Wikivoyage talk:Region article template/Archive 2013-2018

Standard of 9 "Other destinations"

Hi, everyone. We seem to have adopted the standard of no more than 9 "Other destinations" in region articles that are not bottom-level regions, but I don't see that policy on the project page. If we agree on the policy, it should be made explicit, because we can hardly refer new users to mere customs. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:57, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's never really been a problem, has it? Powers ^(talk) 18:35, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, I wanted to point a user to such a policy yesterday, and that's why I came here and then found that there is no such policy typed up - or at least not here. So do you have any objection to making the policy explicit? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:38, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

I suppose not. Powers ^(talk) 22:11, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Please have a look at how I edited the text of the policy page and see whether you agree or disagree with it, and please tweak the wording at will. I don't think I clarified before that the reason this has come up is that loads of non-bottom-level regional articles about India have extremely long "Other destinations" lists. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:20, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks like a fairly straightforward change to me. Powers ^(talk) 03:08, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Placement of "Talk" section

Why is it that it's placed after "Understand" in this article template and after "Get around" in Wikivoyage:Country article template? That inconsistency seems strange and also makes it confusing to figure out where to put it in other templates where it's optional, such as Wikivoyage:Huge city article template. This just came up on the Delhi article. I think we should end the inconsistency in favor of one order or the other, and it doesn't matter much which. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:20, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd suggest making the "Talk" heading optional for the region template and removing it from the defaults since, at this point, most high-level regions have already been created, and the remaining regions are probably not going to have differences in language from the parent. Regarding placement (in the cases where the heading is needed), I don't have a preference but agree it should be consistent. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:45, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Isn't it already an optional section in this template? If not, I don't have a big problem with making it optional. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:44, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

The "Talk" heading is included in the skeletons used when creating new region articles: Wikivoyage:Quick region article template & Template:Region skeleton. If it is supposed to be optional then I'd suggest removing it from those, as well as from Wikivoyage:Region article template -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:51, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone object to this? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:33, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

There seemed to be unanimous support when this issue came up previously (#Talk), so I'd say go ahead and remove it. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:38, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I removed it from the quick region article template and the region skeleton, but I'm not sure I want to remove it from Wikivoyage:Region article template because I like the instructions:

==Talk==

If there are any language issues with the region that are different from the country as a whole, or the surrounding region, point them out here. Regional dialects of the national language, for example, are worth listing, as well as large local minority languages. Even local slang or sayings can be helpful to a first-time visitor. Consider linking to the phrasebook for the local language, if it's different from the country's language. If there really aren't any language issues, just leave this section out.

This sounds optional to me. But if we do let it remain in Wikivoyage:Region article template, we still have to harmonize the placement of the section with the standard placement in Wikivoyage:Country article template. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:20, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

The operative question would be whether we had a good reason for putting "Talk" after "Get around" in country articles, or if it's just a quirk of history. The talk page of the country article template isn't very helpful on that front. Powers ^(talk) 18:29, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

What's your view about the best placement for the section? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:59, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I couldn't say without knowing what the argument was for placing it below "Get around". Powers ^(talk) 22:20, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

It's possible that the people who made that decision might not be reading here anymore, but I'll try posting to Requests for comment and see if that rustles up any more interest in this thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:33, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Maj put it below "Get in" but didn't explain why in the edit summary. I think that if we standardise it would be better after "Understand", but I don't feel especially strongly about it. Nurg (talk) 07:38, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I think I agree, since "Talk" helps people understand something about a country or region and doesn't relate directly to getting around. But like you, I have no strong feeling on where to place the section; I'd just like a consensus to pick one spot or another. Either way, lots of article will eventually have to be edited accordingly, though it's hardly an urgent fix. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:01, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm tempted to suggest that ===Talk=== be a subsection of ==Understand==, as its importance tends to be variable at best. France will speak French, England will speak English, so it's almost Captain Obvious to the rescue to include it. It's useful in *some* regions, such as Flanders and Wallonia as Dutch/French split geographically in bilingual Belgium, but treating this as a standard, second-level section instead of something third-level and optional gets it put into regions where it's superfluous - there was a Thousand Islands#Talk before that article was moved to bottom (large rural area) level like a city or town, even though it mostly contained comments of questionable importance on regional dialect. K7L (talk) 04:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd agree that the importance of regional dialect is often superfluous. You will always get people claiming their regional way of speaking is so unique that it demands categorisation as a unique language. It does happen though... Western visitors will visit Shanghai without realising that there is another dialect going on around them.

Although useful to know that such dialects exist, I don't think there is any value for the casual visitor to Shanghai to learn Wu though. (Other Chinese don't see a need either)

I'd support making this an optional section though, and not a sub-section under 'Understand' that will confuse our general structure more. Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:04, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

This is now already an optional section in region-level articles but it is a default section in country-level articles, and I think that's right, because in countries where English is not the first language of most residents, it's important for potential visitors to be informed about how much English is spoken. I see the point of folding the section into "Understand," but I don't think it's terribly compelling and don't consider it worth the effort. However, we can discuss this more at Wikivoyage talk:Country article template after we've made a decision on where the section should be placed while it's (still) a separate section. I take it, you guys would approve of putting it right after "Understand" (providing it isn't folded into "Understand")? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:23, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I support this. Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Sure, that sounds reasonable. K7L (talk) 04:03, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It looks like we have a consensus of a small number of people in favor of moving the "Talk" section to right after "Understand" in the Wikivoyage:Country article template, to match its placement as an optional section in region and other articles. Does anyone object? I see no urgency in making the change, so I'll wait at least a couple of days to see if there's any opposition. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:28, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Moved accordingly, since after 2 weeks, no-one else commented. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:41, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Is 'Regions' subsection required?

There is a 'Regions' section at the top of the template, but if there is no need to link to further sub regions then is it actually required? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:07, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

It is not required: "If this region contains other regions, list them here with brief info about each. If not, leave this section out." -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:12, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, not sure how I missed that text the first time. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:40, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Rethinking region articles - request for feedback

In just over ten years Wikivoyage has developed a lot of great articles. However, with a few exceptions there seems to be a broad agreement that region articles are a category that have fared poorly (see also Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy#Weak regions - "why do our region guides suck?"). With the caveat that there are a few really good region articles, the fact that those good region articles are such a tiny, tiny minority on a wiki that has been around for more than a decade seems like a strong indicator that something isn't working. Personally, my experience of trying to use Wikivoyage travel guides to plan a long trip was a difficult one, with the poor region articles being one of the main culprits (see also User:Wrh2/Why Wikivoyage was not my primary travel planning tool). I had two primary issues with region articles:

1. In practice Wikivoyage just uses regions as a way to subdivide the geographic hierarchy, so most region articles are just skeletons with lists of cities or child regions without enough information to help a traveler differentiate between those cities & child regions.
2. The region article template is designed to present an overview of the region as a whole, but in ten years we haven't really figured out what an "overview" of a region's attractions, activities, etc means, and even longtime editors struggle to figure out what to include in a region's "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat" and "Drink" sections. The result is that in the vast majority of region articles today, these sections either contain a list of random individual business listings that are then tagged with {{movetocity}}, or else the sections are just empty.

In an effort to improve our region articles, and based on preliminary feedback from several Wikivoyage editors, here are two specific change proposals for the wider Wikivoyage community to consider that would make region articles 1) more useful for travel planning, and 2) easier to write:

1. Recommend 2-5 sentence descriptions for child regions, cities, and other destinations - In practice region articles are primarily used to organize the geographic hierarchy, so make that organizational structure the focus of the region article. Treat the entries in the "Cities", "Regions" and "Other destinations" sections similarly to listings in city articles, giving a 2-5 sentence description about the highlights of that destination and providing the reader enough detail to make a decision whether to click on the article and read more. In addition to benefiting readers, this change would make life easier for editors - for example, despite having lived on LA's Westside for ten years I'm not really sure how to write a "See" section for Westside (Los Angeles County) that isn't just a long, subjective list of attractions, but I can easily summarize some highlights of Marina del Rey and Beverly Hills into 2-5 sentence descriptions. Note that this proposal would require changing the Wikivoyage:One-liner listings policy.
2. Make the "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat", "Drink" and "Stay safe" headings in Wikivoyage:Region article template optional. While there are some exceptions, in the vast majority of cases we haven't really figured out what to do with sections where the goal is to provide an overview of the region as a whole. If we change the focus of the region article to its role in guiding users through the geographic hieararchy as outlined in #1, these "overview" sections could be made optional. Thus, if you're writing about a wine region like Napa Valley or the Finger Lakes and a "Drink" section makes sense, include it and write as much as you like, but for the majority of regions where it's less obvious what to include, the section would not be included in the article. This change would require removing "See", "Do", "Eat", "Drink" and "Stay safe" from Wikivoyage:Region article template, noting in Wikivoyage:Article templates/Sections that editors should add these sections to region articles when relevant, and updating Wikivoyage:Region guide status to reflect the template changes.

