews projects for that very reason. //shb (t | c | m) 23:46, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Alexander, it's true "that dozens if not hundreds of volunteers have spent a considerable amount of their time on developing Wikinews", but it's also true that keeping a failing project because of past efforts is an example of w:en:Sunk cost fallacy.
I suspect that if someone made a credible proposal to move Wikinews to another host, the WMF would be be open to negotiations over the name. (But any new sponsor might prefer to come up with their own name.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:31, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess my main problem is the absence of any well-defined criteria that distinguish a sustainable project from a failing one. Do you understand what these criteria are? -- Alexander (talk) 08:35, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A well-defined criteria that defines what a sustainable project would still heavily rely on how the project functions, though. For Wikinews, it needs to be very active and metrics that may be appropriate for Wikivoyage or Wikibooks like number of articles aren't super relevant because 20000 articles is no good if the last one was written 2 months ago (the numbers are hypothetical but my point stands). //shb (t | c | m) 08:50, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the same metrics can not be applied to all sister projects, but "very active" leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Imagine someone decides that Wikivoyage is not sustainable because it contains a lot of outdated travel information that has not been updated in the last 5 years. That would be a problem... -- Alexander (talk) 09:27, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We don't want well-defined criteria. There needs to be judgement on the projects actual prospects. Opening a community discussion is good, as that's a way to see whether the metrics give a correct picture – although there should be discussions with the projects before opening a discussion like this (I don't know to what extent there have been such discussions). –LPfi (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't love the way the SPTF decided to mass-send these messages to every wiki without consulting the Wikinews community; it really should be up to them (and when I mean them, I mean the more active Wikinews projects such as en or ruwikinews) to decide their project's future, not the rest of us or the vast majority who don't get involved with Wikinews. //shb (t | c | m) 23:01, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. The issues should have been raised with the projects first (not only the big ones, but all projects affected). I don't know whether that was done, but seemingly not enough, anyway. It seems the SPTF (?) wanted to introduce a more general practice of re-evaluating projects, and just chose the two as examples. They should have understood that doing it that way, without consultations, would upset people. –LPfi (talk) 06:40, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
TBF, there were several closure proposals before, including one for all language Wikinews. Those for major projects failed, but one can argue that this was a signal to the communities to evaluate their performance which they apparently did not get. I agree though that opening such discussion before notifying the Wikinews communities first is not really good. Ymblanter (talk) 08:54, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They definitely should have; I hope they use this as a learning lesson because the general sentiment from the enwikinews community is quite clearly unimpressed from that discussion. //shb (t | c | m) 09:01, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well this comment certainly aged like milk. //shb (t | c | m) 13:59, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh dear. I hope there are others in the SPTF who are more keen-eared. This risks degenerating into one more of the WMF-not-respecting-the-community affairs. –LPfi (talk) 08:40, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
SPTF (or Victoria, at the very least) seems so predetermined to close Wikinews that I've never heard something so blatantly biased such as "However, I expect that the wikinewsians would be in COI" – so to them I assume knowing the ins and outs of your own project is apparently a conflict of interest? It's a massive insult to non-Wikipedia based projects. //shb (t | c | m) 11:04, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can understand her view, but I think it is misguided, and somebody in her team should get them to discuss their actual mission. If a project indeed needs to be laid down, the process needs to be lead very sensitively – and the consultation in this phase shouldn't be on whether to lay Wikinews down. It is "to work through and demonstrate the review process", "a community reevaluation" and "potential restructuring efforts".
The demonstration of the process has been a disaster and potential restructuring efforts require a good understanding of he project, which cannot be had without a keen-eared discussion with the communities.
The "re-evaluation" should be based on such potential restructuring paths, where restructuring isn't about where to dump the Wikinews content, but how to save the project, if possible.
–LPfi (talk) 13:13, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I fully agree with you about about the "re-evaluation" but the way they have been responding to community feedback feels as though they have the result pre-determined and this is merely being used as a box ticking exercise – which is why I think it's crucial that we as a fellow sister project speak up about the way this was poorly handled because who knows what they will do when it's our turn to undergo public consultations. //shb (t | c | m) 14:04, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote about some concerns in meta:Talk:Public consultation about Wikinews#Process and analysis seem flawed. –LPfi (talk) 21:34, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers, LPfi; hopefully our project will be fine (I think it will because Wikivoyage or really any other WMF project does not have the same issues as Wikinews does of requiring an active community), but more feedback is certainly better. //shb (t | c | m) 03:49, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Whereas I agree that the process it to some extend flawed (and I agree with the points LPfi makes in the response on Meta), it would be useful to see whether some metrics used for analysis (in whatever flawed way) could be improved for Wikivoyage, so that they are out of discussion. Ymblanter (talk) 08:18, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Victoria: as primary author and for what I think is trenchant feedback: to the extent that this taskforce is assessing the sibling projects, it would be helpful if the individual communities knew what kind of rubric there is to grade their health. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:55, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, the Taskforce in not assessing all siblings projects, the Wikispore/Wikinews was a proof-of-concept exercise.
We used this rubric, which was discussed in a public consultation a year ago - but didn't get much attention, because Meta is littered with documents that are never implemented.
In the Wikispore consultation we ask for the proposals for the clarification of the "activity" and other criteria. Victoria (talk) 09:11, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this and thanks for letting me ping-pong you around various WMF projects with pings. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:38, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are welcome. I'm happy to answer anywhere in English/Russian/Belarusian when there's no personal attacks involved. Victoria (talk) 10:15, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been going through some of the stats, and "very active" is an interesting point. The defenders of the "very active" Wikinews language editions seem to be engaged overwhelmingly in copying/pasting content from suitably licensed external sites. They have turned Wikinews into mirrors for other sites, rather than writing articles.
Just imagine how we at Wikivoyage would react if someone here said "I am a very active Wikivoyage editor. I spend at least an hour a day copying and pasting pages from other travel websites!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We do copy info from hotel websites and other sources, but we don't have the luxury of reliable free content written in our style. Being a channel for reliable news could be a mission of Wikinews (more or less the same way some "social media" sites do it). If so, the question is whether they can do it well enough for it to be worthwhile as a WMF project (and whether the other things they do are done well). But that's not the discussion the SPTF initiated, they chose to go by statistics instead. –LPfi (talk) 22:12, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was mentioned somewhere that the stats may be skewed by bots – I'm still confused on how you'd be able to tell if the stats were skewed by bots or not. //shb (t | c | m) 23:11, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most bots, especially most big ones, do have an appropriate user agent field in their page request, so the server logs can be used to tell apart at least those. With more advanced techniques, you can also distinguish typical bot behaviour from that of human users. There are some grey areas (such as a human using a tool other than a typical web browser, or using some script through the browser, and bots configured to look like humans), but I don't think it is impossible to get quite an accurate and reliable picture of bot vs human traffic. –LPfi (talk) 10:37, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting to know – I suppose you can tell by things like sudden influx in page views as one example but yeah unless you told me I wouldn't be specifically able to pick it out. //shb (t | c | m) 10:42, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From aggregated data, some patterns can be recognised as probably bot-caused, but to know for certain, you have to check the user agent fields, and where ordinary user agents cause bot-like patterns, you have to analyse behaviour of individual traffic sources – not trivial if somebody is really trying to hide their bot as multiple human users. –LPfi (talk) 10:54, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
LPfi, I'm not talking about copying "information"; I'm talking about copying entire pages, word-for-word.
We do have copy-able options; there are multiple travel websites with appropriate copyright licenses. You know what happens to any editor who decides to "help" by copying from Wikitravel. Look at https://travel.fandom.com/wiki/Travel_Wiki whose pages are similar in style but with different section headings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requests for comment notification

Please be notified that there is a request for comment on Meta about paid editing and advanced rights, at m:Requests for comment/Should paid editing as a CU be allowed. You can voice your concerns regarding the topic.

This message is to notify those who haven't made comments in this RFC. For those who have made comments there, you can ignore this message.

Please do not reply to this message. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 08:43, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@HingWahStreet: I don't see this being relevant to this project; no Wikivoyage project in any language has CUs for this to matter. //shb (t | c | m) 09:11, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SHB2000 Sorry I don't know about this. 〈興華街〉📅❓ 09:45, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@HingWahStreet: Well I asked because you only left a message on this project (as per GUC check) – I get if you wanted to send this to all projects (which I also wouldn't do but who am I to stop you from doing so), but the only project you sent this to doesn't even have CUs. //shb (t | c | m) 09:52, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SHB2000 You mean only CUs (not others) can join the discussion? 〈興華街〉📅❓ 13:36, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@HingWahStreet: No, I never said that – what I'm trying to convey that only notifying enwikivoyage for an RfC that doesn't even remotely affect this project is what got me wondering. //shb (t | c | m) 13:40, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The story here: A CU on a small Wikipedia recently created a business to write Wikipedia articles. This has made some people suddenly realize that CUs are not officially prohibited from being "paid editors". They propose that CUs be banned from having some paid editing jobs (e.g., writing articles for companies) but not others (e.g., writing articles for an art museum).
I doubt that it will make any difference to us, and I doubt that it will make much difference overall. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I may be mistaken, but I believe HingwahStreet has a bit of a history with Bojan (the srwiki CU involved with paid editing), too (not that it matters for the outcome of this RfC). //shb (t | c | m) 23:01, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Saved you a click: CU == Checkuser Brycehughes (talk) 18:29, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But wait wtf is a checkuser Brycehughes (talk) 18:37, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Checkusers are a small group of users on some wikis that have access to tools that reveal IP address info of usernames. We haven't found the need to appoint any. AlasdairW (talk) 21:12, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is an argument to be made that this wiki can have CUs and there is a benefit to that, but as the person who's made all this wiki's SRCU requests since 2022, I consider that stewards doing our CU checks are sufficient enough for the timebeing. //shb (t | c | m) 08:58, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
m:CheckUser. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:03, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

UK law & Wikimedia Foundation challenge

EFF on challenge to Online Safety Act. This will affect us too. Pashley (talk) 03:51, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See also https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/07/17/wikimedia-foundation-challenges-uk-online-safety-act-regulations/ WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:03, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

U4C call for non-voting candidates

Swept in from the pub

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) has recently put out a call for people interested in becoming a non-voting member. Through last year's annual review, the community approved appointment of up to 4 non-voting members, and the U4C has now created a place and process for volunteers to express their interest. If you know of anyone who might be interested please point them out way. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask us (or ask me here). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Barkeep49, the purpose of non-voting members is to fill gaps in the voting members' skills. Is there a list anywhere of known gaps? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not really. There are the 3 regional seats currently vacant, Latin America and Caribbean, Central and East Europe (CEE), and Sub-Saharan Africa. There are also some clear patterns including 7 of the 8 whose main project is a Wikipedia (and the 8th being Wikidata) which is why I posted here and languages spoken. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:34, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikivoyage and the Nearby articles map

How do you use the Nearby feature (mainly the one in the Wikipedia app)?

It still shows all kinds of articles such as cemeteries, schools, train stations, etc that aren't relevant to a traveler so I wonder why nobody seems to have any issues with it and why there seems to be little involvement of wikivoyage users with that map despite that it could be so useful for vacations / exploring places / wikivoyage-things. Maybe people here use something else or have some tricks to make the Nearby map useful in realworld scenarios or there is some related discussion. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:10, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's just something that a lot of us have forgotten since it's a feature not talked about often. //shb (t | c | m) 00:14, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just tried it and it worked without issues, but I'd be open to changes if it has flaws. It's one of those features that perhaps readers of the site use more than editors. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 01:07, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot it existed, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:19, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Have you tried it in a real-world scenario or just for testing at home?
I'm asking because there is no engagement with phab:T360197 and this feature seems like it has a huge potential – in particular for wikivoyage-related things like vacations – where some changes seem needed in most cases to make it truly useful for real-world applications.
See meta:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Filters for types of items shown on the Wikipedia app Nearby places map. I can't use this feature for exploring places except when it's some remote area with barely any articles at all on the map.
Lastly, I don't know why this is a widely forgotten feature on wikivoyage – it seems like THE wikivoyage feature, e.g. the feature in the Wikipedia app by which most people would learn about and use wikivoyage for the first time. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:19, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say it's because you can't really use it on desktop, where most editing occurs. Wikivoyage on mobile, where this feature most comes in handy, is shit to deal with, so a lot of us simply forgot it existed. //shb (t | c | m) 23:37, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's available in the mobile app. Since the map there is much more advanced and useful than the desktop version where one doesn't even have a map or input box for entering a location, I was referring to the Nearby feature in the mobile app. (By the way I think I read somewhere a proposal for a Wikivoyage mobile app.) Prototyperspective (talk) 23:41, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage doesn't have a mobile app as of yet, unfortunately. :( //shb (t | c | m) 00:51, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's what I was referring to at I read somewhere a proposal for a Wikivoyage mobile app. With It's available in the mobile app I was referring to the Wikipedia app which I named in my prior comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:25, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly disagree that "train stations...aren't relevant to a traveler", and I happen to have a fondness for visiting old cemeteries. Perhaps we need filters, but it may be difficult to figure out what to include or exclude. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is so that users can configure it. Train stations obviously are very relevant to many travelers. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:01, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nice feature, but is there a way to integrate it into WV, or one has to use the WP app? I was actually thinking to invent something similar - basically grab the nearaby articles, get all listings from them, and show that on a map, ideally sorted by WP views. I think WV cannot just show WP articles, otherwise there'd be no point in maintaining the listings... -- andree 11:53, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
but is there a way to integrate it into WV this is also what this thread is about: there is Special:Nearby but it's not as advanced as the map in the mobile app by far and importantly one can't even enter a location (see Wish:Enable entering a specific location on Wikipedia's & Wikivoyage's Nearby page). It doesn't show a map but just a list of articles which isn't really very useful. Moreover, the version in Wikivoyage only shows pages in WV and the version in Wikipedia only shows articles in WP but I think it should show both (and if they are about the same place then the dot when tapping on it could give you the choice which to open). ideally sorted by WP views I'll edit phab:T360197 to add pageviews as another thing to use at For being able to exclude low-importance articles, the article importance ratings of relevant WikiProjects would be used and one idea I got from this is to not just filter them this way but display them differently based on rating and/or pageviews where for example those with relatively many pageviews being larger or separately colored dots on the map. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:32, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think just considering articles isn't enough for WV, and neither is just adding WP stuff (many of the articles often are either just in the local language version and not covered on en:, or to significant degree matches Wikivoyage:Listings#Boring_places, war events places, etc.); also esp. the remote places sometimes have 10 listings, and e.g. just one is on WP... Thus some kind of hybrid operation would be needed IMO, to be able to find the "best listings nearby".
As for the map, you can show that on via the respective button at the bottom on the dynamic map -- andree 18:41, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the region. In many cases such as big cities there are articles for most of the most notable sightseeing spots and things like parks for example. The map wouldn't be there to show completely all places the user may possibly be interested in and that's not something to expect from it. (Wikivoyage could move the map closer toward that however.) It's not necessarily about 'finding the best listings nearby' but also e.g. 'learning more from Wikipedia about that interesting place you're currently at' and 'finding some neat place that happens to be near where you're at' and 'finding some interesting places nearby to consider visiting'.
-
I'm not entirely sure what you mean – I suggested that both Wikipedia articles of the user's language is combined with Wikivoyage listings. Yes, ideally it would be possible to in addition also add articles of the region's native language. A special feature that could be made available in the app is machine translation via MinT so it's not gibberish but somewhat understandable to an app user not speaking the language of the region visiting.
The map is not showing Wikivoyage + Wikipedia items. First of all it only works when visiting the WV page of a place and then opening its map. This for example doesn't work when you're visiting a region for which there is no WV page. When clicking "Show nearby articles", it shows just very articles, not all articles in Wikipedia and I don't know why that is. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:19, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just tested this while in Wikimania Nairobi. The nearby page only shows Nairobi and Wikimania 2025 Nairobi Guidebook. In my opinion, this functionality should draw a bigger radius because it's not very useful at the moment. OhanaUnitedTalk page 13:27, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does WV need a policy for descriptions of living people?

