Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion/June 2018

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All the rationales for deleting the Ido phrasebook apply here: Esperanto has no monolingual speakers, is not the official language of any country, is not terribly useful as an international auxiliary language in a world where English has de facto taken over that function, and the chances of a traveller needing to speak it to get along in a certain place are zero. Therefore, this phrasebook is out of scope and should be deleted. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:58, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete - Esperanto conferences may be travel-related, but there is no conceivable travel-related need to learn the rudiments of the language - analogize Esperanto conferences to Klingon conferences as a "Do" listing or travel topic. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:13, 4 May 2018 (UTC) - No longer sure; needs more discussion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:59, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Weak keep. It's not terribly useful, but it's not useless either. I can easily imagine an Esperanto-speaker and a non-Esperanto-speaker travelling together using the Pasporta Servo. In that situation the Esperanto-speaker would presumably do most of the talking, but the non-Esperanto-speaker would surely find it useful to learn some basic pleasantries from a phrasebook. Probably not a very common situation, but it's enough to justify keeping the phrasebook, I think. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:30, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - because the article is in good shape, I'd be inclined to keep it despite the policy. This is a worthwhile exception to make since Esperanto is the most established and widely-known of the invented languages. The arguments for deletion are valid, but this article is doing no harm. If it were not so well-developed, or for a more obscure language, I'd be voting "delete". Ground Zero (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Esperanto is spoken by 2 million people, which is an order of magnitude different from Ido (was it 2000 speakers?). The article has been viewed 197 times in the last 3 months, more than Mull, Bedford or Capiznon phrasebook. I have just looked at the news on China Radio Esperanto page which Chrome translated for me - i think that this is a practical example of how much the language is used. AlasdairW (talk) 21:19, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As others have said in this discussion, the 2 million is probably not accurate. According to Lindstedt, only a thousand people speak Esperanto "as their native language", and only 10,000 "speak it fluently". Also, Esperanto may have been viewed more than those three places you mentioned - none of which are well-known travel destinations or languages. I'm sure that if you compared Esperanto with the Spanish phrasebook or New York City, the last two would have had many more views than the Esperanto phrasebook. Selfie City (talk) 13:43, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Personally, I think that's a good idea for an article, and would serve as a compromise, except that such an article would leave little reason left for keeping the article discussed here. Selfie City (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Two travellers meet who both speak the language, and they can communicate in it. That's certainly one of the purposes of the language. So, it's conceivable someone may learn it for travel purposes. I'm inclined to agree with AlasdairW --Inas (talk) 00:15, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think you people are misinterpreting our site's scope. Wikivoyage hosts phrasebooks on this site only insofar as a traveller might possibly find him- or herself in a situation where no one speaks anything but the local language. That being the case, none of the above arguments to "keep" are based in policy. For instance, it's irrelevant how many people speak Esperanto because no one speaks only Esperanto. Also, it's irrelevant whether an Esperanto speaker might meet another Esperanto speaker by chance while travelling, because it wouldn't ever be absolutely necessary to speak Esperanto for those two hypothetical people to communicate - they could certainly speak (or learn) one or the other's native language. Similarly, those who want to learn some basic pleasantries in order to participate in the Pasporta Servo have a wide range of Esperanto learning utilities at their disposal. We are a travel guide, not a language learning tool. Finally, the question of how detailed or well-written an out-of-scope article may be has no bearing on whether it should be deleted - the same arguments were advanced in favor of the equally developed Marriage in China to no avail. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:48, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(multiple edit conflicts) There are arguments both for and against having phrasebooks for little-spoken but non-invented languages like Manx - there may well be cultural events that are worthwhile for a traveller to experience where an otherwise moribund language sees heavy use (I know this is true of certain Amerindian languages, not to mention the Latin-language Masses one might take in during a visit to the Vatican). To be honest, though, if Manx phrasebook were up for VfD, I'd likely vote "weak delete". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:02, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "those who want to learn some basic pleasantries...have a wide range of Esperanto learning utilities at their disposal"—that's true of most languages we have phrasebooks for, from Spanish to Russian, and I'm sure none of us would want to delete those articles on that basis. And the point that all Esperanto speakers also speak at least one other language applies to some of our other phrasebooks as well, like Irish and Catalan, which I certainly wouldn't want to see deleted. The idea that "Wikivoyage hosts phrasebooks on this site only insofar as a traveller might possibly find him- or herself in a situation where no one speaks anything but the local language" is not true—or if it is true, it means that we need to delete quite a few phrasebooks that would really be a shame to lose. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:20, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Delete Keep, so we can get this over and done with. Although this is not a bad article and seems like a good example of a phrasebook, it appears that it does not meet the usual requirements for a phrasebook, and should therefore be deleted. Anyway, this is not a very commonly spoken language (in comparison to English and Spanish) and does not really seem fit for Wikivoyage. A travel guide writes about things unique to certain places - as this language is spoken here and there around the globe, and not in a specific place where a Wikivoyager or other traveler may go, a phrasebook on a global language is not pertinent. Selfie City (talk) 01:01, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't feel passionately about keeping this article, but there isn't a rule here. There is the precedent of a previous deletion of a phrasebook for an invented language. That one has an estimated 2000 people speaking it, whereas Esperanto has 2 million. Precedent provides guidance, but is not law. Our rule, above all others, is the the traveller comes first. I don't see how this deletion is needed to protect travellers from this article. Ground Zero (talk) 01:04, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh, I see. In that case, I would argue for weak delete, since there are still some issues with keeping the phrasebook that I mentioned above. Selfie City (talk) 01:11, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are definitely good arguments on both sides. Ground Zero (talk) 01:21, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: This seems like one of those situations where we maybe need to set a standard for which phrasebooks should be allowed and which we should not allow: for example, perhaps set a standard that only languages that originate in a particular country or culture should be allowed on Wikivoyage. We could, of course, set a standard number of speakers for languages like Esperanto to be kept in a phrasebook, and make that number around a million, and therefore keep this phrasebook. Selfie City (talk) 01:27, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keeping this phrasebook would do no harm at all, and Esperanto is certainly a reason to travel (perhaps a phrasebook expanded into a travel topic may serve this particular case). Show me the policy that says conlangs are not welcome here and I'll happily revise this position. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 01:36, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: Are there 2,000,000 fluent speakers of Esperanto, or are most of that number simply intermediate to advanced-intermediate speakers who speak their native language much better? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:26, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    The often cited "2 million" number comes from one researcher's estimate of "professionally proficient" speakers. I think it's probably an overestimate, but no one is really keeping reliable statistics about this, so it's hard to say for sure how many speakers there are. w:Esperanto#Number of speakers has more information. An interesting side note: there are several hundred native Esperanto speakers who have learned the language as children from their parents (sometimes this happens because the parents meet at an Esperanto convention and have different native languages, so Esperanto becomes the language of the household). —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:04, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: According to w:Esperanto#Number of speakers, then, it sounds as if there are about 10,000 fluent speakers of Esperanto but several million who have some understanding of the language. That turns us to whether or not that substantiates this article. However, if only ten thousand people fluently speak the language, is this scenario much different than the one that occurred about the Ido phrasebook back in 2017? Selfie City (talk) 03:47, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • And that's precisely why the article needs to be deleted. There are no possible situations in which an inability to speak Esperanto will have any bearing on whether a traveller can "find a room for the night", or do anything else that a traveller needs to do. Like the language itself, this article is completely superfluous and unnecessary. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:02, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • K7L, if finding a room for the night is one of your main considerations for keeping this Wikivoyage phrasebook (consider that there are countless non-Esperanto motels and hotels in almost every corner of the world), and that's your main reason for keeping the article, I think that we'd probably do better with an Esperanto travel article, as was mentioned above. Selfie City (talk) 14:20, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Above, I described a situation in which an Esperanto phrasebook is useful for travelling. That should be enough to keep the article. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:42, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Granger - Regarding the scenario you laid out above, the Ido phrasebook would have been equally as useful in the case of two Ido speakers travelling together, yet that didn't stop us from deleting it. The operative question here is, is "usefulness" the criterion for determining whether a phrasebook is within scope, or is the bar higher? In Phrasebooks, the goal is stated as being "to define just enough of the language so that an English-speaking traveller can 'get by' in an area where that language is spoken". Would it be "useful" to travellers to go beyond the mere basics? Sure, but the wording of policy strongly suggests that's not part of our scope as a travel guide. And, for the same reason, the fact that there is no "area where [Esperanto] is spoken" strongly suggests that the Esperanto phrasebook should be deleted. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:34, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

