Welcome to the pub Shortcuts: WV:Pub WV:TP The Travellers' Pub is the place to ask questions when you're confused, lost, afraid, tired, annoyed, thoughtful, or helpful. To start a new topic, click the "Add topic" tab, so that it gets added at the bottom of the page, and sign your post by appending four tildes (~~~~) Before asking a question or making a comment: Have a look at our Help, FAQ and Policies pages. If you are a new user and you have any questions about using the website, try the Arrivals lounge. If you have a question or suggestion about a particular article, use the article's talk page to keep the discussion associated with that article. If you'd like to draw attention to a comment to get feedback from other Wikivoyagers, try Requests for comment. If you are wanting travel advice on a specific matter see the Tourist Office. If you have an issue you need to bring to the attention of an administrator, try Vandalism in progress. If you are having a problem that you think has to do with the MediaWiki software, please post that on Phabricator instead. If you want to celebrate a significant contribution to Wikivoyage by yourself or others, hold a party at Celebrate a contribution. Discuss issues related to more than one language version of Wikivoyage in the Wikivoyage Lounge on Meta. Anything that is Nigeria-related is now meant to go in the Nigeria café instead. This includes announcements, initiatives and celebrations as well as issues with certain articles. Anything that is Kosovo or Albania related is now meant to go in the Kosovo and Albania café instead. This includes announcements, initiatives and celebrations as well as issues with certain articles. Pull up a chair and join in the conversation! Click here to ask a new question

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Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 17 May 2022 at 12:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 86217494304. Dial by your location.

Agenda

• Update on the recent developments
• Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, Italian, Polish; also, only at the first meeting: Farsi, Vietnamese; only at the second meeting: Portuguese, Spanish, Russian. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to [email protected].

At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 05:02, 14 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Disclaimer: Szymon (aka User:Tar Lócesilion) is one of my teammates at work. I haven't talked to him about this, and he doesn't know I'm posting this.

I've been thinking about this change to "new Vector" (Vector 2022). I think the Wikivoyages should make this change. Some recent (Wikipedia-centric) market research said that readers think the old design (Vector 2010) is looking outdated. Making the switch might require a little work (obviously, we will want to double-check key features like the Page Banners), and any big change can take a couple of weeks for individuals (i.e., those of us reading this page) to get used to. But when I think about this community's values, looking like a modern, up-to-date website that is easily differentiated from competitors is one of the things we care about, and adopting this change would be a straightforward way to achieve our goals and support the group's values.

If you want to see what it looks like right now, click on https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Turin?useskin=vector-2022 If you want to see what it looks like without the new floating TOC, click on https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Turin?useskin=vector-2022&tableofcontents=0

I don't know what the team's deployment process is (I can ask Szymon, if you want), but since it's already deployed at many wikis, including the French Wikipedia, I'd guess that any community that says "We checked it out, and we want you to put us on the list for the next round" will be accepted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 15 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

The left margin menus pushing down content on narrow windows is a show-stopper if it affects many people. Has the skin really been tested thoroughly enough to be put in production to "look like a modern, up-to-date" skin? Wikivoyagers may access the site from odd hardware over sketchy connections, so some thought should be put in how to check the functionality. –LPfi (talk) 17:37, 15 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I've clicked the << to hide the left margin menu (which I think is the default?), so I don't see that. I think the best way to test it is to have editors using it for a couple of weeks. We can file bug reports in phab: if we need to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 15 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I think it needs better testing before it gets implemented here. If I'm not mistaken, on Main Page map, anything east of Nepal or Sri Lanka gets cut off. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:26, 16 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it gets cropped when I look at it. It's probably a consequence of their "fixed width" design. That should be fixable, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 16 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I just edited out all instances of "infact" from this site. Please don't add more. :-) The expression is "in fact," two words, but it can usually be dispensed with. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:26, 22 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek Thanks for the edits :-) I must admit that I have a bad habit of writing "in fact" as one word (and I almost did just then), but thanks for the fixes. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:10, 23 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Sure thing. Not all of the edits in question were by you. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if we should only list the local Chinese-Korean name, or if we should also list the South Korean name. Usually, the ethnic Koreans in China will use the Sino-Korean readings of the city's Chinese name, while South Koreans will use a transliteration of the Mandarin name, so the two Korean names can actually be quite different from each other. Yanji is a particular example, where the local Chinese-Koreans call the city Yeon-gil, while South Koreans call the city Yen-ji. The dog2 (talk) 20:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

The local names are the Chinese name and Chinese-Korean name, so those names should be used. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:18, 24 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Ikan Kekek. —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:43, 24 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

There is disagreement about whether adding cheap flight destinations to Go next sections of country articles is beneficial for Wikivoyage. I think it is better to discuss this with all the community. Perhaps Flightnavigator and User:SHB2000 would like to sum up the arguments. –LPfi (talk) 09:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

For a bit of a starter, this is specifically referring to "Go next" sections – I don't have anything against adding them in "Get in", though this should be in the relevant airport or city article.