Wikivoyage is a travel guide and not intended to be a collection of biographies. Still, travel topics and itineraries might mention important individuals, such as explorers, artists, monarchs, and politicians. Wikivoyage:What is an article? discourages from creating an article for a living celebrity, as these are more difficult to finish than articles for Christopher Columbus, Frank Lloyd Wright or Astrid Lindgren. Articles such as Presidents of the United States and Monarchy of the United Kingdom describe living individuals who have not concluded their careers, and they are certainly controversial. When writing Jewish Stockholm tour, Stockholm environmentalist tour and Nordic monarchies, a couple of famous living people came to mind, but I found it advisable to mention them as briefly as possible. Which general principles should we follow? /Yvwv (talk) 12:58, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like foundation:BLP encourages us to have a formal policy, even if there isn't much to say. Project:Don't be evil, maybe?
We already have Wikivoyage:Photographs of identifiable people and Wikivoyage:Image policy#People in photos, which discourage photos of people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd support a policy for the same reason. //shb (t | c | m) 11:40, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is largely not that relevant to a travel guide, but it is actually common to have "Maps of the Stars" or tours of celebrity homes in the Los Angeles region, which to me is completely crazy and behavior that should not be encouraged. Considering Whatamidoing's point about the WMF encouraging this kind of documentation, I think having a guideline/policy is wise. Good thinking. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:00, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I would absolutely oppose any article for a tour that takes people to the homes of celebrities who would rather be private in their own homes. If this kind of tour existed in New York, New Yorkers would be up in arms about it and pressing the City Council to pass a law about it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:35, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The page and section about photos say very little, mostly discouraging photos of yourself, which isn't what this is about. says a lot more and should probably be followed also regarding locally uploaded pictures. None of those three says anything about text about people (other than that captions shouldn't be defamatory).
I think we probably shouldn't write a policy unless there are real issues. We have no reason to write about most people, and it seems common sense, like what Yvwv showed above, works reasonably well. Writing a policy opens up for loopholes and wikilawyering.
–LPfi (talk) 21:50, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if our "BLP policy" could be a section in our existing Wikivoyage:Be fair policy. Basically, a few principles about avoiding mentioning individuals, and especially avoiding saying anything contentious or unfairly invading their privacy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds reasonable. In the past I have opposed a suggestion to create an itinerary based on the travels of a living individual.
A more common situation is where a listing mentions something about the people that work in the hotel or restaurant. "Friendly owners" or "poor service from the waiters" is ok, but referring to staff by name needs more care. AlasdairW (talk) 23:04, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's surely OK when the name of the Chef de Cuisine or Pastry Chef are printed on menus or are well-known chefs the restaurant promotes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:40, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can an artist's personal life be separated from their work? At least, death is useful to conclude a life story. As Georg Riedel past away one year ago, he deserves to be described in the Jewish Stockholm tour. Aleksander Wolodarski is another person appropriate to mention, but as he is well and alive (and to some degree a divisive character in Swedish architecture) the description of him in the same article is very brief. The Harry Potter tourism barely mentions the author, and that might be good as it is. /Yvwv (talk) 10:16, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be fine to note the name of a celebrity chef ("Thomas Keller's restaurant, The French Laundry"), or even a relatively public non-celebrity ("The restaurant owner, Mary Smith, is also the long-time mayor of this small town" or "Olly Owner is happy to pack a picnic upon request").
However, as an extension of Wikivoyage:Avoid negative reviews, we don't really want "Chris Celebrity is pretentious and their restaurant is overpriced" or "Wendy Waitress is unfriendly and slow". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should avoid "Wendy Waitress is unfriendly", but "Some staff are unfriendly" is ok. It is important to report negative aspects of a place if either it is balanced by "excellent cooking and wonderful bread" or it is the only place in town. It becomes more difficult with one person businesses. AlasdairW (talk) 20:24, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage should not be interested in people: that is the province of Wikipedia. Wikivoyage is however interested in places associated with people and to this end should be cautious about their privacy. If however the individual concerned invites members of the public to their homes or businesses (for example Donald Trump has a website for Mar-a-Lago) then it is no longer Wikivoyage's role to protect his privacy: if he publicises his home, then it is incumbent on him to look after his own privacy. In contrast, Joe Biden does not appear to advertise his home, so neither should Wikivoyage (even if a search on the internet will reveal Joe Biden's properties).Martinvl (talk) 15:18, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does something like this feel about right?
----
As a general rule, Wikivoyage is interested in places, not people. Occasionally, providing a fair description will involve mentioning a specific person. In such cases, these principles apply to protect living people:
  • Avoid contentious matter about living people to the maximum extent possible, to show respect for human dignity and personal privacy. Publishing personal information that is tangential to the needs of the article, trivial, ephemeral, or constitutes a negative review is unfair. For example, if a restaurant owner promotes dubious beliefs to customers, then omit the listing completely rather than writing about the owner's beliefs.
  • Avoid whole articles focused on living people, such as an itinerary to see the private homes of celebrities. It is fair to have an itinerary focused on Taylor Swift's concert tours; it is not fair to have an article focused on her homes.
  • Individual listings that name a living public figure are acceptable so long as the content is not contentious. However, you should avoid naming living people when a general description is adequate. For example, write "The owner is happy to talk about local history" instead of "Harry Historian, the owner, is happy to talk about local history", even though you would name the celebrity chef Thomas Keller as the owner of the restaurant The French Laundry.
----
What should be changed, added, omitted? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:39, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for offering a rough draft! The one part that sticks out to me as problematic is the part about "dubious beliefs," which gives an opening to intolerant atheists to complain about a bismillah or cross in a restaurant. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:12, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking about political beliefs, and specifically about an anti-masking restaurant I read about during the pandemic, but you're right: That needs to be re-worded. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:30, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Still a good start, I'd say. //shb (t | c | m) 12:15, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that businesses should be removed because of beliefs of the owner or personnel; that the owner touts antivacc or flat-earth theories might be entertaining rather than a reason to avoid them. One might tell that they might raise controversial topics. For dangerous practices, such as not using masks when needed, that would be treated like them using contaminated water or whatever. Yes, sometimes that warrants removing the listing in line with no bad reviews, but that has little to do with privacy.
For a Finnish business, it was suggested that the listings be removed because of bigotry, in effect a boycott by Wikivoyage. I am not sure about to what extent to do that, but I assume we might tell something about the owner in that case, if we leave the choice whether to use their services to our readers. I would oppose individual editors removing listings because of views that don't conform with their own, but they may of course choose not to add them.
–LPfi (talk) 12:28, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think there might be a spectrum of issues, but some types of (e.g.,) bigotry are not compatible with Wikivoyage:The traveller comes first. Inclusion constitutes a recommendation, at least when there are other alternatives. If we list a restaurant, it should be because travellers are welcome. If the restaurant's listing would need to have a disclaimer along the lines of "BTW, only white people are allowed to eat here" or "People whom the owner thinks look Jewish/Muslim/Black/gay/trans will be refused service", then that restaurant shouldn't be included in Wikivoyage at all. Listed restaurants should normally be open to all of the general public.
On the other end of the spectrum, if the owner cheerfully accepts all customers, but he privately belongs to a racist organization, then that's not really relevant to the travellers' experience, so we needn't mention that. Travellers who want to patronize only businesses owned by people who share the same politics/religion/race/sexual orientation should look elsewhere for that information.
Somewhere in the middle is factual information that travellers may interpret in opposite ways. For example, if a given deli in New York City is kosher, it'd be worth noting that in the description. Most travellers won't care. Some travellers will prefer it (either for religious reasons or because kosher meat is considered more ethical than conventional meat). Some travellers will reject it. But knowing that it might appeal (or not) to different travellers is not the same as different travellers not being allowed to eat at the deli. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:02, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see no problem in describing a restaurant in terms of the religious beliefs that it portrays provided that it is done in a neutral manner - for example , "The XYZ resaurant is a kosher/halal/vegetarian establishment". The reader can then make up their ow mind about patronising the establishment - after all Wikivoyage has many articles about various places of worship. Martinvl (talk) 21:05, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the general point is that we want "XYZ is a kosher/halal/vegetarian restaurant" but not "The owner of XYZ is a Jew/Muslim/vegetarian person". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree here. //shb (t | c | m) 06:56, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggested rewrite of the first point (Changes in bold):
"Avoid contentious matter about living people to the maximum extent possible, to show respect for human dignity and personal privacy. Publishing personal information that is tangential to the needs of the article, trivial, ephemeral, or constitutes a negative review is unfair. For example, if a restaurant owner promotes particular beliefs to customers, then omit the listing completely rather than writing about the owner's beliefs. If however the establishment itself caters for certain beliefs and/or ethics, it is reasonable, or maybe even desireable, to add those beliefs/ethics to the description in a neutral manner - such as including the words "kosher/halal/vegetarian" to the establishment's description." Martinvl (talk) 21:14, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suggest that the second point be extended as follows (additions in bold):
Avoid whole articles focused on living people, such as an itinerary to see the private homes of celebrities. It is fair to have an itinerary focused on Taylor Swift's concert tours; it is not fair to have an article focused on her homes. However, if the celebrity concerend advertises their home to the general public (for example Mar-a-Lago, home of Donald Trump or Blenheim Palace, home of the Duke of Marlborough) , then it is perfectly in order to mention the home in an article and ideally to include a web address the description or article.
Martinvl (talk) 21:27, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think all this discussion of beliefs and politics is bad and not something about which we want policies. Also, bad reviews are by no means inherently unfair, and I'm mystified by how anyone could think that's the case; it's just that Wikivoyage chooses with some exceptions to simply refrain from listing businesses, rather than stating that they are bad. I also don't see why we would need to add a policy that establishments that discriminate against people based for example on their ethnicity, appearance or national origin, such as a historic restaurant in Düsseldorf that refused admission to East Asians early in the pandemic, be delisted, because we already do that based on preexisting policies. Right now, I think that based on the drafts circulated in this thread, we risk approving a new policy that is worse than none. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:40, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It might be best to try the smallest possible addition. After all, it's usually easier to get a policy expanded later if we really need it, than to get it shortened later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a shorter version:
----
As a general rule, Wikivoyage is interested in places, not people. Occasionally, providing a fair description will involve mentioning a specific person. In such cases, these principles apply to protect living people:
  • Avoid contentious matter about living people to the maximum extent possible, to show respect for human dignity and personal privacy. Individual listings that name a living public figure are acceptable so long as the content is not contentious.
  • Avoid whole articles focused on living people, such as an itinerary to see the private homes of celebrities.
----
We could also soften "the maximum extent possible". It's always "possible" to avoid mentioning anyone's name, but it's not always "reasonable" to do so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What about the article on U.S. presidents? We don't avoid contentious facts about living current and former presidents; we just agree on what should be in the blurbs about them based on the existing Wikivoyage:Be fair guidelines. I still fail to see how adding at least your first proposed guideline will improve anything. Also, are we creating a solution for a nonexistent problem? Can you cite a previous example of an article that had unnecessarily contentious facts about living people that we were not able to deal with by using existing guidelines? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:33, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Presidents of the United States is not a "whole article focused on living people"; it is a whole article focused on mostly long-dead people with just five living US Presidents being mentioned (and mostly in a "public museum" way, not a "current private home" way). This would therefore be acceptable as a case of "Individual listings that name a living public figure" that "show respect for human dignity and personal privacy".
The existing problem to be solved is: The Board of Directors for the WIkimedia Foundation said that every project needs to have an official, written BLP policy. They said this about 16 years ago, so we're running a bit behind schedule, but we should have something. Their resolution encourages "special attention to the principles of neutrality", so I think putting a few sentences inside our version of the "NPOV" policy would be appropriate. We could even create a WV:BLP shortcut to it, so the Wikipedia folks can find it easier. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:16, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My problem is not with your second proposed provision, which is fine, but your first, and that's what my last reply addressed. If it stated that when living people have to be mentioned, we must be fair and come to a consensus about anything contentious, I'd be happy. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:33, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you think of any contentious or derogatory information a travel guide – especially one that does not cite external sources – needs to include? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I already gave you an example! And what about when we fairly describe countries as dictatorships? We've sometimes had users object and try to whitewash articles, and in such cases, we are armed with Wikivoyage:Be fair, not some ridiculous claim that anything "contentious" is bad and must be avoided, which would have played into their hands. Wikivoyage is a travel guide, not a site that tries to be neutral. We expressly don't have an NPOV policy, but instead a policy that requires fairness. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:10, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that we can fairly describe a country as being a dictatorship. Do we need to describe an individual living person as a dictator, when doing so would be contentious (e.g., produce disputes and disagreements on wiki)? I just checked every article containing the words "a dictator" and "the dictator"; none of them refer to living people.
If your prior example was "What about the article on U.S. presidents?", I've already answered that question. I don't see anything privacy-invading in Presidents of the United States, and I don't see anything contentious about any living person in there, either. The contents are not universally approved by the campaign team, but nobody actually disputes or "contends" over the facts (e.g., that Clinton was involved in a sex scandal, or that Trump is technically a convicted felon). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you haven't had the misfortune of speaking with a Trumper lately, consider yourself lucky. There are tens of millions of hard-core Trumpers in the U.S. who don't accept basic scientific facts and advance all kinds of conspiracy nonsense as truth. I dealt with a cabbie in New Rochelle yesterday who gratuitously started talking about politics. He claimed Biden already had cancer 4 years ago, and "they" covered it up, that claims of fossil fuels causing global warming are "bullshit" and that if the Democrats had been elected last year, we'd all be driving electric cars already, among other things. So I very much contest your confident assertion that statements of fact about Trump, Biden, Obama, etc. are not "contentious". We need to remove that word from consideration as something Wikivoyage cannot be. Do you remember years ago when there was someone who spent a couple of weeks or more trying to whitewash descriptions of Cuba by claiming that it was really a democracy, their elections are really free and fair, and the Communists have never been dictators or oppressed anyone there? Or the ones that claimed that China is a democracy and it was the U.S. (pre-Trump) that was really oppressive (the latter of which of course has never been completely false, but that was entirely beside the point in a travel guide as well as being pure whataboutism that disproves nothing). We've had all kinds of politically motivated contentions against facts. That's why our standard is Wikivoyage:Be fair, not "Wikivoyage/Avoid saying anything anyone could argue with", which is what "contentious" means or would mean in the hands of anyone who wants to use a travel guide to grind an axe, rather than to improve a resource for travelers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:14, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Ikan. I was brought up in South Africa during the Apartheid era. Had Wikivoyage been around at that time, would we have deleted everything about South Africa on grounds that almost every establishment was required by law to practice racial discrimination? I do not think that would not have been appropriate. However I think that it would have been appropriate to include a section on how to navigate the country's racial policies. Martinvl (talk) 22:22, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Related: several of the brief bios of Presidents of the United States editorialize big time Purplebackpack89 15:03, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And you've suggested edits. Continue doing so as appropriate. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As for the overarching issue at hand, I would suggest focusing on places, not people, and more specifically focus on officially listed or designated places. Homes are designated on registers of historic places either after people have died, or with their consent if alive. Official libraries and museums are one of those two ways as well. And there's a reasonable argument for just leaving Trump and his four living predecessors, with the possible exceptions of the Clinton, Bush and Obama Libraries. Purplebackpack89 16:01, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My academic article on teaching with Wikivoyage