For some examples of what this proposed change would look like in practice, see:

• Central Coast (California)
• Santa Barbara County
• Thompson-Okanagan
• Okanagan (work in progress)

Note that nothing in the above proposal would stop someone from creating a region article like Bali (one of the rare examples of a good region), but it would mean that the default template would be simpler and the goal of most regions would change from "here is an overview of the entire region" to "here is an overview of the region's geographic hierarchy". A change to how we handle regions is obviously a big deal, so hopefully others can weigh in on whether they would like to see this change pursued, or if they have other ideas on how to improve upon the status quo. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:46, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I support your proposals and applaud your efforts. I have some other thoughts about what regional articles need, but more in the nature of missing content in "Understand" sections and such (I did some basic work on region articles for Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio and Central Italy last night, and User:ThunderingTyphoons! and I did some work on adding photos to Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the past few days). However, I think those issues should be discussed separately from your proposed structural and policy changes and should probably wait until this discussion comes to a resolution before we, perhaps, create a Region Articles Expedition. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:02, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I have yet to do more than skim through the proposed changes, which I will do, but pre-emptively I support any changes that would strengthen our region guides so long as they would not require any massive changes to old-style region guides that are currently in good shape (e.g. Gaspé Peninsula). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:26, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Support, this will cut out all of those pointless sections that say little more than "As with the rest of Turmezistan, this region bla bla bla...". Though I do think one role of the region articles should be to give an overall 'feel' for the region (is there a less nebulous way of describing this?) as a destination, not just what smaller destinations exist within its boundaries. The reason I say this is travellers can and often do decide to visit a region before they decide on a particular locale to stay or know the places they want to visit, so it is helpful to have all the relevant information, and something to hook people in, in one place, i.e. the region article. Photos and the descriptions we use for the 'listings' can go a long way toward conveying that, as can the 'understand' section. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 01:49, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I would say that's one of my strongest concerns. Without the clearly delineated sections of "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat", and "Drink", it shifts a very strong burden for explaining the region to the "Understand" section. To take the Central Coast example, the lede seems very perfunctory before launching into a long list of destinations. To me, that says "Here's the real content you were looking for; ignore the rest of this article." I don't know if I like the idea of turning regions into nothing more than directories.

I won't deny that writing a good region article can be a chore, but it seems like we could include better information about subregions and cities without sacrificing useful prose about a region's cuisines and activities. And even if we make "Buy", "Eat", and "Drink" highly optional, "See" and "Do" are critical; the reader needs to know what the highlight attractions are.

Powers ^(talk) 02:49, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

You are correct, 'see' and 'do' are essential. But the lead of any article can always be lengthened. I personally prefer leads that are 2 or 3 paragraphs precisely because there is room to give that hard-to-capture "general feel" --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 03:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Consider me an enthusiastic supporter of this proposal. I think this is a very pragmatic approach that understands how we treat most regions (as geographical units rather than destinations) while still allowing room to talk about regions as traveller destinations should it fit the region in question. Honestly, a lot of the stuff that currently goes into "See" and "Do" in region articles today could be easily folded in to the descriptions for the cities/other destinations on the page. PerryPlanet (talk) 03:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Support. I like the longer descriptions -- it gives a better flavour for what the subregion or destination is about, and the longer description can incorporate some of the highlights so it's easier to decide if I want (or don't want) to go to a destination. If the See, Do, Eat, Sleep & Drink sections aren't used, it definitely shifts the burden to the city/region descriptions or the Understand section or the lede, but I think that's doable. -Shaundd (talk) 06:43, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Support the proposals. Some of sections should definitely be optional. There may be better sections to include in regions instead which don't apply elsewhere. I can't think of any right now but I agree they need a separate structure to most other destination articles. Gizza ^roam 08:36, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Agree the state of regions are very poor and I also sometimes find it difficult what to put in the see, do, eat and sleep sections. Although is this that there is nothing to say or just there has been no effort to get regions from outline to usable. The proposal for 2-3 sentences for cities and other destinations is a good one. I am however not sure about making the other sections optional. Yes sometimes it is not possible to think of a unique food style for a region but I think if made optional it should be a proactive action to remove the section not a proactive move to add it. Not having the the section will not encourage people think about it. For example, for someone from the area of Leicestershire it would be obvious that curry and fish and chips are the things to eat, but it should still be stated for those readers who no nothing of the region. Also as a region has between 6 and 12 destinations it should be possible to extract out a few see and do listing, maybe order them by subject like at Anglesey#See. How about making listings for regions more image based like this experiment? Maybe more controversial how about a second mention on the region page of the best hotels and restaurants in the area. Orange_County_(California)#Eat maybe a little too far but you see the idea. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:46, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Support. Longer descriptions would allow readers to decide where they want to go. Some regions don't have any very particular food so no need to force an Eat paragraph in all regions I would say. By the way, I would love to know what proportion of our regions have a static map. Syced (talk) 08:47, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Good point by Traveler100 above: "Yes sometimes it is not possible to think of a unique food style for a region but I think if made optional it should be a proactive action to remove the section not a proactive move to add it. Not having the the section will not encourage people think about it." Maybe this is correct: That these sections are optional but that the default will be to include them in our templates. But I think there is also a very strong counter-argument, which is that in so many region articles, these sections are blank because no-one could think of what to put in them. I would support making them optional either on the basis of optional removal or optional addition in the templates, but let's keep in mind what most region articles actually look like when making this decision. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:08, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Good work on this proposal Ryan which I understand you've been putting quite a bit of thought into for a long time. You have my support on both counts. However, I don't think the main issue is not knowing what to write; it's duplication. If a destination has a really prominent landmark, should it be mentioned in each See section at every level of the hierarchy? That just does travellers a disservice and makes ours guides confusing and repetitive, especially if they are being printed and used together, or we ever progress the idea of PDF books. Regions should be giving users a taste of an area, and helping to direct them further down the hierarchy.

To give an example of my own, I recently split the Goldfields region of Victoria (state) into further subregions due to a large number of towns. However, I don't really know what can be said for the Eat section in Goldfields, as there's no real prominent food apart from the usual Australian selection. That's even more true for a lower level such as Loddon. So I do agree that some sections should be optional, but by default present in the new article template. James A ▪ talk 10:07, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I support the suggested changes and must say, I think I've been somewhat flexible with region guidelines for a long time. If we re-write policy or explanation pages, it might also be a good time to include some exceptions we use in practice; e.g. the structure used for underdeveloped regions like Surinamese Rainforest, which we treat like a lowest level region. Same for combining eat&drink sections or see&do sections where that makes sense.

Adding to what JamesA is talking about, I've been struggling in the past with some specific situations where the 7+2 rule works against travellers' interests, imho. This is a different discussion, but let's have it anyway. While I had wanted to let sleeping dogs lie, perhaps I should give the example of South Limburg. A few years ago I worked extensively on this region. After I asked for advise in the Pub, I stopped my efforts of expanding the article and creating entries for the many towns (there are still at least 6 that should have an article), out of fear that others would decide the region "needed" to be geographically sub-divided. I know that would be a disservice for travellers to this region, which is widely treated as a singular destination for several reasons. There's the limited size of the region and the fact that where-ever you are staying, you can get to any other "sight" in 30 minutes at most. There's also the fact that most people are not staying very long, but just want to pick a few places based on their interests (urban exploring, culture, hiking, nature), instead of based on area. I made a personal decision that in this case less information is better than divided information, and I would still rather delete a few towns than chop the article up. It's not the way it should be, though. It would make sense to (in selected cases) allow a region to hold more than 9 destinations, but with some other logical division. I think this will also make way more practical sense for many of our India regions. I honestly feel that trip planning is our Achilles' heel. Our breadcrumb and regions structure is a plain disaster when planning a trip to a larger region (say, a country). Combined with the lack of "highlights" sections and our historic dislike of "3 weeks in..." suggested itineraries - there you have it; the reason I love editing this travel guide, but almost never use it myself. JuliasTravels (talk) 13:01, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

At the risk of getting slightly off topic, 7 +/- 2 is a recommendation but is rarely a hard limit - see Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy#Dividing geographical units, which notes that long lists are an indicator that sub-division should be considered, but that if subdivision doesn't make sense then common sense should be used. California has ten sub-regions, and Contra Costa County has 21 cities listed; in both cases, creating sub-divisions just to meet an arbitrary limit wouldn't really make much sense. Our guidance on that subject may not be clear, so if you can update any relevant policy pages to make that fact clearer please do so. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:10, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I support Ryan's proposed changes, with the optional sections omitted from the default template. The template documentation description for optional sections should also cover sections that are already optional but useful for some regions, e.g. Talk is used in Catalonia and Scotland but can & should be skipped for most regions.

I also share Julia's concerns. I think our policy on what a region article should look like needs to be quite flexible, leaving most of the decisions on organisation to whoever knows the region and does the work.

There are related issues we might consider along with this. One is whether we need a separate tag for historical regions. Currently some, like Mughal Empire, are tagged as travel topics while others like Ferghana Valley are extra-hierarchical regions and Inca Highlands is an itinerary. That works, but there might be a better way. Pashley (talk) 14:15, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

When I first started I was honestly perplexed by the strictures on regions and region articles, of the requirements of how many were allowable, and how they are defined -- where flexibility might be introduced into the process - I support. JarrahTree (talk) 14:51, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I think this is basically a good idea and support it. Our region articles are on average far behind our country, city and park articles. This is, I believe, not surprising as people (in general) travel to countries and "places" rather than to regions per se and therefore don't edit the region articles (e.g. someone who just visited Paris may edit that article and possible the one for France and be unaware that we have an article about Ile de France even if they've taken a trip to Versailles too).

To address some of Powers’ concerns, how would it sound to put Understand right under the lede, above the destinations and subregions? In that way the reader could get an overview of the region first before moving on to the next article. Editors should of course have an option to add other headings as well if for instance there is some activity the region is particularly famous for. Actually, I have a crazy (?) suggestion; what do you all think about having Eat, Sleep etc. as optional subheadings under Understand?

As Ryan just mentioned, our current policy is not so strict about the 7 2 rule. "Common sense (and the traveller's viewpoint) should always apply, so if a region has more than 9 cities in it and there's no helpful way to divide it into subregions, don't split it. This applies especially for bottom level regions." ϒpsilon (talk) 16:28, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

If I may, why is everyone bolding the word "support"?

