Wikivoyage talk:Archive of Wikitravel (not Wikivoyage) press coverage

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Latest comment: 11 years ago by Peterfitzgerald in topic Vfd discussion
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This kinda overlaps with the (dormant) Project:Awards and mentions page. (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:56, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

Good call. What should we do with this? I'd like to have Project:Awards and mentions a bit more organized though and updated regularly if we redirect of get rid of this all together. -- Sapphire
P.S. I'm willing to go through that list and make it conform to something like I've started here if anyone has any ideas about which way we should head down. -- Sapphire

Terribly out of date

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There must be a better way! — (WT-en) Ravikiran 08:36, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

Anecdotes or interview subjects wanted for story on Wikitravel

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Archived from the Pub:

I'm writing a piece on Wikitravel for JetStar's inflight magazine, and am looking for Wikitravelrs who can say, in their own words, why Wikitravel is the greatest thing since sliced bread or tell some funny anecdote regarding how it's helped them on their travels. Please drop me a line at jpatokal@iki.fi if interested. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:18, 3 October 2006 (EDT)

Slate article

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Archived from the Pub:

There's a not-very-positive article on Slate by someone who tried traveling (in Thailand) using only web resources (primarily Wikitravel). His main criticism is that Wikitravel is missing information and too "neutral". - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 07:57, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

Todd, do you live in a cave? Just kidding. 8) -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 08:12, 11 April 2007 (EDT)
Yes, I do. I tried getting out once, but couldn't find a decent online travel guide. :) - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 08:22, 11 April 2007 (EDT)
Good article and I think we should pay some attention to it. The writer has a very valid point, our Be Fair rule can sometimes cause us not to give quality, useful information. --(WT-en) NJR_ZA 03:49, 1 May 2007 (EDT)
Just crawled out of my cave and read the slate article! The author makes a very valid point about the missing 'quality' information. As a long time LP user, I can vouch for the fact that most people use LP as an effective mechanism for filtering all the info out there. Just wondering if anyone has given any thought to how Wikitravel can do the same thing without compromising its openness? (Or, is there a 'weaknesses of Wikitravel' page out there where perceived weaknesses can be discussed and solutions explored?)--(WT-en) Wandering 17:47, 12 September 2007 (EDT)
Yeah, I think that's sort of a later problem, curious to see how it pans out myself. It will probably become harder to retain a point of view in a listing once there are 50 people watching an article and trying to come to a compromise on a hotel blurb. guess we'll just have to wait and see how things develop, and be willing to change policy, etc to suit the changing needs of the site. the fact that we put a limit on how many listings should be in an article will probably help at some point... just keeping the top 8 or 9 for any given section, based on reviews should a) weed out the crap and b) encourage people to write even more lively and descriptive reviews. All that said, the writer of that article is pretty clueless... if he took one of our star articles like Singapore and traveled with it and disliked it then fine... he would have a point, since we were bold enough to say it was a star article, and it failed him. But he was traveling using articles that we fully admit (with their status box at the bottom of each page) weren't complete. And if you look at the log book that Sapphire references above you'll see that he also didn't realize we had district articles for Bangkok, which is why he had such a tough time there... we've made revisions and tried to make districts more obvious since this article came out. – (WT-en) cacahuate talk 01:25, 13 September 2007 (EDT)
I didn't see his article when it first came out (because I was traveling in Thailand with Wikitravel articles at the time, appropriately enough - and yeah, the Bangkok article did wonders for me). I love his contention that if he didn't get more than two hotel listings from the Wikitravel article, he'd be sleeping on the street. How does he think these hotel listings are created in the first place? People show up, look at a room, agree to rent it, and later write about it. So if the two Wikitravel listings are booked, go find a third and add it to the article. That's not a disaster scenario. If he's that dependent on being led to every stop, the Bangkok tuk-tuk drivers will eat him alive. How many suits, jewels and ping-pong balls would he be coming home with? It was a lazily written article on a lot of counts. But it probably drove some traffic our way. ("Travelfish"? Seriously? Something called "Travelfish" has good writing? I'm going to spend my time adding comments about whether I agree or disagree with the official opinion of something called a travelfish?)
Cacahaute makes an important point about the changes that more traffic will bring. I don't know how that will work. As much as I'd like more people's input into the Chicago articles, for example, I'd hate to see them become big masses of negotiations and, as a result, as badly written as their Wikipedia equivalents. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 01:59, 13 September 2007 (EDT)
Umm... Travelfish is actually a pretty good site. Not as good as WT, of course =P, but they limit their scope to "Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam" and they do a decent job, although it's very much a traditional cathedral model — only anointed editors can write, and they're paid for it.
And I think the whole idea of Extra was that eg. the hotel listing bits of Wikitravel can be stripped to the lowest common (factual) denominator, and opinionated reviews shifted over to Extra. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:23, 13 September 2007 (EDT)
> just keeping the top 8 or 9 for any given section, based on reviews should a) weed out the crap and b) encourage people to write even more lively and descriptive reviews
But most of the time I see that lively reviews are reduced to a shortest possible "essential facts only" 1..3-sentence description. Or are you talking about reviews at Extra? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 16:49, 13 September 2007 (EDT)