I've already made my argument in User talk:Flightnavigator#Your revert, but I'll mention it here:

• Wikivoyage is a guide for everyone, not just budget travellers – what Flightnavigator has been adding is not appealing to everyone, and in fact discourages some people like me to go there.
• This gives an impression that "ultra-low-budget flights" are the standard way of getting from one destination to another. Should budget flights be added, then normal flights that are not budget flights should also be added
• This same information is spammed across articles, and in some cases, it's very unrealistic – do you really think someone would really travel from Iceland to Poland only because of cheap flights? (see Special:PermaLink/4447268#Go next for what I'm talking about)
• Building upon the previous point, the same information on "ultra-low-cost" repeated in every country article makes Wikivoyage less interesting to read, somewhat like the solar eclipse situation we have
• In some cases, Flightnavigator seems to have been selective in where the budget flights are rather far away or unrealistic, such in the case of many European destinations.

So that sums it up and why I am strongly opposed to adding budget flights in country go next articles. Wikivoyage is a guide for everyone, and not just budget travellers. Presenting information which makes it look like travelling on a budget flight is the primary way does not serve the traveller, because not everyone wants to go on budget flights – in fact in some parts of the world, many care more about comfort rather than cost. My removal of this information is so Wikivoyage is not budget traveller-centric, and the same thing repeated in every single makes it worse. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I'd prefer to leave travel specifics such as flights to 'Get in'. Mentioning which bordering/neighbouring countries you can visit is usually sufficient for 'Go next' unless you're writing about an island that's only accessible from one or two faraway countries, and even then you don't want to be writing a 'Get in' section in reverse. And I agree with SHB that repeating information with narrow appeal across multiple articles doesn't improve Wikivoyage for most of its users. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

You are usually not able to choose from where to fly in, while you might choose your next destination based on flight prices, so Go next is more logical. On the other hand, you should look in Get in for transport details anyway, so you'd just need to take a look before deciding. The only thing that would be illogic is where the cheap flights are just one way (out), but that can be said in a few words, and choosing the words right you could even say that while talking about getting in. –LPfi (talk) 08:55, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I am not sure I agree about restricting this to airport and city articles. You tell about flights in Get ins of countries, and it'd be logical to say something about price also there ("most budget flights use A, although there are some cheap flights also to B and C").

Few would fly from Iceland to Poland just because there is a cheap flight to there, but somebody on their way from America via Iceland to Europe for a Eurail holiday could very well choose to use that flight instead of Berlin or Frankfurt, which might have been their first thought. We do mention more far-fetched go-next options in some articles.

–LPfi (talk) 09:05, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Rail is usually cheaper than flying in Europe, right? So if we wanted to cater to the ultra-low-budget traveler, I don't think we'd be mentioning flights within Europe at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Rail to Iceland requires some preparations that most travellers wouldn't do :-) Also getting from Poland to Finland might be much cheaper by plane than by alternative means. I assume these are not the only examples. –LPfi (talk) 19:49, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

A destination you never thought about can very easily become your next destination if prices are enticing. I've definitely planned trips around cheap transportation to places I previously had no plans to visit. Is Poland really such an off-putting place that people can't imagine anyone willingly choosing to visit? Is this just about Country articles? For cities, for example, I think nearby destinations (on the ground) are preferable in the "Get out" section. For countries, I suppose places accessible by air could make sense, but nearby countries when they exist, still makes the most sense to me. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 07:08, 29 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Likewise, do you also think someone will go to the Canary Islands from Morocco just because of cheap flights? (see Special:Diff/4417910). The Canary Islands are a popular travel destination from Morocco, but budget flights are not the prime reason why many visit the Canaries. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:46, 29 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Looking at your link: If flights from Morocco are particularly cheap to the Canary Islands compared to flights from all/most other places that service it (especially if the others are more commonly used or traveled) then it's a noteworthy detail. It reads as if flights for everywhere are cheaper, though, so that makes the Canary Islands seem less worth specifying. If flights from Morocco are universally cheaper, it may be worth mentioning but reframing it without the CI focus. Also, if the Canary Islands are particularly affordable from Morocco, that doesn't mean other things that make it worthwhile cannot be added. Most of the "problem" seems to be that no one has added anything else to the "Get out" sections. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:33, 29 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

