Wikivoyage talk:Votes for deletion/Archive 2014-2017

Reconsidering unanimity and guilty until proven innocent

First part copied here from the vfd discussion about Trouble with authorities, to allow for further discussion.

No consensus to keep

Okay: as we'd hoped, the author of this article has come out of the woodwork and made his (her?) case for keeping it. But Andrewssi2 has been vociferously arguing for its deletion, and from his tone it looks unlikely that he'll be swayed. It's been three weeks since the nomination and, given that we lack a unanimous consensus to keep, policy dictates that it should be deleted imminently. Absent any major sea changes within the next day or two, I'm going to do that. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:47, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

If that's the standard, then any one person alone could get anything deleted, including real geographic destinations, just by nominating it and stubbornly refusing to back down. Ronald Reagan could nominate Russia for deletion and, in the absence of unanimous consensus for or against, bombing would begin in five minutes. Wow. K7L (talk) 17:21, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Not only are you both right about the current disproportionate "one man on the nuclear button" policy, it's also against policy to discuss it here - as opposed to on the discussion page of this project page... --118.93nzp (talk) 19:30, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any place that demands unanimity for a keep result. Powers ^(talk) 19:50, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Um. Our policy has never been taken to mean we need 100% unanimity to keep something. I seem to remember quite a lot of things being kept despite my personal opinion to delete, and the world didn't end. Texugo (talk) 19:50, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you that a consensus, while broader than a 50%+1 majority, does not require unanimity, and I thought we had already exorcised that notion in some other decisions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:55, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Granted, Saqib is the one who's generally handled VfD's lately, but I distinctly recall that our interpretation of "guilty until proven innocent" has been that all outstanding delete votes have to be recanted before an article is kept. If that's changed at any time over the past few months, I apologize. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

If consensus doesn't require unanimity to block a user, how could it require unanimity to keep an article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:22, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I reiterate that I remember this being our procedure, but a) I've been fairly inactive on VfD for a while, b) I see nothing written in policy other than a vague reference to "guilty until proven innocent", and c) I really don't feel like digging through the archives for examples, so I'm prepared to just drop it. :) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:30, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Even if that was the rule, that's a pretty bad rule. --Rschen7754 02:15, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I think you're all right. The policy is just vague, and various admins have interpreted it in various ways over the years. We should just clear it up, and as far as I'm concerned, get rid of that "guilty until.." sentence. On other wikis, there are (often far too) extensive and well-considered policy pages for these things. Maybe we should just take a few basic ideas/procedures from there and see if they would work for us. That would also bring our deletion policy more in line with the way we handle other discussions and nominations. Adapt the Wikivoyage:Consensus page to better explain that it is not the same as unanimity, and link it here. Officially adopt the Wikipedia and other wikis procedure of an uninvolved admin determining such a consensus based on arguments (which in practice we often already do) and adopt the policy that in case of a lack of consensus, we maintain the status quo, leaving some option for relisting. If others think it's worth reconsidering the policy itself, I'm happy to write up a first proposal on the talk page for further discussion. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, the "guilty until..." bit contradicts our infamous "status quo bias," which is policy. In the absence of consensus, a fail-safe approach would err on the side of not nuking Goldsboro. :) K7L (talk) 15:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

That it contradicts the status quo bias is intentional. We want articles to have to pass a high bar, and not get a pass just because they went undiscovered for a while. Powers ^(talk) 18:03, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't really see how a vfd with a status quo bias only in the case of no consensus and with an option for relisting is not a high bar indeed? It seems to be fine for many other wikis as well. I'll copy this discussion to the talk page, let's continue this discussion there without cluttering this page? JuliasTravels (talk) 11:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Looking at the archives, I also see Wikivoyage:Votes_for_deletion/January_2014#Template:NowCommons, which in my opinion is a problematic close, per the "outstanding vote." --Rschen7754 12:11, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

See also Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy#Proposed new policy on deletions where Ikan proposed changing the wording for the "consensus to keep" criteria, but that discussion never resulted in any action. -- Ryan • (talk) •

I don't see how status quo bias on 'no consensus' is the same as articles getting "a pass just because they went undiscovered for a while". Articles would only "get a pass" if there is no clear consensus to delete them, rubbish which has been around a while is still rubbish. Agreed that consensus should not mean unanimity, though - a 'no consensus' outcome would be one with comparable support for both sides, like the "{{listing|wikipedia=...}} field which was discussed and deadlocked a year ago. K7L (talk) 16:18, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Reading through that older thread, as Ikan started it, the main concern seemed to be a shift towards voting. I don't think parting with the "guilty until" principle has to lead to that at all. Not if we adopt the process as some other wikis have it, having a non-involved admin (or user in good standing) see if there indeed is a consensus (not a majority as such), taking arguments into account as well. Surely, all alarm bells would start to ring when several established users would argue for deletion, and only new users would argue against. We can work with that: all wikis do, and if it comes to it, we can always have a checkuser before closing any discussion. I feel we're having this highly conservative policy out of a fear for rubbish articles to pass, when there's no proof at all that that is justified. All wikis are somewhat conservative in nature, and of course that has it benefits. However, we take it too far now, I think, and further than all other wikis I know. We use the status-quo bias as a policy throughout the site, except in the one case where it would possibly, incidentally have a progressive effect (and that only when there's no consensus against an article): there we turn it around. JuliasTravels (talk) 13:18, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Precisely. --118.93nzp (talk) 21:01, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

It's a balance, really. Straight voting is something that we want to avoid, because of meatpuppetry - which is someone going on Reddit and asking people to vote a certain way, for example (and CU would be useless for such a case). That is bad. But we're at the other end of the spectrum, requiring unanimity. That is also bad. We need to find somewhere in the middle. --Rschen7754 21:48, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I've started a discussion that addresses the apparent misunderstanding that consensus means unanimity at Wikivoyage talk:Consensus#Wikivoyage:Consensus/Draft. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:29, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Pages VfD'd to remove WT attribution

It seems like many if not a majority of pages that have been nominated for deletion lately have fallen into this category. Is it perhaps time to create a new Project-space page for these articles so we don't clutter vfd?