I don't like putting Understand first. We rightfully moved it back down in Country articles once we ditched the long quickbars because it reduced the navigational utility of our region pages. Also, it would tend to encourage the sort of perfunctory lede we see on the Central Coast article.

I agree with Ikan that removing standard sections from region articles should be an affirmative, consensus decision, rather than the default. And I still think every region needs at least a "See and Do" section in order to explain the highlights. (There may be an exception or two out there where literally the only reason to visit a region is for its cuisine, but I can't think of any off-hand.)

-- Powers ^(talk) 19:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I didn't say that. I said that that's a good argument, but that there's also a strong argument for making the headings optional and not part of the default region articles template: "Maybe this is correct: That these sections are optional but that the default will be to include them in our templates. But I think there is also a very strong counter-argument, which is that in so many region articles, these sections are blank because no-one could think of what to put in them." I'm OK with either decision, but if we continue to make these sections default sections, I believe many of them which are blank or really don't provide any useful information will and should be deleted, creating more work for us. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:27, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that the examples stated at the start prove the point that many regions have blank sections, not because there is nothing to put in them but that no one has put the time and effort in (yet) to add content. Changing the guideline may be a good idea but is not going to change the state of articles. --Traveler100 (talk) 21:34, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

We should have a Region Articles Expedition. But I do think that some of the blank sections are blank because people couldn't figure out what to put in them or simply didn't feel motivated to do so because they figured the content would be boring. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:56, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Two points:

1. I think there is unanimous agreement that information about sights and activities belongs in region articles, but there is a difference of opinion as to whether our current practice of using separate "See" and "Do" headings to organize that information works. My argument is that the city and child region descriptions are a more natural place to describe sights and activities, and that it is easier for editors to create descriptions of specific cities or sub-regions than to generate an overview of an entire region's sights and activities using separate "See" and "Do" sections.
2. To the point that people "haven't put the time in (yet)" to fill out these sections, I would argue that it's been ten years, so I think the problem is deeper. As noted in my original comments, I've been editing here longer than most and I'm not really sure what to put in Westside (Los Angeles County)#See that isn't just a bunch of individual listings. LtPowers has been working on Finger Lakes for as long as I can remember, yet the minimal content in that article's See and Do sections should arguably be moved to city articles if we follow our current guidance on regions. In those two specific instances, lack of attention from editors doesn't seem to be the problem.

With a few exceptions it seems that there is a broad consensus that overall our region articles are a disappointment. Given the quality of many city articles and the fact that it's been ten years, I don't think it's just a lack of editors that is the issue, thus the suggestion to revisit the way we approach region articles and align that more closely with actual practice, instead of sticking with a status quo that strives for an ideal that we don't seem to be making any significant progress towards reaching. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:59, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

While I agree with your analysis, the examples you mention are easily fixed when we make these sections optional. In an article that does receive attention from a user who knows the region, such sections would now be quickly removed. What strikes me as a bigger issue are the countless regions that we create for organisational reasons, but have no deeper knowledge of. For a random region in say India or China (to just name a few huge countries), I'd have no idea if deleting the "optional" sections is warranted. I don't really like the idea of adding wiki-text to the template, but would it be better to have the main optional headers visible in the edit-version but not showing on the page, as default? As a way of making the step of adding them smaller? JuliasTravels (talk) 22:15, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's not desirable. Instead of looking at Finger Lakes (which I haven't fleshed out because there's so much work still to do in the lower levels of the hierarchy, so attempting to summarize them is pointless), what about New York (state)? Specifically the See, Do and Eat sections? Aren't those at least as valuable to the traveler as more region-based summaries? Powers ^(talk) 20:57, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Aren't states and provinces (when there are a manageable number) special cases of region articles? I think it makes perfect sense to require an overview of things to eat in each US state, each Indian state, each Chinese province, each Italian traditional region (Tuscany, Umbria, Campania, etc.), each Mexican state and so forth. The upshot to me is that we need two different conceptions of regions: One which requires all these sections and another which doesn't. And it's possible that should be reflected in our default article templates. Let me bring up a comparison that might be useful. We have different templates for cities: Wikivoyage:Huge city article template, Wikivoyage:Big city article template and Wikivoyage:Small city article template. I don't think we should use "big" and "small" for regions because that's likely to cause too much confusion about area vs. population or importance, but why don't we think about the possibility of having a "Primary region" template that looks just like the current default region article template and a "Secondary region" template that's designed for smaller or less populous regions that might not have distinctive styles of food, drink, lodging, etc.? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:34, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

My first instinct is to support two region templates as a nice compromise, but my second is to wonder how we would decide when a "See" or "Eat" section was required for a region, as opposed to something someone would add when there was content worth including. Would it make sense to (for example) suggest when a region is complex enough that it has grandchild regions that it should probably use the "primary" template? -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:41, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a good rule of thumb, though there will be exceptions. For example, some Malaysian states may not have grandchild regions, but each state is distinctive enough that all of them should probably still use the "primary" template. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:48, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Having two region templates sounds reasonable to me. I'm OK with the idea that a region with grandchild regions should (but not always) use the "primary region" template, but I think there needs to be flexibility both ways. I agree with Ikan's point above, and there are several Canadian provinces that also don't have grandchild regions but should probably use the full template. On the other hand, if a state or province has four layers for some reason, I'm not sure a mid-tier region should be required to have the full template if it doesn't make sense or would create a lot of redundancy because each layer of the hierarchy says much the same thing. -Shaundd (talk) 06:20, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree that a mid-tier region shouldn't be required to have a full template. I think this will continue to be a judgment call, just like the differences between city templates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:49, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Reduced criteria for mid-tier regions sounds like a good idea. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:06, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I think it is a great idea to make most of the section headings under regions optional. The WP style hierarchy approach just doesn't work in practice.

I also feel that perhaps Region articles should rely on images more than text. For example a well designed sequence of showcase images for finding oneself around a region. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:50, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes the See section should be ordered by topic rather than location with images. Here is the start of an idea. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:40, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

How many images do you plan on putting in that "See" section? There's an awful lot of white space in the Haddon House listing, just in order to make it stay in a row with an image. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:15, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

• I would just say that I Strongly support these proposed changes. --Saqib (talk) 03:51, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Summary (16-November)

This discussion has garnered a lot of feedback (thanks to all who have participated!), so it seems useful to try to summarize where it stands:

1. Regarding the proposal to recommend 2-5 sentence descriptions for the cities and child regions within a region, there haven't been any objections raised. We should let the discussion continue, but at this time it appears that proposal is one that is heading towards implementation.
2. Regarding making "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat", "Drink" and "Stay safe" optional headings, while this isn't a vote, there seems to be fairly robust support for change (by my count 14 individuals have expressed a desire to implement this change and two have expressed concerns). Obviously we want to try to find a solution that works for everyone, and in that effort Ikan has suggested a "primary" and "secondary" region template. If I'm understanding correctly, the "primary" template would basically be our existing region template, while the "secondary" template would be the proposed update that does not include the optional headings by default. The tentative guideline for identifying "primary" vs "secondary" regions would be whether or not the region has grandchild regions - example: California (primary) → Central Coast (California) (secondary) → Monterey County (secondary) - but the expectation is that common sense would play a larger role in determining region type than any rule of thumb.

Changing how regions are handled is a substantial change so ideally we will find something that everyone can accept. I would think that for a change this large that two weeks is probably a minimum time to let this discussion continue, so hopefully additional individuals can provide feedback and we can make an effort to find a solution that works for everyone. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:29, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

That all sounds right to me. While I will not oppose such a model for the sake of consensus, I'm not a great fan of the primary/secondary model. If I'm understanding it correctly, it's too rigid, with the primary template requiring all subheadings, with the secondary template only requiring the mandatory ones. I'd prefer a unified region template whereby select headings (potentially See/Do, but definitely Buy/Eat/Drink/etc) are optional but included by default in the template. Then we can cull empty headings on a case-by-case basis, with guidelines stating that larger regions guides with child regions generally should keep all the subheadings. However, like I said, I won't oppose the primary/secondary model if that's what's needed to find a consensus. James A ▪ talk 03:45, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'd prefer a single template as well, but if two templates helps to address concerns raised then it seems like an acceptable compromise. If we did use a single template then further discussion is probably needed on whether the optional headings would be included by default - I was assuming that they would not be, and others seem to be assuming they would be. My concern with including them by default is that people will then be afraid to remove them, which would somewhat defeat the purpose since it wouldn't significantly change the status quo of our current army of skeleton regions with "overview" headings that no one is quite sure what content to populate with. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:52, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think that would solve the perceived problem. If no one's sure what content to populate it with -- that is, if it's clear there's not much to say about the region as a whole -- then the heading can be removed. I just don't want us to get into a paradigm where editors don't even stop to think about whether those sections need to be filled or not. The headings are an invaluable prompt for such consideration. Powers ^(talk) 18:31, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

While I understand what you're saying and agree that the headings prompt consideration, I also share Ryan's expectation that in practice, having the headers there by default will result in leaving the situation largely unchanged. I'm not sure the question should only be whether "it's clear there's not much to say about the region as a whole". I thought that through this change, we were also making a choice to leave out the headers for regions where it's unlikely someone will fill them soon. For many of the large regions in China or India, I imagine there is something to say. It's just that leaving all the headers in will in practice mean having very empty articles for -most likely- a long time. Is there any other way we can prompt consideration? JuliasTravels (talk) 22:05, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Given enough time, I'd say there probably are sufficient things to fill every heading in every single region article we have, it is just that when someone visits Barcelona for a few days they have generally little to say about Catalonia as a whole. We need to recognize that contributors are generally enthused in writing about cities and countries, and much less so the regions in between them.