And that's another case of something that's only appealing to you. Likewise, would you really travel from Georgia to the UAE because of cheap flights? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:50, 30 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I have at least one friend who will fly off somewhere at the drop of a hat because she found a super-cheap flight in the middle of a new wave of COVID (she's also had COVID 3 times). I have no problem with mentioning cheap flights, except for one thing: Can we really expect things to be updated when those flights become expensive and somewhere else becomes cheap? Also, my friend won't go anywhere; she has no interest in having a vacation in Dubai, but did go to Lisbon when there were $300 round trip flights from San Francisco through Boston. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:59, 30 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't think the argument that cheap flights don't inspire travel is convincing, but you are right that the "cheap flights" need to be stable or the cheapness in comparison to other flights needs to be mostly stable. It couldn't be based on a travel sale or something temporary. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 05:51, 30 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Cheap flights do motivate travellers who are interested in the locations in question. But if, for example, it's easy to get cheap flights to Dubai from a whole slew of places in Europe and the Caucasus, I'm not sure that should be mentioned in every article for a place with its own airport throughout those regions. Instead, maybe it should be mentioned in the Dubai article and in "Go next" for the relevant multi-national regions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:03, 30 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

20 days later, Flightnavigator has not commented since then and nobody has made a convincing argument against the budget traveller-centric content going out-of-date. Any last minute objections before I remove this from all country articles? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:34, 20 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Based on the prior discussion there seems to be a consensus for keeping the info on budget flights though. Tai123.123 (talk) 18:01, 20 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I think outline information on budget flights should be kept. In country articles probably the most useful thing is to say which airports the budget airlines use. Precise details of destinations and prices is likely to go out of date, but budget flights will often continue to use the same "cheaper" airports. AlasdairW (talk) 22:38, 20 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

But surely not in 'Go next'? These sections have always been brief, with travel specifics going to the relevant 'Get in'.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:36, 21 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. It should be in the "Get in" section. Those who are saying "You can't choose where you go in from" are just not using the "Get in" section to its full potential. If you are in a city, the "Get in" section can give you ideas on where you can go easily and/or cheaply FROM that location much better than the "Get out" section, which is meant for quick and convenient daytrips. I would say that's the best use of the "Get in" section in many cases. It wouldn't make sense to list Tsuyama in Tokyo's "Get out" section, because it's far and not likely to even make the top 100 list of places someone would go from Tokyo. However, if you look at Tsuyama's "Get in" section, you can see that there is actually a direct, comparatively cheap night bus to Tsuyama from Tokyo. You could use that if you are in Tokyo to "Get in" to Tsuyama, but more likely you will use it if you are in Tsuyama to figure out how to get to Tokyo cheaply. Tokyo/Shinagawa's "Get in" section also lists Tsuyama, but again, the most likely use for this is to realize that you can go all the way to Tsuyama cheaply from Tokyo/Shinagawa. No one is going to go to the Shinagawa article hoping to find information specifically about how to visit Shinagawa from Tsuyama. In this case Tsuyama is there, but very few articles have information specific to someone traveling from Tsuyama. The "Get in" section of Tsuyama is the best place to learn how to travel outward FROM Tsuyama. This is true for every destination that isn't of similar status to Paris. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 12:19, 21 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The section you're talking about is called "Go next", and it is not at all only for day trips, but at least as much for logical places to literally go next and stay at. So for New York City, that includes Philadelphia, Boston and DC, only one of which (Philly) is really fairly reasonable as a day trip but all of which are logical places to visit for several days or more. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:28, 21 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I should have said "nearby", but in most articles they will be almost the same. I don't think NYC is a very good example of a typical city or city article anyway since it's a megacity that, to be honest, could just as easily list Los Angeles in the Go Next given that it's "the other city" that foreign travelers who want to visit NYC most often mention. The NYC article also lists Montreal and all of New England, so it has room for improvement. But that is all besides the point, which was that you can use the "Get in" section however it benefits you. And that I don't think the Go Next of country articles should generally list extremely far off places in place of neighboring countries, so stable discount or cheap flights should be in "Get in" not "Go next". ChubbyWimbus (talk) 12:35, 22 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Montreal is questionable to list in New York City#Go next, but Boston is not, IMO. I wasn't disputing your points on country articles and don't have any strong opinion on the point you're arguing; I just wanted to deal with the side point on Wikivoyage not having "Get out" sections and "Go next" sections not being at all exclusively about day trips. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:14, 22 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Alasdair, this is about them going in "go next", not in get in. I'm not going to repeat my arguments again, but in simple words, Flightnavigator spammed a bunch of country articles with "There are cheap flights to xxx", which is way too budget traveller-centric. I don't have a problem with budget flights being listed in "get in", but this should really be in the relevant airport, city or in rare cases, park article – not in a country article. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:12, 23 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I am fine with moving the budget flights from "Go next" to "Get in" and sumarising it in the process. With the possible exception of short distance travel experiences like hiking tracks or steam trains, practical travel details belong in get in, not go next. AlasdairW (talk) 21:46, 23 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Tai123.123, where's the consensus? Nobody gave a convincing argument as to why they should be mentioned in "Go next". I'm aware the section header is misleading, but this is about budget flights being mentioned in "Go next", not "Get in". SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:14, 23 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I misunderstood your statement as you never stated where you were removing info from. I thought you were going to remove all budget flight info, not just the flights in Go Next. There seems to be consensus for removing it from go next. Tai123.123 (talk) 00:12, 24 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Does WN have any statistics about its audience? For example, a breakdown by age of the audience.