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:02, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

As far as it's skeletons or articles with very limited content, I actually think they could just be tagged for speedy delete. In fact, that has also been done a few times recently. Perhaps we should just agree on that and only bring cases with complications to the VfD page? If it will still clutter we can always create a specific page after all. Just a thought. JuliasTravels (talk) 13:43, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Happy to tag with speedy deletion in future Andrewssi2 (talk) 14:08, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

There was a discussion recently at Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub#Re-creation of articles for SEO purposes proposing a speedy deletion tag {{rewritten}} for articles to be replaced with new, non-WT, non-derivative text. If there's truly no content, perhaps speedy {{delete}} would be best (per Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy#Deleting empty articles) to lose the WT attribution as there's no actual content to replace. VfD is unnecessary unless there's something controversial to discuss. K7L (talk) 16:43, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I haven't read that discussion, but tagging would be part of a wider effort to single out suitable articles and tag them for people to start working with: they'd still have to be deleted after that, I presume? I think the issue now is rather about editors who have no admin rights and want particular almost-empty skeletons deleted so they can start over. When no copyright issues exist, that should be fine for speedy. I'm not sure tagging is needed now actually. Torty3 once showed me this labs scan, making it easy enough to identify almost-empty articles for recreation based on bytes, in case anyone is interested in doing so. I've been using that, at least. JuliasTravels (talk) 20:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

A skeleton re-creation list differs from a {{rewritten}} tag as the latter is used to indicate a new version of the article is already ready and waiting on a sub-page, from which it could be moved without redirect once the old version is discarded. The tag doesn't replace the list, nor is it intended to do so. K7L (talk) 22:31, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Deletion of redirects

• Mt. Bromo
• Montreal/Old Town
• Phnon penh
• Romanian language
• Tukuzi
• possibly others

Is it really a good idea to delete (without even putting them through VfD!) redirect articles that consist of common misspellings of foreign, easily-misspellable place names, or that represent real places? Specifically, in the latter case, doesn't policy specifically disallow that?

If there was a discussion about this on some obscure talk page that I was unaware of, I apologize.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:54, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

See . Only redirects with WT attribution are being deleted as far as I understand, and they can be re-created if desired. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:07, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh, that again. Nevermind. :) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:10, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Deleting templates

In most cases, when removing about-to-be-deleted template calls from articles where the templates are in use, these templates should be substed, not simply removed, as was done with Template:Clear. Could I ask those of you who removed the Template:Clear transclusions to please go back through your contributions and add <br clear=all /> where the template was removed? Thanks! Powers ^(talk) 14:01, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Non-admins can delete pages?

Swept in from the pub

Am I hallucinating or did I just see a non-admin deleting some articles??? User:Andree.sk doesn't even seem to be autopatrolled (which I think a user with a few weeks of good edits should be). --ϒpsilon (talk) 21:06, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

A non-admin can delete a page during a page move, if the target is a redirect without history that points to the page being moved. Example: move page "A" to "B", then "A" becomes a redirect. A non-admin can then move "B" back to "A", which deletes the (redirect) "A" in the process. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:08, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Archiving

Just a reminder: when archiving discussions, please specify in your edit summary what the outcome of the discussion was (keep, delete, redirect, merge...). It's very difficult to tell otherwise. Powers ^(talk) 01:58, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Another reminder: closed VfD discussions should be moved to the archives subpage of the month of the action, not the month of nomination, as per the guidelines: "Note that it's the month in which the action was taken, rather than when the nomination was first posted, that should be used for the archived discussion". James A ▪ talk 04:45, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Admins are still not specifying their decisions when discussions are archived. This is very important. I realize discussions can stick around too long sometimes, but if you're going to do it, please do it correctly. Powers ^(talk) 00:40, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Vote for redirect

Given our policy to redirect real places, vfd would only apply for travel topics, as fake places and obvious spam are to be speedily deleted on sight and real places are to be redirected (even in cases where a place us mentioned only in its parent region and redirects to its parent region?). So maybe given the way things often turn out here, we might want to have a "vote for redirect" page to decide whether a real place deserves an article... or we could change our "redirect real places" policy...Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a policy for immediate deletion of "fake places". Sometimes it's not obvious whether a title refers to a real place or not. There are also cases where a valid destination article is purely organizational in nature and could be deleted if it becomes superfluous (particularly if there's no obvious redirect target). Powers ^(talk) 00:34, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