I think this flexibility to include headings is a good idea, and I am someone making efforts to fill in regional information for South Korea and Australia presently. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:23, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

To reply specifically to JuliasTravels's point: I think we're in agreement about "large regions in China or India" if by that, you mean subdivisions of Indian states and Chinese provinces. However, I would not countenance removing all of these subheadings from first-order subdivisions of those two countries. To take one example, in general, each Indian state and Chinese province has its own cuisine, and all are notable. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:30, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

My point was rather that we need to make clear which problem we are trying to solve. Is it the issue of empty articles for regions where there's simply not much to say (which I imagine is only a small percentage) or is it the issue that region articles in general (so thousands of them) are empty because there might be something to say about them (by someone who knows the region well), but no-one here can or wants to now. To me, the first issue isn't really much of an issue at all; I've always considered policy and practice to be flexible enough for common sense, and I've incidentally changed and deleted headers in all kinds of articles if I know them to be irrelevant for that particular destination. I think, it's the second issue that makes our website look bad, and we need an (intermediate) solution for the big pile of empty region articles. JuliasTravels (talk) 10:43, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Are we not looking at this the wrong way? Most regions you can fill the sections with something but having does this for a few interim regions it is a lot of effort and understand why it is not done often enough. So if there is nothing to say on a region or no one want to put the time in to say something, then remove the page. Move the city articles up the hierarchy until there is a region with content. Now keep the limit of 9 articles to the main cities list but have a new section called something like Further Destinations or Additional Destinations. Here list the small settlements and outline city articles, but list maybe 4 or 5 per line and organize by the removed regions.--Traveler100 (talk) 07:44, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Hold on, I really don't like the idea of removing structure (either article or hierarchy) that may be needed in the future just because we haven't gotten to it yet. Wikipedia has a principle: Wikipedia:There is no deadline. Just because something isn't quite ready yet isn't a reason to avoid or undo the establishment of a structure for future contributions. If the problem that Ryan was trying to solve is that the region articles aren't useful enough, then removing sections and removing region articles doesn't do much to fix that. The part of his proposal that addresses that problem is expanding the sub-element descriptions so that the reader has some guidance. If the problem being solved, though, is supposed to be simply the fact that some sections are empty, I have to ask what's the big deal. There is no deadline, and unless we've actively determined that there's nothing to say on a particular topic for a particular region, why remove the structure? Powers ^(talk) 15:25, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd also be concerned about removing region pages just because there isn't sufficient information. I suspect it would result in many of those regions never being created and the parent regions having long lists.

As to the issue of empty sections, WP and WV aren't the same. WP doesn't have standard article templates so it isn't always obvious when an article is incomplete, whereas our use of standard sections makes it look like we're missing information. I definitely think readers could equate incomplete with unreliable, and that's a problem. With Ryan's proposal a lot more information is included in subregion/destination descriptions, the Understand section and the intro -- if these expanded sections can competently cover off the main attractions, specific cuisine, etc. for a region then it makes sense (in my mind) to remove the See, Do, Eat (etc) subheaders (i) to reduce redundancy, and (ii) so we don't have a bunch of blank or marginally filled sections that potentially make our site look unreliable.

Another way I find of looking at it is to think back to the old LP paper guides. Each top level region had its own chapter with multi-paragraph introduction, highlights box and map. Those top-level regions were sometimes broken into smaller subregions to make the larger region more comprehensible (or I'm assuming that's why). The subregions were called out with a different style heading, but the intro was only one or two paragraphs and there was no highlights box. I think there's a great deal of sense in that. My perception is a lot of our mid-tier regions are creations we've made to help the reader navigate the larger province/state/cultural/traditional region. As such, I think it makes more sense to focus subregion guides on the destinations rather than treat the subregion as being equal to the province/state/cultural/traditional region. -Shaundd (talk) 18:09, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

This is a wiki! We want incomplete guides to look incomplete. Incomplete guides that look complete don't get edited. Powers ^(talk) 18:13, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess that's one of the tensions with using a wiki to provide a service/product. Wiki authors are attracted to incomplete looking guides; the people relying on our guides for advice want something that is reliable (and that includes looking complete and reliable). I don't have an answer for that one, other than waving my magic wand and hoping we get more authors! :-) -Shaundd (talk) 18:21, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

In more seriousness, what I was trying to get at in my post is what is "complete" and should it be different for some (say, mid-tier) regions? Does Thompson-Okanagan, for example, really need as much detail as its parent (BC) and, more specifically, does it really need a bunch of detail about wineries when it will also be covered in a child region (Okanagan) and its parent region (BC). My position is no (provided it is covered in the region/city description or Understand), and so the guide would be complete without all of the extra sub-headings. -Shaundd (talk) 18:29, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To clarify the intent of this proposal, as stated in the initial comment in this thread, I don't think the main problem with region articles is lack of attention from editors leading to incomplete region articles, and I'm not suggesting we remove headings just to make articles "look complete". Instead, I think the problem is that we've structured the region template with sections that ask editors to describe the sights/activities/food of a region like Desert (California) in a way that doesn't just involve creating a list of attractions that duplicates content in lower-level articles. Shaundd summarized the goal of the proposal well, but to reiterate, our region articles would still include relevant information about sights, activities, etc, but that information would primarily be contained in the "Cities", "Regions" and "Understand" section. Thus in Desert (California) editors would be adding descriptions that mentioned highlights in Barstow or Death Valley, which is a more logical way to cover that information than a "See" or "Eat" section for the entire region. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:42, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessarily more logical to do it that way. I'm certainly in favor of adding more information to the sub-element listings (Cities/ODs or Subregions), but I don't see how you could comprehensively cover a region's broad attributes solely with a location-based approach -- and especially so not in just 3-5 sentences each. Powers ^(talk) 00:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, that depends on the region. Sure, sometimes you have a region where describing the individual cities and towns alone isn't enough--hence a case where you include See, Do, Eat, etc. But I think more often than not our region pages are more like this. I think a location-based approach like Ryan is proposing would work just fine there. PerryPlanet (talk) 02:32, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Possible ways to add content to intermediate regions (have been looking into this). For See and Do summaries what is in some of the city articles by subject such as Anglesey#See #Do. For Eat, Drink and Sleep, advice on which cities have the best or list a few highlights such as Inland Cities (Orange County)#Eat #Drink #Sleep.

I think Inland Cities (Orange County)#Sleep is a good example of an optional section that could be added by someone who has a useful overview to include - note that "Sleep" is already an optional heading for regions, so in that particular example nothing changes from how we do things today. I think Anglesey#See is actually sort of an example of the problem of these "overview" sections since it seems like a haphazard list of attractions and business (including a photographer?), which isn't really what those sections are meant to contain. I think Bali#See is a better example of what a region's "See" section should look like, but again, if someone is knowledgeable enough to write a section like that for a region they are welcome to add an optional "See" section and do so, we just wouldn't require it by default since that information can be more easily captured in the city and region descriptions, or in the "Understand" section for broad generalities. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:52, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Ryan. To me -- and apologies in advance because I'm not meaning to rubbish Traveler100's hard work even though it probably sounds very critical -- Anglesey highlights the weakness of our current approach to regions. I know nothing about Anglesey and after reading through the guide (usable status), I still don't know how to approach a visit to the region. I've learned the names of towns and villages and I know there are some historical buildings, beautiful beaches, parks and hiking trails, but there isn't enough information for me to really differentiate the destinations or what I should be excited about and thus plan my trip around. Some of this is probably related to the way I use a travel guide, but I do think applying the structure proposed by Ryan would make Anglesey (and many of our regions, including ones I've written) more useful. -Shaundd (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

[unindent] I think there are various possible good outcomes of this discussion, but there is one that is not good: No change. No change means that a slew of region articles continue to be useless for readers and travelers. I hope we don't lose sight of that and keep it in mind while thrashing out precisely what should change and in which types of articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Not sure if mentioned already, but sites such as Lonely Planet have a more visually engaging, if somewhat information poor, way of presenting regions: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/indonesia/bali Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:25, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

They aren't able to link to Commons, though, which is an advantage we have here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:29, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Summary (21-November)

In an effort to move this discussion to a conclusion, here is where things seem to stand:

1. There is sufficient support to move forward with the proposal to recommend 2-5 sentence descriptions for the cities and child regions within a region.
2. There is sufficient support to make the "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat", "Drink" and "Stay safe" headings for a region article optional, although it is unclear if they should continue to be a part of the default region article template or not.

Since the main sticking point seems to be when when to include these headings and when to leave them out, our options would seem to be the following:

1. Include the headings in the default template, but note that they are optional. Based on the fact that there seems be a consensus to allow the headings to become optional, this would be the default option if there isn't agreement on an alternative.
2. Exclude the headings from the default template, but note that they should be re-added when relevant.
3. Create two region article templates, similar to how we handle WV:Small city article template vs WV:Big city article template. The "primary region article template" would include the optional headings by default, while the "secondary region article template" would exclude them by default. The proposed rule of thumb for primary vs. secondary would be whether or not the region contains grandchild regions - example: California (primary) → Central Coast (California) (secondary) → Monterey County (secondary) - but the expectation is that common sense would play a larger role in determining region type than any rule of thumb.

After reading everyone's feedback, I've changed my original opinion and would be most in favor of option #3. With that option we would still essentially have a single region article template, but having an "optional headings included" and an "optional headings excluded" view of that template should hopefully address concerns about the fact that the optional headings are more likely to be useful in high level region articles like Canadian provinces or Indian states, while still ensuring that they are generally excluded from regions at the bottom of the hierarchy where they are less valuable. Using this same approach of having different templates with optional headings sometimes excluded by default has worked well for city articles and would seem to be a useful model to follow for regions.