In this particular example I believe that the older you are the less you care about the price of the flight (up to a limit?) and the more you care about convenience: comfortable seating, meals, good connections, timing, Etc. Also, I think(?), older people are more concerned about COVID and prefer to travel by automobile, when at all possible. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:21, 25 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

It has been 1.5 months and as Flightnavigator simply hasn't bothered to comment along with clear consensus, I'll be removing all budget flights from "Go next" in the next few days. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:27, 11 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hello all,

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) project team has completed the analysis of the feedback accompanying the ratification vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines.

Following the completion of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines Draft in 2022, the guidelines were voted on by the Wikimedian community. Voters cast votes from 137 communities, with the top 9 communities being: English, German, French, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian Wikipedias, and Meta-wiki.

Those voting had the opportunity to provide comments on the contents of the Draft document. 658 participants left comments. 77% of the comments are written in English. Voters wrote comments in 24 languages with the largest numbers in English (508), German (34), Japanese (28), French (25), and Russian (12).

A report will be sent to the Revision Drafting Committee who will refine the enforcement guidelines based on the community feedback received from the recently concluded vote. A public version of the report is published on Meta-wiki here. The report is available in translated versions on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Again, we thank all who participated in the vote and discussions. We invite everyone to contribute during the next community discussions. More information about the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines can be found on Meta-wiki.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 26 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

We'd like to provide an update on the work on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct. After the conclusion of the community vote on the guidelines in March, the Community Affairs committee (CAC) of the Board asked that several areas of the guidelines be reviewed for improvements before the Board does its final review. These areas were identified based on community discussions and comments provided during the vote. The CAC also requested review of the controversial Note in 3.1 of the UCoC itself.

Once more, a big thank you to all who voted, especially to all who left constructive feedback and comments! The project team is working with the Board to establish a timeline for this work, and will communicate this next month.

Members of the two prior UCoC Drafting Committees have generously offered their time to help shape improvements to the Guidelines. You can read more about them and their work here, as well as read summaries of their weekly meetings in 2022.

Wikimedians have provided many valuable comments together with the vote and in other conversations. Given the size and diversity of the Wikimedia community, there are even more voices out there who can give ideas on how to improve the enforcement guidelines and add even more valuable ideas to the process. To help the Revisions committee identify improvements, input on several questions for the committee’s review is requested. Visit the Meta-wiki pages (Enforcement Guidelines revision discussions, Policy text revision discussions) to get your ideas to the Committee - it is very important that viewpoints are heard from different communities before the Committee begins drafting revision proposals.

On behalf of the UCoC project team

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 19:10, 3 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

A couple of weeks ago Peter Meyer from Wikimedia DC, Richard Kinipel from Wikimedia NYC, & myself (from Cascadia Wikimedians) met with Maggie Cawley, Executive Director with OpenStreetMap US. We discussed the possibility of doing WikiConference North America/2022 on the days after FedGeoDay on Thursday, November 3, 2022. Please note this is very preliminary & that WikiConference NA 2022 may occur on different dates altogether.