AndreCarrotflower: I must not have phrased my comment clearly enough. Let me flesh out the scenario to make it clearer. Imagine that I decide to go backpacking around Europe with a friend of mine who speaks English but not Esperanto. My friend and I communicate with each other in English, of course, but since I speak Esperanto, we decide to save some money by finding lodging through the Pasporta Servo. In that case, I would handle most of the communication with the Pasporta Servo hosts, but my friend would surely find it useful to use the phrasebook to communicate with the hosts at a basic level too. Nothing comparable applies to Ido, because Ido doesn't have a homestay network like the Pasporta Servo. In fact, I can't think of any realistic travel scenario in which an Ido phrasebook would be useful, so I think deleting the Ido article made some sense. Esperanto is different in that a phrasebook can be useful to travellers (though only in uncommon situations), and in my opinion that is enough to justify keeping it. (I see the "get by" sentence as a description of what content a given phrasebook should include, not a criterion for which languages we should cover. If it were that kind of criterion, I doubt Irish, Welsh, or Navajo would meet it either, because travellers can always "get by" with English in those areas, but I don't think we should delete those phrasebooks.) —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:14, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In response to Granger's comment listed here, I would like to mention an important fact which has been stated before on Wikivoyage in relation to phrasebooks: Irish, Welsh, and Navajo are all languages associated with specific cultures and they therefore have cultural events that make them useful to the traveler, quite on the contrary to Esperanto. For example, the popular tourist destination Monument Valley is inside the Navajo Nation. Therefore, people visiting Monument Valley would find knowing some of the Navajo language useful during Navajo ceremonies, demonstrations, and in relation to the Navajo Code Talking Language that was used during the Second World War. There are similar arguments for keeping the Irish and Welsh phrasebooks. On the other hand, there is no more reason to learn Esperanto for a vacation trip than there is to just learn Esperanto at home. Since Esperanto has two million speakers worldwide at most, I probably wouldn't learn Esperanto for traveling purposes - if I decided to learn the language, I would find an educational source that teaches the language, and then learn the language at home for primarily local purposes. Selfie City (talk) 21:42, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Navajo code talking? That's surely not useful for travel. Anyway, it's fine that you wouldn't learn Esperanto for travel purposes, but some people would (I've already laid out an example of why), and that is enough to keep the article. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:56, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Travelers with historical interests may find the Navajo code language interesting: the whole code language is displayed in a room at the Monument Valley visitor center. Also, the unusual occurrence that a non-Esperanto speaker and an Esperanto speaker go on vacation together is not a consideration because the Esperanto speaker would almost definitely know the language of the non-Esperanto speaker. We must also consider the elements of the Esperanto phrasebook. It lists Esperanto phrases for restaurants and bars. Yet, I find it very hard to believe that there are any bars or restaurants in the world where the waiters come to your table and ask for your order in Esperanto. Selfie City (talk) 02:09, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The example was that the fellow traveller would be speaking Esperanto with their host, and the three would not necessarily have any other common language (the host may speak whatever language as mother tongue). There is nothing hindering from extending the vocabulary to areas more likely to be of interest (but much of the restaurant vocabulary is still useful at the dinner table). --LPfi (talk) 15:44, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Well, that's not exactly my point. First of all, what do you mean by "host"? Do you mean at a hotel, or do you mean when a non-Esperanto speaker goes to an Esperanto speaker's house for lunch or dinner? Second, if an English speaker goes to Europe, they will not go around looking for Esperanto speakers; they will look for English speakers and destinations where English is spoken. The only people who will go on vacation to Europe or any place in the world looking for Esperanto speakers will be people who spoke Esperanto fluently before ever planning their European vacation. Therefore, non-Esperanto speakers wouldn't spend precious time learning the Esperanto phrasebook on Wikivoyage so they can spend some of their holiday finding a Pasporta Servo location, just to communicate a few words with some other Esperanto speakers. Basically, no reasonable traveler would learn the Esperanto phrasebook when the language is so little-spoken. Selfie City (talk) 23:57, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd appreciate if you recall what was said earlier. I referred to the example of somebody using the Pasporta Servo together with an Esperanto speaking friend. The friend and the host (home hospitality, not hotel) speak decent Esperanto, but the person himself does not, and is using the phrasebook. --LPfi (talk) 05:02, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
After thinking a little about this scenario, it does seem to be a reasonable point. However, it is extremely hard to believe that such a scenario would occur in real life. Especially these days, it seems that Esperanto is a community language - in other words, people who speak Esperanto usually travel with other people who also speak the language. Anyway, have there been any Wikivoyagers who have come to this website with that scenario in their vacation plans? It's hard to believe that an Esperanto speaker would travel with a non-Esperanto speaker and use Pasporta Servo. Selfie City (talk) 14:00, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Anyone can contrive a scenario by which an article might hypothetically be useful to a traveller in some extremely specific situation. If that were the yardstick by which we measured an article's worthiness of existing vs. being deleted, then we'd never delete anything. If the best we can come up with vis-à-vis the usefulness of this article is a scenario as farfetched as that, then the obvious answer is to delete. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:56, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's a farfetched scenario, and obviously there are other editors here who agree with me about that. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think it’s handily more farfetched than the idea of a traveller going to China to get married, an article that we previously deemed out of scope for similar reasons. — AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:51, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article on wedding travel. It's related to travel and is in scope. K7L (talk) 16:07, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No. No no no no no no no. We’re not going to relitigate Marriage in China four years after the fact. — AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:01, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think there's some important points that I need to state: first of all, the Wikivoyage policy "the traveler comes first" is a very general policy. However, that doesn't mean we should just use it as an excuse to keep whatever articles we choose. TTCF doesn't mean that "the hypothetical traveler comes first", and it doesn't mean that we should keep an article just because a few travelers have looked at it. For example, there may have been travelers in the past who used the Marriage in China article, but that article was still deleted because it didn't match other policies. The same is the case with Esperanto: the traveler comes first, and if this article was really being a help to a lot of people, and it follows our general policy, it would make sense to keep it. However, it is an article that only has one hypothetical use, according to discussion on this page. Second, although Wikivoyage has very few actual rules when it comes to deletions, we have a general set of standards that we follow that are usually based upon consensus in previous deletion nominations. The Ido phrasebook was deleted; we now have a similar deletion nomination, and we're going back on it. Either we shouldn't have deleted Ido in the first place or we should delete the Esperanto phrasebook now. Third, we need to get our facts straight. Phrasebooks are not travel articles, so the sleep test is not relevant. Getting facts straight may also mean that we all need to forget hypothetical Esperanto-related occurrences and wrap up our decisions on whether or not we should keep this article. The fourth point follows on from the third: I hope that this deletion nomination doesn't stay on the deletion nominations page like Ido did. I wasn't on Wikivoyage when the Ido phrasebook was deleted, but I have recently looked back at the deletion nomination log and the Ido deletion nomination continued for a few months instead of fourteen days. Nearly all of the major points in relation to Esperanto have now been stated, so we should begin considering our final decision on deleting the article or not soon. Selfie City (talk) 23:10, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Selfie City, the procedures for whether or not to delete are spelled out at the top of this page: all nominees for deletion get deleted unless there's a consensus to keep (with "guilty until proven innocent" in italics to make it clear that VfD is an exception to our usual status quo bias), and in this case there is no clear consensus either way. Note also that per Wikivoyage:Consensus, a consensus is not the same thing as merely a majority viewpoint; those of us arguing to delete the Esperanto phrasebook are a significant minority rather than just a few outliers, and are making cogent policy-based arguments at least as much as the pro-"keep" majority are. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:22, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Yes, I understand better now after looking at it more carefully. The problem is that, in the past, those rules weren't followed: for example, with the Ido phrasebook - it took whole months for that one to be deleted. I don't want that to happen with this Esperanto nomination. Selfie City (talk) 00:36, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) AndreCarrotflower: Since we've refuted the claim that the article is useless to travellers, could you please explain what the remaining policy-based arguments for deletion are? —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:37, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's a strawman, Granger. The "claim that the article is useless to travellers" was never refuted because no one ever made that claim. The argument was that policy places the deletion-avoidance bar higher than merely "the existence of a scenario, however contrived, in which an article might be useful to a hypothetical traveller". I'm still waiting for an explanation as to how the fact that Marriage in China was deleted fits into your interpretation of policy. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As some users pointed out in the discussion of Marriage in China, it's more of a topic for immigrants (outside our scope) than for travellers. Still, I could see an argument for keeping it. Anyway, the situation I described for Esperanto isn't a crazy hypothetical—it's a realistic (though uncommon) travel situation. I read about a recent Esperanto convention where someone was giving a presentation about the Pasporta Servo, and audience members were asking to make sure the service allows you to bring non-Esperanto-speaking family members along. If they were asking about it, they were probably considering doing it. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:03, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The article on page 13 of this publication also mentions the option of bringing non-Esperanto-speaking family members along when travelling on the Pasporta Servo. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:09, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I don't think anyone called it a "crazy hypothetical". It's definitely not crazy, but it's still hypothetical. Also, after taking a look at , I don't think we should go by that as a reliable Esperanto source - it is basically someone's personal blog that is partially written in Esperanto. Selfie City (talk) 01:50, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The copy I linked to happens to be hosted on someone's personal website, but Familia Esperanto is a publication of UEA, probably the most important Esperanto organization in the world. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:56, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I still have two issues with the publication: first, it was written in 2007, more than ten years ago. Second, after translating some of this publication to Google, it ends with sending letters to Father Christmas - still not really a valid source (in my opinion) for keeping this phrasebook. Selfie City (talk) 02:16, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's a publication aimed at families with children, so why shouldn't it talk about sending letters to Father Christmas? Anyway, my point in linking to the edition Familia Esperanto is just that the situation I described isn't a farfetched scenario—it's an uncommon but realistic travel situation. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:09, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I still have an issue with the publication’s date, but I will respond to what you said about the “uncommon” scenario. If it’s “uncommon”, that means it does happen. If it does happen, could you please link me to a Wikivoyage talk page or travel pub topic where a non-Esperanto speaker and an Esperanto speaker were asking about traveling via Pasporta Servo? Selfie City (talk) 01:23, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@AndreCarrotflower, SelfieCity, Ikan Kekek: Aha! I just found a Reddit thread where someone mentions that they travelled on the Pasporta Servo with their non-Esperanto-speaking mother. Now the situation is not hypothetical at all—this demonstrates that it's a real travel situation that really does happen. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:26, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘First, I would appreciate it if you answered my previous question: could you please link me to a Wikivoyage talk page or travel pub topic where a non-Esperanto speaker and an Esperanto speaker were asking about traveling via Pasporta Servo? Second, could you please let us know where on the Reddit thread it mentions this? (I don’t know Esperanto.) Thanks. Selfie City (talk) 01:41, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know of any Wikivoyage thread matching that description. The relevant comment in the Reddit thread is "Mi vojaĝis per ĝi kun mia neesperantista patrino, do se vi deziras intertraduki, uzeblas ĝi ankoraŭ.", which translates to "I travelled on it with my non-Esperanto-speaking mother, so if you want to translate, it's still usable." —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:43, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the fact there is no Wikivoyage thread means that no Wikivoyagers have been in the scenario. Also, someone replied to that comment with the words "I think I'll travel with perhaps four or five others," and the original comment you pointed to does not use the words non-Esperanto-speaking, but instead it stead "non-Esperantist", according to Google Translate. Selfie City (talk) 00:10, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's worth our time to get into the nitty-gritty of everything that's being said in that Reddit discussion, but the person who said that they're travelling with four or five others is a different user explaining why they don't want to travel on the Pasporta Servo.
I think you're holding this page to an unreasonably high standard. Can you imagine if we always deleted phrasebooks unless we could find a Wikivoyage thread where someone specifically mentioned that they were planning a trip where they could use the phrasebook? I've described a situation in which the phrasebook is useful, and I've provided strong evidence that it's a real situation that travellers encounter. I really think that should be enough to keep the phrasebook. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:15, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, then, I'll zoom things out to perspective a little. Your whole argument to keep the article is based upon one scenario that can be found in two places on the whole internet: one on social media, and the other in a more than ten-year-old Esperanto pamphlet, but none on Wikivoyage. Then we should also go back to what has been said from the very beginning: there are no monolingual speakers of Esperanto, making this phrasebook unnecessary, and the chance of a tourist even coming into contact with an Esperanto speaker are close to zero, again making this phrasebook unnecessary. Wikivoyage is already covering too broad an area of topics for tourists (think of golfing in Thailand), so why should we let that continue? Selfie City (talk) 00:28, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[unindent] It's confusing when people post out of chronological order, but I'd like to say that I strongly disagree with the idea that we should narrow our focus, presumably deleting a swath of articles you think are too broad because you wouldn't think of doing them. For a golfer, golfing in Thailand might be just the thing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:01, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well, I guess you're right, but there is at least one contradiction in the article: it says at the top that 40 people live there but farther down it says that it's "uninhabited". Selfie City (talk) 23:36, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also in reference to that point, "uninhabited islands" are considered Wikivoyage non-goals. Liberland more-or-less falls under that category; if my geography is right, Liberland is either an island or peninsula in the river that separates Croatia and Serbia. Should I nominate Liberland for VFD, or not? Selfie City (talk) 06:18, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Not. We don't delete real places. You can discuss on the article's talk page and propose it be redirected to another article. ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 07:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would also argue against redirecting. Inhabited or not, given the information in the article Liberland apparently does see some actual tourism. There's also the question of what it should be redirected to, given that the land is not clearly under the jurisdiction of either Croatia or Serbia, and redirection to Balkans seems pointlessly over-broad. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 12:54, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Selfie City, where do you find the phrase "uninhabited islands" in Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals? I did searches for both "islands" and "inhabited" and got no results. So I submit to you that guides on uninhabited islands are not a non-goal of Wikivoyage. The point is, can you visit the island and is it interesting enough to merit an article? It doesn't matter if no-one actually lives there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:56, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Uninhabited islands are listed at Wikivoyage:What is an article?#What does not get its own article?. But that section says there are exceptions, and we do have articles for some remote uninhabited islands, such as Jarvis Island, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, and Palmyra Atoll. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:23, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. All the arguments above have convinced me that this article is out of scope. Just because two travellers may find it useful to communicate in a common language is insufficient to put this into scope, because those people are going to have learnt it from another source. Our scope is to give a traveller a phrase-book to allow some basic communication or understanding in an area of which they are travelling. That said, the article is well developed, and doing little harm. And the fact that it is out of scope wasn't apparent to me until I thought about it a fair bit. So, I'd still tend to be a very weak keep, on the basis of the unwritten rule that we give comprehensive and well written articles more leeway than sparse and empty ones. --Inas (talk) 23:14, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. There is nowhere that Esperanto is spoken as a first language, or even as a lingua franca. Sure, languages like Sanskrit and Latin no longer have any native speakers, but they are still official languages somewhere, while Esperanto is not an official language in any country or sub-national authority. We can briefly mention Esperanto in the "Talk" article, but for me, it does not warrant any more than that. Knowing Esperanto will not be particularly useful in understanding or communicating with people, as every Esperanto speaker uses another language as their primary language, and it's not used to publish official documents either, so even it that regard it's not particularly useful. The dog2 (talk) 02:13, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Keeping it does no harm & deleting something that a number of users have thought worth working on over a time span of more than ten years strikes me as remarkably stupid,
Granted, it appears unlikely to be of much use, but the chance it might sometimes be useful appears to be non-zero. We have a policy not to delete real places & I do not think we should delete real languages either; that would apply here & to Manx Gaelic phrasebook; personally I would not extend it to Klingon or Elvish, but can imagine arguments even for those. Pashley (talk) 02:00, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
