Wikivoyage talk:Cruising Expedition/Structure for cruising articles

Dummy article

We need a dummy article to play around with to develop a suitable format. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:33, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Could be worth considering similar expeditions on other wikis. A review of the format of Cruisers wiki and Noonsite could be useful to provide examples of pros and cons of various format decisions. Iowajason (talk) 23:24, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

The term "destination" is confusing as defined in the sample article. I think of a "destination" as a city and suggest that an anchorage or marina could more of an "attraction" to cruisers within a larger destination.

While the dummy page for "a place to keep your boat" could be useful, I wonder if a sandbox for updates to existing topics could be just as useful. Plenty of existing articles could be extended for those traveling by personal boat, including (with some examples):

• Countries
  • Bahamas
  • British Virgin Islands
  • New Zealand
• Cities
  • Cape Town
  • Chicago
  • Puerto Vallarta
• Existing islands
  • Anegada in the BVI's
  • Grand Bahama in the Bahamas

As an American, I was thinking Puerto Vallarta, since this destination is moderately covered by WikiVoyage, discussed on other cruiser websites, and already covers many water based activities, including whale watching, diving, snorkeling, fishing and boat rental. The cons of PV as a sample are that it is rarely used as a port of entry and that all marinas are in one geographical area. I don't believe we need only one and it could be useful to include other sample pages for potential editors to test ideas on a destination they are more familiar with. We probably need to update this page with procedures for using a sandbox.

Iowajason (talk) 00:05, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

What is a destination - or an article

Wikivoyage:Cruising Expedition/Structure for cruising articles says "A destination is a place to leave your boat, such as an anchorage or a marina. A city may have several destinations for boaters which can be combined in an article, or split"

Here I suppose a "city" can mean also e.g. an island.

But what about the waterways? It is good to have destinations, but with a sailing boat I am at my destination as soon as the sails are up (as they say over here). Areas with common navigation hazards and sights should usually be described independently of any harbours. For the voyager coming by bus Finland or Finnmark is a destination, but for the mariner a similar destination may be the Baltic Sea (which is suggested for deletion) or the Coast of Finnmark. I think such areas should be described before describing too many harbours (cities, islands) in the area, and I think those descriptions would suite better in the destination framework than in the travel topic framework (as the jump from a travel topic to a specific destination in many cases would be arbitrary).

--LPfi (talk) 12:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

One possibility is to have a parallel geographical hierarch for bodies of water for the cruising articles, oceans>seas>bays>etc, but there is also the possibility of staying linked to the land based geographical hierarchy, as ones access is constrained by political boundaries. The larger bodies of water such as the Baltic sea and Caribbean sea are also legitimate regions for cruising, and rivers, lakes and other inland waterways are important destinations for cruisers.

In New Zealand, for example, the Hauraki gulf is a very popular cruising area, with several inhabited islands with harbours, towns etc, and also several uninhabited island, some with anchorages, others without, and some are closed to access without special permits. The Hauraki gulf would be part of North Island, which would be part of New Zealand, because you need to enter New Zealand to cruise there, but is is also part of the Pacific Ocean, which complicates the issue a bit. For cruising, New Zealand would be considered to be part of the Pacific Ocean, but then Australia would be part of both Pacific and Indian Oceans, just like Russia is part of both Europe and Asia. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:40, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Extensions for existing topics

As I commented under the "Dummy Article" topic, I suggest that extending the primary country and destination templates, provides the most value from Cruising Expedition.

For most WikiVoyage articles (focusing on Puerto Vallarta as my preferred example), I see these opportunities:

• "Get in" - "By boat" seems to consistently cover commercial water transport. A few options present themselves on how to extend the "Get in" division. First would be to add subsections to the "by boat" division and include options like Cruise Ships, Freighters, Ferries and Yacht (or other term for personal boat). A second option would be to add a subhead of "By yacht" (again, subject to wordsmithing) as a direct child of the "Get in" section, at a peer level to "By boat". This would allow existing "By boat" information to remain unedited while the content for cruisers was added to each article. Other editors can create other options for the "Get in" section.
• "Get around" - Could add a "By boat" or "By dinghy" section. The "By boat" section could cover water taxis, yachts and dinghies subsections. The part addressing dinghies could include sites, like hotels, public attractions, or city provided sites, that allow one to dock their dinghy ashore.
• "Do" - Sections within "Do" topic could be extended to provide additional information to those travelling by personal boat. Looking at my PV example, a few specific bullets in this area could be augmented with personal boat information. For instance:
  • Whale watching - Information I have as a prior visitor lets me know that a congregation of boats at a any spot in Banderas Bay between 9AM and 4PM means that the commercial providers have found a whale or several for their customers. Follow the crowd is good advice. I could augment that section with a second bullet point. If other visitors found the "ship to ship" VHF channel used to communicate such information (don't think there is one), it could be added in that bullet.
  • Snorkeling & SCUBA diving - Many WikiVoyage articles cover commercial providers of dive experiences and ignore a more DIY approach. Back to my PV example, the snorkeling section covers Los Arcos and could be extended to cover the specific protocols required to moor and dive at that highly regulated site.
• "Sleep" - As Peter mentioned, marinas and anchorages need to be covered somewhere. Options exist. One is to cover in the "Get in > By boat > By yacht" section, as most cruisers would head to the marina as part of their arrival. Another is to cover in this section, since most cruisers will sleep on their yacht. Either one could use the Wikipedia template of "Main Article" to link to a list of marinas and anchorages.
• "Go next" - Common cruising routes mean that there is a "next" destination many times. The coverage of waterways and, implicitly, "routes" was introduced by LPfi in another discussion on this page. How does a personal boat transit the Panama Canal? When a boater is transiting the U.S.'s Great Loop, the next stop after Chicago is typically Joliet. Without changing article structure, it seems a comment on common destinations after departing this place could inform those planning to travel by personal boat. Routeboxes could be added for some common routes, especially those that involve travelling along rivers, like an Amsterdam to Black Sea trip along Europe's major rivers.

Requesting comment. Ready to "Plunge in" without guidance.

Iowajason (talk) 01:00, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

This is a time where plunging in seems a good option. If there is no policy you get to create one. Of course it may not survive peer review, but if it doesn't, you at least get alternatives suggested and a chance to argue your point. This happened to me with diving articles and the final result works quite well. Good luck and I look forward to seeing the results. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:23, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

I think the suggestions in this section can be used without creating or altering any policy, as they fit our present framework. If we get these additions to most important articles in an area or a few, they would be useful and good examples to point to. We will probably stumble on destinations or regions were they fit less well, and either find other ways to incorporate them or need a new discussion at that point. It would be good to mention good examples and regions that have decent coverage for boaters on these pages, as one creates or stumbles over them. --LPfi (talk) 10:08, 21 July 2016 (UTC)