Vfd discussion

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Latest comment: 11 years ago10 comments7 people in discussion

Moved discussion from Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub.

There are several WT project pages that have nothing to do with Wikivoyage and are not needed for historical purposes.

We will develop our own history as time passes and these pages are from a fork that really has nothing to do with us and are not needed for any type of history that applies to Wikivoyage. I think these pages and links to them should be deleted. And any other pages that apply to WT only and are not needed to justify policies we are continuing on Wikivoyage. All of these pages will have equivalent Wikivoyage pages now and in the future. If someone wants to know the information covered in those pages, then they should visit WT. What are the thoughts of others? Should we start a discussion page on this? - Tom Holland (Xltel) (talk) 07:34, 1 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Oppose. Bear in mind that the history of Wikitravel up to the last data dump IS our history, along with the history of Wikivoyage between the fork and the reconnect, and all that has happened since. We who were Wikitravel have no need to pretend that we were not Wikitravel. Our disagreement was not with the community of contributors or with our past, it was with IB, who in spite of owning the name and the server, are not the people or the content. I do not support suppression or denial of that history. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:07, 1 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
I understand your point and I agree totally that Wikitravel is "MY" history and our history and I am not ever going to pretend it was not my/our history. This is "our" history and I am not suggesting anyone pretend we did not come from Wikitravel or that there is any disagreement with the Wikitravel community in the past. I have been a big part of that Wikitravel past very active as an Administrator/contributor and will be a part of the future of WV. I have tried my best to help WV with edits and cleanup where I could and will continue. But as time goes on some of these older pages may get a bit more muddy and confusing to new Wikivoyagers. We have changed "Wikitravel" to "Wikivoyage" just about everywhere on the site including talk pages when were talking specifically about Wiki""travel"". To be honest I don't really like that very much and it causes additional confusion in my opinion, but I figured there were legal issues (I apologize I have not read all the comments and discussions in that area). I never thought it was a purge of "our" history. When I was on Wikitravel in my past life and put comments on a talk pages and mentioned Wikitravel it was about Wikitravel, but now all my references and everyone's references to Wikitravel have been changed to Wikivoyage. If you go to User talk:Xltel/Mar 2006 you can see where I was welcomed to "Wikivoyage" in December 2005, but we know that is not the case. I am now on Wikivoyage and as we go forward I expect we will get farther apart from the content, policies, goals and overall objectives of Wikitravel. New people will have new ideas and as time goes on we will move farther apart from where WT and WV are now. Please don't think I have any difference in agreement whatsoever in your comments, just looking for some better organization on the old Wikitravel content going forward, maybe deleting is not the solution and possibly the way it is now is the best way to keep it. My comment on not needing it for historical purposes really applies to they are not needed to explain development of policy. Obviously, there is no rush or need to delete anything and we can discuss organization of our history going forward. Happy New Year! - Tom Holland (Xltel) (talk) 17:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi Tom, next time when you nominate something for deletion, please do so at Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion. @Peter, I agree with you but then at-least we should have some information on this site about our (WV) background so that people who will join this community sooner may learn about our history. Happy new year everybody! --Saqib (talk) 18:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
I agree with Peter. These historical pages should be kept, albeit perhaps in an archive section or tagged as historical.
I also agree with Tom, and perhaps go farther than he would. To me it seems obvious that, except where there are compelling legal reasons not to, the WT->WV substitutions on talk pages should all be undone. Pashley (talk) 20:51, 1 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
I concur, though I fear it may be too late for the latter. LtPowers (talk) 22:16, 1 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
The WT→WV substititions are particularly annoying on pages such as User:(WT-en) IBobi, where it says that Internet Brands owns Wikivoyage. It would be nice to have those undone, but maybe there are legal reasons not to. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
We should try and undo substitutions that don't make sense by hand. Most substitutions were OK, though, since most mentions are just referring to our project, and it is the same project, albeit with less-douchey hosts and a different name. --Peter Talk 23:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Outcome: kept. --Peter Talk 22:51, 14 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

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