As an aside, many thanks to everyone who has commented on this thread. In general proposals for significant changes to Wikivoyage tend to be hopelessly convoluted and frustrating discussions that result in nothing ever getting done, but in this case people seem to be open to considering a change to a longstanding site practice, and the discussion has been civil while productively raising concerns and alternatives. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:51, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Of those three, I think option #3 would be my preferential choice as well; it lays out what to do and what we would expect in fairly clear terms. While I could live with the other two options, I think option #1 would lend itself to slow change since the sections would still be included by default in regions where they would never be filled, and I could see some confusion arising from new/future users under option #2 in terms of when these sections are relevant. #3 seems like a happy compromise in that it clearly illustrates both approaches and would (presumably) demonstrate the benefits of both and when to use them. PerryPlanet (talk) 20:42, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the summary. Ryan. All things considered, I also agree option 3 is the best one to address most of the concerns raised. Just for the record, I agree with the concept of "no deadlines". In a city article, empty headers actually give a fairly honest view of how "usable" an article is. I just don't think the same is true for (lower level) region articles. I feel the empty region articles (sometimes 3 layers deep) give potential users the impression that Wikivoyage coverage for a certain country or state is quite poor, when in reality the coverage in terms of destination articles (city's/parks/diving areas) is sometimes better than any printed guide. One important difference between Wikipedia's "there is no deadline"-approach and ours, is that Wikipedia does not use empty templates to start with. The fact that many articles in the same categories have more or less the same layout there, is the result of regulars structuring information when it becomes too much for one paragraph to hold. The proposal to make headers optional for part of the regions brings us in a similar position, but with the added value of having a ready to use structure of sections available whenever it makes sense. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid I still strongly disagree with allowing a template to exclude subheadings -- ESPECIALLY See and Do. In my opinion, See and Do (or "See and Do" together if necessary) are essential in virtually every region guide. And even for the other sections, I'm afraid I just don't see the harm in retaining them by default and only excluding when there's a positive consensus that they are unnecessary. I think, in a wiki, the illusion of completion is a much greater risk than the illusion of incompletion. And I think we should assume there is something to say about a region's cuisine or nightlife or shopping options unless we have evidence to the contrary. Powers ^(talk) 03:04, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I had a feeling you'd object. But there are so many region articles in which it's very difficult to name or describe any sights or say anything much about the food and drink that shouldn't already be either in the descriptions of cities in the region (and restricted to them as peculiar to individual cities, not the entire region) or more generally applied to the entire state, for example (in cases in which we're talking about Southwestern Nebraska or what have you). Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Should that be the case, then it should be simple to come to a consensus to remove the irrelevant sections. Powers ^(talk) 21:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary, that doesn't sound like a simple matter at all. If consensus has to be sought prior to removing sections on any region article, how many people are likely to get involved in a discussion about some place like (hypothetically) Southwestern Nebraska? Not every region page has lots of eyes on it; in fact, many don't. This is an area where I would want to encourage people to plunge forward, not set up a hurdle for them. PerryPlanet (talk) 22:19, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

A hurdle to what? Removing section headers? I'm afraid I just don't see the urgency. If a region article is up for a starnom, then the issue of empty sections becomes relevant, and at that point there'll be plenty of people to participate in a discussion. Before that, if no consensus can be formed, what's the harm?

And I should point out that consensus doesn't require a large discussion. Lack of objection to a proposal constitutes consensus, as long as interested parties have had a fair chance to comment.

-- Powers ^(talk) 00:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm foreseeing someone proposing the Secondary Region Template for a bunch of articles, you objecting on a global basis because you object to the template, and a consensus thereby never forming in favor of the new template in any article. Can you reassure us about this as a likely outcome if a proposal to change the template is required for each individual region article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:25, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Hold up, hold up, let's assume good faith here. I may disagree with LtPowers on this one, but I certainly don't think he's that petty. PerryPlanet (talk) 00:37, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not assuming bad faith. I think that Powers has good reasons to want to maintain the full region template for every region, so if he were to oppose the removal of empty section headings in every case, it would be for a principled reason. Yet I would still like the reassurance I asked for above. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Why should it take a starnom to draw people to a discussion as to whether or not to remove section headers? Also, I want to point out that our own consensus policy clearly says "Consensus is not created without participation." I don't think lack of objection alone really constitutes "consensus" under that framework. PerryPlanet (talk) 00:32, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

While I think it's healthy to discuss differences of opinion and to try to find common ground, at this point there does not seem to be a solution that works for everyone, and while it's not unanimous, based on the opinions expressed in this thread we seem to have a clear consensus for allowing the region "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat", "Drink" and "Stay safe" section headings to become optional. Once that change is implemented, if someone objects to an optional heading being removed from an article then that would be a basis for a discussion (just as we do today), but if we have agreement that these headings can be optional then no discussion would be required before an editor chooses to remove them. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm fine any with any of the three options as long as there is some guidance to when See, Do, Eat & Drink need/don't need to be completed. We've already created many region articles in the project, so I'd guess a lot of the work will be addressing how to fix existing regions rather than creating new ones. I think #3 will probably provide the most clarity, but I'm not too fussed one way or the other. -Shaundd (talk) 04:56, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I would have to disagree. #3 would be rather confusing since there is no criteria whatsoever for a 'full region template' and a 'partial region template'. It just comes down to 'common sense', which doesn't mean a lot since typically you would have to start filling in a region article before you know for sure if those sections are needed or not.

I would prefer option #2 , since it would be a clear communication as to what a region article should be at a minimum. Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I have some counterpoints to your argument. First, has the type of city template used for articles been tremendously controversial and confusing? Hasn't the selection of the small, big or huge city template been mostly a matter of "common sense", except in cases in which districting needed discussion? Second, don't you think everyone would agree easily that the following should get the "primary region template"?

US states; Canadian provinces; Australian states; nations (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) of the UK; traditional regions of France, Italy and Spain; Chinese provinces; Indian states; South African provinces; the North and South Islands of New Zealand.

I think that we should build in a policy of when in doubt, choose the "primary region template". The fact, for example, that not every Mexican state has a good region article doesn't mean that it doesn't merit a primary region template. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:47, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I tried reading the proposal again between 'primary' and 'secondary' regions. I'm wondering, are there really that many potential 'Primary' regions still left to create?

If there are not many left, then wouldn't it be confusing to provide the option to create one? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

No, because at some future point, there may be a decision to change the regions of a country - for example, when provinces are shifted or a new one is created. But what you really point out is that the primary region structure would require no change, so all that we're talking about is changing regions that are pretty indisputably secondary to the secondary region template. And again, when in doubt, we shouldn't change. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:34, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Just to explain my thinking on why I said "I think #3 will provide the most clarity", it's because I feel two templates provide more opportunity to explain why one would be used over the other. Info like Ikan's list of regions above that should get the "primary region" template or Ryan's proposed rule of thumb (re grandchild regions) can be included in the preamble/description at the top of the template. I think it would be harder to get that level of description into options 1 and 2. -Shaundd (talk) 04:54, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Ryan's summary seems fair to me. I think LtPowers concerns are not unjustified in principle, but some of the underlying assumptions seem flawed:

1. ) The assumption that all the empty region articles do no harm. I really think they do. As I said before, users who browse through our country breadcrumb navigation (sometimes through 3 layers of semi-empty regions) might very easily gain the impression that our coverage for that country is poor, when in fact our destination coverage (cities, parks, dive sites) is better than any printed guide.
2. ) The assumption that having empty headers somehow encourages editors to fill them up, or that not having them might inhibit expansion. I'm not sure this is the case at all. For me personally, the giant empty region pile is off-putting, if anything. More importantly, Wikipedia never used the empty headers and it seems to fill up just fine, and we have plenty of high-profile article examples where (almost)-empty headers remained almost untouched for many years. (Just think of all the empty See sections in our country articles).
3. ) The assumption that not having these sections gives a harmful illusion of completeness. I own a large pile of printed travel guides, and with a few exceptions, I consider most of them proper and easy to use guides. None of them use the level of detail we have. While there's always something more to be said, it's perfectly possible to write a good guide for a state or country without having sleep and do sections for all lower level regions. In fact, especially for smaller countries or regions, we see loads of double information when certain sections are filled out. While I'd be fine with requiring a region to have all sections filled for star-level, and while I also agree that primary regions typically need those sections to be good guides, missing sections in lower level regions do not necessarily mean a guide is incomplete.

As for the method of implementation: I believe #3 is best suited, but I can live with the other options. I agree seeking consensus beforehand is not a good idea and also not needed in this current consensus to make sections optional. I think Shaundd might be right that having the distinction, like we also have for cities, might actually make it more clear what the choices are and why. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:41, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Great points, JuliasTravels. I find it hard not to agree with all of them. I especially like your observation that having a bunch of empty sections in a guide for Southwestern Nebraska or some-such lower-level region can be offputting for the editor as well as the reader. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Can we agree on a few axioms for context?

1. Wikivoyage is not Wikipedia. The methods and tropes involved in writing a good encyclopedia article are entirely different from those involved in writing a good travel guide.
2. Wikivoyage is a wiki, and a functional public wiki requires cues that encourage readers to become editors, and for existing editors to continue.
3. Taking incremental, uncontroversial steps and examining their results before proceeding to further changes is usually the best way to make changes to operational procedures.

