Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikioverland

discussion swept here from the pub

Hi All,

I've created the page Cooperating with Wikioverland to start a discussion with regards to cooperating with WikiOverland
WikiOverland is a wiki specifically for people traveling across multiple countries with vehicles (commonly called traveling Overland. The people are called Overlanders, who are Overlanding).

It's designed to supplement wikivoyage with the very detailed information needed by travelers with a vehicle.

It currently includes things like customs paperwork and fees, the process at the border, extending a stay, exiting with a vehicle, vehicle insurance, up-to-date gasoline prices (in any currency and unit the reader chooses), gasoline frequency and quality, camping, roads, checkpoints, bribery, vehicle shipping, maps, navigation, vehicle maintenance, buying and selling vehicles and much, much more.
It uses the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license for content.

WikiOverland has a page for every country, much like wikivoyage.
By linking here WikiOverland does not need to worry about all the standard travel information available here and can focus on specializing in the huge amounts of detailed information required by those traveling with vehicles. It's not intended to be an all-encompassing travel guide, but merely to contain the information specific to travel with a vehicle.

WikiOverland is essentially a wiki dedicated to the "by-car" sub sections here, and is extraordinarily specific with regards to traveling with a vehicle - exactly the information those sections are supposed to include.

WikiOverland also uses a custom MediaWiki extension to convert prices to any currency the reader wishes to use.
This extension may be of interest to wikivoyage, where prices are constantly stated in different currencies.

For an example of this extension, see the section Gas and diesel price in Mexico and choose your preferred currency and unit of measure.

For an explanation of how the extension is used, see Prices on WikiOverland.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on cooperating with WikiOverland.

Thanks! -Dangrec (talk) 23:25, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd be in support of the implementation of some material from the wiki in relevant sections, though it does seem to only have little to basic material on most locations at this moment in time. --SU FC 02:05, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely. One of the goals of WikiOverland is to only include the information that is specific to Overland Travel, rather than an all-encompassing travel guide. It's never going to grow to include many hundreds of pages of information, but rather a limited set of very specific detailed pages. -Dangrec (talk) 05:30, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like an excellent idea. I was thinking having a section on the main page about specific travel types that we present at different times, like this one, or "hiking adventures", "biking adventures", etc.

The above site looks fairly quiet. What about inviting them to join us fully? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:13, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The only thing about fully integrating the content of WikiOverland into wikivoyage is that it's so extremely detailed I can't see how all that content would fit into wikivoyage. For example, checkout Wikioverand's page for [Argentina] - there is so much information about entering Argentina with a vehicle, and getting around with a vehicle, I can't imagine where within wikivoyage that amount of content would fit. I think wikivoyage aims to be a "generic" travel guide, not a "guide for people with vehicles" as Wikioverland aims to be. It makes sense to keep them separate and to leverage each other for content.-Dangrec (talk) 05:26, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I can see the value to WikiOverland in linking to Wikivoyage, but not how the other way would work except in a few cases. No problem with doing it if it is useful. WikiOverland can link to WV any time they like.• • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Really? You don't thinks the readers of VW would benefit from the huge amount of data on say the [Argentina] page? -Dangrec (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Not quite what I said. I can see that the information is valuable, but I don't know how the linking from WV to WO would work. How do you suggest? There are existing policies, supported vehemently by some Wikivoyagers, which do not allow interwiki links in article text, even to Wikipedia. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:32, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like people here are suggesting interwiki links in the sidebar, which look easy to add. I understand there are existing policies about external links, though I think you'd agree it's not feasible to include the content of WO into WV, so linking might be the best way for Wwikivoyagers to benefit from the useful and detailed information in WO. -Dangrec (talk) 03:19, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

A possible way of dealing with a merger if both sides found it desirable, would be to put the overland articles in a separate namespace — Overland: — within Wikivoyage, where they could retain their special character. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I think interwiki links, at least, on country pages, could make a good deal of sense. I have content in my head I'd certainly like to share on the Colombia page. And the price conversion extension you are using is pretty fabulous! We should try and get something along those lines in every country's Buy#Costs section. Having the option to click to switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius on our climateboxes would be a similar, really helpful functionality. --Peter ^Talk 06:12, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