I have finished the draft (still doing minor c/e fixes and like). I'd appreciate your thoughts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mOR7w19Dd8CrElZcoeFkDxGCCOi12kff6qe1WQa8JCM/edit?tab=t.0 In few days or so I intend to submit it to an academic journal (there are several straddling the fields of education + tourism and hospitality) for peer review. Thank you for all the help over the years with my students (also, note: new semester starts soon, expect new crop of students editing about Korea and China from late September onward; I'll provide a list of their chosen articles to watchlist in a month or two, as usual). Piotrus (talk) 11:19, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, interesting, will give this a read. //shb (t | c | m) 11:21, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just finished reading it – I don't have much else to say other than that it's very well-researched and is a great read. Nice work, Piotrus. //shb (t | c | m) 11:46, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Pashley (talk) 17:20, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have given the article a quick read-through. May I suggest one minor addition - the article Requested_articles is an additional source of suggested topics - the student might find one there that they had never thought of. As an example, I saw a request for the Taizé Community there. This is a monastic establishment in the middle of rural France that attracts many young people and is named after the village where it is located. The first section of the talk page is interesting as it shows a debate about the scope of the article (should it include the village or just the community?".Martinvl (talk) 14:18, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Martinvl Thanks - I did not know about that page, I'll add it to the relevant resources soon! Piotrus (talk) 18:29, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Piotrus, thanks for sending us this link! I'm enjoying reading the paper so far. I'm wondering if you'd like any proofreading suggestions such as eliminating the semicolon in the following sentence: "The next section will review the academic consensus on pedagogical benefits of writing for Wikipedia, an assignment that was developed over a decade ago and has since been used by thousands of educators (Vetter, McDowell & Stewart, 2019; Konieczny 2021; Evenstein Sigalov & Konieczny, 2025); as a building block for the discussion on how such an activity can be adopted to the tourism and hospitality context, both on Wikipedia as well as on Wikivoyage website." Maybe I should stop reading until you let me know, because I saw a couple of other places where I'd suggest small edits, and I'll forget about all such instances if I read through the article, and won't want to read it again just to proofread. I'll add that so far, it looks quite well-written, with nothing major I'd suggest changing, but I'm only in the 2nd section. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:25, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ikan Kekek By all means, all suggestions, minor and major, are welcome. Piotrus (talk) 18:28, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @MarianaSenkiv as she also uses Wikivoyage (in Ukrainian) to teach tourism students. Piotrus, you might have met her as both of you were at Wikimania Katowice. OhanaUnitedTalk page 12:39, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've worked as an editor for journal papers. In the passage above I'd delete the semicolon & change "adopted" to "adapted". Pashley (talk) 16:23, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I found one substantive issue, strikes me as an error but it's arguably just oversimplification.
Wikivoyage is ... It was launched in 2006 as a volunteer-driven fork of the commercial Wikitravel site, ...
Wikitravel was started in 2003 & became commercial in 2006. Wikivoyage in German & Italian was started about then, but the fork of English WV & becoming a Wikimedia site happened around 2012; see Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage_and_Wikitravel for details. Pashley (talk) 16:33, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch, Pashley. //shb (t | c | m) 21:14, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'd say the above date is correct. I'm pretty sure the German and Italian wikis forked in 2006, so arguably that's when Wikivoyage was first forked by volunteers. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 00:06, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's arguable. That was definitely when Wikivoyage started. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:58, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Pashley @SHB2000 Hmmm, my summary is a simplification, since the detailed history of Wikitravel/Wikivoyage is effectively trivia and not really relevant for us. Wikipedia article about Wikivoyage says "The project began when editors at the German and then Italian versions of decided in September 2006 to move their editing activities and then current content to a new site..." and then English version followed suit c. 2012/2013. Infobox states: "First version (German language) December 10, 2006. English-language version January 15, 2013". So I am not sure what is wrong here? But I am happy to consider suggestions for rewording. Piotrus (talk) 09:19, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When do I get to translate articles?

It’s been a week (maybe 2) and I still don’t have the ability to translate English articles to Esperanto. When do I get it. HtialilwW (talk) 02:43, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did someone tell you that you'd get that ability in a couple of weeks? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:49, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No. I just assumed, but when do I actually get it? HtialilwW (talk) 02:51, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to translate articles, you have to do it yourself. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:07, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Although it would be nice if we did, we don't have an official translation tool the same way Wikipedia does. Special:Translate won't work for anyone on this site. //shb (t | c | m) 03:53, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But when I click ‘languages’ in the top right it has some languages. How do you connect your article? HtialilwW (talk) 04:28, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's done on Wikidata. //shb (t | c | m) 04:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How? HtialilwW (talk) 04:31, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Start an article on Project X (e.g. footwear was recently started here).
  2. Go to the relevant Wikidata item if it exists (in this case, d:Q161928)
  3. Edit the relevant site links typically along the right hand side of the page (in this case, Wikivoyage)
  4. Choose the appropriate language code (in this case, en and in the case of anything written in Esperanto, eo)
  5. Once you add the name of the newly-written article, it will be saved at Wikidata and show up across all relevant Wikimedia Foundation projects.
—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:51, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. HtialilwW (talk) 05:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Amire80, has your team looked into enabling content translation for Wikioyages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Kind of looked a bit, but never prioritized. It's theoretically possible, but requires work. It's better to ask about it at mw:Talk:Content translation. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:10, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone, what do we think about this idea? Do we want the translation tools enabled between the Wikivoyages? (NB that enabling machine translation, such as Google Translate, is a separate question. My question is about the software to translate a {{sleep}} template into the matching template for a different language.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, the point is to have machine translations of blank templates? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:01, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Temporary accounts will be rolled out soon

Hello, we are the Wikimedia Foundation Product Safety and Integrity team. We would like to announce that we plan to enable temporary accounts for this wiki in the week of September 1.

Temporary accounts are successfully live on 30 wikis, including many large ones like German, Japanese, and French. The change they bring is especially relevant to logged-out editors, who this feature is designed to protect. But it is also relevant to community members like mentors, patrollers, and admins – anyone who reverts edits, blocks users, or otherwise interacts with logged-out editors as part of keeping the wikis safe and accurate.

Why we are building temporary accounts

Our wikis should be safer to edit by default for logged-out editors. Temporary accounts allow people to continue editing the wikis without creating an account, while avoiding publicly tying their edits to their IP address. We believe this is in the best interest of our logged-out editors, who make valuable contributions to the wikis and who may later create accounts and grow our community of editors, admins, and other roles. Even though the wikis do warn logged-out editors that their IP address will be associated with their edit, many people may not understand what an IP address is, or that it could be used to connect them to other information about them in ways they might not expect.

Additionally, our moderation software and tools rely too heavily on network origin (IP addresses) to identify users and patterns of activity, especially as IP addresses themselves are becoming less stable as identifiers. Temporary accounts allow for more precise interactions with logged-out editors, including more precise blocks, and can help limit how often we unintentionally end up blocking good-faith users who use the same IP addresses as bad-faith users.

How temporary accounts work

Any time a logged-out user publishes an edit on this wiki, a cookie will be set in this user's browser, and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created. This account's name will follow the pattern: ~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, current year, a number). On pages like Recent Changes or page history, this name will be displayed. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser. A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. However, only some logged-in users will be able to see it.

What does this mean for different groups of users?

For logged-out editors

  • This increases privacy: currently, if you do not use a registered account to edit, then everybody can see the IP address for the edits you made, even after 90 days. That will no longer be possible on this wiki.
  • If you use a temporary account to edit from different locations in the last 90 days (for example at home and at a coffee shop), the edit history and the IP addresses for all those locations will now be recorded together, for the same temporary account. Users who meet the relevant requirements will be able to view this data. If this creates any personal security concerns for you, please contact talktohumanrights at wikimedia.org for advice.

For community members interacting with logged-out editors

  • A temporary account is uniquely linked to a device. In comparison, an IP address can be shared with different devices and people (for example, different people at school or at work might have the same IP address).
  • Compared to the current situation, it will be safer to assume that a temporary user's talk page belongs to only one person, and messages left there will be read by them. As you can see in the screenshot, temporary account users will receive notifications. It will also be possible to thank them for their edits, ping them in discussions, and invite them to get more involved in the community.

For users who use IP address data to moderate and maintain the wiki

  • For patrollers who track persistent abusers, investigate violations of policies, etc.: Users who meet the requirements will be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range (Special:IPContributions). They will also have access to useful information about the IP addresses thanks to the IP Info feature. Many other pieces of software have been built or adjusted to work with temporary accounts, including AbuseFilter, global blocks, Global User Contributions, and more. (For information for volunteer developers on how to update the code of your tools – see the last part of the message.)
  • For admins blocking logged-out editors:
    • It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
    • It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
  • Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this.

Our requests for you, and next steps

  • If you know of any tools, bots, gadgets etc. using data about IP addresses or being available for logged-out users, you may want to test if they work on testwiki or test2wiki. If you are a volunteer developer, read our documentation for developers, and in particular, the section on how your code might need to be updated.
  • If you want to test the temporary account experience, for example just to check what it feels like, go to testwiki or test2wiki and edit without logging in.
  • Tell us if you know of any difficulties that need to be addressed. We will try to help, and if we are not able, we will consider the available options.
  • Look at our previous message about requirements for users without extended rights who may need access to IP addresses.

To learn more about the project, check out our FAQ – you will find many useful answers there. You may also look at the updates (we have just posted one) and subscribe to our new newsletter. If you'd like to talk to me (Szymon) off-wiki, you will find me on Discord and Telegram. Thank you!

NKohli (WMF), SGrabarczuk (WMF) 21:37, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

...and it's been deployed. //shb (t | c | m) 13:56, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And I posted my first touting warning on the talk page of such an account. Are they mainly going to protect touters and vandals? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:39, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My experience with dealing with temp accounts on other smaller wikis like srwiki is they prevent vandals from IP hopping since this is supposedly tied to the device and not the IP – but it makes dealing with such abuse much harder, especially when it comes to things like range blocks or for those who don't meet the criteria for viewing temporary accounts (6 months and 500 edits; though supposedly I think I can bypass this restriction now since I was given global temporary account IP viewer?). //shb (t | c | m) 23:24, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I was worried about, too. But I see advantages for the wiki communities:
"The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser."
"It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option."
Further, "Users who meet the requirements will be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range (Special:IPContributions)." That means gorgeous you, you will still have the sane access as now. Ground Zero (talk) 15:59, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I guess we'll have to get used to how to autoblock very soon... Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:04, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've taken my first attempt at blocking a Telstar long-term abuser IP identified through temporary account. Please take a look if everything is done properly. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:33, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Easily finding 'top destinations' in cities

Foreword: I get it, every traveller has different priorities. That aside, surely most cities have the major attractions, and then 'side-quests', for common travellers.