What is the question or proposal exactly? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:37, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The proposal seems to be for a new policy page operating parallel to this one, but dealing only with real places, with the understanding that deletion is off the table and the only options are keep and redirect. Personally, I don't see why we can't simply rename this page. The status quo seems to be working fine; I think most people who nominate real places here already do so with the intent to have them redirected, it's just others get all hung up on the word "deletion" in the name of this page and assume that the "no deleting real places" rule is being ignored. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:56, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Possibly. In any case, with current "vfd traffic" I don't think we'd need a second page. It's more about allowing a bit of time for an article and interested editors to work on it, before deciding to redirect or not. But then if not tagged, these skeletons will be forgotten. A tag like suggested on the vfd page seems to fix that, and we could just have a little section on the vfd page to keep track (renamed or not). Obviously, we only need to do anything for cases where an article might be wanted. Tiny places and other articles that don't meet the article criteria (despite being a real place) should still be redirected on sight, with notice to the creator. JuliasTravels (talk) 13:09, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we need a separate page - it has been a relatively recent occurrence that people have started using the VFD page for redirect discussions, so hopefully we can go back to having those discussions on article talk pages. To address the issue of not biting newbies who create questionable new articles, what about just creating a "whatIsAnArticle" template (better name suggestions appreciated) that can be placed at the bottom of articles to provide a note that the town may not merit its own article and suggests a talk page discussion, has a pointer to WV:What is an article? and WV:How to redirect a page, and also puts the article into a maintenance category? That would be an easy way to tag and keep track of questionable articles without immediately biting newbies, and if the article remained a skeleton for more than a week we could redirect or delete it (in the case of empty skeletons or page creation vandalism) with no harm done. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

That's fine too - I think anything works as long as it provides a tag, a maintenance cat (in the maintenance panel) and a place to discuss. I do agree the talk page is the best place. JuliasTravels (talk) 15:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The problem currently is that this here is not the place to discuss redirects, at least technically speaking. And as this is the proposed result of all vfds for real places (at least in theory) the letter of the law correct alternative is to start a redirect discussion on the talk page of the article in question... However, said discussion would be unlikely to draw a significant amount of community input... Hence my proposal to do something Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:25, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Ryan - the problem with your suggestion is that most mainspace article talk pages have few if any followers - the exceptions being the very largest and most popular destinations, as well as articles like Buffalo that are or have been the subject of substantial work by a particular editor (in other words, precisely the type of destinations that would be least likely to deserve a redirect). If doing it the way you suggest were the rule of thumb, then in practice most redirects would be unilateral. While I'm not sure that establishing a separate "Votes for Redirect" page is the answer, I do think it's much better to have redirect discussions in some centralized location, so that as many community members as possible can be encouraged to contribute to such decisions before the trigger is pulled. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:35, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I see now that Hobbitschuster made basically the same argument above. At any rate, I agree with him about everything except the need to have redirect discussions somewhere other than here. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I am fine with having redirect discussions here. But if we do so, we should clearly mention that in some policy page and/or the heading of vfd... Or better yet in the template... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:45, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

(reply to AndreCarrotflower) My counter-argument is that redirect decisions for new articles have typically been unilateral in the past. If someone creates a skeleton article for Ladera Heights we've never required a group discussion involving people who are likely to be unfamiliar with Los Angeles before the article could be redirected (or tagged for merging) to Los Angeles/South Central. If there's a question about where to redirect or whether a redirect is appropriate then WV:RFC has been used in the past, and the VFD page has been used in cases where someone feels that there isn't any appropriate redirect target, but I don't think we need to drag out most redirect decisions with an extra layer of bureaucracy. Additionally, if we tag questionable articles then there will be a category that interested people can easily review to see if they are familiar with whatever is in the current queue. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd say that there is an element of Ttcf to this (and I don't like citing that particular policy).

Basically is a prospective traveler to Alton_(Hampshire) served well with an empty article that suggests we have nothing at all to say about the destination, or is it better to redirect them at least to the region or closest town that would at least provide them with some useful information. I'd personally go for the redirect option every time. Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:24, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this. The parent article is easily accessible if the information in the destination article is insufficient, and keeping the article serves to prompt editors to place information in the correct article. (And in most cases the information in the parent article won't be particularly relevant to the destination anyway.) Powers ^(talk) 01:43, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Said article is not better than the redlink at the moment I am writing this, it is pointless to keep those and similar. Once there is a user or a group of users with enough passion and information about the destination to create a proper guide, they will do so. Our articles rarely follow the coral reef model of being developed by layers and layers of small incidental edits, most of them depend on large bouts of editorial focus which create the bulk of a given iteration of the article and then incidental edits only polish and expand the creation.

Our empty articles generally pertain to quite obscure locations at that point. It is not that they will see much traffic out of which we need to attract as many potential editors as possible to contribute a little bit to accrue content. Those obscure locations depend on passionate individuals with knowledge of the area to come round to WV and create entire articles usually quite singlehandedly. They, or rather we here as we speak, will do so regardless of whether there is a stub or not. Keeping stubs is just making guides harder and more frustrating to navigate - either we have enough content for an outline or we don't. PrinceGloria (talk) 07:28, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't believe we're talking about stubs. Alton (Hampshire), for instance, is an outline. Powers ^(talk) 15:03, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

At the moment I wrote the above, Alton (Hampshire) consisted of five words. BTW, I do not think the traveller is served well with its current form at the moment I am writing this in turn - the singular attraction (steam railway) should be promoted to Hampshire itself, as there is no extra info in the Alton guide that would help visit it. It is also covered in Alresford, the other end of the line, which has a proper guide. PrinceGloria (talk) 21:59, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I strenuously object to that. Attraction listings do not belong in region articles (with the sole exception of those rare regions without subsidiary articles, aka leaf-nodes). Powers ^(talk) 18:27, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

What about the thousand islands approach? Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:03, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

(indent) This discussion is ridiculous to me. Like I said before, what you are suggesting is that we require people to write usable guides or delete everything (or redirect). Part of "putting the traveler first" is also making editors feel comfortable to add the content that the travelers want to read and requiring only large contributions or risk having everything deleted or redirected to some region creates a very negative and punitive atmosphere for well-meaning contributors. The way this conversation is going, I'll expect to see Ghana and every city in the nation become a redirect to West Africa, since none of the articles are developed enough to plan a meaningful trip and for some reason there is this idea floating around that if we haven't covered it by now, it must have nothing...

