Agreed. I take it there is no appropriate redirect target for "downtown" or "uptown" for travel topic information? I'm not aware of one, but this website has many pages I don't know. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:35, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Namely North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Center, and Central. None of these even vaguely try to list all of the placenames that include their respective compass points, and much like "Downtown" above, the word is usually just a modifier to a country/region/city name rather than a name in and of itself.
Delete One good reason is that if you are searching for "Downtown Pittsburg", "North Dakota" or "Northwest Frontier", then these things are far from helpful; they clutter the screen & actually make the search harder. Pashley (talk) 09:31, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There is an ambiguity here. I'm in a Facebook group discussing English grammar & usage. An exchange there went roughly:
In the South, "fixing to" is entirely normal usage.
I'm in the South, Devon to be exact, and never hear it.
I don't think this warrants a disambiguation page. It does indicate, though, that we sometimes need to be careful about usage. Pashley (talk) 09:50, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have some sympathy for listing places that actually have North, South etc. as their name, not only in their name or as an ad hoc designation. For some of the articles it seems it is just us who chose the name: North (Minas Gerais) is called "Norte de Minas" in Wikipedia and North East (England) is "North East England". For the "South, Devon to be exact", it is common usage, not a name. There is a "the North", "the South" and "the West" in more or less any big country, and I suppose the Devoner (?) wouldn't be able to point out a precise border for where "the South" ends. –LPfi (talk) 10:21, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The West or Western, as a political or cultural term, was discussed somewhere. I don't remember the reasoning or the outcome, perhaps we just dismissed the idea of such an article (after a lengthy discussion). The current West does not shed much light upon the concept. –LPfi (talk) 10:49, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Vfd discussion that resulted in a consensus to delete an article about the West was mostly about whether the term "Western" was "racist-adjacent". Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:22, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. (except Far North) The terminology is too broad. Does the word “southeast” refer to the southeastern part of a country (as the redirect pages imply) or to the direction (what could be written about a direction?). Pages are disambiguated when the desired page title is specific: for example we have a disambiguation page for Windsor because each Windsor is a specific place. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:10, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Each entry in North, South and Southwest is also a place (a region, mostly). The problem is that there are too many of them, most of them can be clicked from the search box (type "north" and you get more or less the same list (plus some "Northern X"), and you should easily be able to navigate there from one level up in the hierarchy: go via Brazil to get to North (Brazil) (Região Norte do Brasil). –LPfi (talk) 15:45, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please clarify. Do you think people forget what town they were reading about and want to find the district to get to know that? Otherwise finding the district via the city article should be easy. Why is Central different from North or South? Are you saying we should keep the disambiguation pages where we have (district?) articles more or less named so? –LPfi (talk) 05:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am thinking that it is possible that people read a central district article and forget what city it was in - a situation which could happen if they came to the district article from a travel topic, or when it is featured on the main page. I do realise that this is unlikely so it is a very weak keep. We don't have district articles named North or South. AlasdairW (talk) 15:41, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We do have Helsinki/South, Helsinki/West, Helsinki/Central, ..., but they are not on the disambiguation pages, and they have "Western Helsinki" etc. as titles – which redlink and aren't shown by the search box. I suppose those are not the only "cardinal districts" missing from the disambiguation pages. I suppose somebody could as well remember having read about Downtown. And I might remember I read about a harbour or its islands. Should Harbour Island have a toplink to Sydney Harbour Islands? Perhaps. To a disambigue page if there are a bunch of similar article names. And then, should we delete the disambiguation as too generic?
It seems this is not as clear-cut as it seemed. We might still want to delete all the bunch, or just keep the disambiguation pages curated. I believe Central, Downtown, North, South etc. are manageable only because we haven't linked all relevant articles (and instead have some far-fetched entries), but I might be wrong.
Dr Who of the North
Rose Tyler: If you're from another planet, why do you sound like you're from the North?
The Doctor: Lots of planets have a North.