Wikivoyage & Openstreetmap seem to be a natural fit. Indeed, there are pages on how to cooperate between the two projects at Wikivoyage:Cooperating with OpenStreetMap & openstreetmap:Collaboration with Wikivoyage. Minh Nguyễn (Mxn) is president of OpenStreetMap US & has edited both on English & Vietnamese Wikivoyage as well has extensively editing in other Wikimedia projects.

In Italy, the Wikimedia & OpenStreetMap chapter is the one & same organization: wmit:Coordinatori.

I wanted to let folks here know about the possibility. I will add a link to the next WikiConference NA planning meeting when we know, for any here who might be interested. Peaceray (talk) 19:22, 4 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/travel/affordable-vacation-alternatives.html —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:33, 5 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

We present some of the ideas in Budget travel, although not with such examples. We should probably include a few paragraphs on the theme (why is there nothing about local travel and travelling more seldom and staying longer instead?) also in Responsible travel. –LPfi (talk) 11:21, 6 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The GDP column of Retiring_abroad/Table has one indicator of costs for various countries. Should this be linked from other articles? Generalised in some way to make it more useful for folk other than retirees? Pashley (talk) 14:11, 6 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Retiring abroad, local wealth and the associated cost of living can be a good approximation on your own cost of living there (with some biasing issues dealt with in the article). For the tourist, costs of transport and lodging often dominate, and the correlation between those and local approximate wealth is less clear (this was discussed in the context of the Nordic countries a few years ago). A problem shared with those moving abroad for a long time, is that low prices for services often correlate with a need to care about security, with associated costs (considered in the table through the GPI and SPI indexes). There is valuable information in the table, but I am not sure it is easily used in other articles. –LPfi (talk) 10:59, 7 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Short but I think this could be expanded with some other generic phenomenon types that have been explained.

Mirages and the Brocken Spectre were 2 major ones I felt may be something readers of this site might ask about.

I like some other Wikiovoyagers take a 'skeptical' view towards the paranormal.

If there's enough material, I'm willing to consider 'Illusions' as a more generic travel topic, outside of the Fringe article...

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:47, 7 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi ShakespeareFan00, that's a really interesting page, will work on it when I get the chance. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 10:49, 10 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Why are we referring to Chornobyl by its Russian name, Chernobyl? Chornobyl is Ukraine and, as anyone with any access to non-Russia/non-PRC news sources knows, Russia has been waging brutal war on all of Ukraine since 24 Feb 2022 (and on Crimea and Donbass since 2014). Maybe mainstream media were fine with using a Russian name for a Ukrainian oblast at the time of the original 1986 disaster, when the Soviet Union was very much still extant and, by extension, Ukraine was under Soviet occupation, but we're in 2022 now and the world is a very different place. There's a war on.

We wouldn't file London under Londres or Germany under Alemania - their French and Spanish names - so why would we use a third country's naming for Chornobyl? 66.102.87.40 18:38, 10 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

• because of policy. WV:Naming conventions: "articles should use the city, region or country name most commonly used in English-speaking countries". Chernobyl is still prevalent - the HBO miniseries comes to mind. Ibaman (talk) 18:49, 10 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Precisely. There may come a time when the Ukrainian name is used more in English, but given the pervasiveness of news coverage under the Russian name, I think it'll be some time before it's forgotten in the English-speaking world. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:59, 10 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the above, it's just typical naming conventions. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 19:57, 10 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

7 days ago the BBC reported Ukraine war: Chernobyl scarred by Russian troops' damage and looting. Can the IP suggesting the name change please provide some examples of recent news coverage in English language sources which use Chornobyl.

I also see that a request to move the page was rejected on WP. We have a redirect from Chornobyl which is sufficient for the limited English language use of the name. AlasdairW (talk) 22:51, 10 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

And as a side note, I sometimes take a peek at what the Chinese media is saying in their news since I understand Chinese, and news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not censored in China. They often bring on pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine commentators to debate with each other, and the tone of the Chinese state media coverage of the war is more neutral than pro-Russia. I know of a Ukrainian woman who posts videos on Chinese social media where she clearly adopts a pro-Ukraine position (and she posts videos in Chinese because she studied in China), and she has not been censored. And in the Chinese media, every now and then, they make it a point to remind people of what Russian imperialism did to them during the "Century of Humiliation", so what they are basically saying is that the Russians cannot be trusted, but they need to have this marriage of convenience for now because America is the bigger threat. But there has also been quite a fair bit of criticism of Russia in the Chinese media for being too hasty to go to war. The dog2 (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