If Alton bothers you so much, plunge forward and add the Curtis Museum , Get in/around, etc. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:31, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

If I'm understanding correctly, the proposal isn't for all skeletons, it's for places where it is questionable whether or not the article meets the WV:What is an article? criteria or not. In that particular case, and where it isn't obvious we're dealing with a page creation vandal, I think it's completely fair to give the original author a short window to develop the article, and if it remains mostly empty to discuss whether a redirect would be more appropriate. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:18, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Is that really the proposal? Parameters of this discussion are unclear except that "Alton" is mentioned as an article that would be affected. I don't personally understand why Alton or other articles like it bother anyone. The way I am reading a lot of the comments, it seems like some people are bothered by articles with little content for some reason and are looking for a way to eliminate them via redirect. But I don't understand this pressing need to create redirects. There are plenty of ways to improve the Alton article and I even provided one "See" site above, but let's say no one cares enough about it to add the content and it remains as it is... What's the problem?

Redirects are not supposed to be created because editors are too lazy or lack the knowledge to add content, but it looks to me like the rationale behind this discussion. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:47, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

My comment was unclear. If an article was obviously created by a page creation vandal then it should usually be deleted (a non-vandal can always recreate it later if desired) - that is a separate issue that we already handle fairly well.

I believe that this discussion started as a way to address mostly-empty articles where it isn't clear that the place merits its own separate article. As to why such articles are bothersome, it's an organizational issue - if an area has three tiny towns with little available to travelers besides three hotels, a single consolidated article is a more useful way to present that info to a traveler than three mostly-empty articles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:57, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

My take is that people are wanting to make redirects a more frequent habit in some way that still seems to be based on how complete the article is when an editor views it. But I think the fact that we're both guessing indicates whatever this discussion about, it's not clear.

If mentioning Alton was brought up to start a discussion about a possible better way to organize Hampshire, it instead threw the discussion way off, because I do not see Alton as a problematic article. I do see that someone has written that only 9 picturesque villages in the region are allowed to be listed, and that certainly is a problem. If this is what this is all about then I think it should be a regional organization discussion rather than a discussion about redirects. Redirects are not going to solve this problem. On the contrary, I think they'll make it more confusing and difficult to navigate as things are now. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:17, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Needs improvement

As a method of keeping track of articles that maybe considered for deletion but giving new users a few days the chance to justify the page I have created {{needsimprovement}}. Will add articles to Category:Articles needing improvement. Comments, suggestions? --Traveler100 (talk) 16:37, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Good idea. Especially if a new user has created a page that there's something wrong with, this template is a much better one than vfd (and in general, vfd:ing the article may scare the newbie away). ϒpsilon (talk) 16:47, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I think having a template like this one is a good idea, but the current version seems like something that would dissuade someone from contributing further to an article. Since the purpose is primarily to allow tracking of these articles, I'd suggest putting the template at the bottom of articles and making the appearance far less noticeable - something more like {{stub}} than {{merge}}. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:59, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

That sound like a good improvement. The text I create was just first attempt, so please make chances as needed. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:03, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Extraregions

In light of the number of vfd that are extraregions at the moment I feel I need to make a general statement in support of the 180 page of this type. Wikivoyage has a rigid hierarchical structure for its main articles, which on the whole works reasonably well. However unless you only view the world from a political and administrative perspective this is not how things are in real life. People describe many regions by geographical, historical or ethnic methods. Also, although we can influence how this site is structured we cannot influence how the rest of the internet is organized or used. It is not possible to control or predict how people will come to this site or generally look for information on the web. It is therefor important to have landing pages using terms other people may use when looking for information on places. It could be that someone sees the Danube on a TV movie and thinks I would like to go there but is not familiar with specific locations along its route, or a school student has to write an essay on the Hudson Valley. We need to be able to catch these from search engines, or more probably via links from Wikipedia. Maybe some of these article need expanding but other will always be just links to other pages on Wikivoyage, guiding new visitors to this site into the established structure here. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

There is no doubt use for extraregions, especially when they cover something of note or relevance. However, we also have to take into account what "works" within the framework of Wikivoyage. Extraregions just for the sake of having them won't do any good and might end up doing harm. And as to school essays, I don't think that's part of our (primary) mission. Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:44, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

While I appreciate the effort to clean up some of the messy corners of the site, I share some of the concerns about using the VFD page as the default location for discussions about whether an extraregion "works" - deletion should be a last resort. By the time something lands on the VFD page, other options for handling the article should have already been considered and dismissed, and the nomination should explain why a deletion is needed instead of another solution. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:00, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I think part of the problems with extraregions such as Westerwald are that they are low visibility, low traffic pages. It does not have many pages linking to it, if you search for it, you have to type "Westerw" before getting it as your first suggestion and it has been edited only a couple of times since being created in 2013. And the result is a page, that - to be quite honest - does not bring a lot of benefit to me as a reader ion its current state. And unfortunately, vfd (or the pub) is pretty much the only place where a "let's do something about this" catches more than one or two eyeballs... Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:40, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that the pushback you're getting is because by the time something ends up on the VFD page it needs to be "let's delete this article because there isn't any other good solution", not "let's figure out what to do with this". -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:58, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

So I have started a list of articles under discussion at Wikivoyage:Germany Expedition, suggest proposals should start on the talk pages of articles and if they are in Germany listed here. As both Hobbitschuster and myself have the same aim of cleaning up articles in Germany but do not always agree on the method it would be good if other join in the discussions. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:47, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Part of the problem seems to be that extra-regions do not find themselves in the article navigation hierarchy (i.e. you can not navigate to Westerwald from Germany), and as such become orphans that no other contributors are really aware of and do not get developed. Any general expedition to clean up Germany will likely overlook them.