One way to deal with your first argument, though, would be to move the phrasebook to some other place, like what was done with the Ido phrasebook. I believe it was moved to a user page. We could possibly move it to Wikibooks, though, or include parts of it in an Esperanto travel page. That way, the hard work of these Wikivoyagers wouldn't be a waste of their time. Also, what is the use of a phrasebook that "has no monolingual speakers", as AndreCarrotflower stated? Selfie City (talk) 14:21, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No, if we were to move this, a more suitable option would be to create auxiliary languages as a travel topic, moving all of the information on Esperanto, Ido, Pasporta Servo and the rest there. Travel-related information belongs in Wikivoyage - we have no reason to use the sibling projects as a dumping ground. K7L (talk) 14:51, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is Esperanto really travel-related? Would you need to learn it if you went on a vacation? There's no more point in learning Esperanto for a vacation than there is to just learn it properly at home. Selfie City (talk) 21:30, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Please read upthread. Again, yours are not policy-based arguments. If an article is out of scope, it's irrelevant whether it's well-developed or not (other commenters have claimed that "we give comprehensive and well written articles more leeway than sparse and empty ones", but that's not reflected anywhere in policy), and the previous comment about the sleep test was obviously a joke. Furthermore, it hasn't been established that "the Manx phrasebook can stay". It simply hasn't been nominated for deletion yet, and I already indicated which way I would vote if it were. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I read over the deletion discussion for Ido and the reasoning applies to Esperanto. It has no national, ethnic or cultural ties, the speakers are also at least bilingual so travelers will never find themselves in Esperanto-only areas, and it does not match our stated goals to simply have phrasebooks for fake/hobby languages. While I understand the hesitation, the age of the article, size/completeness of the article, and contributions to the article are not valid arguments for keeping an article that doesn't support our goals (with prior deletions also supporting deleting the article in this case). Keeping articles because of any of those reasons is really bad practice as it basically requires us to decide to "keep" an article knowing it's against policy and then fabricate reasons to ignore policy for the sake of the article which makes it hard to defend later when it is inevitably brought up to justify keeping an unwanted article later on. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:04, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • There's nothing in policy disqualifying a language just because the people who speak it are largely bilingual, nor should there be. Plenty of Latvians know how to speak some Russian, but Latvia is not Russia (for instance). K7L (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep I find it useful to have an as complete as possible selection of phrasebooks. For the Esperanto case, the usefulness may not be huge, but as least one use case has been provided, and the vocabulary can be extended to include more phrases a traveller may need when interacting with an Esperanto speaking host, as in the use case. I do not find anything in policy restricting what phrasebooks to allow, and unless such restrictions are the result of thorough discussion, we might as well discuss what rules we want with this example in mind, rather than trying to interpret a haphazard wording. Without any restriction we might get phrasebooks for Ido, Klingon, Sindari and whatever, but I do not see how that would be bad for a traveller. They might be useful for somebody going to a related meeting (not everybody in Tolkien fan clubs knows Sindari, but there might be menus and signposts in that language at the meeting), and can easily be listed in a subsection where they do not make other guides harder to find. We might even get some Tolkien fans to work on phrasebooks we consider important. --LPfi (talk) 16:10, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
A quote from the Ido discussion: "I'd go beyond 'require' to support the inclusion of a phrasebook for any language that could be useful, even on the basis that knowing a few words of it would produce a positive response in a particular area". For Esperanto & al it is not a geographical area, but a group you might encounter, either through the Pasporta Servo (travelling with the Esperanto speaking friend) or at the meeting (Tolkien fans). --LPfi (talk) 16:15, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some hypothetical questions: When it comes to phrasebooks, where shall we draw the line? Between Esperanto and Ido, two constructed languages that combined have only a few thousand fluent speakers? Shall we bring back Ido from the dead? If the Esperanto phrasebook remains, what will be the standard for phrasebooks? To keep one and not the other of the same sort? How many major differences really are there between Esperanto and Ido? Selfie City (talk) 00:13, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also: if none of us are fluent in Esperanto, how are we supposed to judge the accuracy of the information in the phrasebook? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:01, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We can ask some Esperanto speaking editor on Wikipedia to take a look. Otherwise I'd suppose it will be one of us who knows Esperanto, who will do most edits. A random change be a passer by may of course hard to judge, unless you can compare with Wiktionary and similar sources. We have the same problems with changes to articles about minor destinations. --LPfi (talk) 05:20, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, Esperanto has more than a few thousand fluent speakers. The "10,000" figure for fluent speakers is 20 years out of date and was only ever a very rough order-of-magnitude estimate. Esperanto is different from Ido in many ways, not least in that it has orders of magnitude more speakers. For a particularly relevant difference, see my earlier comment of 01:14, 9 May 2018 (UTC). To respond to AndreCarrotflower's concern, we have many other phrasebooks for languages that not many Wikivoyage editors speak—that shouldn't be a reason for deletion. And anyway, I'm comfortable enough in Esperanto to judge the accuracy of the translations. —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:59, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There's been significant growth in the number of people learning Esperanto? No offense, but I can't imagine why. I mean, with all the more widely spoken or historically and culturally rich languages to choose from...but there really has been a big increase in Esperanto fluency in the last few years? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, from what I understand Esperanto has been undergoing something of a renaissance, because the internet makes it much easier to learn and to find other Esperanto-speakers to meet up with. —Granger (talk · contribs) 06:12, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The thing that doesn't add up about this renaissance is that, particularly in more recent years, English has become the closest equivalent to a "world language" - along with, to some extent, Spanish. Both languages are spoken in several countries and understood in many others. With the growth of these languages, wouldn't the need for a language like Esperanto significantly decrease? Selfie City (talk) 13:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also, having gone back to check w:Esperanto#Number of speakers, a 2017 estimate puts total Esperanto speakers at 63,000: that is, total, not just "fluent speakers". That's even less than the study 20 years ago that said 100,000 "can use it actively". Selfie City (talk) 14:09, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The 63,000 figure relies on some very questionable assumptions, including the assumption that censuses give an accurate count of the number of Esperanto-speakers in a country. I don't think it's an accurate estimate of the total number of Esperanto-speakers in the world. This will probably be my last comment about the number of Esperanto-speakers, because I think it's mostly tangential to the real issue here: whether the phrasebook can plausibly be useful to travellers. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I will also turn the discussion from numbers here, but I do want to mention that numbers have some importance: if there had been millions upon millions of Ido speakers, for example, the Ido phrasebook might not have necessarily been deleted. As it stands, it seems that all of us Wikivoyagers agree that Esperanto has fewer than two million speakers, but that no exact numbers for Esperanto speakers can be identified from Esperanto surveys for various reasons.Selfie City (talk) 22:47, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Like deleting the Esperanto phrasebook, asking for input of editors seems to me to have positives and negatives. The good side is that we will have many more people to comment on and possibly improve the Esperanto phrasebook. The negative is that, if they are almost all developers of Wikipedia's Esperanto page, they will have a biased viewpoint in whether or not to keep the Wikivoyage article.Selfie City (talk) 13:53, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The answer to that is an emphatic no. We've been having enough trouble as it is getting participants in this discussion to stick to policy-based rationales; the last thing we need is to muddy the waters further by bringing in people with absolutely zero familiarity with Wikivoyage policy. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:52, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Selfie City's point about the probable pro-Esperanto bias among Esperanto speakers is well taken. In fact, bringing Esperanto Wikipedia into this could be seen as canvassing, which is a no-no per Wikivoyage:Consensus. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:32, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm still not seeing any decent rationale for Esperanto as a viable TRAVEL phrasebook. The number of speakers of Esperanto is not significant (and I'll include the "renaissance" that was mentioned above after the statement that the language has not even been worth tracking the number of speakers for 20 years) and the fact that speakers basically only meet by organizing Esperanto-oriented meetings in order to do so proves that. What exactly is the point of us producing a phrasebook for people who are already in the "Esperanto language club" and what's the point of someone who is NOT a member and doesn't know the language making special efforts to seek out and contact Esperanto speakers in spite of not knowing it? Even if they did that, it sounds more like desperate friend-making tactics than travel. Such a person would be much better off getting a phrasebook for one of the local languages that doesn't require special contacts in order to pretend the phrasebook is useful. And that does seem to be what the supporters keep mentioning with these "Esperanto groups": Putting forth extra and unnecessary effort into travel-planning for the sole purpose of pretending that your phrasebook is useful. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:48, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - if the alternative is for this phrasebook to be deleted, would anyone like to instead have it moved to their userspace? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:28, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Esperanto is unique (but not that) unique in that it's second language speakers dwarf - possibly by orders of magnitude - it's first language speakers. While first language speakers are relatively easy to track to within a million or two even for major languages, second language speakers are notably harder as a) what exactly a second language speaker is seems to be unclear b) governments and the likes seem to see much less use in tracking it. I have heard irredentist claims being made on the basis of first language speakers of some language living somewhere, but never on the basis of second language speakers. So it is hard to assess its vitality and indeed its usefulness. I have heard somewhere that the language is enjoying some success in China and has in some places been used as a tool in language instruction. Now for a western tourist in China, finding somebody whose only western foreign language is Esperanto, a phrasebook could indeed be a godsend. The problem is I think that we are all operating on a pretty thin data basis and I don't think any of us is actually sufficiently fluent in Esperanto to have tried finding conversation partners (through whichever avenues). By the way I have even heard of studies that base their estimates of Esperanto speakers on the votes of a political splinter party (!) with an Esperantist platform, as if all speakers or even a reasonably constant percentage would automatically vote that party... Anyway, I find it a bit strange that we on the one hand draconically enforce the "no delete real places" rule even for places that came only into a WV article by borderline page creation vandalism but want to gutt what appears to be not a bad written phrasebook despite potentially several "keep" votes because of a policy that hadn't previously been enforced in years... Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:41, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I'm asking whether anyone would rather have it moved to their userspace if the decision is to delete. I don't think the article should be completely deleted. Actually, I'm starting to have doubts about whether it should be deleted from Wikivoyage at all. The problem is, I thought it was clear the Ido phrasebook was not travel-relevant, and I've always thought, until this discussion, that Esperanto was not travel-related, either. Certainly, there's no place where Esperanto is the native language, and the aims of the Litvaker Jew who created the language were shot to Hell millions of times over in the Nazi Holocaust. Previous VfD threads on Esperanto didn't convince me at all. But the arguments in this thread are going some way toward persuading me that maybe we should let this phrasebook survive in a quiet corner of the site. The problem is that I don't really understand what our standards are. I guess that if a society is created for Klingon-speaking people to travel, that would be just as viable an argument as the one advanced in this thread. So I'm confused. I know clearly that Ido didn't merit a phrasebook on this site. But much as I inwardly scowl and scoff while typing this, I'm a bit less sure on Esperanto. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:56, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hobbitschuster: in early 2017, the policy about phrasebooks was enforced with the Ido phrasebook, so it’s not true that Wikivoyage policies haven’t been enforced. I also think that, along with Ikan Kekek, all the work that has been put into this Esperanto phrasebook shouldn’t be completely removed (the phrasebook page itself should be deleted, though), but moved to a user page like the Ido phrasebook was – if anyone wants the Esperanto phrasebook on their user page, they’re welcome to say so. Selfie City (talk) 02:03, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What "policy about phrasebooks"? Ido was deleted because it has fewer people speaking it, a judgement which was made on an arbitrary, case-by-case basis. A vote to delete (or keep) one page does not create binding precedent requiring that we delete (or keep) every other page that comes along as VfD is not a forum to create new policy. K7L (talk) 04:12, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You're exactly right. A vote does not create a precedent. But a nomination, and actions taken (like what happened with Ido), do create a precedent. Selfie City (talk) 13:27, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, K7L is exactly wrong when he says "a vote doesn't create binding precedent". Policy always supersedes precedent where the former exists, but we cannot expect there to be an explicit, written, preordained policy for every possible eventuality of what can happen on Wikivoyage. It's up to precedent to fill in those gaps, and the results of previous votes, discussions, consensuses, etc. is the dictionary definition of precedent. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:30, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Oh, okay. But wouldn't votes leading to decisions leading to precedent be an example of X to Y to Z vs. X to Z? Selfie City (talk) 22:26, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, now we're into nitty-gritty semantic squabbles. The main thrust of what I said above is that precedent, as opposed to policy, is not, and never was, a meaningless thing at Wikivoyage. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:58, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you about the issue. I just wanted to make sure in relation to WV:Consensus and what it says about "slippery slopes". Selfie City (talk) 01:30, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to reluctantly come out in Weak Opposition to deleting this phrasebook, based on the issue of Pasporta Servo. However, I think that the phrasebook probably should not include more or less unusable phrases, like those one would use in a restaurant or with a police officer, and my weak opposition to outright deletion should not be misunderstood as disapproving of instead folding the phrasebook into an "Esperanto travel" travel topic article. And I'm still confused about what our policy on phrasebooks is. Maybe we should resume discussion at Talk:Phrasebooks#Is there any threshold of usefulness? (which I think was continued elsewhere, and if so, the two threads should be merged) and try to come to some kind of at least general conclusion on the appropriate limits of the languages we should cover at Wikivoyage before nominating another one for deletion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:00, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've discovered something important here in relation to the Esperanto banner: Esperanto banner licensing issues. Selfie City (talk) 13:47, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    What important issues do you mean? If it were deleted, that would not affect this discussion. And the original is by an author who died more than a hundred years ago (according to Commons), while the crop is licensed PD. No issues mentioned on the page you linked (although copyright documentation could be better). --LPfi (talk) 06:41, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it says on the file's page that it "might not be in the public domain outside of the United States". Selfie City (talk) 14:06, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's not an issue. In fact, IIRC we have some articles with fair-use pagebanner images that aren't even in the public domain within the United States. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:30, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By way of better tying this discussion into the one at Talk:Phrasebooks: I think the question we should be asking right now is how the remaining "delete" voters (myself, Selfie City, The dog2, and ChubbyWimbus) feel about the proposed guideline that "[w]e should only have a phrasebook for a language if it is useful in some realistic travel situation, excluding activities where the whole point of the activity is to use the language". For my part, it sounds like a fine guideline to me, and though I still feel that Pasaporta Servo is probably too obscure of a program (especially among non-Esperanto speakers) to really qualify as a "realistic travel situation", I'm willing to pretend otherwise for the sake of not standing in the way of compromise. I think it would be expedient to wait a few days and let others weigh in on that proposal in particular before rushing to judgment on the fate of this article. (Particularly because we've also had enough people who've recently defected from the "delete" side to the "keep" side that I'm markedly less comfortable than before in saying "consensus ≠ majority vote, therefore delete".) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:44, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the support for the proposed guideline. I'd also like to direct the pinged users' attention to the new evidence that the situation I described (a non-Esperanto-speaker travelling on the Pasporta Servo) really does happen. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:02, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In determining whether something is a realistic travel situation, I think the operative question isn't "has this happened before" but rather "how often can this be expected to happen". However, I suppose for the purposes of this nomination there are probably more non-Esperanto-speaking Pasporta Servo travellers than there are commercial space tourists, which we've judged to be within scope. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:16, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘So would this guideline result in keeping the Esperanto phrasebook or not? Selfie City (talk) 01:59, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be fine with this guideline. I'd say the Esperanto phrasebook is less usefully for travellers than the Manx phrasebook as Manx has a cultural tradition behind it, while Esperanto is essentially a made up language. You can travel to go to conventions where people speak Dothraki (Game of Thrones), or Elvish (Lord of the Rings) but it wouldn't warrant having a phrasebooks for those languages. The dog2 (talk) 04:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep. We have pages for Jamaican Patois and Australian slang, both of which recommend travellers not use them. I don't see any difference between those two phrasebooks and this one. --Robkelk (talk) 01:47, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Moving forward

It does not look to me like there is a consensus to delete at this point, and we're moving into a policy discussion. I don't think we'd should be deciding about policy on the VfD page. I acknowledge that I am not unbiased -- I voted "keep", and after following the debate for the last two weeks, I have not been convinced to change my vote. I suggest that the VfD be closed down as "no consensus to delete", and the discussion be moved to wv:WIAA or some other place as a policy discussion to decide on the guideline proposed above. That discussion will have to address the question of whether it would lead to deleting the Esperanto phrasebook. Ground Zero (talk) 17:27, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The logical place to continue discussion is Talk:Phrasebooks, where there's already a relevant thread and we may be moving toward a consensus that would have us keep this phrasebook based on its slight utility to a very small number of travelers. But I must point out, at VfD, no consensus to delete is required. Instead, nominated pages are treated as "guilty until proven innocent", so that the lack of a consensus to keep would result in deletion, if there is no strong countervailing policy reason to keep. Note the VfD thread on Marriage in China, which never produced a consensus to delete yet resulted in the deletion of the page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:37, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's bizarre and counter to how the rest of Wikivoyage works. I am vaguely aware that that's how it used to be, but I am bewildered that that is still the policy. I still think that the policy on phrasebook a should be determined before this is deleted, and then this and other phrasebook a be subjected to the new test. Ground Zero (talk) 18:10, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Ground Zero:"Guilty until proven innocent" is stated at Wikivoyage:Votes_for_deletion#Deleting,_or_not. Selfie City (talk) 22:25, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