Delete the lot of them. These are not reasonable search terms. I don't believe that someone looking for northern Brazil, northern Minas Gerais, or northern Canada would search simply on "North". In England, "the North" means only the North of England, but that isn't even listed on the North page. Same for North Coast, North Island, and so on. So many countries, regions and cities have Centrals, and Easts and Souths. We will never list them all. We need the person searching to provide more information to help them to the right article. Ground Zero (talk) 17:01, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Just a cardinal direction alone, without any further definition, can really mean anything and is as such not helpful. I mean do we need a list of everything that's "North" or "Southwest" etc. in the world?. If it on the other hand is a subarticle of a city or a region, the reader will see the city's/region's name in the url, in the breadcrumb trail, and at least in the case of cities also in the banner in some form. --Ypsilon (talk) 16:53, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I wouldn't necessarily oppose "Far North" as a disambig page, if needed, but I don't like it as a redirect to a specific article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:50, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This one is a different case, not part of the original nomination above but added later by a different user, & a redirect not disambiguation. Should it go as well? Pashley (talk) 00:35, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Don't most places that have a north also have a Far North? In Canada, Far North means the three territories, except for the people who live in the territories, for whom it would mean something else. Delete per SHB2000. Ground Zero (talk) 01:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. It was once an article about a region of New Zealand, until I merged it into other articles. Deleting it would also delete its history – though perhaps that doesn't matter much. When I merged it I made it a redirect to the best candidate of the target articles, Northland. It is not just a generic "far north" – it is a proper name (e.g. see Far North District Council). I have no objection to it being changed into a disambiguation page. It that is not desired, then I suggest moving it (retaining the existing redirect to "Northland") to the name Far North District (which is the name of the Wikipedia article for the region), without leaving a redirect from "Far North" to "Far North District". As well as matching the WP name and the local government district name, this would secondarily serve to preserve the page history, and would remove the ambiguous name "Far North". I don't favour simply deleting it, though it won't kill me if there's a consensus to just delete it. Nurg (talk) 03:37, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Post-archiving note). No, the accepted proposal was to move it without leaving a redirect, not to simply delete it, so as to preserve the page history. I have now rectified that. Nurg (talk) 21:20, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep it's a term used more frequently in the non-eastern states of Australia, in particular WA. Being an extra-hierarchial region, its purpose is similar to West Coast (United States of America). It doesn't fit under our breadcrumb pathway but it's a term that people will potentially search for and it will help direct them to the right articles. Gizza (roam)07:20, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've at least seen PRC, HK and US used colloquially, and can help. No one uses MO and TW, and if one does want to search it up, then they would usually search up the full name. And additionally PRC, HK, US and NZ all are initialisms but TW and MO aren't. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 07:20, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: "MO" is "Missouri" to me and the U.S. Postal Service. If we're really going to have a redirect for it, we need a disambig instead. Do we really want that? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:02, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's an international standard for w:Two-letter country codes. I'm not certain of the original purpose, but they are used as top-level Internet domains. There are lots of sites, including all the government sites for both regions, with domain names ending in .mo or .tw.
I'd still say delete these redirects, but if anyone has time it might be worth creating a travel topic or just adding WP links somewhere. There are interesting oddities like Britain being the only country with two codes, .uk & .gb, Tuvalu making a lot of money from its .tv domains, and two cryptographers with domains cryp.to and cr.yp.to. Pashley (talk) 08:13, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete both for now, though having started the Taiwan redirect discussion I'm not sure it's quite comparable (that one had political considerations). Country codes has potential as a travel topic, but IMO I don't think these are particularly useful for it, and as noted MO in particular is ambiguous (I don't think it's worth a disambig). Vaticidalprophet (talk) 08:46, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I don’t think it makes sense to use the abbreviated redirects unless use of the abbreviation is as common or almost as common as use of the common name of the place. For example US is particularly common. Since w:HK (disambiguation) mentions Horowhenua-Kapiti, I would propose deleting HK as well. I’m not sure about PRC because the term is common. I would leave the judgment on the latter two to regional editors who know how common use of these phrases can be. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:17, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I might qualify as a "regional editor". I'd certainly delete TW & MO and keep PRC, US, USA, UK, NZ since are all in common use. USSR too. I'm inclined to keep HK too, since it is an abbreviation I often use, but I'm not certain it is needed; I doubt it is likely as a search term or that writers will want to use HK for links. Pashley (talk) 11:28, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
HK will not be linked or used as search key, but can be used as a shortcut by lazy readers (just as I use USA and end up at Usa, because of a "convenient" search feature). Neither I think we should have redirects for the country codes, although a travel topic of all kind of codes might be nice.
UK is not the only one with two top domains, although it may be the only one with two two-letter ASCII top domains. Most countries that use non-Latin scripts have a two-letter ASCII top domain and a puny-coded second one (IDN), e.g. Russia has .ru and .рф.