If the aim is to harmonize quality between extra-regions and actual regions then we should have a better linking mechanism in both directions. Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:39, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Good catch, I think some of these regions fell off the lists when we reorganized the top levels of Germany to strictly follow state boundaries and a strict enforment of the 9+2 rule. Some of these extra-regions were part of the main structure but then moved to the side. What we did not do was follow up these changes with links to the original pages. Looking into this now, most will probably be referenced at the state level rather than the country level. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:46, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Still after all is said and done, we might have to think long and hard about extraregions. While they can be a great way to describe a recognizable area that is just not covered coherently any other way, some of them seem to just be doubling or even tripling of content. I think there should be a very careful case by case assessment and I don't really think the answer can always be "well, what harm do they do". de-WV got rid of the 7+-2 rule almost first thing after the fork there and they have a lot of overlapping regions, extraregions and otherwise messy (in my assessment) regional subdivisions, including linking a number of "regions" (some of which don't even link to anything) at the beginning of every article. Still (I might be repeating myself here) a well done extraregion can be of great value to both our editors and our readers, but if there are too many of them, we might want to look at the region layout once more to assess whether the extraregions shouldn't be made real regions instead... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:41, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

In most cases, extra-hierarchical regions should be little more than disambiguation pages, primarily linking to other guides that contain the actual content. Exceptions to this, like Navajo Nation, should be limited to cases where there's significant value in presenting the region as a travel destination, rather than merely as a likely search term. Powers ^(talk) 02:44, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

(indent) The Navajo Nation article reads more like a travel topic than an extraregion. I didn't think of it as an "extraregion" at all. Perhaps that why it seems like an exception. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 04:50, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm surprised you think so. It has all of our usual region sections, and it contains destination articles (which, in turn, refer to Navajo Nation in their breadcumb trails). Powers ^(talk) 00:53, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

It just seems like it's an article for those interested in Navajo culture, history, religion, art, handicrafts, etc. which sounds like a travel topic. Whatever it's called, it's a worthy article. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:34, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Redirecting (extra)regions

In many cases the response to a vfd is "real places should be redirected". However, I don't really think that redirecting an unnecessary child region to its parent always makes sense. And where would Lahn Valley or Rhine have to be redirected if such were the decision? Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:26, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

That is often the repose to empty cities not extraregions. Think of extraregions more like disambiguation pages, directing the reader to the right pages. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:22, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Any likely search term should have at least a redirect on this site. If you have no idea where to redirect, other than Germany, that might be a good reason not to delete the article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I am sorry if that may sound blunt, but the only page that wholly contains all parts of Lahn Valley that is not itself a redirect is in fact Germany. And it's not like we don't have enough pages redirecting to Germany as is. After all, the abortive attempt to create "regions" like Central Germany ended with them being redirected to Germany. Hobbitschuster (talk) 01:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I feel like you may have missed the point. The point is, this is a valid region and a valid search term. If the decision is made to redirect to Germany, explain the harm, please. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:34, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

The harm of such a redirect is that it's unhelpful to the point of being insulting to the traveler. It's worse than deleting it, in my opinion. The disambiguation page with some added info is better or a travel topic, like the Navajo sites. Perhaps extraregions that are often seen as destinations should be travel topics... ChubbyWimbus (talk) 08:41, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, actually, I agree with you. But as you say, that's an argument for not redirecting and not an argument for deletion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:44, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually it may well be a case for deletion; if we end up deciding that some (extra)region is not really needed, and there is no suitable place to redirect them to, deletion may well be a valid outcome. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not really sure that's the case. If a redirect isn't suitable, then we should at least have a short extra-hierarchical region (like Hudson Valley or Niagara Falls) to direct readers to actual articles. Powers ^(talk) 00:25, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘So if someone say created an extraregion consisting of New York State, Iceland and Norway, we should not delete it and if we cannot decide where to redirect it keep it as a sort of disambiguation? And please note that my example was deliberately absurd, but absurd extraregions are not entirely inconceivable... Given the reaction towards the current article on Rhine and Danube, I fear we will soon have to deal with "extraregion" articles on the Volga, the Rio Coco, the Weser and god knows which river. Surely in some of those cases deletion should at least an option not inherently prohibited by policy. Or am I getting this wrong? Hobbitschuster (talk) 01:00, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Can you please lay out the case for what harm the existence of this extra-region is doing? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:15, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

These may once again be better travel topics, if the purpose is to see and experience the Volga (or whatever) to its fullest or figure out what places along the river actually offer things to do on the river. I certainly don't think that every body of water needs to have a redirect or disambiguation page. It should also be travel-related. For example, the Ring of Fire is a term that includes countries in its definition, but it's not a destination. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:34, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

So if such an article were created would it be valid to nominate it for vfd? And would deletion be a valid outcome? Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:57, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Assuming there was a recognized term for the union of New York, Iceland, and Norway, I don't see a problem with creating a brief article that points readers to the three relevant articles under that title. Powers ^(talk) 18:38, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Replace New York with Newfoundland and add in Greenland and you are getting close to the historical extent of the Vikings. But I really don't think we should be creating extraregions for everything up to and including the Hittite Empire. And I see a de facto policy of never ever deleting them even if they are created empty and never filled with content in half a decade as problematic. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:49, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I started this to highlight a general point. Did not mean it to go into theoretical realms of fantasy. Getting a little worries this site is just becoming a debating site and not enough additional content being added. Please do not go the way of Wikipedia projects. (will try and curtail my discussions) --Traveler100 (talk) 19:39, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Hobbitschuster, given all the other articles about historical empires, I don't know why you'd single out the Hittite Empire as an invalid one. However, I agree with Traveler100 and would suggest you refocus on clearly explaining the harm in retaining the particular extra-regions currently at issue. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:47, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Is the problem so much with the concept of extra regions, or rather the poor implementation of many as demonstrated by the examples that you have highlighted?