...where it most often directly contradicts another long-held position around here, that of not deleting real places. Perhaps the time has come to open a discussion on some other page (separate from this individual deletion discussion) with a view to fixing this broken and contradictory policy? K7L (talk) 00:28, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link @SelfieCity:. Yes, I think we should take another look at that rule for the reasons the K7L and others identified on the talk page. Ground Zero (talk) 01:38, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think we probably have no choice but to delete the Esperanto phrasebook given the policy as it currently stands (both the deletion policy and the phrasebook policy), but I agree the policies themselves are nonsensical. All due respect to Evan, but the closer I examine all these vestigial elements that date back to the days of the site's founding, the more I struggle to figure out what the hell he was thinking a lot of the time. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:49, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If the phrasebook policy is being revisited, then surely this VfD can wait until that is resolved. Is there a deadline we have to meet on the VfD? I know the aim is to resolve these things in 14 days, but what we will happen if we leave it open? Will the Wikipolice arrest us? Also, I don't think that there is consensus that this violates existing phrasebook policy as some editors argue that Esperanto is useful to travellers in albeit limited circumstances. Ground Zero (talk) 02:25, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I have proposed changes to the VfD policy "guilty_until_proven_innocent" here. Ground Zero (talk)

At the moment, the standard is guilty until proven innocent. It's been more than fourteen days, the article should be deleted because there is no evidence to keep. We can't use changing the rules as an excuse for keeping the article. Selfie City (talk) 14:22, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Why this haste? If we are going to decide we want articles like this, what is the point in deleting it now? There is a point in not having discussions take people's forever, but deleting the page and archiving the discussion will just make the further discussion (on policy) a little more cumbersome. Instead just let this thread rest until we decide on the policy. --LPfi (talk) 15:15, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with not rushing just to rush. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:28, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with SelfieCity that it seems self-serving for "keep" voters to press for delaying taking action on this nominee while pushing through a policy change conceived explicitly to enable this article not to be deleted. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:43, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If the policy is clarified to permit this sort of article after it is deleted, then it could be restored. So why bother deleting it until we decide what we want to do? Could you explain how "keep" voters are being self-serving? None of us are getting paid. Like you, we are here to serve travellers. This discussions would work better if we could keep that in mind. Ground Zero (talk) 17:16, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
AndreCarrotflower, would you agree that attaining a consensus to undelete an article is a higher bar than deletion? So if this article is deleted and a consensus forms behind a standard other than "guilty until proven innocent" for VfD, wouldn't articles like the Esperanto phrasebook and Marriage in China (which you don't want to rediscuss) remain deleted? I think they would. I don't suggest that would be a horrible outcome, but I point that out so people understand what we're talking about. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Some seem to be suggesting that trying to change the policy while a vfd is going on is somehow underhanded. I couldn't disagree more. It's the perfect time to look at a policy in the light of a complex example. Especially if it may give an outcome here that may not have been intended. --Inas (talk) 23:31, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I'm switching to keep so we can just get this over and done with. It doesn't matter much, anyway. Selfie City (talk) 14:21, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Outcome - Deleted. After three plus weeks, there was no consensus to keep the article as required under the current policy, and after two plus weeks, there was no consensus behind any of the proposals to amend our deletion policy and do away with the "guilty until proven innocent" rule. As frustrated as many of you are surely going to be, this deletion was by the book. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:24, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Template:RelatedCommons and use of [[commons:]]

Is now redundant as replaced with a wikidata check which places Commons Category link in the "In other projects" section of sidebar. If wish to add additional Commons reference (as not exact match of article but related) can use {{RelatedCommonsCat}} which creates link to the Commons Category (currently in sidebar but will be related link at bottom of article). --Traveler100 (talk) 08:17, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Tentative oppose. A link to a Commons page is not the same animal as a link to a Commons category. Commons occasionally will use mainspace pages to store manually-created image galleries and description of a specific topic. It's used less than the category link, but the two do differ in purpose. K7L (talk) 22:43, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The Commons category is almost always more useful than a Commons page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:46, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In some cases the page ("gallery") is well developed, such as most country galleries, and pages such as Commons:Winter driving (this one developed in parallel with our article) are certainly more useful than the categories for the average reader. Most galleries, however, were created as a substitute before categories existed or had gained wide acceptance. They are often not maintained at all and contain only the images present at a time Commons was a much smaller resource. Links to the latter galleries are not useful to the reader, and the galleries are easily found via the category by those wanting to do clean-up. I'd say the gallery links should be added manually in the cases they are useful (and not removed by bot in the cases they have been added). --LPfi (talk) 06:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In the Winter Driving example the "In other projects" sidebar link goes to the gallery page as this is what is entered in the Wikidata and I assume because no Commons Category entry exists in the Wikidata object. As for bot removal this is not necessary as no page uses the [[commons:]] command any more and it will very shortly not work anyway. Can however keep the RelatedCommons template if people feel is need for manual option and use a different method (same as currently done with {{RelatedCommonsCat}}). --Traveler100 (talk) 09:52, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • DeleteRedirect. This article has very little content and it has almost no valid links, except for one to an itinerary. The information in this article would be more useful to travelers if its content was moved to other locations. Selfie City (talk) 03:35, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. See Talk:Rail travel in Africa. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:23, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete At the risk of being labelled a "deletionist", this article seems to be meant to curate an overabundance of African rail travel articles that do not currently exist. We don't need an article to curate non-existence. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:58, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree the list of redlinks is useless, but I think the article could get useful if those redlinks where each replaced with a paragraph written based on the By train section of the country article (where something useful can be said). I suppose that could be done without first hand knowledge, but I am not going to do it without some support. --LPfi (talk) 13:36, 16 May 2018 (UTC)'[reply]
On the other hand, though, we could just take the one paragraph in the article Rail travel in Africa and move it to Africa#By_train. Selfie City (talk) 13:59, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also, though, check out High-speed_rail#Africa. Maybe you could use that to create a better Rail travel in Africa article. Selfie City (talk) 14:05, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As the nominator of this deletion, I want to say that I think we're all on the same page (literally!) about this travel topic. However, we need to recognize that this article has been around for years and its content remains almost unchanged; this article needs to be developed soon (and it will probably have to be developed by us) to keep it. Also, I want to point to a map of the African railway network I found on the internet, and I must say (unfortunately) that the current African rail network may not be strong enough for a Wikivoyage article solely on African rail travel: according to the picture's "existing" map, many countries have their own railroad networks, but these do not seem to connect well with the networks of other African nations. Still, if all the "proposed" railroads were put in place, a "rail travel in Africa" travel topic would definitely be a good Wikivoyage article. Selfie City (talk) 03:45, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think a redirect is a reasonable proposition, but it doesn't seem as if Rail travel in Africa would be a very useful redirect. Redirects usually link to a whole article, not just a subtopic of a very broad article. If we create a redirect for Rail travel in Africa, we may as well create redirects for every country in Africa, every country in Asia, etc., and I think the redirects for rail travel in countries could extend beyond their usefulness. Selfie City (talk) 14:02, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Please post in chronological order; otherwise, it's confusing to read these threads, and hard to know where to find new posts. That said, we may as well not create unnecessary redirects, because why should we spend the time doing that? However, if someone did, where would be the harm? It's also not unusual at all for redirects to go to specific sections of articles. Look at LaGuardia Airport, for example. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:10, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What about replies to comments, though? Selfie City (talk) 23:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Replies to comments should also be in chronological order. It's very easy to simply write something like "In reference to User X's point about Y..." Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:29, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Okay.Selfie City (talk) 16:01, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[:image:Passenger trains in Chile.png]]