Ah! Here Usa (and thus USA) works for USA. On sv-wp Usa is a disambig, including some place in France, if memory serves. –LPfi (talk) 13:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To the suggestion of creating a travel topic for abbreviations, I say no. That's what Wikipedia is for. It's not about travel. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:04, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree mostly: we shouldn't list the abbreviations. But I think there are some tips good for a traveller to get. Difference between language and country code, airport codes, and country codes for top level domains, vehicles, ... I am thinking of an article that briefly presents a few concepts and links to the Wikipedia articles. But I haven't thought much about it, so I am not sure whether it could be done well. –LPfi (talk) 15:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It's a redirect for W national park, and I think we should keep it because that is literally the only place name called W. 188.151.55.3310:12, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We don't usually have redirects for shortened names of National Parks. The exception is if it's an alt name or if it's a really famous one. There's also a train line in LA called "W", and if Paris were to have so many RER's, then an itinerary may also be an article for that. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 10:16, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I suppose the complete name we use for the article is not used in all cases, especially not in other languages, and searching on an individual letter often give too many false positives or other unhelpful results, in contrast to seeking on Isle Royale, Lake District or Leivonmäki (all articles if you add "National Park"). If "W" needs disambiguation, then just make it a disambiguation page, but those interested in the train line should look for it in Los Angeles. –LPfi (talk) 10:59, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. That's a linear itinerary through West London along which the primary/recommended mode of travel is the bus; it's not an article about the bus route itself. If someone in future decides that the MTA's W train should get an itinerary, they can make one as long as it passes WIAA.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:44, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep - I can't imagine the majority of people searching "W" will really expect to land on that oddly-named park, but for the minority that do, it could be useful.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:45, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I can't see people looking for the subway line just by typing a letter, but there is the chain of W Hotels, so we really might need a disambig page. Sure, we don't have articles about hotels, but what do you think is a more likely thing for a reader who comes to this site for travel information to look for? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:31, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - the single W letter can mean almost an infinite number of things, and unless the reader is from the part of the world where the park is, they will almost certainly think of something else if they type just 'W' (Wikipedia for example). --Ypsilon (talk) 17:12, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But who is going to search for "W"? If somebody does so without any thought of what will turn up, I think sending them to the park article will be a nice surprise for them. Those searching for a hotel chain or railway line aren't too many, and getting to a park article instead shouldn't upset them. But if you read about "W du Niger", "Parc Regional W" or the equivalent in a native language, search for travel info here, and those names don't give you a hit, "W" by itself is a natural desperate next try. Of the infinite number of other things, is there something that needs to turn up a "no matches" or a real link somewhere? Is it bad that those who type "W" for Wikipedia end up in a real article? –LPfi (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I think that this should be kept, because It's the only place (That fits on Wikivoyage) which is called W. If W is deleted, then Å should also be deleted. --Crocusfleur (talk) 16:32, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Ås are villages (there are several of them), with Å as their official name, cf Ii. Thus Å is a very different kind of redirect. –LPfi (talk) 17:01, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete We don't need a redirect for this kind of shortcut. There would be an argument for the redirect if the article was "National Park W", but not with W coming at the start of the name. (Keep Å, as it is qite different). AlasdairW (talk) 21:26, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
When you put it like that, it doesn't look like consensus ;-) Even if the majority is in favour of delete, consensus isn't just a simple majority. But the better arguments have mostly come from the delete side, which no-one on the keep side has been able or willing to refute. And three of the keep voters have barely done anything on WV but participate on this thread. As someone who voted "weak keep", I have no great trouble with deleting.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:59, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The only person who's contributed significantly to WV and wants a strong Keep is LPfi here (since you've voted a weak keep), so if we're disregarding the IP and the other two, then yes, it means consensus. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 09:42, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think of an overwrite of a redirect as technically a delete, but I guess you're right that in practice, it isn't if an existing discussion is underway. Removing my vote to delete. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An unnecessary disambiguation template. There's only one Campbelltown, and that's just a redirect to Sydney/Macarthur. The other one listed can be dealt with the {{confused}} since it's Campbell Town and not Campbelltown. IMO, I see no reason why we need to have this disambiguation when we can deal it with {{confused}}. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 14:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. In addition to Australia and the UK, there are Cambelltowns (or variations thereof) in Guyana and United States. Also a former name of the New Zealand town of Bluff. Precisely what disambiguation pages are for. Gizza (roam)05:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep. While it appears there are no other articles with the same spelling, it's a reasonable assumption that some people will misspell "Campbeltown" and find the disambiguation page. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the work here was done by banned ArticCynda with the 90 IP. We should delete this as block evasion and additionally, see a message on User_talk:Ground_Zero#Just_letting_you_know... that AC is planning to return in September (openly admitted on French Wikivoyage). It should be made clear to him that he isn't welcome, and thus nuke this article, despite our policy on not deleting real places. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:21, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do not agree with the use of this template for a few reasons and therefore nominate it for deletion. First, if an article "merits attention," we have talk pages to raise specific issues. The number of articles that "merit attention" is all of our usable and outline articles, probably over 90% of our total number of articles, so it doesn't seem right to use a template to mark just a few of these. I also disagree with the "last edit" counter for an article, as this is useless, as it doesn't reveal any detail about the size of the edit. In most cases the last edit was a template fix and has no relation to content development. Requiring consensus to be gained before removing the template causes it to be left in articles while having no effect, and seems antithetical to Plunge forward. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. It seems the template is not intended for marking articles that need improvement like any outline. Rather it seems to be meant for keeping track of certain types of articles, that may need to be deleted or redirected at a later time. I don't think the current implementation is good, but I think we should consider how the objectives of the template could be reached – by changes in the template and its documentation or by other means. It seems to have been created during a wave of page creation vandalism, where good faith article creation could be mixed up with vandalism, discouraging contributions. The main objective seems to be to mark an article that should be followed up, giving the creator time to show that the article is worthwhile without harassing them by asking about it right away, and putting the article on a common todo list, when a patroller didn't have time to do anything about issues. Perhaps this could be handled with a should_be_checked=date parameter to the outline templates. –LPfi (talk) 08:09, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. It would be good to first deal with all the tagged articles to either expand, merge, delete or just remove the tag if the article is now ok. I have had a quick run through and got the list down to 15, which is not a lot. Most of them are US places. Anyone willing to help? An odd thing is that only 5 are listed at Category:Articles needing improvement, whereas 15 appear at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Needsimprovement. Perhaps there is a problem with the way the category is populated. I wonder if the same problem affects other categories at Wikivoyage:Maintenance panel. All (I think) of the articles have been tagged for 5 years, which suggests that the template has not been a raging success in drawing editors to fix the articles. Nurg (talk) 08:52, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the template and the categories. Having some editors who go around identifying work to be undertaken by other editors may work in larger communities, but we are a small enough community that doing so here is ineffective, and is more of an irritant. If you think something needs fixing, fix it. I agree that 90% of our articles need improvement, so it would be better if editors spend time improving articles than adding tags which will be ignored. Ground Zero (talk) 00:10, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that identifying work for others to do is not that useful, but what often is useful is to have tools to identify work for yourself to do, and that todo list is often more useful if it is public. If the ones marking all are part of the team fixing, then it works, at least if the team manages to fix at the same pace as articles are marked. In this case, articles have stayed marked for years, which shows the markers have abandoned the project in question (or don't know what to do about those articles in the first place, while the template was meant for easy fixes). –LPfi (talk) 06:40, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per SelfieCity and Ground Zero. Every article on this site, perhaps barring some of these, needs improvement. Users who go to the trouble of pointing out easily fixable errors instead of fixing them is one thing that makes my blood boil on Wikipedia, so let's not import that mentality here.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A very unusual type of redirect created by Soumya-8974. A redirect like WV:DISAMBG makes more sense, but to me, it means "Digital Audio Broadcasting" (dab also has an inappropriate meaning as well, and search it up for yourself. I don't want to offend some here). While I get that that is irrelevant, and you may think I am a hypocrite, my redirects are often the first letters of the page name. But this seems quite unusual, and from all the shortcuts that I've seen, none quite unusual, and I believe no one would have this in mind to be lazy enough to not type this fully. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:38, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We do have that article, but why ambiguity needed? IMO, I feel like the person who started this redirect is just copying all Wikipedia redirects. I'd also prefer the direct to lead to Cannabis tourism than WV:disambiguation pages SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:59, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It might be useful for those coming from Wikipedia, but they should rather learn not to use acronyms than getting an easy time using them over here. I am quite annoyed with en-wp people (I think it's them) having brought the WP shorthands to Commons and discussing G3 and whatnot instead of telling what they are talking about. It is a sure way to raise the bar for newcomers to feel they are full members of the community. Those who know what DAB means on WP should not have a hard time to figure out that the page is found as WV:Dis... (the three letters are enough when typed in the search box). –LPfi (talk) 12:58, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete No need to use acronyms like on Wikipedia, it's unlikely many will be searching in this format on Wikivoyage. I previously made the mistake of creating redirects on Wikivoyage and stopped: generally, they don't get many views at all so aren't needed, unless it's a common alternative name. Rubbish computer (Talk: Contribs) 13:10, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a redirect to Eyre Highway. First of all, the highway just runs through the Nullarbor, and is not the entire Nullarbor. Secondly, the Nullarbor is only a region in SA, but if I can recall correctly from the ABC documentary Back Roads, the highway also goes to WA as well. The Eyre Highway article also explains nothing about the Nullarbor, so I think this redirect is pointless, and is much better off as a red link. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:10, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: As a non-Aussie who has never visited, I've heard of the Nullarbor but not the highway. I'd therefore think that unless/until someone wants to create a real article on the Nullarbor, the redirect is better than nothing & should stay. Pashley (talk) 02:20, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's true. I didn't even know much about that side of Aus until like April. (mainly the highway and the towns along it. I did know about the Nullabor though but as just a plain barren road with nothing along it.) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:22, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I know nothing about Nullarbor, but it is mentioned many times in the article. It doesn't explain the name itself, but this is probably what we have about Nullarbor, it is probably enough for some of those looking for the place, and more info could be added quite easily (and made its own article by time if it warrants one). My impression is the redirect serves the traveller and helps expanding our coverage. I don't see any downsides of having it. –LPfi (talk) 08:18, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy keep. "the Nullarbor is only a region in SA" - false, more of it is in WA than SA. "The Eyre Highway article also explains nothing about the Nullarbor" - false - see especially the "Drive" section. Nurg (talk) 21:40, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Unless someone wants to create the national park article, just make a listing in the highway article's See section with a bit of text & a WP link, then point the redirect to that. Pashley (talk) 08:47, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Removing delete vote. I should have checked that the redirect led to an anchor within the article, and not the full article, with relevant information. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:24, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I remember a discussion about telephone bill scams. I think it was uploaded as part of that discussion. I suppose the bill was from a hotel, so highly travel related. I suppose the bill doesn't meet the threshold of originality, so copyright-wise it should be unproblematic. A good description is needed if it is moved to Commons, for it not to be deleted as not in scope. –LPfi (talk) 09:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete See Talk:Phone_service#A_terrible_experience for background. It looks like there was a plan to use it as an illustration, but it never was used. I don't think a bill in Hungarian Forints is very useful as an illustration, as it is not a currency most readers would know the value of. AlasdairW (talk) 11:59, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It is not used & does not look useful. I see no reason to imagine it would be useful on Commons either.
Reading the discussion AlasdairW linked this was part of a complaint by a user about how much he was charged for a phone call. I could see a legal issue here so switching to speedy delete as photo has no good use and the hotel could object to the image’s use. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:43, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus is leaning toward re-designating Tibetan Empire as a travel topic, but there's not consensus to make a similar change to German East Africa. However, there is sentiment that calling it an extraregion is not appropriate as there is no current "German East Africa." Therefore per wiaa, this is not a travel article as all the information contained is encyclopedic. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:36, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, there really is zero travel content on that page. Either delete, or strip back to a very basic soft redirect, with about the same information as a disambiguation page, pointing to Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanganyika. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:42, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I think we should perhaps rename this article to German Empire, and expand the scope to include the other German colonies such as Namibia, Samoa, Qingdao, Cameroon and so on. If we do that, then there will for sure be enough travel content to justify an article. I know there is still a German-speaking community in Namibia, and there are surviving German colonial towns you can visit. And in the case of Qingdao, it is still known for its beer, which is a legacy of German colonial rule, and also has many German colonial buildings that have been preserved. Also, such an article will allow us to cover former German territories in Europe such as Kaliningrad, Gdańsk and Strasbourg, which are now part of Russia, Poland and France respectively, but still have visible German heritage that you can explore. The dog2 (talk) 20:20, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mind that idea, but if we do that, we need to make sure first we have contributors willing to write travel content for the article (local experts?) because one problem with some of our travel topics is that none of the Wikivoyage contributors have visited the location(s) of the travel topic. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:51, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If this is going to be another exercise in writing history without sources, I would say it is a waste of time. Wikipedia has better articles than we could write. Let's delete this article, and if someone wants to write about points of interest associated with the German Empire that travellers can visit, that could be the basis for a new article, with a concise explanation of the context, of course.