There should possibly be better guidance as to when to use a travel topic or extra region when discussing (for example) Hittite Empire. I'd personally prefer historical articles such as Hittite Empire are defined as travel topics and current geographical regions that do not fall under our hierarchy as extraregions. Andrewssi2 (talk) 21:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense. Only if a historical region is still used as a current (though unofficial) designation does an extra-region article really make sense. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

(starting at the left again) Okay, so I think that when regions are reorganized it might make sense to redirect (some of) them to their parent region. But it does not necessarily make sense to do so for extraregions which we don't want to keep as their own articles any more. And am I really the only one that finds (many of) our current extraregions aesthetically displeasing because of all the empty sections and in some cases the number of redlinks? I mean you can slice and dice many a place over in several ways. Let's take Saxony as just any example. We can divide it by mountain ranges and lowlands (Ore Mountains for instance). We can also divide it by rivers, be it the Elbe (which as the itinerary Elbe Radweg makes sense, but not as an extraregion) or the Pleiße valley or by any other metric that goes counter to that all like Wine growing region around Meißen and Radebeul. Do some of those subdivisions make sense? Yes. Absolutely. Do we need all of them for regions that are themselves often devoid of much useful coverage? No. Remember, the amount of guide or even star regions is woefully low. And somehow we have arrived at a "don't even discuss deletion for regions" de facto policy? I am sorry, but I fail to see the virtue in this. Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:07, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

"am I really the only one that finds (many of) our current extraregions aesthetically displeasing because of all the empty sections and in some cases the number of redlinks?" Definitely not! Many are aesthetically displeasing and frankly low in quality and I personally question why many were created with no apparent desire to follow through.

However aesthetically displeasing is (at least for me) is not directly connected to the question of to whether we should delete specific extraregions. I think we could delete extraregions if they are not something a traveler would ever use for navigation purposes. Admittedly that is a high bar for deletion, but not impossible. Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:19, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

"am I really the only one that finds (many of) our current extraregions aesthetically displeasing because of all the empty sections and in some cases the number of redlinks" Are we still talking about extraregions? Extraregions are almost always just glorified disambiguation pages for regions that don't fit into the existing hierarchy - see Lake Ontario. If there are empty sections, delete them. If there are redlinks, remove them. I think this discussion may be conflating poorly organized regions with extraregions. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:46, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Have a look at Lahn Valley, which I btw vfd'ed and apparently a big portion of the replies was: "This is the wrong place to discuss this" and "We don't delete real places". Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to have to say that Lahn Valley shouldn't be deleted. The easy option would be cleaned up and remove empty sections so as to be just a 'glorified disambiguation page', or even worked on to be a travel topic later. Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:21, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes. If it doesn't fit our hierarchy then it should be redirected or turned into an extra-hierarchical region with only the amount of information in it deemed necessary. Powers ^(talk) 01:18, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘It currently is an extra-hierarchical region. My contention was that it is not needed and does not serve much of a purpose. Much like we don't need articles on Lommatzscher Pflege or Oder. Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Lahn Valley may be tagged as an extra-hierarchical region, but the article is still organized as a normal region article using the region article template. As noted earlier, the majority of extra-hierarchical regions should basically just be disambiguation pages with a little bit of extra information included. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:46, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

The Low cost airlines VFDs - this probably also touches upon policy

So could you please explain this? I don't exactly know about policy, but I thought the idea was to delete unless there is a consensus to keep. I cannot see a "consensus to keep" in any of those cases. In any case, there might have been no consensus with a slight tilt towards "Do something about this, don't just keep it as is". And if my vote was not clear (I don't think I explicitly voted on this) I would have liked to have the courtesy extended to me of being asked before archiving occurred. I think the whole low cost airline stuff is of limited value in its current form. And as evidenced by this whole episode there seems to be very little drive to do something about it. Hence I say: delete it all and leave no redirects except where they make sense. But that is neither here nor there. Hobbitschuster (talk) 04:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

"I would have liked to have the courtesy extended to me of being asked before archiving occurred". See these comments left almost two weeks ago requesting further discussion. As to why I resolved these without deletion, none of the nominations cited anything in the Wikivoyage:Deletion policy to justify a deletion. As to the comment that "Hence I say: delete it all and leave no redirects except where they make sense", that is counter to Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting, which explains the reasons why redirecting is almost always preferred to deletion. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:13, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

That page says "If it's a real place..."; 'low-cost airline' is not a place. (It also neglects to mention that we do delete page creation vandalism, even if it's the bulk creation of pages for real pop-100 villages with nothing to list.) I don't see anything in policy which requires a travel topic be redirected, unless the content has been retained/merged to another page requiring we keep the edit history for CC-BY-SA author attribution. K7L (talk) 05:22, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

