Wikivoyage talk:Ways to promote Wikivoyage

Downloadable icons for linking

I am wondering if it would be possible and preferred to have downloadable icons or buttons for promoting Wikivoyage on websites. Just as Firexox is doing on his Spread Firefox website. I would love to put a nice icon on my blogsite, however prepared icons would be better. (WT-en) bujatt 13:47, 16 May 2005 (EDT)

Lists versus recommendations

I just had a great trip to San Francisco with a "Let's Go California" guidebook. In addition to just listing interesting things to do, they have a little thumbs-up logo by those exceptional things that deserve special mention, and they give the establishment a decal to put on their door. What would it take for wikivoyage to have a similar recommendation system? Presumably it would require some kind of a vote, although I suppose we could seed it with suggestions from dead-tree guidebooks.

If such a system became effective, the next step would be to send out decals, which could be effective advertising of wikivoyage.

(Over four years of using that guidebook, I've found the thumbs-up recommendations to be a great help, the best being a hostel overlooking Salzburg for €12 a night.) —(WT-en) BenFrantzDale 23:31, 18 Mar 2005 (EST)

I think I'd find that more useful if there were a way to correlate it with something else that I might be interested in. Thumbs up or down doesn't mean much to me unless I know who's making the recommendation and why; I could go my whole life without ever going back to downtown Juneau for instance, while a very good friend of mine goes absolutely gaga over that whole "tourist district cruise ship owned jewelry stores" experience.

Similarly, I think any visit to San Francisco isn't complete without five bucks dropped at the Musee Mechanique [1], and maybe wandering down to The Castro and seeing who's cruising, dropping in at A Different Light [2], maybe take in a drag show, but there are people I'd recommend one of those to, and people I'd recommend another, and people to whom I'd not even suggest that the latter exists.

—(WT-en) Dan Lyke 14:36, 15 Nov 2005 (PST)

Merchandise

Swept in from the Pub:

I am interested in buying a wikivoyage branded piece of clothing for when I next go backpacking. However there appears to be no link on Wikivoyage to anything like this. Therefore,

1) Could we create an easily found page directing people to the Cafepress.com merchandise (they have 25 products with the Wikitavel logo on it) at:http://www.cafepress.com/buy/wikivoyage/-/pv_design_details/pg_/c_1/id_8949393/fpt_/opt_

2) Is there anywhere else that sells merchandise related to Wikivoyage, if so, could that be listed too.

Thanks, (WT-en) Witty lama 07:33, 18 April 2006 (EDT)

I think people buying Wikivoyage merchandise would like to know that the profits go to help Wikivoyage, and alas, the commercial/financial/legal backend for this is not yet ready. (This also explains why there's no Donate button anywhere on the site.) Evan & co are working on this but it'll be some time until things are finalized, so I think the "official" merchandise link will have to wait -- in the meantime, plunge forward, make your own or contribute designs! (Time for a Project:T-shirt design contest?) (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:13, 18 April 2006 (EDT)

I put up the CafePress "store" (zero profit) hoping to get the merchandising started. So I think it is time to start the T-shirt contest now so we can have an official T-shirt before summer. Or a T-shirt of the year contest every spring. I do not know how to set up the financial backend, but it is important just to make Wikivoyage more visible on wikivoyagers. --(WT-en) elgaard 10:33, 18 April 2006 (EDT)

Promote via open projects?

Swept in from the pub

One of this project's founders, User:EvanProdromou, went on to do several Open Source social networking projects; the current one is w:Pump.io. There are also several other projects aimed at building social networks not under commercial control; Forbes lists three; w:Diaspora (social network) is probably best-known. See also w:FreedomBox for a project aimed at wide deployment of small cheap home servers to make the net more secure and more under personal control.

To me it seems fairly obvious that the goals of these projects align with the goals of WV, WMF and open content projects in general, where the goals of Facebook and other commercial projects do not. This implies we should support the open projects wherever possible. Pashley (talk) 16:11, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I completely agree that we should support open projects when we can. Promoting Wikivoyage is a plan to provide webcasts for chambers of commerce in the US explaining what Wikivoyage is and easy ways to keep their town current. My request for Facebook was to use a tool already in place to aid the chambers in asking questions. I didn't find any open projects to support my plan. If you know of some that would be appropriate, please message me?--Tbennert (talk) 02:53, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Mainly, the WMF as well as WV are free content, not free software organisations/projects. Wikimedia projects do not have Twitter or Facebook accounts to support these services, but to promote themselves, and I don't think we should explicitely promote anything that is not related to the WMF itself.    FDMS  4    05:08, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The WMF has been great about doing this kind of thing. I agree that Open Source and Open Content projects go hand in hand -- WMF's support of open protocols and open file standards has been above reproach. Is there a specific project we want to orient WV towards? --EvanProdromou (talk) 03:28, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Update: Promoting Wikivoyage

Swept in from the pub

Hello! First I want to apologize to the community for the huge gap in my communication. I should have done a better job of providing information and checking in. I plan to rectify my poor behavior with logging on every day and also adding updates regarding the project soon after they happen.