For example, take Esztergom. If you are there for a week, you can probably inspect it all. But for 1-2 days, most people will only consider e.g. the Basilica, 1-2 museums, castle and aquapark. Could we add some field 'top-pick' for listings, and have e.g. limit 10 per article and type (see/do)? Perhaps such listings could have just more vivid markers or whatever.

I'm asking for the same reason as usual. Another vacation/roadtrip came by, and I tried reeeeeeally hard to use WV to plan it, but it just can't be done. I had to use google maps to search sights, read reviews, put together road-plan somewhere else (my usual go-to page), and then consult WV to maybe some final hints. I am thinking about putting together some JS tool for WV, that could gather listings for such trips - but unless one can at least roughly evaluate where the main sights of given area are, it's useless to even start.

OTOH, if I could e.g. open page of Hungary, and get on a map combined top-10 sights of all articles, that could at least give me a rough idea, what are the most interesting regions...

Am I alone having this problem? -- andree 18:42, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In cases in which there's a strong consensus about what the top sights are, we can organize "See" something like Siena#See. Otherwise a summary at the beginning of the see section would do it. No need for any fancy changes in the colors or format of the listings templates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:50, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good, let's say we're visiting Tuscany for a week or two. How would you put together the travel plan using WV? Summary text is nice, but it helps only if you get dropped off in a particular city and need some introduction (like via some organized tour) - it doesn't help at all for major/self-organized planning. E.g. Montepulciano looks quite trivial regarding sights, and would hardly be worth visiting during a roadtrip (no major sights). Of course if you are in the area for a few days, it's a different story. But with the current structure of WV, how do you figure this out? By reading all articles? I can open tripadvisor/google/wanderlog/... and be 100x more effective. -- andree 18:55, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are so many great ways to spend a week or two in Tuscany that there's no reasonable way to give our readers a one-size-fits all "One week in Tuscany" guide, and all we can reasonably do is mention some highlights in the Tuscany#See and Tuscany#Do sections and leave them to their own devices in choosing what to prioritize on a first visit (and then a second, third, fourth if they can take one...). Of course, they can instead choose to take a precooked guided tour, but we aren't here to guide them on that. All that said, if you think any of the sections of the Tuscany article are missing important information that should be summarized, there, go ahead and add it! And if you think any of it might be controversial, make a proposal at Talk:Tuscany. Also, I don't have time to look at the Tripadvisor link right now, but what makes it superior to Wikivoyage, and how might we best address that? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:40, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hence the very first sentence... :) Also, Tuscany was an example. I could be an American soldier with 5 days to spend around Rammstein, salesman on a trip from NYC to Jacksonville, someone who wants to spend a month in central America, whatever... You say you don't want to do 'one-size-fits-all' things (and I agree), but then you suggest to do it in overviews of regions. These can always only cover a particular area, and likely won't inform about top-notch stuff right behind the border.
In the past 10-15 years I did various few weeks/3000km roadtrips, and WV didn't help me create even a rough plan most of the time. The city guides themselves are usually nice (even if missing bits here and there, but that's fine with me, I'm always trying to fill the gaps after trips), but I'd expect a digital travel guide would also help with the bigger picture...
Or is the idea still to only compete with traditional printed travel guides? -- andree 06:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Go next" (or sometimes, "Nearby") is for places outside the area covered by a guide, and there will always be something not covered by any guide. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:13, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the lead and ==Understand== sections are also useful for this purpose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:16, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't be opposed to creating some kind of icon to signify what are the "must-sees" for a first time visitor and what are some additional places you can go and visit if you have extra time – it's a subtle change but with lots of potential. While I know summary text can work well, from my experience only having that doesn't quite compare to other travel guides that I use (mostly expedia or Google). //shb (t | c | m) 06:00, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The summary text is nice, once you are in the respective city. My problem is that it's impossible to read 200 such articles, even if they all had to-notch overviews... I'd much rather use google maps on an area, search for 'attractions' and pick the ones with a 100+ reviews, for example. But IMO WV could do that easily, if we had at such 'must-see' tags. -- andree 06:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I made a bit of a mockup at {{mustsee}} and implemented it at Canberra/South Canberra, Kiama and Budderoo National Park – thoughts on this? //shb (t | c | m) 06:12, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In principle yes, but for my usecase it would only be useful if the listing template would have such parameter (e.g. { {see|mustsee|name=xyz}}). That would allow creating a dynamic map that could show the listings from an arbitrary area with such stuff.
OTOH, adding this is quite a bit of effort, and perhaps source of community friction...
We could do a similar thing, if we misuse wikipedia search, and e.g. order the listings according to number of wikipedia search results (poor man's google pigeon rank alternative; because I'd get banned by google quickly, if I wanted to use their numbers - also it's probably in violation with their T&C :) ). E.g. for Esztergom, it "Esztergom Basilica" gives 51 results, "Christian Museum" -> 13, "Bottyan Bridge" -> 2, "Jesuits parish-church" -> 1...... I guess this could work, and we wouldn't need any external stuff, not even wikidata (but we need markers :) ). -- andree 06:35, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe this works for Esztergom, but what would the results be for cities like New York, Berlin, Paris, Rome or Washington, D.C., where there would be considerable disagreement about the "best" things to see and do, depending on the preferences and interests of the traveler? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:45, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, from what I can concur, we're all on the same page about such a pin working for small cities, parks, smaller rural areas – or really, anything that is not a huge city, where the best things to see/do is more subjective. shb (t | c | m) 06:49, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, generally, it's a lot easier when there are a few obviously great sights in a relatively small city that does not have a tremendous number of activities to offer to visitors who might be uninterested in them. But why doesn't the Siena#See model work for them? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, that's also one way to do it, but many of our See sections are already categorised by other means. Maybe this is the way to do it for larger cities. //shb (t | c | m) 07:00, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For larger cities? I doubt it. Refer to my comments about cities like Berlin, Rome, New York, etc. elsewhere in the thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:06, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure does, once you already decide to go to Siena, I'd say it's a perfect guide (on the first look), I'd perhaps just use google to search for food and perhaps missing new venues. But it's not the point of this topic....... -- andree 07:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that at least in the U.S., Google Maps is usually most useful in finding places to eat. I miss the days when I could get more reliable information by checking food forum sites like Chowhound. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:17, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that wasn't about Esztergom itself. But if you go on a trip Esztergom -> Nagykanizsa, knowing not much about the country, IMO it would be nice if you would gather the respective articles we have, take the listings and show top-10% of them, according to this (or other) ranking. Then you'll know it makes sense to have a stop in Székesfehérvár, but probably not necessarily to Várpalota... -- andree 06:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like something to address in a region guide or to some extent in "Go next" sections. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:57, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I thought of having a special category that would list them on a dynamic map, but I know that's going to receive a lot of community opposition – hence why I proposed a small pinpoint which is both easy to implement for most cities and far more uncontroversial while getting most of the similar benefits. //shb (t | c | m) 06:45, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Attractions should be bolded as appropriate in summaries. Look at Chicago#See for an example. I oppose using a special template for supposed "must-sees". That ignores the step of agreeing on what they are, and I don't know if we really want to spend time about arguing about that on the talk pages of every article, but neither is it reasonable for people to just unilaterally decide they will dictate the answers. We've had many discussions about this topic before, and while there's a clear consensus in certain places, there is none in many others. To take one example, if you consider New York City, many people who haven't visited think Times Square is a must-see, and New Yorkers would grudgingly admit that it makes sense to see it once, but does that make it a top-5 attraction? The Metropolitan Museum is a "must-go-to" if visiting art museums (though it also has great musical instruments and fashion wings) is a priority and not if it isn't. The Brooklyn Bridge might be one most people would agree with, but even in that case, some people would object to the number of pedestrians on the bridge or simply lack the fitness to walk 1.1 miles. Most New Yorkers and many visitors would say taking the Staten Island Ferry is a must-do, but a tour guide who has a YouTube channel claimed it was a bad deal even though it's free, and you could do better by paying a lot of money to drink champagne while taking a tour in a smaller boat and seeing more of the Statue of Liberty (I think she's dead wrong, but those expensive tours do have customers), but more seriously, some people prefer not to spend the time to do a round trip across New York Bay and would rather walk a lot, go to clubs and bars or what have you. Etc., etc. Paris is a similar case: The Eiffel Tower is iconic, but it doesn't have to be visited to be seen; the Louvre is incredible but could pall on someone who doesn't really care about art; but there's so much to see and do in Paris that it's a great place for most people to visit. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:25, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, these are all issues that Google, Tripadvisor, Expedia, Lonely Planet and all the other major travel guides, all have to deal with as well, but they do so just fine. I recognize the main difference here is those sites don't operate as wikis, but they do somehow manage to do with it fine, and there's no reason why we can't either (might require some discussion for major cities, but that's it, really). Having a pinpoint or some special listing doesn't necessarily mean that readers lack critical thinking – they could, of course, just decide for themselves if that's not their thing. It should be treated more as a new feature that readers can use at their own will, but it doesn't replace everything else.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm somewhat worried Wikivoyage will lose relevance if we don't have some kind of distinguishing feature and stick to only using article summaries because, nobody my age is willing to read through long swathes of text and fluff (it might also explain why I couldn't really care less about lively travel writing as much as most people do on this site), and something visual is what is needed if we want to actively maintain relevance. //shb (t | c | m) 06:42, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to try to have arguments about the top 5 or 10 attractions in every city, region, state/province, etc., even district, you'd better get started, because it will take a long time. Those other sites are commercial and want to feature whatever helps them sell most. The history of this wiki is that it does not focus on the most typical travelers who would be satisfied with precooked tours that tell them where to go. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:47, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They might be commercial, but if even if someone like me, who defends this site as being a viable travel site in many ways, ends up often resorting to Google/Lonely Planet because they highlight key points of interests way better than we do, that is something they do better than us and something we should strive towards fixing. I don't deny that the implementation of this for large cities will be an issue, but I want this site to actually be read by people, and there is no reason we shouldn't for smaller cities and parks. //shb (t | c | m) 06:55, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
btw most of my comments here are anecdotal, both from my own experience and many others IRL (many of whom are roughly my age) who travel frequently. Take that as you will. //shb (t | c | m) 06:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I look at Tripadvisor and Wikivoyage when looking for things to see and do in a city. My biggest complaint about Tripadvisor is that they show things to see and do far outside a given city that are not reasonable to actually see or do unless you have a car, and you have to spend time looking at their results to see that there is actually nothing they think you can see or do in a city itself. The biggest problem I have with Wikivoyage is that many places lack any coverage or the coverage is insufficient, but that depends on the place in question. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:00, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do think the rankings on Tripadvisor can be helpful, although I don't always agree with them, but I see those as complementary to Wikivoyage and don't have a problem with Wikivoyage being different. I will concede that if it helps more readers if we can try to do more top-10ish lists, we could do them, but for a city like New York, it would amount to top art museums, top viewpoints, top scenic walks (which would often be neighborhoods, rather than exact itineraries), top parks (we could do more with that one), etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:03, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I don't love Tripadvisor for that reason – I do have a car and can drive, but I do travel to regional areas for site visits quite a fair bit on public transit to save up on money and sometimes check out the city. Normally I don't mind walking 12–15 km solo (and sometimes even next to 110 km/h highways with no protection), but Tripadvisor takes that to a whole different level. //shb (t | c | m) 07:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
+1 ... I just want to make the effort we (the whole community) put into this guide to show, and get used by people. As shb wrote above, mostly noone likes to read walls of text, before they even decide they want to go there. -- andree 07:02, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You think bolding is of no help? Could you do a mockup of what you want to see? If you want something that's even clearer than bolding, wouldn't it be a list? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you on all points, but my problem is elsewhere. I went Budapest->Croatia, and wanted to spend a few days learning about history, natural sights if there are some etc., on the path. I could do 50km detour if needed, within schengen, so even to a different country.
Globetrotter19 (talk · contribs), City-busz (talk · contribs) and other guys really are doing great job describing everything in Hungary. But you know, I don't want to see every (+- the same) Baroque church in every 5000-people town...... :) I'd like to visit e.g. some summer palace of the Habsburgs, unique architecture I can't find elsewhere, some natural sights, perhaps some playgrounds for kids. That kind of itinerary.... Ultimately I succeeded, but not thanks to WV, which is IMO a shame, because most of the pieces (sans some kind of "priorities" and a map) are there... -- andree 06:48, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think any itinerary based on "must-sees" is going to recommend playgrounds, though some are pretty interesting (for example, I thought one in Vondelpark in Amsterdam was, and I thought I added a description of it in the Vondelpark listing in Amsterdam/Zuid, but I don't see it, so maybe I didn't). Unique architecture and amazing natural sights should be highlighted in any good guidebook, though, and that obviously should include Wikivoyage. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:54, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking more about this: What you're really asking for is the kinds of maps Michelin used to have in their paper Green Guides and allow access to online for free, which showed which cities were 3 stars (worth a trip), 2 stars (worth a detour) and 1 star (interesting), or non-starred, and likewise with attractions within and sometimes outside of cities. That was very useful, partly because although Michelin has certain biases in what they find interesting, I find their judgments pretty reliable in that what they think is worthwhile usually is. So yes, I very much see the use in that kind of map. It would be a hell of a lot of work for us to create our own, though, and would require a lot of debate (relying on some calculation based on searches for Wikipedia articles or anything else is not something we are going to want to substitute for our own judgments, or what is the point in a crowd-based guide?). Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:14, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm willing to take part in such discussions if that's what people want to do. Start a thread in Talk:New York and so on if you want to. We've tried before, but we can try again... Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:19, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That kind of rank sounds quite useful, it would help to somehow categorize/sort our articles... Wikipedia-search-based-ranking is just a possibility that's better than keeping doing nothing (I'd say) :) -- andree 07:28, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That would be interesting to see. //shb (t | c | m) 08:37, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One thing we would have to decide is whether to have some attempt at an absolute global measure of star rankings like the one Michelin had (and presumably still has in its paper green guides) or to do rankings per area, and also whether we will make decisions about which cities (etc.) deserve 3 stars, 2 stars, 1 star or no stars, or what other distinctions we would want to use. Something to consider is that as I recall from the 1990s, when I still used paper guides, Michelin had a number of 3-star and 2-star attractions in Rome, but there were dozens of 1-starred churches, because for example even fairly minor churches in Rome may have good art by known artists and be pretty buildings, such that they would easily be top attractions in much smaller Italian cities. I would seriously doubt the neo-Gothic St. Mary's Church in Hudson, New York would get any stars from Michelin, because while it's a very pretty building to run into while visiting that picturesque little city and has good stained glass windows, it just doesn't compare to a Roman church like Sant'Andrea della Valle, a parish church I enjoyed visiting when I was staying in a hotel on via Arenula nearby. However, I think it's an important sight in Hudson, even though it surprisingly gets no mention in any guide I've seen other than Wikivoyage - because I listed it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well that's the whole point. If I'm in NYC, I will probably not travel 2x2h to see that one church - but maybe if I travelled NYC-Albany and could have a short stop there, it would make sense. OTOH, the question is now, if the proposed ranking would help here. I suppose the whole road would be littered with 1-star cities, so you'd resort back to clicking on each of them and reading through... -- andree 09:39, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think if we are to replicate the global measure of star rankings, it should ideally be relative to the area. A church in a metro area of 5 million might not be that interesting to most travellers (and could get zero stars), but a church in a town of 500 might be the most prominent thing to see in that town (and might get two stars). Now I'm not familiar with the one Michelin had so do take my star ratings as an example, but my main point is to avoid a one-size-fits-all criteria. //shb (t | c | m) 09:52, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we followed in Michelin's footsteps, there would be only a few one-star cities at most. Most would be unstarred. I wish I could find information about them online to link for everyone, other than a brief paragraph in w:Michelin Guide#Green Guides, but in some online searching for "list of Michelin starred attractions" and so forth, nothing else useful was found. It's worth looking at that paragraph, though:
The Michelin Green Guides review and rate attractions other than restaurants. There is a Green Guide for France as a whole, and a more detailed one for each of ten regions within France. Other Green Guides cover many countries, regions, and cities outside France. Many Green Guides are published in several languages. They include background information and an alphabetical section describing points of interest. Like the Red Guides, they use a three-star system for recommending sites, ranging from "worth a trip" to "worth a detour", and "interesting".
I believe I got rid of my old Green Guides from the 90s a long time ago, but Michelin's high standards are shown by the fact that most villages in Tuscany got no stars even though someplace in them (probably the Duomo or some church if nothing else) got a star on its own and the great majority of them are really beautiful. I believe I remember that being the case for Asciano. Of course Florence and Siena got 3 stars, but I believe Arezzo got no more than 2 and Cortona got one because although there are a couple of great attractions there (especially its little Duomo, which got at least 2 stars as an attraction), that's all there is other than a great view, and there are great views from a lot of hill villages (and I think that's a fair rating on that basis). I'm pretty sure San Gimignano got 3 stars, because it has incredible attractions for such a small town in addition to its great location.
It would be great if anyone had Green Guides for areas of the U.S., but by that standard, if I think about places I've visited in the Hudson Valley north of Poughkeepsie, Kingston would get a star or maybe two, ditto for Hudson (probably 1 star, though Olana would get at least 2 stars as an attraction) and Troy, Saratoga would probably get 2, Cohoes would probably get 1, Albany would get 1 because it's the capital of the state and has one interesting area and probably some decent museums I didn't go to, and I think that's it. No chance for a star for Rhinebeck, though there are some churches and accompanying graveyards with interesting histories that I was never motivated enough to write up, and no stars for all the more or less pleasant and picturesque villages. New Paltz would get one star, but it's further south. Some of the suburbs along the Hudson in Westchester would probably get a single star, but not unless there is more there than just a view, so Yonkers for the Hudson River Museum and the garden there whose name I forget, and maybe Sleepy Hollow for the legend (Michelin folks love stuff like that). Not sure what else. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:19, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder how much of this is about highlighting the best attractions within a large destination vs saying which cities to stop in when you're already driving between X and Y. I think that an itinerary might be a better model: Go here to see this, then go there to see that, stop off here if you're interested in this... WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I used a Michelin Green Guide during a roadtrips in France in 2002 to help make spontaneous decisions about side trips off the autoroute. My brother drove and I sat next to him, looking at the Michelin maps and reading to him from guides to places not too far from exits. As a result, we visited Semur, Saumur and Le Mans in addition to the other places we had planned to visit before the trip. The Michelin stars for cities and attractions helped, but so did their descriptions.
I definitely think it would be possible to use Wikivoyage the same way (I haven't tried so far - no more family roadtrips since my father got too sick and my parents subsequently died), but the inconsistency of this site in its coverage, due to which places members of this crowd chose to write about, creates a lack of standardization that is unavoidable. Considering the built-in drawbacks of wikis, it's amazing how good they are! Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:03, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For some cities, such as Agra, they key sites are mentioned in the article's introduction. Pashley (talk) 20:26, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When you have metro area article with cities under it or a huge city with districts, the top-level article can mention the most important sites leaving details & lesser sites to other articles. e.g. Shanghai#See & Metro_Cebu#See This also works for things other than tourist sights, e.g. see Shanghai#Clothing. Pashley (talk) 20:34, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I find that usually region articles are much less complete than the articles for cities within them. In part this is a result of the nature of volunteer supplied content. It is much easier to add content to the city article for somewhere that has just been visited. To write about the region, ideally you would have some knowledge of most of the region which requires a much longer visit exploring the whole area, rather than a weekend in a single city - it is much harder to collate multiple editors contributions on the cities to make the region guide.
The commercial guides have an advantage here - a traditional guidebook company will pay for the author to spend a couple of weeks touring the region. The review sites have loads of data to crunch - TripAdvisor can filter based on the number of 4 star reviews it has, Google may know how many Android phones visited a location (user settings permitting etc).AlasdairW (talk) 21:06, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The end of an era for Wikinews