That's interesting and sounds like a fairly sensible take for China. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:47, 11 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

It appears that Reuters has changed their spelling, if https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/chornobyl-radiation-detectors-back-online-levels-normal-iaea-2022-06-07/ is representative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 11 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

We should watch things, but we need to keep in mind the impact of all the media coverage in and since 1986, not just current-day changes. I think at the very least, we will probably need to wait x-number of years before changing the spelling if we ever do. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Also, people should be careful of what media stories they believe. There have been claims in the media that the Chinese delegation walked out when Zelensky gave his speech at Davos, and more recently at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Turns out it was the Vietnamese delegation both times, and people just assumed that it was the Chinese just because they look Asian. The dog2 (talk) 13:50, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Chernobyl remains the most widely used spelling, and even so, the difference is only one letter. Some changes have been amplified due to the war, such as Kiev to Kyiv, but Chernobyl is not one of them. I agree with the consensus to keep "Chernobyl" until the change becomes widely accepted, as was concluded in Turkiye. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 15:16, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Is it worth creating a new article on Storm chasing? There's lots of information I could use but it may overlap a lot with tornado safety. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 17:44, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Why not start it as a section of "tornado safety" and see how it goes? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:20, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi Ikan Kekek, that's a good idea. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 18:29, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi I wrote a separate page as struggled to see where to fit it into the existing page. It's at storm chasing. Cheers, Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 17:31, 14 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I've always wondered on how these should be formatted. They're not usually standard in district articles (and in fact, the only one I could find was Sydney/City East), but I did a small experiment today with Canberra/Civic with the use of a "neighbourhood map" (or whatever they're called). It did leave me with three questions though, merely because we don't have other examples of such maps and I'd like some answers before I implement more of these maps.

1. Which section should a map like this go in? For Canberra/Civic, I chose "districts", but Sydney/City East has it in an "Orientation" section in Understand
2. Do the duplicate maps pose an issue?
3. Do these maps help? I guess it helps to sort of know which neighbourhoods are in a certain district, but then you don't need to know, and it might appear too encyclopedic.

--SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:23, 13 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't have any advice for you or answers to your questions, but I like what you've done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 13 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Image policy#Minimal use of images and WV:Map: do we really need to display multiple dynamic maps in one article? It seems redundant and tiresome to me. Ibaman (talk) 17:30, 13 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Can't we integrate the neighbourhoods into the normal map. Probably opacity should be tweaked for them not to dominate. –LPfi (talk) 18:02, 13 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

@LPfi: Special:PermaLink/4467260 is what it would look like if we merged the maps together. As someone with visual impairments, I find the second map (the one with listings) hard to read with all the colours as all the listings look cluttered, making it hard to identify where the POI is located. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:18, 14 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I lessened the opacity of the districts. Is this this still hard to read? It could still be lessened a tad if needed. –LPfi (talk) 07:56, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

My eyes still prefer the map without the mapmasks, and I think the older map is easier to read for people with visual impairments. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:11, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

OK. I undid the edit. I hope you noticed that I linked the previous version (oops), now fixed. –LPfi (talk) 09:10, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't think that the neighborhood map needs to be dynamic, but since dynamic is what we've got/until someone wants to make a static map, I've no objection to it being a dynamic map. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:28, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I might be in the minority, but I actually think a dynamic map is better for all region articles, and not just bottom level region articles, and it brings me to the question; are there any users here who can make a static map? I've tried to make several static maps before, but unfortunately Wikivoyage:How to draw static maps is either unclear or out-of-date, and the only successful one that I've managed to draw was File:Mungo NP static map.svg, and that also looks terrible. Anecdotally speaking, the only time where I've found a static map way more helpful was when I was in Yosemite National Park earlier this year (and T-mobile was not that great in the Sierra Nevada, but I didn't really need the map since it was a second visit to Yosemite). They're often difficult and time consuming to make, and they become hard to modify when change is required. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:44, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I'm sure they have all of those downsides, but I understand that dynamic maps don't print properly, which is also a problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 15 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I can make static maps, although I do not have much experience with this particular kind of map. I've never done it for WV, because it's a lot of work if you want to do it right. I don't really think it's worth the effort: 1) I'd never use a WV map (static nor dynamic) for actual navigation. That's what navigation apps (preferably with offline options) and proper paper maps are for. 2) I've been meaning to update the static map in North Rhine-Westphalia for years now. But it's a raster graphics file, so in order to make clean changes, I'd basically have to re-create the whole map (Wikivoyage:How to draw static maps has some really bad advice in that regard). Even if it was SVG, I'd probably rather make a new one, because there's only so much you can do in a graphics program compared to something like Qqis. 3) The styles for static city/district and especially country/region maps look like it's still 2007. El Grafo (talk) 15:40, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ibaman: I made a static map but it's togglable. Does it still look a bit redundant? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:25, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