To clarify, the deletion policy states that "Redirecting non-articles, when possible, is usually preferred to deletion", and also notes that there are SEO benefits to redirecting vs deleting, something that is particularly important for articles that have been around for a while. These articles are excellent candidates for merge & redirect, but based on the existing deletion policy and how we've done things in the past they should not simply be deleted. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have missed the notice. Probably because I do have vfd in my watchlist, but I don't always see every change in my watchlist, especially if logging on anew after a prolonged period offline. I think tagging users who might have to say something can do no harm. I for one get notified when someone tags my username... Back to the topic at hand. I cannot see how there was any "consensus to keep" which (iirc correctly) is what policy requires for an article to have a closed vfd with the result "keep"... Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:27, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I think we differ on our interpretation on what consensus means, and whether the the proposal to delete these articles (as opposed to merging/redirecting) was valid given the WV:Deletion policy. Given that none of the deletion votes cited anything in the deletion policy, there wasn't a consensus to delete, and no one was arguing for an exception to policy I'm not sure how else these could have been resolved. From WV:Consensus: "well-reasoned arguments based on existing policies and practice should carry more weight than a "support" comment that is unaccompanied by any sort of reasoning or justification". -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:40, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

There is nothing in our policy that says we cannot delete travel topics that are deemed to have been a "failure" in some way. As for what is wrong with the low cost airlines articles, please have a look at their source codes. Generally the individual country articles (and airport articles) as well as the general series on "flying" do a much better job than the low cost airlines articles who are based on a distinction that is rather hard to make in the first case. I think we should not have an article on Low cost airlines in North America because nobody can actually tell me who is and isn't one. And if Delta or American Airlines isn't one, why do they charge so many fees on top of their fares? Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

The problem with your argument is that it doesn't justify deletion - it justifies a merge (if there is anything to keep) & redirect. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:35, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Why? Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:38, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

There are any number of reasons why site policy encourages redirects instead of deletion in most cases. Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting calls out some of them, but to list a few: redirects don't require admin rights, redirects don't break internal or external links, redirects don't cause us to lose SEO value for old articles, redirects help users find content they might be searching for, redirects are a tool that (usually) offer only benefits without disadvantages, etc, etc. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Well the way I see it in this case is that someone might search something in the search function and then be suggested several "articles", and if half of them are redirects, I can't really see the benefit they are supposed to provide. So if I understand this correctly, in your interpretation of policy there are only very contrived cases that vfd might ever be needed, as clear vandalism or articles outside our scope are cases of speedy deletion and everything that could even remotely be considered a place or a travel topic should be redirected? Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Search results don't "show" redirects - if you search for "USA travel" the USA redirect is not shown, but anyone searching for the term "USA", and any link for "USA", takes the user to the right place. Regarding the question about when a deletion is warranted, deletion is the option when there aren't any other reasonable options, and a review of Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion/Archives would be the best guide to the types of articles that end up getting deleted. Articles go through deletion nomination far less often now because we allow speedy deletion in more cases than we used to, but it's still used multiple times each month. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Unused page on meta

Swept in from the pub

FYI, if no answer or request for further info in a few days, will ask a meta admin to delete

There is a wikivoyage related page on meta, that probably needs deleting -

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikivoyage/List_of_Wikivoyagers_by_destination

It has been pending as unwanted for a few years now. This is as much a FYI, as requesting comment.

If someone want to comment, great, go ahead. JarrahTree (talk) 08:41, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

It is now at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Wikivoyage.2FList_of_Wikivoyagers_by_destination JarrahTree (talk) 11:14, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Short "useless" articles

ShakespeareFan00 & perhaps others have been VFDing many things lately because they are short allegedly useless articles. In general I think this is a mistake but there is certainly room for discussion on some of them.

See also earlier discussion at Wikivoyage_talk:Deletion_policy#Deleting_NEW_empty_articles. Pashley (talk) 20:12, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

there is no reason these can't be userfied. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:50, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

If the linked discussion is an accurate reflection of the state of affairs, it appears there's a small but vocal minority of users who insist on deleting empty skeletons and simply refuse to take "policy doesn't support that" as an answer. If it's really that important to these users, the thing for them to do is make their case is Wikivoyage talk:What is an article?, rather than engaging in tendentious agenda-pushing on non-policy pages like the pub. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:40, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't know of a restriction precluding discussion of policy in the pub. Nothing is cast in stone; if we get consensus to change a policy, we change it. K7L (talk) 23:45, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

There's certainly no gag order on discussing policy in the pub, but it's customary (and documented as such in Wikivoyage:Consensus) that any attempts to gather consensus for a change in policy belong on the talk page of the policy in question. This is for good reason: if whoever was behind the most recent proposal to delete undeveloped articles had raised the issue at Wikivoyage talk:What is an article? (or at Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy as mentioned above, an equally valid place to do so) rather than in the pub, s/he would likely have seen that it's already been proposed and rejected several times. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:56, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I think the reason the discussion was started in the Pub was because there has been quite a few "empty" article pages created where the creator thought the page a "good idea" but only created a "stub" for others. I would have been inclined to write a couple of them but already have a rather massive list of existing pages to work on 1st (and the list is growing, more pages being added than being removed). So if at some point in the future I have time to put to such a page I can create it (which takes seconds) and write it (which is the real work) - at least to a point where it adds to the site rather than giving a "poor impression" to readers and adequate for others to build on. So I think the Pub discussion was more a "please stop creating". PsamatheM (talk) 09:48, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, my comments above refer to destination articles. Underdeveloped travel topic articles without any real hope of further attention get VfD'd routinely, and Outline-level itineraries are actually prescribed by policy to be deleted absent any meaningful edits in the space of a year. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:04, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I don't understand the site/reports enough yet but my contributions to the site are directed when I notice a rather "empty" (outline) page I add to to my list and I'm gradually working down my list filling out pages I think are too "empty" (discovering more faster than filling them out). For destination articles, why not spend the time adding content so VfD is not an issue? For new articles maybe wait to create the page until the author can write adequate initial content to contribute to the site (rather than detract). Collaboration will then build the page but in case it does not, at least what it starts with will be enough to contribute PsamatheM (talk)