Some of you might remember the discussion we had about the site here – it seems they've drafted up the report at m:Proposal for Closing Wikinews which I think is worth a read. For one, I think it's a shame that the final outcome was to lock all Wikinews projects without really consulting the Wikinews community at all (with SPTF even claiming that's an apparent conflict of interest) and dismissing genuine suggestions that were brought up which gives the impression that they were more interested in an authoritarian approach because of how much backlash that proposal initially garnered (and I also get the impressions they had the result predetermined).

I don't think we on Wikivoyage have much to be concerned about, mainly for two reasons – a) information on Wikivoyage is still relevant for the most part, even in 20 or 25 years (unlike Wikinews where content becomes irrelevant after 2–3 weeks); b) Wikivoyage is still a viable travel site for large parts of the world, even though it has many gaps. That said, I don't think now's a bad time to start discussion on how we can genuinely compete with major travel sites like Google, LonelyPlanet or Expedia, even if it doesn't result in change, both so we stay relevant in the grand scheme of things, and so our content is read by travellers. Either way, RIP Wikinews and it's sad that a flawed consultation process was how it had to go. //shb (t | c | m) 11:51, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A couple thoughts. First, and admittedly I don't know all the context here, that seems to be only a proposal. Presumably that proposal could be rejected?
One resource that would be valuable would be data on number of edits, page views, etc. by project, and while graphs from that tool are shown in the proposal, I can't find the actual web page mentioned anywhere there. In my opinion we would be wise to look at which articles are receiving the highest readership by humans and learn lessons from those articles. From what I've seen in page information tabs, travel topics perform far better than we might think, and they require less maintenance than destination articles. Perhaps we should increase our offering of travel topics and itineraries, which certainly would increase the distinction between our site and alternatives like LonelyPlanet. I also believe we should come to a consensus regarding station articles and, if we want to make that a new type of article permanently, expand our offering in that area.
Strange as it sounds, we may suffer from having too many destination (and particuarly city) articles. Sparsely populated regions such as North Dakota have articles for even the smallest towns, and there aren't enough editors in these places to keep listings up to date. I'm not sure what is the best way to resolve that problem, but I think there was a wave of creation followed by deletion of empty skeleton articles in the past.
If Wikinews is indeed taken offline, the timing seems inappropriate. A time when news organizations (PBS, NPR) are being defunded is not the best time to close down the project, surely. I do think the proposal makes a convincing argument that the current state of Wikinews is insufficient, but I think that would call for changes rather than closure entirely. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:45, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the way SPTF acted on the consultation page, we can be very sure they had the result predetermined (especially because they did not consult Wikinews beforehand either) and due to the lack of any positives about Wikinews mentioned in the report. It's one of the most egregious box-ticking consultations I've ever seen from a WMF charter. //shb (t | c | m) 12:59, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I realize this is totally a side point, but any figuring of how many human edits articles get has to make exceptions for repeated attempts by Brendan to edit articles like the one for Equatorial Guinea or vandalism of the Nigeria article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:30, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To my knowledge, I don't think any human edits were excluded in the calculations for WN – I might be wrong, though. //shb (t | c | m) 14:35, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we could exclude edits that are tagged with reverted/rollback. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 19:35, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Presumably that proposal could be rejected?" Yes. You can make your voice heard at m:Requests for comment/Sister Projects next steps and see other comments (now closed) at m:Talk:Public consultation about Wikinews. This will be reviewed later in the year for any decisions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:46, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
SPTF has done a great job of wilful ignorance; you can in theory, but they've demonstrated ample times that they aren't interested in hearing opposition. //shb (t | c | m) 22:18, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unironically, that's also why m:Requests for comment/Closure of Sister Project Task Force even seems to have come about (and I do hope the WMF takes notes that SPTF isn't super popular with the community – most of the opposes are just people saying the community can't close a WMF-appointed charter). //shb (t | c | m) 22:31, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of my speculation/conjecture/take, I'd say that the various WMF projects are in tiers something like:
  • Safe/successful:
    • Wikipedia
    • Wiktionary
    • Wikidata
    • Commons
    • Wikispecies
    • MediaWiki
  • Safe/qualified successes:
    • Wikisource
    • Wikiquote
    • Wikivoyage
  • Less safe/qualified failures:
    • Wikibooks
    • Wikiversity
  • Other:
    • Wikinews (possible closure, major restructuring)
    • Wikifunctions (too new to assess, very small and narrow scope)
I don't think that anyone has the English Wikivoyage in the cross hairs as such, otherwise, it would have been brought up at the time. I've been pretty vocal in the consultation process about Wikinews generally and while I think the proposal to possibly shut down is the wrong one, I have also been disappointed by some of the vituperation aimed at those who were just doing their jobs. The fact is, Wikinews has struggled and failed. I don't think it's an inherent failure and I personally continue to contribute at the English Wikinews: I believe in it. But some users took the criticism and proposal as a kind of attack and attacked back in a way that I think was not warranted. If for no other reason than no one wants to put up with the drama, I find it unlikely that there will be any serious proposals to close any other projects and even if there were, Wikiversity and probably Wikibooks would come before Wikivoyage.
As an aside, if an admin could please address Template_talk:WikivoyageSister#Wikifunctions, that would be nice. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:54, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the post, but since I don't recognize all the abbreviations you used for wikis, I'm dead sure other readers didn't. So if you choose to explain what they all stand for, you'd be doing a good service. I'll get the process started by saying that wp=Wikipedia, wikt=Wiktionary, d is presumably Wikidata, c would be Commons, species is clear, voy=Wikivoyage, and wn=Wikinews. I don't recognize the others. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:10, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for being so clipped. Modifying. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:14, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, appreciated. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:49, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: What would you say distinguishes the three qualified successes from the successful projects, and in turn what distinguishes us from Wikibooks and Wikiversity (the qualified failures)? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 00:25, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that the "successful" projects are all very active and generally pretty successful at what a person wants to get out of them. E.g. if you want to know what a word means (particularly in English) and you look it up on Wiktionary, you will probably find the answer. With those qualified successes, you may get what you want and there's a decent amount of content, but there are also some big gaps. With the semi-failure ones, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it useful. That's just generally how I think about it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:38, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense. Where would you say the holes lie on Wikivoyage? I think we've made a lot of progress regarding outline articles in recent years, but there remain many out of date articles for smaller towns and suburbs. The thing I wonder is, though, whether anyone is really looking to travel to those towns in the first place. In my view that's an issue the community will need to address in the long run.
That said, Wikivoyage's ratio of useful articles to outlines has seen incredible improvement since 2012 and even since Covid. I do have high hopes that we can join the level of Commons, WikiSpecies, etc. within a few years if our progress continues. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 11:33, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The holes are some missing locations/topics, but mostly outdated info, bloat, and a lack of multimedia. I think this project is generally successful to the extent that you could probably use it to plan a trip to many locations. I've never been to Buffalo (New York) or Boston and I think that if I just read our guides and did the things that made sense for me, I'd probably have a fine time, but I also think I would miss out on some things that we don't have covered and we don't have the kind of interactive functionality (e.g. planning a route and connecting that to a map application) that someone would ideally want. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:08, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I think we have a policy against multimedia at the moment.
As for missing locations and topics, could you give some examples? I'd imagine we have more holes in terms of travel topics than locations.
I don't have the technical knowledge but maybe we could find a way to export the lines on itinerary routemaps to a GPS or OSM application? If could do that we could fix the other point that you mention about itineraries. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:52, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we do have a policy to de-prioritize media in favor of print-outs, which is emphatically not how literally 99% of users would use this site. It's preposterous and probably was not how users used this site in 2003. Just imagine what the perfect travel guide would be and there's no universe where that doesn't have interactive media and the functionality to actually dynamically plan routes and connect with mapping or navigation abilities. As for topics, I occasionally provide my suggestions of what we could talk about, the most recent time I kind of threw an idea up here that was vaguely a proposal was here, where I suggested that we have more material that is just more free-form and anecdotal that encourages the kind of wandering and deliberately getting lost that can be enjoyable in travel. I also mused about bringing back the personal travel blogs that used to exist here years and years ago for that purpose. If this were a site that included more engaging and fun material as actual reading material, that would also be part of the ideal travel guide in my mind.
To ramble more, if you imagine Wiktionary, which is a dictionary, but we've also added a thesaurus, media like audio pronunciations and images to supplement the entries, appendices for more trivial information, etc. It's an attempt to make something that is as robust as possible for everything that someone would want about a reference work that is about words and terms generally speaking. If this site is just a bunch of listings of "go to place, see thing" then there is value to that, but if you think of the best thing that a travel guide could be, then we can expand our horizons about what we want to do here in principle (if not necessarily in practice, since resources are finite). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:20, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, we need to move on from the prioritization of being able to print our guides in an era when cellular service is everywhere. Most people don't even use a printer these days.
One of the challenges of our site right now is that we have so few people who write based on where they've just visited. You're right that if we could have engaging itineraries written by travelers, it would improve site quality. Such articles, being more subjective and with less time related info, would also require less maintenance to stay relevant.
An article I'd love to see would be Intracoastal Waterway, but by someone who's actually done a good stretch of it on their own vessel. I think that could be a terrific itinerary, even if it covered the route through just one state. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:57, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, I agree with everyone that we don't want to prioritize printed pages, but it's still a factor that there are places with little if any cellphone signal, and they are not even all extremely remote. Can someone tell us whether there is still no cellphone signal for something like 70 miles of the Pacific Coast Highway? My feeling is that while printed guides should not be the main priority on this site, we should still make sure there's enough printable content to be useful to people who are venturing out of cellphone connectivity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:04, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed in principle and also agreed that we need to make the most accommodations for the most important issues: e.g. accessibility for those with visual impairments or the capacity for serving pages to those who have spotty connections, etc. Print is certainly a consideration and could be an important one for a minority of users, but it is far more common that someone is accessing this material live on the Web, many times using a portable device that has mapping and navigation capabilities. For us to have literally no integration with those basic functions is a lacuna to say the least. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:54, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's insane! Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:17, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed – that said, from what I can infer, we have come quite some way especially given that we're a bit neglected by the WMF. Static maps are no longer favoured in most of our articles and the lack of contributors who can make static maps has somewhat done a service. We've moved towards better integration with OSM, especially when it comes to mapshapes. Plenty of progress, but still a lot more to go. //shb (t | c | m) 00:12, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ikan Kekek, SelfieCity: I used to be someone who would print out things when going remote or somewhere with no signal (which I do quite regularly), but nowadays I would just save an offline PDF copy on my phone. Phone storage is much less of a concern with most modern phones today so I do think it's worth revising our policies to be a bit more lax. //shb (t | c | m) 00:03, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a Wikibooks admin myself, it's probably the sheer volume of incomplete or abandoned books, coupled with low participation. Unlike, say, Wikipedia, Wikivoyage or Wikisource, you need to know the topic reasonably well before writing a book on Wikibooks (and thus there isn't a whole heap of collaboration on the same article). There's a long process to clean up many of the old/abandoned books but it's been a work in progress for at least 2 years. //shb (t | c | m) 00:39, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. And the nice thing about a textbook is that you can come back to it and complete it. That's not true of news: if news isn't completed or written, it ceases to be news at all. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:40, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah that's why I think the entire premise of Wikinews was always a bit problematic from the get-go (and why I was in support of closing many of the smaller Wikinews projects even before the SPTF consultation came to fruition). //shb (t | c | m) 00:50, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but I disagree that the response to the criticism was unwarranted. The most appropriate course of action for a committee when reviewing the project is to actually address the project directly and work with them on how to improve the project going forward. SPTF, however, didn't do that – they notified Wikinews at the same time when all other projects were notified (see my message earlier for the link). You could argue that this might have been a genuine error, but when this was brought up multiple times, SPTF was either virtually unresponsive to all criticism on the lack of communication or Victoria doubled down by saying that being involved in a consultation that involving your home project is a supposed conflict of interest. When you consult a community so poorly without even trying to hide that, it is a perfectly normal human reaction to react in such a way. //shb (t | c | m) 00:33, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Over the past decade, the English Wikivoyage has received about 2.5 times the number of pageviews as English Wikinews. Of course there are other languages but English is usually the biggest wiki for all Wikimedian wikis so it's easiest to compare. Also if you look carefully at the stats, the gap between Wikivoyage and Wikinews has grown in recent years. So I think we are pretty safe in the short term. As far how we can grow, there is so much to unpack but I still believe that in addition to the legacy W-travel content which has remained unchanged, many editors are not sufficiently paraphrasing content brought in from Wikipedia. There are sentences added verbatim which 1. isn't appropriate when the tone of our articles are meant to much more casual and fun than bland and technical Wikipedia and 2. The duplicated content continues to penalise us in the SEO rankings. There are e.g. plenty of articles which go into Köppen climate classifications. The climate and weather sections of a city should be written as if you're talking to a friend who wants to travel to a place where you've recently been. Most of our articles should be written like that. I'm mindful that internet users aren't clicking on search links as much as they used to because they often just read the AI summaries up the top (funnily enough AI often uses wikis as a major source for their summaries) but serious travellers planning a trip will still want detail and click further.