On this map it says API key required when you switch to relief maps. Not sure who to raise this with to see about getting it fixed? Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:01, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Just going by this old phabricator task, it seems that tool has been depreciated in favour of Kartographer — are you able to use that instead? TheresNoTime (talk) 20:35, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The mapframe in Heaphy_Track#Walk doesn't appear to show the issue with the relief map layer. It appears that is only an issue with the full page map (from the icon at the top right of most pages. I think that mapframe is Kartographer based, but I don't know about the full page map. (It is worth keeping the full page map as it has some features missing from mapframe as is better for printing.) AlasdairW (talk) 21:38, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

This article needs major cleanup, copyedited a bit the best I can. Are there any templates for articles needing cleanup or copyediting? Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 19:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes, such as "style," but the problem is that they seldom produce any corrective action, so my advice to you would be, do what cleanup you can and post remarks to that article's talk page with comments about other work that should be done. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:32, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi Ikan Kekek, will do, thanks for the response. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my talk page) 21:35, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Could someone please help me archive Talk:Bulgaria? I've already copied the old comments to a subpage and linked the subpage in the main talk, you only have to delete the old discussions. I can't do that because I'm too new and trying to do that triggers the page blanking filter. I want to start a new discussion about regions, and the old stuff on the talk page has made it unwieldy. Daggerstab (talk) 16:59, 17 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

It's done. Daggerstab (talk) 17:12, 17 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

If you want to discuss regions, we should unarchive the previous regions discussion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:54, 17 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

We need to change all of these article titles that don't merit deletion. What's the best way to do it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:11, 18 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

There is a discussion underway at Talk:Montérégie. Ground Zero (talk) 15:46, 18 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if there are any engineers here who would be able to write an article on famous bridges. Of course, the ones that immediately come to mind are New York City's Brooklyn Bridge, London's Tower Bridge, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but I believe there would be numerous others that could be mentioned in such an article. The dog2 (talk) 20:12, 20 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Making this the new default

Hello. I wanted to give you an update about the Desktop Improvements project, which the Wikimedia Foundation Web team has been working on for the past few years. Our work is almost finished! 🎉

We would love to see these improvements become the default for readers and editors across all wikis. In the coming weeks, we will begin conversations on more wikis, including yours. 🗓️ We will gladly read your suggestions!

The goals of the project are to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. The project consists of a series of feature improvements which make it easier to read and learn, navigate within the page, search, switch between languages, use article tabs and the user menu, and more. The improvements are already visible by default for readers and editors on more than 30 wikis, including Wikipedias in French, Portuguese, and Persian.

The changes apply to the Vector skin only, although it will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Monobook or Timeless users will not notice any changes.

The newest features

• Table of contents - our version is easier to reach, gain context of the page, and navigate throughout the page without needing to scroll. It is currently tested across our pilot wikis. It is also available for editors who have opted into the Vector 2022 skin.
• Page tools - now, there are two types of links in the sidebar. There are actions and tools for individual pages (like Related changes) and links of the wiki-wide nature (like Recent changes). We are going to separate these into two intuitive menus.

How to enable/disable the improvements

• It is possible to opt-in individually in the appearance tab within the preferences by selecting "Vector (2022)". Also, it is possible to opt-in on all wikis using the global preferences.
• On wikis where the changes are visible by default for all, logged-in users can always opt-out to the Legacy Vector. There is an easily accessible link in the sidebar of the new Vector.

Learn more and join our events

If you would like to follow the progress of our project, you can subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the pages of the project, check our FAQ, write on the project talk page, and join an online meeting with us.

Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 21 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thank you.

Most of our pages use the pagebanner template to display the table of contents rather than the standard method. Will this be impacted by your proposed changes? AlasdairW (talk) 18:58, 21 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

At least in the current version they seem to get along quite well. Page banner still works, but there's an additional TOC in the side bar. You can try for yourself by enabling Vector (2022) in your preferences. El Grafo (talk) 14:22, 22 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Try it out:

• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=Vector-2022 (still cropping the first image, so we only get half of Australia)
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Random?useskin=Vector-2022
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Random?useskin=Vector-2022&tableofcontents=0 (with the floating Table of Contents disabled)

WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 22 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. That looks fine.