interwiki links would be preferrable from the WO end of things. We're also willing to share the currency conversion media wiki plugin. Do you have any idea who I can talk to about either of those ideas? -Dangrec (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I certainly support the idea of adding this information into our guide. I've had a look at the HUBB forum a few times and mention it in Africa#By car and even in the resources on my user page. Traveling overland is on my wishlist when I win the lottery...doing London-Cape Town down through West & Central Africa (the Congos & Angola are a bit problemic) or via the Middle East (Turkey>Syria>Jordan>Saudi Arabia>Sudan); driving across Eurasia from Europe through the Caucasus, Central Asia, & Siberia (including Yakutsk>Magadan on the w:Road of Bones...hopefully this bridge will be replaced!); and definitely a couple months doing a loop around Australia. I like the suggestion for the "Overland:" namespace. Another alternative is having travel topics about "Driving in [Country]" (some already exist, with a different focus) or even creating a special kind of travel topic with a specific template/criteria. Prices look better when given in whole, local units (like $1/L, not €0.9478?L, especially when they're rounding). I've advocated for a modified version of w:Template:Exchange_rate to be included on WV in several posts that just got lost with no attention/action...see: Wikivoyage_talk:Currency#Exchange_Rate_Bot, Wikivoyage_talk:Using_Mediawiki_templates#Other template imports, & Wikivoyage_talk:Using_Mediawiki_templates#Experimental templates. AHeneen (talk) 07:29, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Right On. I drove from Alaska to Argentina, am I'm in the early stages of planning a few more continents, that's why I'm so passionate about Overland Travel. (my blog is The Road Chose Me if you are interested.) I think linking to WO from either the VW country or the driving in pages makes the most sense. I understand why the currency converter is a little annoying with it's decimal places, though we at WO find it much, much better than having to convert currencies and units all the time. -Dangrec (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

FYI, we had a contributor who did the Kolyma Highway recently. --Peter ^Talk 07:53, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Co-operation is a fine idea. I'd like to see a tag similar to [[Wikipedia:wherever]] that can be added at the bottom of an article to create a link to Wikoverland in the sidebar, similar to our curent WP links. I am not sure how that is done.

You seem to say above that overlanding means travel by car, and I do not think that is true. For example, I did the route described in Overland Kunming to Hong Kong by bus. When I went overland to India I had the traditional VW combi, but met people doing it by bus and heard of some using bicycles.

I have thought for some time that some of our titles such as Istanbul to New Delhi over land and Europe to South Asia over land are wrong; "overland" should be one word in all of them. Would anyone object to my correcting this? Pashley (talk) 19:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

While the term "overlanding" can mean traveling across a region by any means, it is also the term embraced by people traveling overland in any vehicle...car, motorcycle, truck...which they themselves own & drive (as opposed to renting cars in each new city or hitchhiking/grabbing a ride with a local driver). That definition is the focus of Wikioverland and entails a lot more practical and regional knowledge (border crossings, local laws pertaining to vehicles, fuel quality/availability, road conditions, and more). Finding a ride on a bus (routes, companies) can easily be incorporated to the "get in" section, info for overlanding in one's own vehicle is a bit more involved. AHeneen (talk) 21:05, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I would object, Pashley. "Overland" is an adjective; "over land" is a preposition and a noun. You don't drive "overland"; you drive "over land." Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:31, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

From a language perspective, I'm sure you are correct. Colloquially, the term "Overland" is very popular in the community. For example, the number one magazine is Overland Journal, the biggest "trip registry" site is Africa Overland, etc. -Dangrec (talk) 22:02, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, but in every one of those phrases, "Overland" is functioning as an adjective. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:12, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Carnet de Passage

The WO article on the Carnet de Passage is clearly better than our Carnet de Passage, though neither is ideal. This is one where keeping it up-to-date is difficult. In the long run I'd like to see the WV article cut down some with a link to WO for current details. There is no use even trying to maintain the two independently. Pashley (talk) 21:22, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

It's funny you should mention that page. Many Overlanders have contacted me describing the pain they've experienced trying to edit Wikipedia's Carnet de Passage page. Many times their edits would be reverted because of either the "original content" or "must be verifiable" rule. It's taken a lot of work to convince Overlanders that not all wikis have to work that way.

I have a few friends right now Overlanding in Africa and the Middle East, where Carnet's are mostly required, so I expect some heavy updates to WO's Carnet page shortly, especially an up-to-date list of countries that require them.

I can see the WV page is hugely out of date as I have personal experience that no country in South America requires a Carent anymore. -Dangrec (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Are we reading the same article? The WO article appears to be almost entirely devoid of any content. We're hoping one day to remove our article in favour of WO, on the hope (yet to be seen) that the WO article may be updated. Can't follow this reasoning. --Inas (talk) 23:02, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll find the WV article is not actually useful in any way. It has 3 links to various motoring authorities, then a list of countries that require a Carnet, which is horribly out of date (at least 5 years old for South America, more for other continents). It contains nothing else. The WO article describes (in understandable terms) what a Carnet actually is, where to get one, how to pay for it, about getting insurance for one, how to get your money back. In the future, it will include an up-to-date list of countries that require a Carnet. Right now it already has much more useful information than the WV article. -Dangrec (talk) 00:09, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I still don't follow. The Carnet de Passage article clearly is within scope on WV, and we should be encouraging people to update it here. I can't see any precedent or motivation for making it a link to WO. We don't have the requirement WP has for verifiability. To move it to some other site because a couple of people who we hope will update WO, but won't update WV is a good argument for not linking to me. --Inas (talk) 03:50, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Cooperating with WikiOverland

Swept in from the pub

On Wikivoyage talk:Cooperating with Wikioverland many people support using interwiki links to WikiOverland.
Does anyone know how or where I can request WikiOverland be added to the list of related sites so interwiki links can be added in places that make sense (Country and "drive.." pages, I think)?
Thanks very much. -Dangrec (talk) 22:45, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Long term viability