On to the update. Arranging a conference call has been more difficult than I imagined. For now I plan to focus my efforts on creating the presentation, how to videos, and updating the "Welcome travel guides" page. I will then resume contacting chambers. After the chambers (the targeted project group)I will begin finding and contacting location specific travel groups.

The first draft for the presentation is on Google Docs. The link is at User:Tbennert/presentation. I'll be working on User:Tbennert/welcome this week. Anyone is welcome to edit, comment, or question. Thank you!--Tbennert (talk) 19:40, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Right, as nobody else has bothered commenting I'll try to write down a couple of thoughts. I think it would be good to urge the audience to try out WV themselves to see how practical and easy to use it is and also how easy it is to make it even better. Right away.

Unlike Wikipedia, a travel guide is something that you are directly using as it is - like a recipe in a cookbook. Ask the audience to use the WV article for their home town (if it has an article), a nearby larger town or a destination they visit. Or even to go out on the street right away and look for the nearest POI mentioned in the WV article for the city/town where the meeting is held/wherever they happen to be. Even many small towns have an article with something.

On the other hand, where information you add to WP has to have a source, information you add to Wikivoyage is usually, at least to some extent based on first-hand experiences and impressions, and therefore does not require any prior in-depth knowledge about the destination. Have the audience add something to the WV article of their hometown or some other place or again, the destination where they happen to be at right now. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:16, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I like this suggestion. People usually have a "thing" that they recommend to visitors ("while you're here, make sure you eat at ____" or "If you go to San Francisco, be sure to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge"), and it's easy to see whether your "thing" is listed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Presentation ready for review

Swept in from the pub

I would greatly appreciate feedback for the informational video on Wikivoyage that I've been working on. It is 15 minutes long. Rather than a tight focus on US Chambers of Commerce it is more generic. The "ideas" slide is the only one specifically aimed at Chambers.

• Video at Google Drive
• PDF with slide notes at Drive

There are some clunky sounds on a few of the audio transitions. Those will be fixed. The first several slides are sort of sleepy and I'm not sure how to fix, so please give any suggestions you have.

After I implement your suggestions and get a final draft, I would like to request a review from Wikipedia editors. They will be familiar with the mechanics but not with specifics so their input can help me find any spots that don't make sense to a non-Wikivoyage editor. Let me know what you think on any/all of this. Thanks!--Tbennert (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Great efforts but too long to watch. You've to shorten the video if you really want someone to watch it but I'm afraid I'm not good with suggestions. --Saqib (talk) 17:14, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing! You obviously put a lot of work into this and I think the idea is wonderful. That said, I do think there's room for improvement. A few of my first thoughts;

• I agree with Saqib that this video is far too long for people who are not yet engaged. As I see it, your presentation now pretty much combines two separate targets: a promotional aspect, aimed at gaining people's interest, and a fairly comprehensive explanation, almost a tutorial. For promotional purposes a catchy short video (say 2 minutes) would be far more effective. A more in depth introduction would rather be a next step.
• Also, I would suggest focussing more on our strengths. Show viewers (eg Chambers) why Wikivoyage can be a resource for them. Of course you may want to explain what red links are, and that editors are very welcome to fill empty sections, but if you want to make people enthusiastic about the project you want to showcase good articles. Pick examples with great banners, pictures, maps and more or less complete content. Also, while many articles indeed start with the rather factual "x is a place in y", we encourage editors to be more creative.
• Regardless of the target, I would start positive and leave the somewhat more complicated or administrative topics like the licensing for later on in the presentation. Start with destination articles (because that is the part of interest to Chambers) and leave our Main Page etc for later. Start with why Wikivoyage is great: as an up to date and ever-growing source of information for travellers and a free opportunity for Chambers to share information and highlights of their town with potential visitors, with only a handful of restrictions.

I understand that these are suggestions for rather large changes - I hope you don't mind. Thanks for your efforts! JuliasTravels (talk) 20:57, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the look through. I think you are absolutely right on this being too much at once. For some reason I kept wanting it to be something that could load quickly and with no glitches on a webcast and boxed myself into an idea. Will give it another go with these excellent suggestions. Thanks! --Tbennert (talk) 04:19, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Targeted promotion of featured articles

Swept in from the pub

In an attempt to promote Wikivoyage in general, and the Uppsala article in particular, I recently sent a mass-email to all the hotels listed in Uppsala. Essentially, I just said that the article exists and is free to use, and encouraged them to share it with their guests. While most have not responded yet, all those which have responded have been very positive. I figured that this is a very simple way to spread awareness about our project, and to help travelers. If these hotels manage to forward the page to 10 people a day, that would double the readership of Uppsala, and hopefully these readers would remember Wikivoyage for their next trip as well.