This file, which is used on the Chile article, is basically a cropped screenshot of a map from traveler.sharemap.org. Although the file says that it follows the copyright guidelines, the general Wikimedia Commons rule is not to upload images of screenshots of applications. Anyway, we use static maps or dynamic maps on Wikvioyage, but not maps like this. Selfie City (talk) 01:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If the file is hosted on commons: the deletion would have to be proposed there, not here. K7L (talk) 01:27, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
K7L is right; there's no way this discussion can end with the deletion of the file, so the discussion should be closed and archived without further ado. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:44, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
But it could be deleted from Wikivoyage, right? Selfie City (talk) 01:53, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you mean. It can be removed from the Chile article, but we don't need a VfD discussion for that—you can just bring it up at Talk:Chile. We could also make the image impossible to view on Wikivoyage by uploading another file with the same name, but I don't see how there could be any value in that. Beyond those options, there's not much we can do besides starting a deletion discussion on Commons (which would also be unlikely to result in the deletion of the file, because it seems to be within Commons' scope). —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:57, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, just click here: https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Chile&action=edit&section=21 and remove the image from the article. No need for VfD to do that. In the meantime, you may want to look at commons:Commons:Deletion_policy to see how to delete things over there. K7L (talk) 02:00, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that there is a page on Wikivoyage (it is linked to above) dedicated to the file. That is what would be removed. Selfie City (talk) 02:03, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Pages like that can be accessed for any image on Commons (unless there's a locally uploaded image with the same name). Here is an example for an image that is obviously not travel related. I don't think this is a problem, but if you want to change it for some reason, I think your options are (a) to upload a different image locally with the same name, (b) to nominate the file for deletion on Commons, or (c) to propose changing the configuration of this wiki so that we can't access pages like that, at least not in the same way. I don't think any of those options would be a good idea, though; I can explain why if you want. In any case, none of them will be achieved by this discussion. —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Do we have consensus to archive this discussion, then? Selfie City (talk) 02:25, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And then also, why is this going differently than the leaflet we discussed recently? The issue is very similar. Just asking. Selfie City (talk) 02:30, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The leaflet was uploaded locally, not on Commons. And yes, like I said, I think this discussion should be archived without further ado, because there's no way for it to end with the deletion of the file. —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why we should delete this: as this article exists, it's a very poor article that is not well-formatted and doesn't even have any headings. The information in it could pretty much all serve its purpose better in a country article (gestures used in Pakistan should go in that country's article, etc.). If this article was improved, maybe, but as it is, it needs improvement or should be removed. Selfie City (talk) 18:24, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Better to expand than delete. That gesture in Hawaii with the pinky and thumb extended in opposite directions should be added, for example. (I forget what it's called.) We should also include non-obvious obscene gestures that visitors would want to avoid making unintentionally. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I struggle with this one. We should have an article on gestures, but this one isn't it, and for four years there has been discussion about how it should be improved, but nothing has happened. Maybe this should be moved out of article space until it can be fixed. It's just embarrassing now. Ground Zero (talk) 00:50, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, as long as somebody is willing to work on the page and bring it up to presentable condition. (That somebody would not be me; I don't have the knowledge or the time.) --Robkelk (talk) 15:38, 17 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You misspelled "English". :) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I agree that this article needs to be expanded as we've been proposing to do for a long time, but even if that never happens, some information is always better than none. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep once again I don't believe the poor quality of an article is a reason for deletion, unless it is a copyright infringement or every single sentence is useless for the traveller. The article definitely could do a revamp though. I think a better structure would be discussing gestures by cultural spheres in the world (what are the common gestures used in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, etc. and what do they mean?). Some gestures may mean very different things across neighbouring countries but that can be clarified. Gizza (roam) 00:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I like Latin-American music and it would be nice to have Latin music itineraries on Wikivoyage, but this existing itinerary needs to be deleted for these reasons: first, the information in this article is quite likely out of date; the article says so. Even though there have been changes to the article over the last few years, these edits have not been major expansions or important changes. In fact, the only major edits (500+ bytes in change) after 2011 were vandal-related. Second, salsa dancing is an extremely wide topic that is not really practical or possible to cover in one article. And third, you can dance at home or at a lot of Latin American restaurants and bars, so why would you need to go to a salsa dancing club as a tourist anyway? And this article currently has only a few listings in each country and even these are not formatted properly. Fourth, it makes more sense for dancing club listings to go in their city articles than for a few of them to be put onto one page Keep. Selfie City (talk) 23:20, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Valid topic, and the article contains useful information for someone planning a trip where they want to go salsa dancing. If it's out of date, that problem can be solved by updating it, not deleting it. Like with golfing in Thailand, just because you're not interested in salsa dancing clubs doesn't mean that it shouldn't be covered on Wikivoyage. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:39, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep many tourists go to Latin America with a specific interest to go to salsa dancing clubs. The lack of editing activity is unfortunate but never a reason for deletion. Maybe Latin America (1.5 continents) is a bit broad and salsa dancing by country articles would be better but the guide isn't long enough to split it into countries yet. Gizza (roam) 23:53, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - we have a lot of articles with obsolete information. We just have to keep building the project to attract more editors do that articles are updated more frequently. In editing Southeastern_Kansas, I was updating or removing information on festivals from 2006. I don't think we would delete Southeastern_Kansas for that. Ground Zero (talk) 00:00, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • You may be right. Should we instead suggest cities or regions that are best for salsa dancing, or are there particularly famous clubs that we should favor with a mention? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:55, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps both Salsa dancing and Gestures could be restructured and reformatted so they would be more useful, but that would take a lot of work. Perhaps we should do more descriptions on this article instead of listings, but it still seems that this article's general topic is incompatible with Wikivoyage's goals and possibilities considering the number of active editors we have. Selfie City (talk) 14:02, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Why? If the problem is that there are way too many nightclubs that have salsa dancing, why is covering which cities or neighborhoods have the most active salsa club scene beyond the scope of Wikivoyage? By the way, are there also too many salsa dancing schools to cover some particularly good ones? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:59, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's like having a travel topic about restaurants. Travel topics would normally cover the general topic - for example, a travel topic about Cuban music. Inside that would be a section about dancing. At least to me, it makes more sense to have Salsa music as the topic instead of Salsa dancing. Selfie City (talk) 18:23, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've added some background from the Wikipedia article, and updated some of the listings to demonstrate what this article can be with a little effort. Ground Zero (talk) 18:54, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Well, that definitely looks better, but it's still not nearly enough information. Selfie City (talk) 19:06, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is "not enough information to be a good article" a topic for Vfd? No. This board is solely about deleting articles, not the fact that they should have more information. I think you should concede the point that there should be a discussion on the article's talk page about the direction of the article and steps that should be taken to develop it, and not a Vfd nomination. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:24, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We could definitely discuss this on the article's talk page - that is, if the article really can be developed. Selfie City (talk) 20:46, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The article is no longer out of date. It has been expanded with more description of salsa and its regional variations. It's not the same article that was nominated. If anyone wants to make more improprieties, please go ahead. Ground Zero (talk) 02:59, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ground Zero: thanks for the work you've done on improving this. If there were perhaps a couple pictures to color the page a little, I'd definitely say this should be a speedy keep because it's going from being a poor article to a good one. Selfie City (talk) 14:31, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Then it's a speedy keep now, because the lack of thumbnails on a page is never a reason for an article to be deleted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:35, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Problem solved, I've added a thumbnail. Selfie City (talk) 16:03, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "What if we had a travel topic that listed restaurants? How long would it be?" We have thousands of travel topics that list restaurants - they're called City pages. Restaurants are listed under "Eat". Thus, I don't see what your point is here. --Robkelk (talk) 15:35, 17 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Without comment on the validity of the topic itself and without prejudice to the re-creation of a better article on this topic should someone care to do so in the future, I believe we should delete this as the page only contains two sentences worth of text and even that is an import from pre-2012 WT. (The redirect Ice Age Trail is another WT import with no history, which should be deleted.) There's basically nothing here which could be useful to the voyager. K7L (talk) 16:58, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Aren’t Outline-level itineraries that haven’t been substantially edited in a year or more supposed to be auto-deleted anyway? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:36, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy keep - As much as I hate stub articles, it took no time at all to copy and adapt text from the Wikipedia article. Now it's not a bad article. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to delete easy wins like this. Ground Zero (talk) 17:39, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I suspect that abandoned incomplete itinerary still goes through the full VfD process, but without the keep as a real place bias that applies to destinations and with a strong bias towards delete. That said, copypasta from WT, WP or other projects incurs a WV:SEO penalty. Keeping WT in this article's history instead of creating a {{rewritten}} page which is free of content from (or attribution to) other travel wikis makes us look like a copy instead of like original content. The proposed topic is valid. I just want to lose the copypasta and the WT attribution. If one were to write something original instead of merely cribbing answers from WP or another wiki, this might be a usable itinerary some day. K7L (talk) 18:06, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment - we've spent enough time on policy and process recently, so I'm moving forward on this. I've created Ice Age Trail with no WT content (with thanks to User:LPfi). If you compare the new article to the WP article, you will see that I have adapted it to make it more suitable for a travel guide, and useful for travellers. It is now a good base for expansion by anyone who is interested. "SEO penalty" is not a justification for deleting content that is useful for travellers. Maybe you could try to be constructive by working to improve it instead of denigrating my contributions. Please plunge forward to make the new article better. Ground Zero (talk) 20:40, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and if we decide the article is good, recreate it without the whole SEO stuff. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:19, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment - My only concern SEO-wise at this point is that the entire Ice Age Trail#Understand section is a word-for-word copy from w:Ice Age Trail. The entire section, which is at least half the text in the entire article. K7L (talk) 21:43, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Please change it if bothers you. SEO is not a reason to delete info useful for travellers. Ground Zero (talk) 21:51, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Creating an entire article that is a copy-paste from another source is a reasonable reason to delete an article. Copying useful articles from another websites does not make ours useful and it's not the kind of content we've ever encouraged. We want original travel guides. I don't know why we have never added it to policy to ban copy-paste outright, but in practice, whenever it is noted that content was copied, it was removed or rewritten. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:46, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • Yeah, the Ice Age Trail isn't "an entire article that is a copy-paste from another source". Please feel free to contribute to improving the article. Ground Zero (talk) 16:04, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • Having text copied (or adapted) from other sources isn't the ideal solution, but it's also 1) better than nothing, 2) not unprecedented, and 3) a basis on which to build. Regarding those last two items, in the very early history of Wikitravel many of the country articles consisted of copypasta from the (public-domain) CIA World Factbook, which over the course of 15 years were elaborated and expanded upon into what we have today. I think we've come to a situation where I'm comfortable voting keep, and as Ground Zero has said, hopefully editors will keep this article in mind for copyediting to reduce the SEO penalty. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:11, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • Thanks, Andre. There are two articles here. Ice Age National Scenic Trail, which is the WT-sourced stub, which has been nominated for deletion; and Ice Age Trail, which is based on WP and other sources, and has been adapted for use in a travel guide. It has not been nominated for deletion. Anyone who wants to nominate the new article for deletion should at least read the article first so they know what they are talking about. Ground Zero (talk) 17:20, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to Ice Age Trail. That is the common name for the official title anyways. -- Dolotta (talk) 17:28, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd say do whatever needs to be done to remove the WT attribution and tweak whatever text was copy-pasted and then keep it. It is an established trail and the article seems to have enough content to jump off from. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:01, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • The text has already been adapted for use in Wikivoyage. If you think it should be tweaked, tweak it. Or you can just keep complaining and not do anything to improve it. Your choice. Ground Zero (talk) 14:02, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@JakeOregon:, @LPfi:, @Traveler100:: deleting the two versions of the article, restoring the new one and redirecting the old would remove from the article history the reference to WT - from which none of the new article is derived - and it would remove the documentation of your contributions to the new article. Do you have any concerns with this, or can we proceed? Ground Zero (talk) 14:02, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

One way to do the attribution is to mention the contributors in the summary of the edit whereby the new version is created, but just deleting what needs to be deleted is OK with me. --LPfi (talk) 14:13, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, deleting both pages and then undeleting every revision except the (WT-en) mess would do the trick (as none of the subsequent revisions of anything are derivative from WT). Special:Undelete asks the admin which revisions are to be undeleted; back before other "delete a revision" capabilities existed in MediaWiki (or an extension), it was a fairly common means to remove one problematic revision and keep the rest of the history. K7L (talk) 17:43, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That works if a problematic revision is noticed soon, before other significant edits. In this case text from the WT-en versions was still present when substantial additions were made. MediaWiki does not save the diffs but the revisions, so those edits cannot be kept without keeping also the attribution to WT-en. Fortunately the additions were made by active wikivoyagers who can redo their edits in a clean version or permit using their contributions without attribution. --LPfi (talk) 19:23, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead, I don't have any objections on attribution.--JakeOregon (talk) 02:54, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wrapping this up

I plan to:

  1. Delete Ice Age National Scenic Trail and Ice Age Trail.
  2. Recreate Ice Age Trail with its current text and provide credit to Wikipedia, @JakeOregon:, @LPfi:, and @Traveler100: in the edit summary.
  3. Recreate Ice Age National Scenic Trail as a redirect to Ice Age Trail.

This eliminates the record of credit being given to the predecessor site as the new article has no text from that site. Okay? Ground Zero (talk) 00:32, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Outcome: articles deleted, main article recreated and second article recreated as a redirect. Ground Zero (talk) 02:26, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I still plan to work on these articles (as you can see at my recent contributions list I am trying to tackle many more important projects at this time). Please move them to my userspace in the mean time. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:21, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I still plan to work on these articles (as you can see at my recent contributions list I am trying to tackle many more important projects at this time). Please move them to my userspace in the mean time. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:21, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever this is, it is confusing and stubby. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:28, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what's confusing. It's treated as a district of Dalian. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:19, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It is a district of Dalian and should be kept. That may become clearer if it is renamed to Dalian/Jinzhou or Dalian/Jinzhou District but that's not relevant to deletion. And in terms of content, the article's quality and quantity is not terrible by any means (probably better than half our articles). Gizza (roam) 04:30, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Like many articles on Wikivoyage, there is plenty of room for improvement. This Chinese site for instance lists no less than 54 attractions in Jinzhou District: http://www.bytravel.cn/view/index3114_list.html STW932 (talk) 05:22, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A general question: How meaningful are "city" boundaries in China? Some "cities" have a surface area of a small country and include loads and loads of rural land. Is it therefore correct to call this a district of a city? Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:19, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, "cities" in China are very large and don't necessarily correspond to what foreigners might think of as a city (see List of Chinese provinces and regions for more information). For instance, I was recently in Changping Town, which is administered as part of Dongguan City, but which locals and expats seem to think of as a separate place. Likewise with Jiangyan District in Taizhou (Jiangsu). That's why I hinted above that it might possibly be better to treat this as a separate city rather than part of Dalian. (I'm not sure if that would be the right choice, I'm just mentioning the possibility.) Either way, it's not a reason to delete the article. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:14, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the city/prefecture ambiguity is pervasive in China. One earlier discussion, with links to others, is at Talk:Fuzhou Pashley (talk) 17:14, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There are two Chinese terms that are normally translated as "district" and "county", but neither means what those terms mean elsewhere & the two are at the same level of the hierarchy. The next level up might be any of:
  • A prefecture, as for Fuzhou. No city government. No gov't structure except for the prefecture & districts/counties. The guy a western paper might call mayor is actually the head of the prefecture.
  • A prefecture-level city, e.g. Xiamen.
  • A county-level city like Kunshan, part of the prefecture-level Suzhou.
  • A municipality, e.g. Shanghai; no province above this level.
Probably there are more complications that I don't know about. 23:57, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
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