So who owns Wikioverland? How is it being funded? It appears small with only a few editors. Just started in 2011. There is a good chance that it may simply disappear in a year or so without a solid tech underpinning. I see this content as being totally appropriate for an internet based travel guide. We should be developing content for all sorts of activities (hiking, cycling, mountain biking, kayaking, diving, climbing, etc.) right here. So Dangrec what is your relation to this site and what do you think about developing something right here on WV? Would decrease duplication of content and effort and we of course have easy linking from the 16 million media files on Wikimedia Commons. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:36, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

About Commons, note that any Mediawiki project can include Commons images very easily by simply enabling mw:InstantCommons. --Stefan2 (talk) 10:25, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. I own and run WikiOverland myself. I created and funded it because I'm so passionate about Overland Travel, and my number one goal is to assist and encourage other people to get out there on their own Overland adventure. I thought long and hard about the best way to store/present the data (I'm a Software Engineer), and I don't need to tell you why I chose MediaWiki. I honestly think the kind of information in WikiOverland is so specific and detailed that there is no place within WV for it, and not enough people dedicated to keeping it up to date (for Overlanders, if it's not up-to-date, it's not worth reading). For example, see Buy or sell a car or motorbike in Argentina as an example of the crazy level of detail in WO. I've had many people contact me to say how extremely helpful that is.

I've also had many people contact me to say they hate wikis because of all the bureaucracy surrounding edits - I know people with Overlanding world records who've had their edits on Wikipedia reverted for one reason or another. These people are busy out there Overlanding, they don't have time to engage in a "consensus" debate about a particular edit, they just wanted to put the information out there to help others. Because of that, one of WOs goals is to do away with all the bureaucracy that often surrounds the big wikis, and make it as simple and straightforward as possible for people to get in, make and edit, and be on their way. WO is just now gaining the confidence of seasoned Overlanders, who incidentally have no interest in contributing to WV for the reasons above. We know Wikipedia etc. are struggling to keep contributors, and I know for a fact Overlanders don't contribute here because it's more trouble than it's worth.

You are correct that it started in 2011, though I am dedicated to keeping it up and running for many, many years to come. I'll be entering data for ~50 more countries when I set out on my next Overland adventure myself. The site is not going anywhere, I will see to that. Also note WO is not interested in having thousands of articles on thousands of topics. There will be a page for every country, a handful of advice pages, and that's as "big" as it will ever get. So while it appears "small", that's actually one of it's goals.

As for duplication, it's a non-goal of WO to include anything that is readily available in other travel guides (WV, Lonely Planet, etc.) so I'm not concerned about that in the least. Every country page in WO links to WV so that travelers can get the basics from here (currencies, customs, weather, advice, etc., etc.) -Dangrec (talk) 17:33, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Please not that Wikipedia and Wikivoyage are different sites with different polices and procedures. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Yep, Absolutely. I'm very aware of that, but like I said, many Overlanders are very skeptical and unwilling to contribute. Do you have further thoughts on what I said? -Dangrec (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

What do you propose? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:24, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Many people here are proposing interwiki links from WV to WO where it makes sense (country and "drive..." pages, it seems). WO could do the same thing back to WV. There is also talk of using the currency conversion MedaiWiki Extension from WO on WV -Dangrec (talk) 03:03, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletion nomination

This is somewhat similar to the Citizendium one we had a little while ago. It has an Alexa Rank below 1 million, so I don't think we need a "Cooperating with..." page on Wikivoyage. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:12, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Delete even though it is travel-related, it's a moribund wiki with only 19 edits in the past month, mostly anonymous. Gizza ^(roam) 01:43, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Glancing at the talk page, it looks like this collaboration never had more than tepid support from the Wikivoyage community even in the best of times. If Wikioverland is as dead as Gizza says, then yes, let's delete. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:47, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• I've made a few edits there and I think it's fairly good (see the recent changes of the website), but the quality of the English writing is generally not impressive. It's one of these where not much is happening. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:25, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: Alexa ranking isn't a very useful measure for specialty interest wikis. Wikipedia has a low Alexa ranking because it's a general knowledge wiki, but it's expected for wikis on niche interests or hobbies for readers to go long stretches without reading, and for the reader base to be smaller. As for the contents, some of those recent changes actually have useful firsthand information which it would probably be difficult to find anywhere else. ARR8 (talk) 02:44, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, keep in mind that a lot of the recent changes are mine. In fact, all of them so far are today. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:52, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh. I checked when you first posted this, before those edits. Unless it was you who wrote about the Costa Rican border crossing? ARR8 (talk) 02:55, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

No, I mean just the United States ones. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:59, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: I don't know what to think here. Cooperating with a site that has low activity is not a priority, but I could well imagine some Wikivoyage users posting personal accounts there, if they wanted to. That seems to me at a glance to be the main difference between that site and this one. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:24, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• I'm still unsure on this one. Why is it important to delete this? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:54, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Result: delete. While there were some who didn't support deletion, nobody clearly said that they wanted to keep the article, and a few supported deletion. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:22, 27 December 2018 (UTC)