Another big hole is the absence of an online app. Wikivoyage readers will continue to be skewed to desktop and laptop users instead of tablets and phones (where younger generations spend more of their time on) if we continue to only rely on a website URL. Addressing this is unfortunately out of our hands though as developing an app for Wikivoyage is not high priority for the WMF. Gizza (roam) 01:10, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's the thing that's most likely to kill Wikivoyage in the next few years, I think. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:14, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh absolutely – this will be the downfall of basically every Wikimedia project that is not Wikipedia (atp Commons only has an Android app). //shb (t | c | m) 01:35, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even the web wrappers of mobile-optimized websites are better than nothing IMO, and I often like to download various mobile-optimized websites as progressive web apps as a young adult user, especially when there are no native versions of them in Play Store (or App Store if you're in iOS). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:24, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps tangentially, I nominated Nairobi for DotM a while before Wikimania took place there, expecting that some of the participants would read and use the article, notice the nomination banner, and edit/update the article or just even add something little. Aside of two Brendan edits, the article history shows zero edits from that time. Unfortunately Wikivoyage does not seem interesting or attractive to editors of other wikis even during and after their travels :( . --Ypsilon (talk) 04:37, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is a travel guide app that uses Wikivoyage's content, but it's unofficial and gets updated only every once in a while. More users coming from other projects (and particularly Wikipedia) would be a great help even though our policies are not the same. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 11:40, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(But I can't find it now, so perhaps it doesn't exist anymore. Regardless, the creation of an app for Wikivoyage and other projects should be a priority for WMF — it's where the future is and surely wouldn't be hard to create.) --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 11:41, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are you talking about Wikivoyage:Kiwix? Yeah that is nice but it's a shame everything is offline. //shb (t | c | m) 12:08, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe, I think there was another, though, specifically for Wikivoyage. I'm not sure as the last time I checked was several years ago.
We definitely need an official app. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:11, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SHB2000 doesn't want offline app (exactly the only reasonable use of an app), and you want basically a browser wrapper so that the users don't need to enter wikivoyage.org into a browser... strange times :-D -- andree 15:48, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I should clarify that by offline app, I don't want to have to download the entire wiki on my phone periodically every few years or so (like how Kiwix works), rather than an online app that has the ability to save pages offline (huge benefit for park articles). //shb (t | c | m) 22:38, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"does not seem interesting or attractive to editors of other wikis even during and after their travels": I was thinking, if something alike "OSM notes" would be useful for this. Basically some "Suggest change" floating icon for article? Maybe even something that would just post the suggestion into the talk page would suffice? And ideally we'd have some list of such suggestions, to efficiently process/reject those... This may only be useful for less-frequented areas, because big cities are usually sufficiently covered and changes are not even needed. -- andree 08:05, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have also watched the response to the m:Proposal for Closing Wikinews and the related m:Public consultation about Wikinews. I don't think that Wikivoyage need fear that we're next on the chopping block.
I found the numbers in the m:Proposal for Closing Wikinews to be informative, and if you are interested in facts and the criteria that the Board uses to evaluate success or failure (e.g., "Alignment with Mission"), then I suggest reading it. Here are a few things I learned:
Summary:
  • Wikivoyage has a lot more readers than Wikinews.
  • Wikivoyage creates more articles than Wikinews.
  • Wikivoyage communities are bigger than Wikinews communities.
  • Wikivoyage communities are more active than Wikinews communities.
Long version:
Only 20% of Wikinews page views go to humans. In three months, all the Wikinewses combined got 10 million page views from human readers. English Wikivoyage alone got 30 times this in the last three months. Most of the "visitors" to Wikinews are clearly not looking for news articles, because 90% of the most popular search terms are in Russian and for baby names. (I'm not kidding: "Japanese female names", "Korean names", "beautiful names for girls Muslim", and so forth.)
It's not surprising that human readers don't visit the sites, because Wikinews writes almost no articles. For example, when I checked in ~July, the German Wikinews had written just one (1) article in the entire previous month; it was a slightly TOUTy article from a newbie about a minor politician. Almost everything at Russian Wikinews is bots copy/pasting free content from other news sites – which, as Wikivoyage knows better than most, kills SEO. Search engines index the pages (spider bots are 70% of the traffic to Wikinews), but they rank it low. For example, the featured article at enwikinews is about German unemployment; searching for information about 'German unemployment 2025' puts it on the second page of results – and that's a good result. If you copy/paste the article's full headline into other search engines, Bing puts Wikinews halfway down the first page, and both Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo put Wikinews on the second page. We don't expect a simple search on "London" to rank Wikivoyage high, but if you search for one of our longer or more unique page titles, like Itinerary of the Opera dei Pupi, Wikivoyage is often on the first page (for that example, Google lists us first).
The English Wikinews reported early in the discussion that they have improved their output: they had been officially publishing 8 news articles per month, and they had recently achieved the milestone of 9. For comparison, here at the English Wikivoyage, we created about ten times that many articles in the last month, which is particularly impressive when you remember that a newspaper could easily write a hundred news articles about even a smallish city in a month, while we can pretty much only create one article ever for that same city. One of the committee's problems with Wikinews is that if you produce one news article every three or four days, you're not really achieving the goal of educating people about what's going on in the world.
One of the reasons for this lack of content creation is that the core communities are tiny (e.g., Chinese Wikinews is largely written by three editors; German Wikinews is basically one editor). At the most active English Wikinews community discussion page, there are a couple of discussions about their future. There are more Wikivoyagers talking about Wikinews' future in this discussion right here, than there are long-time English Wikinewsies on the whole page.
Many of the communities don't seem to keep up with basic maintenance, either. Right now, the English Wikinews, which is the biggest by number of registered editors and admins, has 18 articles up for "speedy deletion", several of which are tagged as pure vandalism, in the main namespace, and have been waiting a couple of days for an admin to delete them. They have 17 human admins. It only takes one to check and empty that cat every day or two. (The same cat here is empty, of course. Some of our admins obviously watch Special:RecentChanges and zap vandalism pages on sight.)
If you want to go read the discussions on Meta-Wiki, keep in mind that lot of the comments are Wikinews editors dealing with their emotions. One editor said that Wikinews was valued because it felt like a job that you couldn't be fired from. The overall discussion feels like a workplace conversation right after the company announced long overdue layoffs.
What I think we could learn:
  • Optimize for long-term success. Like Wikinews, and unlike Wiktionary, our content needs to be updated regularly. That means that a viable Wikivoyage needs more editors than a viable Wiktionary. The movement as a whole should probably raise the barrier to creating new language editions in general, and specifically for projects that need up-to-date information. We can prevent painful closures by preventing overly optimistic openings.
  • If you're not growing, you're shrinking. We should consider opportunities for recruiting. School clubs to update their local area? Ask the WMF to fund an advertising campaign for new editors ("See what Wikipedia's sister travel guide got wrong about your city"?!)? A presentation at a tourism conference? Have an annual "Wiki Loves Tourism" campaign? Start work earlier on our birthday contest?
  • Consider some changes. One of the recurring themes in the Wikinews discussions is that the long-standing rules hinder article creation. Maybe we should reconsider some of our long-standing rules. For example, as raised above, should we continue to prioritize paper printouts?
  • If we don't face unpleasant facts, it will eventually be done for us. We could institute a review process for the smallest Wikivoyages, with a plan for helping them. We know what a functioning Wikivoyage community looks like. What if long-time Wikivoyagers from a couple of different languages could go to, e.g., the Hindi Wikivoyage and say: this is a widely spoken language, with tremendous potential. And with almost no articles and almost no editors, you're basically failing. What can we do to help? And if the answer is that nothing works for that language (which may be true for small languages, but probably won't be for Hindi), then we should propose closure ourselves, instead of waiting for an outside group to tell us what to do.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the last point, I have repeatedly opposed the creation of smaller language Wikivoyages but keep getting shut down, much of it because Wikivoyage is apparently one of the few projects that actually grow post-incubation (how true this is I remain skeptical about). I wouldn't be opposed to creating a policy that ensures that a set number of articles are all present before launch – something like maybe all 200 or so countries, some certain global cities, and important parks and wonders. //shb (t | c | m) 23:34, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: thanks for the input. These are some great observations. If we could create some kind of event that attracts editors from our sister sites, that would be terrific as per some earlier comments here, many of them aren't aware of what goes on here. Despite our differences from Wikipedia, I believe that many WP editors would enjoy the editing process here. I started at Wikipedia but the idea of being able to have the article sections already laid out for me (Understand, See, Do, etc.) combined with the replacement of citing sources with real-world knowledge is what originally attracted me to Wikivoyage. That said, I still edit at Wikipedia as well, so I think the same could lead to positive engagement from other writers at sister sites. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 02:24, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also I cleaned up the CSD category on Wikinews (local policy allows for it) and it's wild that an English project has vandalism unchecked for so long – not something you see for a wiki with 17 sysops. //shb (t | c | m) 04:19, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's incredible to me as, just a few years ago, I remember Wikinews being a good, up-to-date source for major news events. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:27, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The English Wikinews was largely run for years by a single person, who has died a few years ago. This doesn't really explain why the others are in poor shape, but they have struggled at enwikinews to organize themselves.
Businesses sometimes talk about a "bus test": What would happen to the company, if this key employee got hit by a bus/was suddenly out of the office and unreachable? (I've even heard of a few that simulate this by sending a manager on a holiday with no warning.)
A possible 'lesson learned' for us is never become overly reliant on one person. That could mean each of us deciding to do a little more (e.g., I check Special:RecentChanges a few times a year: Could I do more?) or a little less (e.g., if one admin thinks they're the only one checking a backlog categoriy, maybe they could post a note here at the travellers' pub that says "Hey, is anyone else keeping an eye on this cat? I'd love it if someone else was checking it every day"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, I am aware of Pi-zero – he did dedicate an insane amount of his time to both enwikinews and enwikibooks (the latter where I became familiar with him) for sure. //shb (t | c | m) 19:46, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh okay, that explains a lot. I do think we have more diversity here, although we've lost some reliable admins in recent years. But I think we have a diversity of expertise, with a couple admins good at dealing with touts and content issues, and others good at code and templates (looking at you shb). --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 20:20, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fun

m:Wikipedia 25/Easter egg experiments looks like something we might want to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would be a fun idea indeed. //shb (t | c | m) 13:25, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Server switch - Your wiki will be read-only for a short time soon

Trizek (WMF) (Discussion) 15:41, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Have your say: vote for the 2025 Board of Trustees

Hello all,

The voting period for the 2025 Board of Trustees election is now open. Candidates are running for two (2) seats on the Board.