Do you think that it would be a good idea to implement this kind of targeted promotion of Wikivoyage articles more systematically? The articles we decide to promote must be comprehensive enough to impress those working in the local tourist industry, so it is probably best to focus on our most distinguished articles. For example we could reach out to all hotels listed in our star articles. Another idea would be to systematically contact the local tourist office in X whenever X is about to feature on our main page. Aside from using the occasion and share our guide, the tourist office could also be helpful in providing useful feedback, helping us to trim the article before it is featured. In a best case scenario this would bring a big reward for little effort. In a worst case scenario we lose a few minutes of our time, but as far as I can see not much else. MartinJacobson (talk) 08:56, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

That's great news, because I think it's central to our goals that Wikivoyage gets into the places themselves to spread the word about the travel guide. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:39, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

The only short-term risk I see is a possible increase in touting and spamming from the hospitality industry. Some of them may see an opportunity to further promote their hotels on the page. But if that is the case, we can always semi-protect the page until it dies down. Overall I think it will be a net benefit to the project. Gizza ^(roam) 02:09, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

This is good. I particularly like the idea of contacting the local tourist office of DOTM cities. I would suggest doing this a few weeks ahead of the page being featured so that there is time to de-tout any additions. Similarly it would be good to contact the local press when cities in English speaking countries are going to be featured. AlasdairW (talk) 22:06, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Fully support the principle of this idea, and would like to see more enthusiastic adoption of it. Thanks to Martin for a good idea, well-implemented.

The other thing to be mindful of in addition to watching for increased touting by business owners is to make sure that all future "mass emails" are relatively short, respectful, non-pushy and only sent once to any single business, so that we're creating the right impression of Wikivoyage with people who could be great ambassadors for our travel guide. If businesses respond with questions about the guide or suggestions for the article, then it may well be beneficial to enter into a more detailed conversation with them, but we shouldn't follow up with further 'reminder' emails to those which didn't reply to the first one. I'm not suggesting that any of this happened with Uppsala, just reminding the community that we won't gain allies in the travel industry by annoying them, and we'll only benefit from working with the people who want to work with us.

It might also be good to make the emails bilingual (English / local language (s)) where possible. Firstly, this ensures you reach as many potential helpers as possible. Secondly, it lets them know you're writing on behalf of the English-language Wikivoyage, and that it is specifically the English article which will be featured. And thirdly, it may encourage them to contribute to the corresponding article in their own language's Wikivoyage, which would help our smaller sisters out. Quite often the other language versions of our featured articles are not really where they should be in terms of quality (equally, there are some very good foreign-language WV articles which have a poor English counterpart; one of my many to-dos is translating the excellent fr:Perpignan to English).--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:12, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

How do you promote wikivoyage to let everyone know?

Swept in from the pub

I found that most language version of the wikivoyage are less active, so how to do promote wikivoyage for more people to use or read? first of all, I think the Wikivoyage is a best travel website, but the problem is that it starts late, and often the editors come from a small number of Wikipedia people. It is definitely a great difficulty for Wikivoyage.

I have created the Youtube channel of the Wikivoyage, and I also tried to help anyone easily to edit any page of the Wikivoyage by teaching; I also tried to use the government's charity activities to promote us, but after all, personal ability is limited, resulting in the promotion power is really too small, so how can we let more people know about us? how?--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 03:45, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

When I write about a city in any travel forum, I usually link the city's name to the Wikivoyage article. That's a way to get visitors and improve SEO. And of course, improving the article is the best way to make sure people come again :-) But the way, nice videos! But how about talking in the video, with someone's real voice, to explain better? Syced (talk) 07:25, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Igor, did you make sure to add links to all the ZHvoy articles from their parralel articles in the ZH Wikipedia? (using Template:Sister_project_links). To my estimate, this is THE-ONE-ACTION that has helped us at HEBvoy most of all to increase the number of page views + helped increase the Google ranking of the Hebvoy articles (articles with such a link, if expanded enough, usually are in the first results in Google for the phrases when they are typed in Hebrew). Other than that, my best tip to you would be to create really useful articles at ZHvoy that contain a lot of translated content from EngVoy (as far as I remember you actually do this)... because creating "half baked" articles and waiting for the masses to expand them does not work in Wikivoyage like it does in Wikipedia. I don't know if you have that expectation, but some people in Hebvoy had that expectation, and it never worked out that way, in the way most articles at Wikipedia end up being developed. One last tip I have for you... I am starting to think that at Hebvoy the best way to get more readers and editors might be by sending direct invites to the Hebrew speaking people/organizations on the web that are considered experts in the topics/destinations which are considerd the most sought after acording to the statistics pages ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:59, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