Can we agree on these? -- Powers ^(talk) 15:43, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree that taking the smallest possible steps is usually the best way to change things. Instead, in situations where glaring problems exist, it may be better to take momentum that comes from the time we've taken to have a discussion in order to overhaul things and really make a difference. I'm also not convinced that agreeing on a series of axioms would help in dealing with the specific issue(s) we've been spending time discussing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

So, off-wiki stuff has kept me from weighing in so I will try and raise a couple of points in no particular order:

• Regions are by far the worst offenders when it comes to outline vs guide proportion; Districts are the best in that statistic. Make of that what you want
• It may be that some regions were subdivided wholly or in part because of the 7+/-2 rule. de-WV chose to throw out that rule (with imho not all that good results), but they still subdivide regions to a sometimes even more ridiculous degree than we do
• Our coverage of groups of rural places in general is poor. Whether this is do to an urban bias of our editors or of our processes, I don't know
• IIRC in some isolated cases like Thousand Islands things that have previously been a "region" were converted to a "city"
• I think some articles like Eastern County X don't have good things to fill into a "eat" section, whereas others (like Franconia) do.
• The sleep section is the most difficult to fill out for a region, no matter where it sits in the hierarchy. What is there to say about accommodation in New York state that's not WV:obvious yet still true for the entire region?
• In isolated cases there may be stuff to say for sleep but none for eat (e.g. accommodation in rural Antartica tends to be sparse)

I think my main point is this: We do a poor job at covering many (though not all) rural places, while our coverage of cities is really good. Generally speaking bigger cities are covered really well and some exceptionally so. Another thing is: No debate about how to deal with marginal outlines (i.e. outline articles that have little more than the lede and a template) is helped by saying "but if we nominate an article for star status..." There is also the issue of region articles not being ineligible for status promotion due to quirks in their child regions. But I don't want to raise that issue again. Overall I am thankful we are having this debate and I hope that we have any outcome that differs from the status quo, as bare bones templates about Easter County X and other places are an embarrassment for the wiki and may very well keep us from drawing more editors... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

In regards to the empty sections looking ugly or off-putting, I know that when there are empty sections on Wikipedia, there is usually a template saying something like "This section is empty. Please expand!". Make of that what you will. I think this point is more of a wiki thing than an encyclopedia thing and is still relevant for a travel wiki. I personally don't like the look of empty sections without at least something in them.

There seem to be two types of empty sections in Wikivoyage. Sometimes the section is clearly useful but happens to be empty because nobody has added any information yet. At other times the section will never contain anything useful for a traveller. The former is found everywhere while the latter is mainly confined to region articles, and is why these sections should become optional. Gizza ^(roam) 11:22, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Something I haven't yet said but I think is significant is that, regardless of what happens, this proposal has awoken an interest in our region articles that I've never experienced before, and I hope this is true of others as well. For me, region pages have always been the tedious extraneous pages that never felt inviting to contribute to and instead were mainly just a dumping ground for content that didn't easily fit into any specific city article. As JuliasTravels suggested above, an empty "See" section never felt like an invitation to add content, but rather a massive undertaking that never seemed worth the time. It can be hard enough to summarize a huge city's attractions into a nice, pleasing paragraph; when you're dealing with a region that might contain cities, suburbs, towns, rural areas and wilderness — in short, a huge variety of settings with very different characteristics and types of attractions — it can seem nearly impossible to come up with a meaningful way of summarizing all that in a way that isn't just a list of the most popular attractions in the region. Not only does that fail to be in any way comprehensive, but they're awkward to put together because you wind up essentially just copying content from the lower level articles, which seems antithetical to the spirit of travel writing on Wikivoyage; after all, this is a place where we avoid using the same pagebanner for more than one article.

On this website (and Wikitravel before it), I'm the kind of content creator who tends to migrate from one set of guides to another (and back again) as it strikes my fancy, going through brief but intense periods of content generation for that relatively short period of time that doing so holds my interest. And in nearly a decade of doing so, I can't think of a single instance when a region guide held my attention for one of those periods. A passing contribution here or there, sure, but never an instance where I really sat down and tried to build an excellent region guide. And until this discussion, it never occurred to me that maybe the reason why that had never happened was because what these empty region guides have always asked of me was unreasonable.

tldr: contributing to region guides has never been fun, engaging, or rewarding. Ryan's proposal gives me a new hope that all of that will soon change. PerryPlanet (talk) 19:18, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I can understand being reluctant to copy content from subarticles for use in "See" and "Do" sections, but I'm not clear on how Ryan's proposal solves that problem. The whole idea is that it will make region articles easier to create because one can just take information from each subarticle for use in the corresponding expanded listings. One is still just copying content. Powers ^(talk) 02:10, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

My experience has been similar to PerryPlanet's - region articles have never been something that I was really comfortable with, and as a result I've added very little content to those articles. Summarizing highlights of city articles is something that I find much easier to do, and since proposing this change I've been going through the Central Coast (California) region and contributing more to region articles than I probably have in my past ten years on this site. Everyone's experience will obviously differ, but I find it much simpler (and more interesting) to expand content within a section like Monterey County#Cities than I ever did with a similar "See" or "Do" section where I struggled to figure out what information was appropriate. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:25, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Summary (28-November)

Here's the latest attempt to capture the status of this discussion:

• As noted previously, we seem to have unanimous consensus for allowing longer sub-region/city/other destination descriptions, so I've updated Wikivoyage:One-liner listings (Special:Diff/2887761/2896918) accordingly.
• Also noted previously, while not unanimous there is a clear consensus for allowing the "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat", "Drink" and "Stay safe" sections to become optional, so I've updated Wikivoyage:Region article template (Special:Diff/2730524/2896924) and Wikivoyage:Article templates/Sections‎ (Special:Diff/2835702/2896927) accordingly.
• My reading of #Summary (21-November) is that, while option #3 seemed to garner majority support, there weren't enough people commenting, and there was enough disagreement, that we don't have a consensus at this point for changing the headings present in the default region template, or for introducing a two-tiered "primary" and "secondary" region template.

Feedback and tweaks to the wording used in the policy page updates would be appreciated. Ideally, as people begin making updates to regional articles based on the changes from this discussion we will hopefully gain more clarity on whether or not the default template needs to change or not. Also, there is obviously still some disagreement about making headings optional, so that discussion should continue, although given the fact that there was very strong support for making a change and this discussion has continued for more than two weeks it should hopefully not be controversial that I've plunged forward and updated policy pages based on the original proposal. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:50, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I do not understand why you and others continue to push forward with the drastic step of making those content sections optional by default instead of making the very simple compromise of requiring consensus to make the the sections optional. No one has attempted to address my concerns regarding the negative effects of this major change, beyond expressing doubt that they'll occur. Perhaps we should set up some metrics to potentially measure the effect? That would be a lot easier with a smaller change.

I'm afraid I don't approve of the change to the one-liner listings policy. One-liner listings must remain "short and sweet". Your proposal was to use longer descriptions for immediate subregions and for cities and other destinations in bottom-level regions. In my mind, those are no longer one-liner listings. Changing the definition of one-liner listings and making the previous definition the exception, as you did, is misleading and puts too much focus on the region-article format for listings. I would prefer to call the expanded listings something else. They're not one-liners anymore.

-- Powers ^(talk) 18:10, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I just tried applying some of the new template principles for Shropshire, and I think it looks much better already. Note that we do keep content such as 'Talk', so it is still keeping some optional sections where it makes sense. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:05, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

[Unindent] Andrewssi2, shouldn't there still be a "Go next" section in that article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:04, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Without the changes to the one-liner listings policy, the change in lower-level region articles that we've taken the time to discuss over the last couple of weeks and more wouldn't happen at all, so I approve of the changes. However, Powers is right: A 5-sentence listing is no one-liner. Should the policy be retitled "brief listings" or something? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:10, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

No, we still use one-liner listings in many other places; this is just one singular exception to the usual format. We should keep the previous policy at Wikivoyage:One-liner listings and either expand the existing exception for region articles or create a new "brief listings" policy.

I'm afraid I disagree that Shropshire is in a good state. There is absolutely nothing in the article about accommodations or activities -- not even in the city listings, which are far too short if we're going to follow new region guidelines.

-- Powers ^(talk) 23:54, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

My feeling is that at the country level, descriptions should normally be no more than a couple of sentences or so, but you'll note, for example, that not all of the descriptions in United States of America#Regions are limited to a single sentence. I'm not sure what's sacred about a single sentence w/o period, anyway. The more general point is, don't make your writing more verbose than is necessary for the purpose of summarizing a place. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:01, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

As I said, though, we still use one-liner listings in many other places, not just for describing places. I agree that the descriptions you point out in the USA article are not a single sentence; they fall under the already-existing exception I mentioned. But you'll note that the listings in the same article for "Cities" and "Other destinations" do comport with our one-liner listing format, and it's that type of listing (as well as listings of non-places) that we need to preserve. The changes Ryan made to the policy reverse what's the exception and what's the rule. Powers ^(talk) 00:41, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

When I updated the policy I couldn't think of any place on the site where one-line listings would still be recommended, except for "Cities" and "Other destinations" in country articles and high-level regions, so I made the "phrase with no full stop" the exception rather than the rule. If there are other locations I've overlooked I apologize, but if that guidance really does apply to just those two locations then I'm not sure it makes sense to call it out as if it was the default. On a related note, I agree with Ikan that WV:One-liner listings is a misleading name for that policy page, and given its limited scope we might want to consider merging that advice into more relevant policy pages rather than having a standalone policy page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:52, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

"Go next" is supposed to use 1-liner listings, too, but I can't think of any sections other than "Cities", "Other destinations" and "Go next" where that's been expected or required. Are "Regions" supposed to be summarized in a single phrase, too, in articles for continents, countries and large regions? Powers, which other sections use 1-liner listings? Did I miss any? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:06, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

"Go next" is supposed to use descriptions that are less than a sentence long??? That section really needs sufficient detail to describe why a traveler would want to click on the article to learn more, and even if one policy page calls for super-short descriptions, in practice the descriptions are typically 2-3 sentences - just grabbing a handful of star articles, check San Francisco#Go next, Chicago#Go next and Bali#Go next, all of which use 2-3 sentence descriptions. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I just checked article templates, and there is no requirement to use a 1-liner listing in "Go next"; the instructions are to "Provide a brief description", not a 1-line description. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:23, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

So it's not in the article templates, but it has been in Wikivoyage:One-liner listings since that page was created in January 2008. Just saying. Nurg (talk) 06:33, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The format described in Wikivoyage:One-liner listings is our default for any lists not requiring more elaboration. For example, the list under United States of America#Museums and galleries. The Itineraries subsection should also use the one-liner listing format, so it's not just Cities and Other destinations. (I stand corrected on Go Next, though it's clear there's been some disagreement historically.) Powers ^(talk) 02:57, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

That begs the question of how much "elaboration" things need. My feeling is that we should use whatever structure is most useful to the reader/traveler, and whenever the structure we've adopted isn't practically optimal, we should consider changing it. I doubt you'd disagree with me at that level of abstraction. But my feeling is, while you disagree with some of the steps being taken, the adequate never precludes the ideal, so anyone who has the knowledge, time and motivation to produce a more complete region guide like Bali for "Northwest Nebraska" or what have you is always welcome to do so.