To check your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Learn more about them by reading their application statements and watch their candidacy videos.

When you are ready, go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote.

The vote is open from October 8 at 00:00 UTC to October 22 at 23:59 UTC.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair, Elections Committee

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:49, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Picking two candidates out of four with two candidates disqualified for no good reason. What a joke of an election honestly. Would highly encourage reading the Meta page I linked as well as m:Objections to the 2025 WMF Board election removals/Arab Community. I still voted, but if any of you are planning on voting, I would highly encourage giving those pages a read first. //shb (t | c | m) 08:13, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, do you actually know that there was no good reason? Or are you just assuming there's no good reason, because you don't personally know what it is? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We might not know the full reason, but Lane already came out and disclosed the reasoning why to the best of what they were able to disclose and I find the WMF's reasoning utterly unconvincing. This is barely even touching the surface with Ravan whose reason hasn't been officially confirmed but highly likely due to her open stance on Palestine. Being barred from participating in an election just a few days before voting for your political views or because of your involvement with criticising the WMF really comes out as authoritarian, even more so when there is now a huge disconnect between BoT members and the general community. It speaks a lot for the WMF's lack of transparency at the very least. //shb (t | c | m) 23:33, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't really "an election" in the sense of the winners definitely being placed on the Board. The WMF's Board is self-perpetuating. This is like an opinion poll, which the Board chooses to conduct, but which does not require them to do anything.
Consequently, if the Board has already decided that they weren't going to put these two people on the Board, would you really want them to let you vote, and, if they did "win", then say "Surprise! Guess what? We decided a week before the election that we weren't going to put this person on the Board, but we thought that we'd just let you vote anyway, in the hope that you wouldn't favor them and we could blame their non-appearance on the Board on the community instead of on ourselves." WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Neither situations are desirable and only goes to show how out of touch the Board is with the broader community. //shb (t | c | m) 02:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Board's job is to do their fiduciary duty to their charitable purpose. "Being in touch with the broader community", no matter which minority you choose to consider "the broader community", is not their job. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps that is why they are ever so increasingly becoming deeply unpopular, as evidenced by those pages I linked. //shb (t | c | m) 03:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Board's job isn't to be popular, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So why do they bother to do this non-election? Also, are any non-self-perpetuating members of the community guaranteed to be on the board or normally put on it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:07, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why do they bother? I think they get some value out of seeing who's the most popular with the affiliates and individual community members. I think that they want to have affiliate and community members on the board, and this is as good a way as any other to narrow down the list of candidates. The public process may help with the vetting, since a background check isn't going to pick up some things that you'd want to know. A background check will let them find out about things like drunk driving convictions or being in debt to a level that could present a bribery risk, but a public announcement gives them a chance to hear about things like, say, creepy behavior towards women at events. (I give these examples in the belief that none of them are relevant to any of the current or former candidates.)
Nobody is guaranteed a position on the WMF's board. The outgoing board is entitled to reject any or all candidates (and to throw them out later, if they seemed okay initially but the rest of the board decided later that they disliked having someone on it). However, they voluntarily created a requirement in the bylaws to have "a" community- or affiliate- nomination process for some board seats. Technically, it can be just about any process the board chooses, on any schedule the board chooses, and repeated as many times as necessary until they find a candidate they are willing to accept. However, we've never needed to have more than one round in the past, and as a general rule, whoever gets the most votes is usually the one whom the board appoints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:22, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:32, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I should say, though, that some of your responses have helped me to understand that there is a big problem that ought to be addressed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To me it's just sad that this whole controversy even happened – expressing your views on an international conflict should never result in a disqualification. If she was really controversial, the community would have expressed that anyway. There was no need for the WMF to intervene and the fact that they continue to defend this decision is worrying. //shb (t | c | m) 12:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that expressing some views ought to result in disqualification. For example, I don't think that an internationally known non-profit organization whose flagship website is supposed to be neutral is best served by elevating to the board a woman who expressed support for Hamas (NB: not Palestine, but Hamas) and who publicly supported the view that rape victims were lying. Opposition to genocide is consistent with the mission; support for rapists and terrorist groups is not. The current Board has a duty to advance the mission, and sometimes that means, among other things, discouraging the kind of politicking that would result in potential voters knowing about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree that that should be disqualifying, but has the board explained that that was the reason for the disqualification? Furthermore, if her views have been known for a long time, why did they wait so late to disqualify her from running? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:08, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AIUI the process last round (from the POV of the candidate) was:
  • announce candidacy and start allowable types of politicking,
  • individual contributors vote on the long list,
  • affiliates vote (from the list shortened by the previous vote),
  • background checks and the board disqualifies any inappropriate/unwanted candidate that happened to be at the top of the list, and
  • whoever is at the top of the list is officially appointed by the current board members.
They got complaints about individual voters needing to research too many candidates and affiliates not simply rubber-stamping the individual results, so it did not surprise me when this year they reversed steps 2 and 3.
Then they tweaked the process to do background checks before the final vote. I would not be surprised if this second tweak was because someone realized that at least one candidate would be disqualified.
One board member has provided a personal explanation on the wikimedia-l mailing list. I am not aware of (and would not expect) an official statement. (I would be disappointed if they did so, in fact, because that would constitute a heavy, official condemnation.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:50, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Was there no way to disqualify her earlier? I appreciate the link to the post by that one board member. The disqualifying reasons for both disqualified candidates are reasonable, but I think the process was problematic and that there should be more and earlier communication about the reasons for disqualifications. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:51, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's the other issue – spending months campaigning, only for the WMF to say you're disqualified just a few days before the election, is very poor form. If they really were controversial (and I still don't buy the reasons for a whole other slew of reasons), the community would have voted them out anyway. The community and voters aren't stupid. //shb (t | c | m) 23:25, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I mean few days, it was only known when the WMF decided to not list them on the ballot box – it was very late and quite frankly indefensible. //shb (t | c | m) 23:26, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but on trusting people to vote out someone on the basis that she has voiced support for Hamas and is a rape denier for political reasons (I haven't read the links, so I'm not making a direct accusation) is an unacceptable hazard for a foundation dedicated to a lack of points of view affecting its most famous and active site, and I would by no means trust a majority to vote her down on that basis. It also wouldn't really make sense to let people vote for Bluerasberry if the board would refuse to seat him, regardless, on the basis of conflicts of interest if he won. So my issues are with the process, the timing and the lack of prompt, transparent communication. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:33, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it's just me having a hard time trusting what Victoria says (this isn't something exclusive to me ftr), I guess. //shb (t | c | m) 07:42, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
TL;DR: If you're not interested in bureaucracies, you can safely skip this.
Well, looking at the dates, probably not. For simplicity, let's just stipulate that it really was all about the accusations against the lone woman in the affiliates' shortlist and that the information in the JP article was unknown to the board/WMF staff until its publication. (I don't actually know whether any of that's true.)
The JP article was published on 10 August. I assume that this was treated like any other communications crisis involving the board. That would mean that the next step was to get the whole board and various staff together to make a decision about whether and how this discovery ought to affect the process. Since they (obviously) decided it should, they probably had to get a formal Board vote (usually done by e-mail), and write an explanation about what's changing. Giving them about 10 calendar days to do all that does not seem unreasonable. m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025/Announcement/Change to the order of the selection process was posted on 21 August.
Remember that voting was originally supposed to start on 27 August, so from the POV of the team handling this process, they had at most 17 days from the date of the JP article until voting starts. The earliest they could have said anything about this was 17 days before voting, aka halfway through the official four-week-long campaigning season.
If you're certain that the board will reject this candidate in the end, your question is whether you want to pull her from the list before, during, or after the voting. None of these choices are going to popular, but the main complaint is that they're doing it at all, rather than the timing. I've seen nobody saying anything even remotely like "If you'd announced this 17 days before the original voting dates, I'd think it was a good idea, but since you announced it 5 days before the new voting dates, it's a bad idea."
Once they had the decision and made the initial announcement about doing the background checks earlier and the voting later, they still had to actually do the comprehensive background checks. Those take time. I'd expect multiple weeks for this. This isn't a quick "push a button, get an answer" thing, especially for candidates in LMIC countries, and because they wanted to review more than just the basics (What if the JP article was exaggerated? what if her account had been hacked? Would you want to "transparently" smear her name in public, only to discover that it was a false accusation, or that other candidates had similar problems?).
I would not be surprised if the new voting dates were set in conversation with the background check company: If the background checking companies promised to complete all the background checks by 30 September, I would have planned to hold a board meeting on 1 October to decide whether we need to act on any of the results, inform all of the candidates on 2 October [I assume this happened; it would be more humane], and publicize the results on 3 October.
We can complain that this announcement came five days before the new date for the beginning of voting, but it's also 37 days after voting was originally supposed to start. Leaving all the candidates in limbo (because until the voting is over, they don't know whether they safely can commit to other projects for the next two years) and delaying voting longer than strictly necessary is not nice, either.
This means that the practical options are:
  • Don't do real background checks, because they're too slow. (We tried that in the past; it wasn't good.)
  • Don't do a background check for her; just reject her in August. Then have a vote and risk discovering, after the voting is over/when you do comprehensive background checks for the winners, that one of the winners also needs to be rejected for unrelated reasons.
  • Do the background checks and start voting ASAP afterwards. (That's what they did.)
  • Do the background checks and then delay the voting for no particular reason (maybe "to let people calm down"?).
IMO they made a reasonable choice about the timing, and it's possible that they made the best choice from among a handful of not-so-great options. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining all of that. The remaining problem is that that explanation is from you here, rather than directly from the board to all Wikimedians. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:15, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto (and I do appreciate the explanation btw :)). //shb (t | c | m) 00:30, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{outdent}

You're welcome. Keep in mind the potential difference to that candidate between a detailed official explanation and a comment from some person on the internet who apparently has an interest in how bureaucracies work.

Everything the WMF officially says about her is at risk of appearing in comprehensive background checks for her for the next couple of decades – potentially torpedoing job offers for decades to come. If they explain their concerns in comprehensive detail, it could result in future employers saying "Wow, they re-wrote the whole process just for this? She must have posted something really bad." What I say (especially since I'm deliberately not using her name) is unimportant.

The WMF has a long history of not explaining certain decisions. One reason for that is this problem:

  • WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Alice. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
  • WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Bob. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
  • WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Chris. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
  • WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block David. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
  • WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Eve. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
  • WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Frank. I can't tell you why.
    • Everyone else: Die, you monster child porn purveyor!
      • WMF: Hey, I never said what it was for?!
        • Everyone else: Yeah, but your silence says as much as your words.

In this case, as in many others, they are giving the candidates a chance to tell their own stories. They know, from past experience, that there is a risk that the candidates' interpretations may be biased. (See also: all the times that sanctioned editors post "the" e-mail message they received from WMF Legal but accidentally-on-purpose forget to mention all the e-mail messages that preceded it.) It also has the effect of causing some people to think that they have the whole story, and that the decision really was wrong. But I see this as an effort to avoid causing avoidable harm to the rejected candidates, and I think it is an honorable approach.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's an honorable approach, whereas all decisions on this Wiki concerning user rights above patroller are a matter of public record? Why should only what the board does be secret, with no official statement whatsoever? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:11, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What the board does is not secret. The official statement is at m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025/Announcement/Change to the order of the selection process. There is an official explanation at m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025/FAQ#Questions regarding the August 21 announcement.
Making the votes for Wikivoyage:User rights nominations be public is our choice. Not every wiki makes that choice. For example, the English Wikipedia is gearing up for their 2025 ArbCom elections, and it's done by secret ballot. Individuals can talk – just like individual members of the WMF's board can (and have done in this case) – but the collective group speaks only through secret ballot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One of the misunderstandings I've seen in multiple other non-profits is that what a board does is different from what individual people say during a board meeting. For example, back in the pre-social media days, I heard regular complaints in one organization from a handful of people who were very concerned about "transparency", meaning that it wasn't good enough to know whether the board passed the resolution or authorized the expense (what a board does), or even to know the names of board members who eventually voted for or against it; instead, they believed that a board meeting should work like a national legislature, and every word that any board member said during a meeting, and sometimes even how they said it, should be disclosed to all members, so they could criticize board members who advocated for the wrong view, who asked questions they thought were stupid, etc. Board members don't usually volunteer because they want to have a jerk picking apart the exact words they used in a meeting. When that becomes typical, the board stops being able to work directly together, and instead turns into a "telephone game": Alice wants to talk about issue X, so she calls Bob and Chris; Bob and Chris each separately talk to David and Eve and Frank; Frank and Eve call Alice, and by the time the board officially meets, the only thing left to be said is "All in favor?"
(One of the "transparency" advocates eventually got elected to that board. If memory serves, he provided his own unofficial summaries of who said what for a few meetings and then was "too busy".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WMF board reform