Yes. I have done some work to flesh out stub travel topics, but often not because I like that way of working, but because I dislike links to stubs from articles I have been working on and got attached to (or in hierarchies I have tried to sort out). I'm happy to contribute to an an article with a though-out structure or some decent content – but trying to make outlines out of short stubs marked as outlines, abandoned after creation, is often quite frustrating. I'd much prefer working to cover the topics in existing usable articles, and create the odd outline from scratch when I feel like. Redlinks, discussion pages and Wikivoyage:Requested articles can all be used, no need to request an article by making a stub. --LPfi (talk) 12:54, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

It is getting very frustrating seeing many VfD nominations on short or empty articles. Nobody is obliged to comment or vote in VfDs of course but in practice it draws people in to discuss the article when that time could be spent expanding the article or doing other work. Maybe a "Request for Expansion" page could be set up, instead of somebody proposing to delete it and then another editor expanding the page to protect it from deletion. There has to be a better way. Gizza ^(roam) 22:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

It might be more profitable to apply commonsense to nearly empty articles. If the content makes more sense one level up then it can be merged and redirected. If it doesn't make sense (i.e. local listings, etc) then, well, just leave it alone. Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:59, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

The problem is that we disagree on what "common sense" is. If we left things solely to Ground Zero's discretion, I'm sure he would agree if I say that he would merge pretty much every currently sparse article with some other article. Most of us don't agree with such a blanket policy, I think. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:49, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

The answer is simple. "Short, useless article" is not a valid deletion rationale, and any article VfD'd for that purpose should be speedy-kept without further ado. If others disagree, fine, but for them, the first order of business is building consensus behind a policy change, not trying to force sparse articles through the VfD process based on (currently) invalid rationales. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Ikan, using a w:Straw_man argument is never a good way to advance a discussion as it usually just offends the person whose position you are misrepresenting. I'm sure you don't mean to do that. It's better if you speak for yourself and not for others.

If it were up to me, I would redirect articles for specks on the map whose click-bait non-articles have been sitting around untouched for years (or over a decade) since they have proven themselves to be of no interest or potential to be expanded. I believe that these non-articles diminish Wikivoyage's usefulness and credibilty. That is different from redirecting every sparse article. But I realise that there is no consensus to change the policy. Ground Zero (talk) 02:10, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

No offense intended. I sincerely thought I was accurately representing your position, but I guess I didn't understand it fully. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:35, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Ground Zero - for what it is worth, I used to think exactly the same as you. Actually I still agree with your sentiment that 'empty' articles are a bad look, but with Wikivoyage we have to accept that we will never reach 100% perfection. There will always be 'orphan' articles that someone felt like creating on a whim and then left the site forever.

It may be more helpful rather than pick out individual destinations, to rather look at a region holistically and see how articles can be better organized within them. This is the approach I took with Australia Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:33, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

People keep saying that Wikivoyage will never reach 100% perfection as if there are people saying that should be our goal. As there is no danger that that will ever happen, I don't think there is any need to discuss it. The question is how do we make this dis-shevelled, rambling, badly formatted, sometimes anarchic project better. Not perfect, but better. Leaving a blank article sitting for a decade achieves nothing. It would be more useful to help the reader find something nearby, or land them into the local district article, rather than maintain the vain and unrealistic hope that someone is going to wander in and click open an empty section of the article to add something. Ground Zero (talk) 03:40, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Adding content to Outline articles seems to me like a good Cotm, and one I'd participate in. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:49, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

The main reason why many articles are untouched for years is because of our small user base with limited interests and time. On the bright side, many of these articles that hadn't been edited by a non-bot since 2013 were finally expanded during the edit-a-thon. I continue to believe that growing the pool of editors and expanding empty articles instead of deleting them is the best way to go. Gizza ^(roam) 23:39, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, given a recent proposal in the Pub for an extended "low-level awareness campaign" after the end of the edit-a-thon, it also sounds likely that the momentum we've enjoyed this past month will continue to a certain degree. And even if neither of those things had happened, the continued gradual closing of the gap between our Alexa numbers and the other site's would have boded (is that the proper past tense of "bode"?) well for our future editor population regardless. To the extent that skeleton articles pose a problem at all (q.v. my earlier question of who exactly is being annoyed by their existence), the status quo is a fine solution. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:54, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Professional profile pages?

It appears User:Ellie_Rose was created solely for the purpose of promoting an actress. It is in Wikipedia format, and appears to have been deleted from Wikipedia multiple times a few years ago [LINK]

What should we do in scenarios like this? I'm assuming Ellie Rose won't be contributing any travel content. Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:51, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

If Wikipedia deleted it, I don't see why we shouldn't. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:13, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we should just blank it or delete it entirely, but one or the other seems called for. Pashley (talk) 21:43, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

It appeared in "Recent changes", and I deleted it for being beyond the scope of Wikivoyage. I don't think there's ever a reason to think twice about things like this, and I've deleted many of them in the past. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:28, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Agree. If it were about a tourist business, however, one should think twice. They should not write promotional user pages, but they are welcome to present themselves if they also are going to contribute to mainspace content, and we cannot expect them to pick the right tone. --LPfi (talk) 09:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

They're welcome to say who they are on their user page, but not to promote their business, even there. So it depends on how they present themselves. If someone posts a super-long promotional page in two places that's obviously plagiarized from somewhere else, they're pretty likely to be a spambot. After a lot of experience, I think I have a good eye for these things, or at least I hope I do. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:09, 12 January 2018 (UTC)