And note what I've been doing lately: I see that, seemingly, a lot of articles about US states lack any photos at all, or perhaps one. I'm not going to adequately decorate them all with photos by myself, but my God, I mean, California had room for a bunch more photos, and the profusion of breathtaking Featured photos of California on Commons went to at least a second page (I didn't look further than that). States like Vermont lack much in the way of photos in special Commons categories, so I had to look through the regular search results. New Hampshire required some searching in more localized Commons categories. Anyway, my point is, there's a lot that can be done to improve region articles and if people get more motivated to do so, they may obviate the need for further debates on Wikivoyage standard formatting someday. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:51, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think I was begging the question at all. Can you explain where you found a fallacy in my reasoning? Powers ^(talk) 01:51, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I didn't mean to suggest there was any fallacy in your reasoning, just that while less than a sentence is needed for some lists, others will need more than a sentence, so saying that 1-liner listings are for lists that don't need more elaboration doesn't indicate exactly which lists those are. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:32, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

So far, the only ones we've identified are ones used for navigation to immediately lower levels of the hierarchy. Powers ^(talk) 14:56, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

But not in every case, right? In the United States of America article, you support the use of more than one sentence for descriptions of some regions, do you not? Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:58, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Er, yes, those are immediately lower levels of the hierarchy. Powers ^(talk) 19:29, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Powers, sorry, I misread you to have said the opposite of what you meant. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:50, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

That would appear to be because I wrote the opposite of what I meant. Powers ^(talk) 18:26, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘So I guess we are right now at another tangent, at least in part... What this debate as well as the current debate in the pub(and many other debates since basically the day I started editing on policy pages) shows imho is that WV has still not found the holy grail: How to effectively handle rural areas. Most of those regions are rural in nature and/or arguably an "excessive subdivision" along the lines of "Eastern County X". If for example we are to redirect real (but small) places to their parent region, they obviously have to get more than one liner listings... And sometimes places are mentioned in a "go next" but don't deserve a standalone article... In that case, one liner listings are also too little Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:26, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

One-liner listings

I do apologize, but I can't let this drop. The change Ryan made to Wikivoyage:One-liner listings means that policy page no longer describes one-liner listings, which (I emphasize) we use in several other places besides just "Regions" sections ("Cities" for bottom-level regions). What the page describes are multi-line listings; it then describes our one-liner listings as an "exception". I believe this is precisely backwards. We still need to describe our one-liner format, and not just as an exception to the multi-liner region-article format. Powers ^(talk) 02:22, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Where would true "one-liner" listings be used besides the "Cities" and "Other destinations" sections of high level region and (some) country articles? "Itineraries" is the only other section that has been mentioned, but that isn't called out on the policy page, nor is it true in practice (see San Francisco#Itineraries and Singapore#Itineraries for two star articles that use multiple sentences). If true one-liners really do have such a limited use case, what about just rolling the existing guidance into WV:Country article template and WV:Region article template, and then getting rid of the current policy page? I don't think it is valuable to have a separate policy page for something with such a limited scope. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:29, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

That seems like enough to me. It's not just high-level regions; it's every region except the lowest ones. I'm sorry I haven't found any more cases where the format is in use, but as you know there's really no way to search for them. I do note that the policy page itself uses the format as a self-referential example, a fun little 'easter egg' that no longer makes sense given your changes to the page. Powers ^(talk) 02:32, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Can't we just change the title and distinguish between real one liners and other short descriptions in the text? JuliasTravels (talk) 10:57, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean by "distinguish between real one liners and other short descriptions"? Powers ^(talk) 14:28, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

We can have a paragraph about the situations where we use actual one-liners, and a paragraph about the situations where we use short, 1 to 5 sentence descriptions, or am I missing something? JuliasTravels (talk) 15:21, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Well it takes more than a paragraph for each, I'd say, but that seems like a decent starting point. To be clear -- the text before Ryan's change already allowed for expanded descriptions where appropriate, though 2-3 sentences rather than up to 5. I'd thought Ryan's proposal simply involved further expanding this exception to the one-liner listing format, but his changes were more extensive than I'd expected and, I think, unwarranted. Powers ^(talk) 22:16, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Which section headings may be omitted

Obviously, "Regions" can be omitted in bottom-level region articles. "Cities" can be omitted if a place is completely uninhabited, I suppose, or edited as appropriate (e.g. to "Bases" in East Antarctica. "Other destinations" can presumably be omitted if there are none. I think "Understand" can be omitted if a region doesn't need more than a sentence or two in the lede. "Talk" is optional. "Get in" and "Get around" are where the rubber meets the road: I can definitely think of reasons to combine these sections (e.g., access to the region is only by camel or boat), but can you think of any good reason to omit these? My feeling is, if there's no content, something should be added. "See" also seems necessary to me, though it can be combined with "Do" if need be. I think the rest of the sections can all be left out if that's for the best.

So to sum up, it seems to me that the following sections are obligatory, and if empty, should have information added to them:

• "Get in" plus or combined with "Get around"

• "See", combined with "Do" when appropriate

Would you agree? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:07, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

There was consensus a couple of years ago that "See" and "Do" were optional. Are you suggesting we should change that? -Shaundd (talk) 07:15, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I think it's OK to omit those sections if the sights and activities are briefly covered in descriptions of "Cities"/"Other destinations". So I guess I'm OK with leaving out either "Cities"/"Other destinations" or "See/Do", but not both. But what about "Get in"? Could you ever see a good reason to delete that section heading? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:40, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I can't think of any reasons to delete "Get in".

I'm curious about where you're going with this (if there is an end destination in mind). Were you thinking of making changes to the region article template? -Shaundd (talk) 16:50, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree that "Get in" and "Get around" (possibly combined) seem like they should always be included. Everything else seems like it could be optional, I guess, but I think some of them (at least "See" and "Go next", and maybe some others) are almost always useful and should only be removed if someone is familiar with the region and is sure that there is nothing to put there. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:18, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

The reason I'm asking this question is that I noticed someone removing "Get in" and "Get around" from some region articles about Egypt because the sections were empty. I promised not to ping him in this thread, so this is just a discussion for the record that could be linked to in the future. However, one of the things that came up was that although there are some sections that are specified to be optional, there is no section that is specified to be obligatory. So if we agree that "Get in" and "Get around" are obligatory, it would be best to state that clearly for everyone's reference. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:01, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

OK. I agree "Get in" and "Get around" should be mandatory (although, like you said, there may be situations where they can be combined). I'd also say "Cities" should be mandatory, except when the region is the bottom-level article. -Shaundd (talk) 05:37, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Do we ever use region article templates for bottom-level articles? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I suppose not, officially, but I certainly do check the template when writing or expanding "city" articles on rural areas. --LPfi (talk) 07:29, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Rural areas, as bottom-level areas, can have city article templates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:27, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, and they usually do. Still, the small article template, which is the suggested one, is not written with rural areas in mind, at least not to any large extent. I'd for example include a Villages section, or some substitute in Understand or Get around. I think taking a look at the region template makes it easier to get something that looks familiar to our readers, and which probably is closer to what we come up with when we finally get some standard than what I'd do reinventing the wheel. --LPfi (talk) 11:46, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to see your proposal. But for the purposes of this thread, how should we phrase instructions on obligatory sections? I'd like to come to agreement on that and make the agreed-upon changes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:39, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

1. I do not see a reason why the region template should not be adjusted from time to time. The changes up for discussion do not have an immediate impact on the region articles, they are merely, IMHO, improving the picture (over time).
2. If you have edited a region article once, you will know which chapter are relevant and which not. Why do we have the template in the first place if now the goal is to move editing help into the actual articles. This does not make sense. Furthermore, I am actually more open on the questions what should be there and what not. I strongly believe each region article is different and some justify a standard template where for others it does make sense to include sleep listings and other chapters that you would not usually expect there. Why should we restrict ourselves with a stiff template that can never cover all circumstances? We are discussing so many things, currencies, time formats, etc. why not also whether somethings makes sense on region level or not. I think we have done that before for the Baltics where we agreed to put some Sleep listings into region level. Reasonable discussions and decisions can never be replaced by inflexible and supposed to cover all rules.
3. I still do not get where suddenly the relevance of the "Get in" and "Get around" chapters comes from when there is a comprehensive "Get around" section available on country level. Many region definitions are highly of arbitrary (see Israel or Estonia) often not coinciding with regions description of other sources. How can this be a good basis for distinct "Get in" and "Get around" descriptions to begin with?
4. I prefer something that is consistent for all chapters, because valuing some region chapter over another is really depending on the country itself in my opinion. But how about settling with a solution where we aggregate all chapters "See, do, eat, ..." and "Get in and get around" and then write a short "Please see on city/country level for details." if there is no information available (yet)? This way, editors can always separate chapters again and to readers it at leasts looks like something is happening.
5. We have so many countries with unnecessary and even multiple regions levels like Greece and Italy. Do you really feel it leaves a good impression with the reader leaving such a stub labyrinth intact with article contain empty chapters for the sake of its template instead of giving the impression that the regions article function as a good direction sign instead.
6. As I have tried to explain to Ikan before, I feel this constant sticking to stiff rules and not being able to have a discussion or at least some flexibility on a case by case basis does actually lead to many new editors (including me) getting frustrated. I mean, I updated the Egypt articles with new information, cleaned them from missing information and I decided to round up my work with some nice and fitting region articles - of course this being highly subjective. Nevertheless, why not leave it with this? Why not appreciate the effort but instead de-value it with such an insignificant discussion? I mean sorry, we are discussing whether an empty chapter should be listed or whether not, we are not discussing arbitrary deletions of relevant information or similar severe issues.