One way is for the Wikivoyage community to be more active at YouTube, since views seem to generate more views in many cases. On a larger scale, (other forms of) social media, along with continued hard work, is helpful. Promotion generally takes time and builds momentum. If you lose the momentum, the results of the promotion may gradually go into decline. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:27, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

I've taken a look at your YouTube channel. Thanks for your work on this and I hope it helps Wikivoyage reach more people. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:33, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks to the advice and methods everyone gave me, I will think about letting the Chinese community's wikivoyager help provide on the Wikivoyage link from any Wikipedia articles. I also want to know how the Russian community has made the Wikivoyage successful.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 14:43, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Didn't they have a big project to do with taking pictures or something? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

On Facebook I routinely link to WV articles whenever it seems appropriate in some thread. Links to articles like Retiring abroad or Teaching English get more FB reaction than the destination articles. Pashley (talk) 15:21, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

That seems to work well, Pashley. Retiring abroad, according to page information, received 404 views over the last 30 days. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:59, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

But the Retiring abroad received 404 views is too less in English community, I think there is still a need to do more in the promotion. I will promote the Wikivoyage at the COSCUP of the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology on August 18th. In addition, I will adopt street lamps in the local government (they will help us to announce the "維基導遊" on the streetlights, see pitcure, the "維基導遊" is "Wikivoyage"), but Still need everyone to promote and support....--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 15:00, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Mailing list

Would it be possible to create a Wikivoyage mailing list through which we could send emails about the latest featured articles, etc? That way, we could get a loyal following. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:34, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I think that's good idea!--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 14:39, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you could start it out on a different language version and then try it on English Wikivoyage. I was looking and you have about 37,000 contributions on zh.wikivoyage, so maybe that would be a good place to start. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:16, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Umm... I don't know how to send a message to wikivoyager on zh.wikivoyage? And what kind of message is better to publish? by the way, we Chinese Wikivoyage edit is too less, I don't think own editing other language versions is a good solution.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 15:07, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

An invitation to subscribe to a mailing list would be fine; I'm on quite few lists already & would likely subscribe to one or more here, perhaps a general user list & an admins list.

However, I would seriously resent getting any message from any list I had not deliberately subscribed to! Even a "would you like to subscribe" message should be on the wiki and/or in the Facebook group for WV.

Also, we need to be sure discussions are kept open. A mailing list by nature excludes some people, so most discussions should be on the wiki & announcements probably both here & on Facebook. Pashley (talk) 16:26, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Any mailing list would have to be opt-out by default, in order to comply with European law - GDPR.

Could we have either a banner ad or a pop-up invitation to subscribe? Something not too annoying, of course.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:58, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd say any mailing list must be opt-in. Pashley (talk) 17:26, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Also as well as being opt.in you need to ensure email addresses are not made visible to others. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:07, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

If it wasn't clear, I meant people would be automatically opted out unless they stated otherwise. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:20, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

A mailing list already exists: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikivoyage-l/ WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I think that by subscribing to the user, it is a good idea to let the user come back again. At least let them know that the Wikivoyage has changed a lot.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 05:15, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

• Well, we could have a mailing list not for ourselves, but instead for people who read our articles. It could include the latest DOTMs, OTBPs, and it wouldn't exclude anyone since all that information is already present publicly on our website. The mailing list would do the same kind of thing Facebook does now. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:52, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

In the discussion of the Telegram group of Chinese Wikivoyage, we will publish DOTM and OTBP regularly in the group in the future. For the external part, we need to promote the Wikivoyage on YouTube, Blog, News and other websites or government activities. I think can improve the exposure of Wikivoyage.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 17:02, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Space

In terms of reaching existing volunteers, https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org is a new option. For example, User:Ground Zero would you post a note there about your Canadian article milestone? That's the kind of happy news that lots of people like hearing, and the results of your dedicated work are worth talking about.

The Wikimedia Space is a new project, and there are no rules against promoting Wikivoyage there (quite the opposite, really – we could even ask for a separate space for Wikivoyage if we wanted).

Everyone with accounts here should be able to use their regular accounts to login there. On the technical side, it's currently run through the Phabricator project. If you go to https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org and click the blue login button, it will take you to Phabricator. You log in to Phab by clicking the MediaWiki button. That will take you to MediaWiki.org to ask if you want to authorize the login. And that will take you back to Phab to authorize the Wikimedia Space login, and then give you a button to get out of Phabricator and back to the Wikimedia Space page to create your account. It is a little weird (and much easier to do than to explain), but it works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

OK, I got it.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 11:16, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I have done so. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Ground Zero (talk) 11:29, 25 July 2019 (UTC)