However, as our coverage of places like continental Tanzania, Namibia, Togo and Papua New Guinea is woefully inadequate, travellers would benefit more from an expansion of travel information about this places than they would from an article on the defunct German Empire. I would hope that someone with an interest in these places could contribute to our articles about the modern-day countries. Those who want to write about history would really be better off contributing to Wikipedia (with citations) where the history is better covered than we can here. Ground Zero (talk) 21:12, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, I haven't been to either of those places. But I can write a bit about Qingdao based on what I've seen in Chinese travel shows. For instance, travellers may want to go there to experience the unique beer culture, where they sell you Tsingtao beer to drink out of plastic bags. Of course, drinking beer out of plastic bags is not a German tradition, but the fact that the Tsingtao brewery is based in the city and is so well-known is a legacy of German colonial rule. If you look at our Namibia article, it does list some towns known for their surviving German colonial architecture. And for those European cities I mentioned, Strasbourg for instance has many German buildings in its old town that you can go and have a look, built during the period before World War I when it was part of Germany. I think there is the potential for an article like the ones we have for the Russian Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The dog2 (talk) 21:12, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Neither of those articles is a good example. They list countries, regions and cities, but no museums, monuments, or important buildings that played a role in the history of the empires. Wikivoyage is better as a travel guide than as a history blog, IMO. Ground Zero (talk) 21:16, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Any "German Empire" article would cover the home country more than any colonies. That might be fine, though. We could consider whether to call it "Prusso-German Empire" or something, if we want to include pre-unification content. I see there's no "Prussian Empire" article, and there are a lot of sights that would be worth including in such an article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:40, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There's not much travel content, but it is non-zero; the article was created to provide context for MV Liemba & there is a link to that.
To me it seems obvious it should be kept as an extraregion. That was the consensus at Wikivoyage:Votes_for_deletion/September_2018#German_East_Africa & nothing has changed that should alter it. It is quite clearly a region & equally clearly does not fit into our hierarchy. SelfieCity's claim that calling it an extraregion is not appropriate as there is no current "German East Africa" strikes me as arbitrary & dumb.
However, as I wrote in the Tibetan Empire discussion "On the other hand, the Roman, Persian, Chinese, Mongol & Mughal empires all have travel topic articles." OK, we could make this a topic.
@Pashley: I think you should think about whether you really need to call user:SelfieCity's claim "dumb". Let's discuss this without name-calling. I agree that extraregions in this travel guide should be current extraregions, not historical ones because this is not Wikihistory. It is not a dumb idea, or even an arbitrary one, just because you don't agree with it. Ground Zero (talk) 06:48, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote that the idea "strikes me as arbitrary & dumb", which of course implies the possibility that it will not strike others that way. To me, that seems like fair debate; I could have said "is" rather than "strikes me as", or used stronger terms than "arbitrary & dumb", but chose not to. I do not think that is name-calling.
As for your "It is not a dumb idea, or even an arbitrary one, just because you don't agree with it.", you have it exactly backwards. The fact that it seems d & a to me is the reason I do not agree with it, not a consequence of disagreement. Pashley (talk) 07:26, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is completely unnecessary. In any argument you can argue for your position without belittling the positions of others. The only argument that you have advanced for keeping it as an extraregion is that there was a discussion three years ago. As no-one calls the area "German East Africa" anymore, and as those countries have fought for their independence from subsequent colonial masters, I don't think it is an appropriate descriptor for the region today. Ground Zero (talk) 12:06, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Simply asserting that a page does not fit within our goals is not sufficient for a deletion rationale, which needs to reference specific policy.
No rationale meeting this criterion has been given; as far as I can tell, no attempt at that has even been made. To me, it therefore seems obvious this is a speedy keep; the nomination is nonsense, barely worth discussing & certainly not worth acting on.
I think that if you can add information about the locations of WWI battlefields and some other things (German colonial buildings? plaques memorializing something that happened during that period?), you may be able to move the article back into article space as a travel topic. I'm glad you will keep it in your userspace, rather than seeing it be deleted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:16, 24 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