The m:2025 WMF Board reform petition affects people from across the movement, so I'm posting this here for visibility. I've only made a few dozen contributions to wikivoyage myself, so if this isn't the right place to post about it, please let me know. Clovermoss (talk) 20:54, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would absolutely recommend giving this a read. Absolutely shameful how out of touch the board is with the movement and community (and no, I cannot be convinced otherwise). //shb (t | c | m) 22:05, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: I’ve Gone to Look for America: Conversations and revelations about an ailing nation along Interstate 95.

https://magazine.atavist.com/2025/america-i95-conversations-trump —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:39, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help us decide the name of the new Abstract Wikipedia project

Hello. Please help pick a name for the new Abstract Wikipedia wiki project. This project will be a wiki that will enable users to combine functions from Wikifunctions and data from Wikidata in order to generate natural language sentences in any supported languages. These sentences can then be used by any Wikipedia (or elsewhere). There will be two rounds of voting, each followed by legal review of candidates, with votes beginning on 20 October and 17 November 2025. Our goal is to have a final project name selected on mid-December 2025. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Thank you! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:43, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For folks who don't know what this is:
We have a number of standard sentences that we frequently write in articles (e.g., "Smallville is a town in northern Ruritania with a population of 10,000"). Imagine that you could start an article by just putting in a sort of 'template' (the call them functions) that would pull the contents from Wikidata for you. You could copy it to plain text, keep some or all of it connected to Wikidata (e.g., if the population of the town changes), or decide that you don't like it and write your own sentence (or try a different 'template'). And, importantly, once the 'template' existed, we could do this in any language. It would speed up article creation and sharing content between all the Wikivoyages.
It may be a couple of years before we can even test this, and I think it will have lower utility for English-language projects than for smaller ones, but I think there is a lot of potential for basic assistance in this project. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The population figures could be useful. That’s something that gets out of date here. Likewise, for large businesses such as airlines that go bankrupt, a Wikifunction connection could be useful. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 20:58, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, keeping the guide up-to-date is a problem & automating some of that is a fine idea. Not just numbers from Wikidata, perhaps also things like exchange rates or hotel prices.
Natural language text might not be the only output format. That can be a fine thing, but it is also a notoriously difficult problem & some data might more naturally be presented in a table or graph. Pashley (talk) 21:57, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine this will more so help smaller-language Wikivoyages (as WhatamIdoing said) way more than it would here, especially since about a third of them seem to be very dead. //shb (t | c | m) 22:26, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Exchange rates seem like a good idea.
Or maybe some pieces of the cautionbox? Simple (subject-verb-object) sentences like "There was a flood on [date]" and a relevant external link could help many languages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Usage of "commune" on this site

This term is used a lot for French and Italian villages: to take a random example, in Fa'a'ā, it's stated that "Fa'a'ā (or Faaa or Faa'a) is a commune on Tahiti." I think this is wrong on an English-language site. In English, "commune" means only a community that has collective ownership of property. Does anyone disagree? It was not until I took my first trip to Italy that I came across the use - in Italian (comune) - of the word in anything other than a context of collective ownership of community property. I recognize that it will be hard to keep editors from continuing to misuse the word, but not misusing it and editing out its misuse would help readers to understand what they're reading. A similar case is with the word "pension", which means a monthly (or perhaps biweekly) payment for retirees and is not a type of lodging in English. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:48, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If people think that using the "official" name is helpful (e.g., if you're likely to get directions that sound like "you need to take an Uber to the next commune"), then I'd leave it in but add an explanation: "Fa'a'ā is a commune (town) in Tahiti".
If we don't think visitors will hear the official name, then I'd just change it to a well-known English-language equivalent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives one of the meanings of pension as "a usually fixed rate boarding house", so I think its use as a type of lodging is recognised in British English. It also has "a French territorial division" as the first meaning of commune, with "a communal settlement" coming third. AlasdairW (talk) 22:36, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While dictionary definitions can be useful, the plain language defintion that most people Will understand will be the one that Ikan Kekek described. For other uses, we should treat commune as a foreign word, i.e., italicized and translated, as we would for ciudad or ville. Ground Zero (talk) 23:01, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with GZ. //shb (t | c | m) 23:10, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The word "commune" is not a foreign word, so writing it in italics would be incorrect. One way around the problem is to create a template "{{commune}}" which would expand to "[[:en:Commune#Administrative-territorial entities|Commune]]".
When I tried this expansion in Wikivoyage, it did not work, but when I tried it in the Afrikaans Wikipedia it worked as expected (See here). A similar template "{{Pension}}" could be created which would link to "[[:en:Pension (lodging)|Pension]]". We could equally well link up to the associated word in Wikidata. Martinvl (talk) 21:08, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be happy with that. We'd have to be careful not to do a global search and replace, though, because there is probably some mention of retirement pensions somewhere (Retiring abroad, if nowhere else), and no doubt, "commune" is used to refer to collective ownership of property in the past (such as was the case with some 19th-century religious communities in the U.S.) and probably in a few cases in the present. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:24, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But before we do this, we have to remember that we don't do those kinds of inline Wikipedia links on this site, and if we start with these terms, a slippery slope is easily imaginable. Also, one demurral: French-language commune and Italian-language comune are foreign words. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:28, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have created Hotels#Pensions to say what a pension is in a couple of lines - please expand or correct. I also see that Sleep uses the term pension without saying what it is. AlasdairW (talk) 22:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This should be written "[[Hotels#Pensions|pension]]" so that a sentence could read "The town has many small pensions." I suggest that we create a template which would do this substitution as it is much easier to remember the text "{{pension}}" that it is to remember the full expansion. A template has the added advantage that if the source text is changed, then we need only make one change to the template. Martinvl (talk) 21:09, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's very useful. Is there a way to make the redirect work with "pensione" also? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:47, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we are happy with what it says, I think it would be better to create a redirect Pension or Pensions. We generally avoid unnecessary use of templates templates, and readers will readily find the link in the search box. I don't think we should give an explanation of a pension every time it is used. AlasdairW (talk) 21:49, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I meant including pensione in the template, but a redirect as you suggest would work. Do we need a disambiguation if retiree pensions are covered in Retiring abroad? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it even better to explain words that readers may misunderstand in an article, rather than making them click through to another article? Ground Zero (talk) 01:16, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are right. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:50, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I appreciate that some might not like links to the English Wikipedia, I do not think that the argument holds for links to Wikidata - after all Wikidata has links into Wikivoyage! The strings "[[:Wikidata:Q3266850|commune]]" and "[[:Wikidata:Q1065252|pension]]" expand into "commune" and "pension" respectively. Using Wikidata has the added advantage that if the artcile is translated into another language, the link is still valid (even if it is redundant). If we do go the Wikidata route, it would be almost mandatory to create templates. Martinvl (talk) 20:46, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, people are very confused by Wikidata pages. For translation purposes, a Wiktionary link might be better than Wikidata, but the obvious solution is to provide a brief description in the Wikivoyage article. Then it works offline too. That's not a high priority for me personally, but I know that matters to other contributors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. //shb (t | c | m) 22:21, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that a simple redirect is a better, more newcomer-friendly idea than a subst:able template. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at both Wkidata and Wikitionary options. While Wikidata might be difficult to navigate, the definition that we are looking for is right there so there is no need to navigate it. On the other hand Wikitionary gives all the meanings so the information given might well be confusing and leave the user none the wiser. Martinvl (talk) 21:33,

Nvdtn19 (talk) 10:10, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to set a different style for dark theme, then may use this code:
html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .cssid {
	/* your customization */
}
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    html.skin-theme-clientpref-os .cssid {
      	/* your customization */
    }
}
Nvdtn19 (talk) 10:22, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @Andyrom75 as I said to @Nvdtn19 I am currently focusing on getting rid of jquery.ui and getting a native Wikimedia dark mode support which has been my ultimate goal when helping with this code to stop it working altogether. The dark mode has been a distraction from that goal. The current dark mode experience is fine please lets just leave it as is. Jdlrobson (talk) 14:46, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nvdtn19, when you ask for "review" I suppose you want a feedback. My main feedback was to eliminate the "!important" because it complicates future modification.
Thanks for the suggested code, now the overlay is nicely shown in both light and dark mode.
@Jdlrobson, I know that JQuery.ui is deprecated, but as long as we use it, would be a good idea to have a nicer interface. Andyrom75 (talk) 19:41, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jdlrobson: It'd be a very large amount of work to redo something that is still working. You sure that you'll be able to getting rid of jquery without breaking anything? Btw, my overall impression of Codex is that it's still unfinished, i.e. it does not have feature parity with previous mw:MediaWiki front end frameworks such as mw:OOUI. Nvdtn19 (talk) 05:25, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Listing editor now see-through?

Erroneous transpare background
New colors
Original colors

Anyone else getting this issue? Screenshot is of Thessaloniki. //shb (t | c | m) 12:21, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Works normally for me. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:26, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, I'm using Google Chrome on macOS and use vector 2010 globally. I tried testing this on Safari (logged out) and while it isn't see-through, I see something that isn't see-through but similarly off. //shb (t | c | m) 12:38, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The second screenshot (I assume that's the one you feel looks off) looks okay to me from a technical standpoint. I know the color scheme of the editor was updated a few days ago, so that's why it looks whiter than it did before.
I'm also using Google Chrome, but on Microsoft Windows. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:43, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah the second is Safari which looks off but not the end of the world – first is what's truly terrible to use (on Chrome). Also pinging @Andyrom75, Nvdtn19: if either of you know what's causing the listing editor to do this. //shb (t | c | m) 12:44, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SHB2000, colors have been changed by @Jdlrobson to not have problems on dark mode.
Maybe there is room for slight color change. I've added an image with the original colors for reference.
Similar thing will occur also on the listing color, even if without such big impact.
PS: the transparency was caused by a "tentative patch" where the background-color wasn't set. Andyrom75 (talk) 15:05, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. I have been primarily testing on the default skins Vector 2022 and Minerva so overlooked skins where CSS variables are not defined. Thanks for the fix @Andyrom75 I have reflected these upstream. Jdlrobson (talk) 15:48, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome – thanks to both of you. Works on my end perfectly now. //shb (t | c | m) 03:32, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm leaning towards using the third option (original colors), as it's obviously looks better than other designs. Currently in Thessaloniki, when I click the "Add listing" button while in light theme, I still see the background overlay editor has the same design as the second image (new colors), and it also has an ugly background when switching to dark theme. If you want to go back to using original colors, then might consider applying CSS in MediaWiki:Gadget-ListingEditor.css:

.ui-widget-overlay {
    background: #000000 !important;
    opacity: 0.7 !important;
}

After adding this CSS, the editor will looks like this when using light theme and like this when toggling dark theme. Nvdtn19 (talk) 02:42, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jdlrobson @Andyrom75 Could some of you review this? Nvdtn19 (talk) 05:50, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nvdtn19, the effect is desirable and similar to the original behavior. I'm in favor of this patch. Have you already checked if "!important" is mandatory? Andyrom75 (talk) 08:11, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nvdtn19, it seems that works without it.
I've applied a slight change on your proposal, trying to follow the original intent (put a overlay with the opposite color of the background to have a contrast):
.ui-widget-overlay {
    background-color: var(--background-color-inverted, black);
    opacity: 0.7;
}
Andyrom75 (talk) 09:14, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jdlrobson, @Nvdtn19, I've made some tests to have a different (better?) effect on dark mode applying @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme: dark) customization but apparently it doesn't work. When I specify the alternative @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme: light) it use only the light definitions, if I remove it, keeping the general definition (stated in the previous post), it use only the general one. In practice, the dark customization is always ignored. Am I doing something wrong? Andyrom75 (talk) 09:40, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Andyrom75: Sorry, but it seems you didn't get me? I mean, just add the suggested CSS without anything changed. I have tested myself in viwikivoyage (where I'm also a IA there), and can confirm that works. For now, just add the exact line I mentioned, then clearing cache and wait a moment for the change to take effect. Also, it's not necessarily to use !important, you can remove it if you want. Nvdtn19 (talk) 10:10, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to set a different style for dark theme, then may use this code:
html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .cssid {
	/* your customization */
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    html.skin-theme-clientpref-os .cssid {
      	/* your customization */
    }
}
Nvdtn19 (talk) 10:22, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @Andyrom75 as I said to @Nvdtn19 I am currently focusing on getting rid of jquery.ui and getting a native Wikimedia dark mode support which has been my ultimate goal when helping with this code to stop it working altogether. The dark mode has been a distraction from that goal. The current dark mode experience is fine please lets just leave it as is. Jdlrobson (talk) 14:46, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nvdtn19, when you ask for "review" I suppose you want a feedback. My main feedback was to eliminate the "!important" because it complicates future modification.
Thanks for the suggested code, now the overlay is nicely shown in both light and dark mode.
@Jdlrobson, I know that JQuery.ui is deprecated, but as long as we use it, would be a good idea to have a nicer interface. Andyrom75 (talk) 19:41, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jdlrobson: It'd be a very large amount of work to redo something that is still working. You sure that you'll be able to getting rid of jquery without breaking anything? Btw, my overall impression of Codex is that it's still unfinished, i.e. it does not have feature parity with previous mw:MediaWiki front end frameworks such as mw:OOUI. Nvdtn19 (talk) 05:25, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Subsea sites

The first new subsea habitat in 40 years is about to launch. Should we cover this, or other such sites? Where? Pashley (talk) 05:55, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article says that it is to be used by scientists doing research, so I would say that is outside of the scope of a travel guide. Ground Zero (talk) 15:39, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. But web search for "underwater hotel" turns up quite a few & those might make a good travel topic.Pashley (talk) 15:49, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a good topic. Ground Zero (talk) 16:50, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps generalise it to include things like the underground hotel in Shanghai or the one that is mostly ice in Finland. Pashley (talk) 02:24, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We already cover dive sites. "Deep" habitat will be at 50 m off the Florida Keys. Probably worth a marker once it's on site, as although only researchers will visit, the structure might be visible to recreational divers from 30 m. Grahamsands (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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