Cheers, Ceever (talk) 14:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Your contributions are greatly appreciated and very helpful. You've brought up a lot of issues, and I won't be able to address them all now. I just want to focus on the specific point that the lack of content in a section does not mean none exists or can be added. And the reason there has so far been agreement in this thread that "Get in" is an obligatory section is that if you can't get into a place, you can't do anything there, so there's a basic question of practicality when a guide lacks that information. In terms of referring people to "Name of country#Get in" or "Name of country#Get around", that's definitely better than blank space or deleting the section header, but it still means the information isn't in the article. Having printable articles that are usable in themselves is getting less and less important, as smartphone ownership and connectivity are improving apace, but offline usability is still one of this site's goals.

I definitely welcome responses to all of your points and look forward to reading them. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:37, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Even in somewhat "arbitrary" regions, "Get in" and "Get around" are still almost always useful. See the four regions of Uruguay for examples—there isn't that much to say about how to get in and around the Central Interior (for instance) beyond what's already in the country article, but there's still enough for the sections to be worth including. Frankly, I can't think of any destination article on Wikivoyage where a "Get in" section wouldn't be useful. —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

The reason for the large number and extra layers of regions (including many which are frankly useless for the traveller) is the 7+2 rule. I'm generally supportive of the 7+2 concept and think it works well with cities and listings, but I wonder if we should tweak its application to regions. Gizza ^(roam) 22:26, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

The traveller comes first absolutely trumps the 7+2 rule for number of cities and "other destinations" in bottom-level regions. No way should region articles be created only because of the number of cities in a larger region. If you can think of specific cases, please post to the relevant talk page so that we can eliminate the unhelpful subregions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:06, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I suppose nothing hinders breaking up a long list of cities in a region article, so that the 7+2 still works. If there is no other reason to break up the region, one can e.g. have the "subregions" as subheadings in the cities list, use two-level bullets or mention nearby destinations in the one-liners. I think the current guidelines are silent on these possibilities, though. --LPfi (talk) 12:15, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

That might be a good thing to do in a lot of cases, in fact. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:27, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

What to do with listings that belong to a region, but not a city.

Hi all, I want to flag an issue with region templates, the guidance for which says they shouldn't have any listings. I've added a handful of listings to the Worcestershire page because these are not associated with any major settlement, so were not listed. These are things like country parks, large woodland reserves, and stately homes in the middle of the countryside.

The region template says this is not allowed, so an editor has added a tag asking for them to removed. However they have nowhere else to go, so I think this is possibly something in need of a policy tweak. JimKillock (talk) 09:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

This is something that pops up now and then. For some parks separate park articles can be created, and sometimes one could create a city article on the area surrounding the attraction. In many cases they can be described in a "nearby" city even when far away (when a certain city is a logical base for a visit). But when the attraction is equally close to several "cities" and there is nothing to create an article about in the surroundings, we have no good solution. The problem with including them in the region article is that they then look as the most prominent attractions in the region, although they often are marginal compared to what is found in the cities. --LPfi (talk) 10:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Reposted from Talk:Worcestershire:

I understand the dilemma, but just how far are each of them from the next town that has a Wikivoyage article? Also, it's possible to have an article just for discrete rural areas. Rural Montgomery County. Uppsala countryside is another example. It does list "Settlements" but doesn't provide links for them because they are not intended to have their own articles.[...] Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Anything from five to twenty miles? Most are also not easily reachable by public transport from these towns. It's not obvious that say Hanbury Hall should be listed under Droitwich, or Bromsgrove, or perhaps Feckenham, as it is a few miles from each, and has no transport links to any of them. I guess we could move this information to a "Worcestershire countryside" template. But would that really help people find the information they want? I'm not so sure. JimKillock (talk) 10:46, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

One way to address that could be to create redirects for each village or other likely search term to the countryside article that's created. I do get the issue, though. This site doesn't cover rural areas nearly as well as cities, and we have yet to find a really good solution for that problem. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:12, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

All the attractions are within easy driving distance of a town. With Handbury example it is less than 4 miles of Droitwich town centre. If you are staying in the town it would be somewhere to consider for a visit. Or if you do some more research there is a small hotel and a couple of country pubs that serve meals in the area, enough even to make an article. For Handbury I would move to Droitwich, for Hagley I would create an article for the village that covers the parish (which includes a train station). --Traveler100 (talk) 11:42, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough re Hagley Hall, which is close to Hagley. However, a visitor to Hanbury Hall would be far more likely to be staying in Worcester, which is maybe five miles from Hanbury. Or maybe Bromsgrove, which is twice the size of Droitwich, and also about four miles from Hanbury Hall. I think if I was a visitor to Worcester I might want to look for sites in Worcestershire, but I would find it very hard to predict that I should look through all the other town pages to find attractions that are maybe close but maybe not. Either the region page or a general countryside page seem much better solutions to me. JimKillock (talk) 21:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Did we not agree about a year ago that it ok to have listings on region level when they do not fit into a specific cityor are far from reachable on a day tour? I mean, the Israel articles are a great example that this approach works very well. A region is between the country and the cities. Why not have let it behave this way?

@Ikan, would you support a discussion towards softening the region conditions a little to include those cases or listings on region level?

Cheers Ceever (talk) 11:58, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

That approach works in some regions, but when the countryside attractions are competing for region article space with more important attractions in towns with city articles, and the traveller does not know those towns are worth visiting, then we have a problem. Creating a city article should not effectively hide away an attraction otherwise listed. --LPfi (talk) 14:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The region articles are an overview, nothing more. Individual listings go in city articles; this is done by having each city end where the next begins (by various means, ranging from including small-city suburbs as part of the city, sticking outlying villages in sections like Cobourg#Nearby, grouping rural settlements like Rural Montgomery County into a single bottom-level article or treating Anticosti-sized entities as if they were one geographically-large, sparsely-populated city or park). If Quinte-Northumberland#Eat is a general overview of local produce such as apples, strawberries and pumpkins in their respective growing seasons, it would be out-of-place to randomly find one individual listing for one novelty architecture restaurant in tiny Colborne (Ontario) stuffed in with the overview of strawberry farming in the entire region - and it would make this one POI look more important than is justified. I wouldn't expect individual listings for non-notable small village eateries to be in the region overview; they belong in bottom-level articles like cities or towns. K7L (talk) 19:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

LPfi laid out the problem with having only listings not in cities in region articles well. I also think it's totally fine to list an attraction that's close to a city that has an article and simply mention that there's no way to get there by public transportation. Some people rent cars or other vehicles. I will also say that if there are any cases in which there is simply no reasonable solution other than having full listings for some attractions in a region article, the relevant sections (See/Do, etc.) should begin with an overview in prose of the top sights, including those in cities, and then make very clear that the listings being presented in full are only for attractions in the countryside that don't really fit in any city article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I think what is clear to me is that the policy here isn't very user friendly. Thinking about readers trying to navigate information, the current policy will lead to some of the following results:

1. A listing that is near several settlements, but nearest a small one, ends up marooned on a page most people don't visit.
2. Listings that are relevant to visitors of an area are spread across several pages despite being only tangentially associated with these places.
3. Content relevant to a region is split across a "countryside" page for the region, and also a page for the region.

In my view, this is not ideal. It requires a lot of users. They must either visit lots of pages, or several pages that appear to duplicate perspectives. It may also explain why coverage on Wikivoyage is rather city-centric currently, as noted by someone above.

However, as I read Ikan Kekek's advice I will try to follow this for Worcestershire – the listings there are essentially in that category. JimKillock (talk) 09:34, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

It's completely possible to mention in other articles' "Go next" sections (or even possibly "See" or "Do") that x, y and z are covered in the [City Name] article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

That is also not hugely satisfactory to my mind. For instance, take the way that the maps work. These are a great tool for getting an overview of what is in an area. The more the information is buried or split across pages, the less the map tools can work. When the listings are in countryside areas, and travellers might access amenities that are out of urban areas, or from several different urban locations, the more helpful it is to view these listing together, and on a map.

This might also just be a development request, but if there are ways to link listings from different pages onto a map that links back to them, that might help solve the problem. JimKillock (talk) 09:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a very good idea, to show listings outside the boundaries of a particular article in a blown-up dynamic map. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:14, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree—something along those lines could be a real improvement. Maybe it would work to have some tool that would produce a map for a bottom-level region that showed all the listings in all the articles in that region. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:40, 6 December 2018 (UTC)