Looking at an example page, it does appear that slightly less page width is allocated to the article and more to the left column, but I haven't investigated, and the different appearance may be an improvement. AlasdairW (talk) 20:49, 22 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Join us on Tuesday

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 28 June 2022 at 12:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 5304280674. Dial by your location. The following events will take place on 12 July and 26 July.

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file and copied to Etherpad. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English. At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We can answer questions asked in English and a number of other languages. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczukwikimedia.org. We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 23 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I have just posted a new topic here and immediately had to edit it. See:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage%3ATravellers%27_pub&type=revision&diff=4472722&oldid=4472721 Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

@SGrabarczuk (WMF),@WhatamIdoing Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

This needs work-me to file a Phab ticket. Thanks for letting me know. I'm curious: could you see the <blockquote> tags in the visual editor while you were typing? Did you paste them in, or type them, or use a keyboard shortcut? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:25, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your prompt reply @WhatamIdoing,believe it or not my memory of this incident is already fuzzy in my memory. I know I originally typed in the < blockquote > tag, but I may have copy&mpasted it later (I sometimes do that if I have to go investigate somewhere else before posting a half-baked post).

I also discovered since, that this version of the software implemented on wiki-voyage (it is different on other wmf-wikis I participate on) has two alternative modes of input (undocumented?):

• Visual

and

• Source

I think I was originally put on Visual by default, but now I am on Source by default, and I am also seeing a preview pane which was not there before, I think? It would also be great if I could add an edit summary, which I can using the shall-we-call-it-reply software elsewhere.

I hope I am making sense in this garbled reply? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:41, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Click on the "Advanced" option above the copyright/licensing statement. Most people don't use a meaningful/custom edit summary in discussions, but you can add one if you want to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Edit summaries are very useful also for discussions, especially at busy pages like the pub. It is often the case that some of the threads have gone down some less interesting paths, and I read them only if somebody brings up a new point (mentioned in the edit summary). When there have been new posts in several threads, I might miss some of them, unless the edit summary caught my attention on the watchlist. And the most irritating of all: making an edit to existing posts without telling that in the summary – I scroll down to the end of the thread, find nothing new, check earlier pre-outdent posts, finding nothing there, search for today's date, no match, then click history and diff, to finally find that change of phrasing or whatever, which often didn't add anything of value to what I've already read. Please write "ce" or whatever. –LPfi (talk) 12:38, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I was surprised to see this announcement on https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases :

As of 20 June 2022, ECDC is discontinuing the data collection and publication of the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths worldwide. Please refer to the World Health Organization (WHO) data on COVID-19 and the WHO Weekly Epidemiological and Weekly Operational Updates page for the non-EU/EEA countries.

ECDC will continue providing weekly updates for EU/EEA Member States and report on an ad-hoc basis about significant events related to COVID-19 globally.

ECDC has been collecting data on the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths for all countries in the EU/EEA and globally for more than two years. The data collected by ECDC will continue to be available in an archived format.

<

So it appears that the EU thinks COVID is no longer an issue? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:06, 25 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

COVID will never be "over", in that it will not stop circulating in our lifetimes, but broadly speaking people's lifestyles will continue to get closer to how they were before the pandemic. Evidently ECDC has decided not to publish this particular set of data anymore, but if I understand correctly, other sources are still publishing substantively the same data for the time being. —Granger (talk · contribs) 22:07, 25 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

It is definitely not over. Current statistics are available from many sources, none 100% reliable. Worldometers Probably the most worrisome number is that there are still 18.75 million active cases (diagnosed but not yet either dead or recovered) plus some infected but not diagnosed; those can spread the disease. The US still has about 3.3 million active cases, though that number has been falling. Pashley (talk) 03:59, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't know whether Finland is typical for EU, but here the government more or less gave up on COVID-19 in early spring. They decided that it is spreading too fast to be stopped, that with most of the population triple-vaccinated "few" get a serious disease, and life has to go on. It seems people took them on the word, I think that less than one in ten is using masks. Incidence and death toll have been record high (statistics on cases is unreliable though, as people don't get official tests), but there are only some critical voices. Non-vaccinated have restrictions on passing the border (tests or quarantine required) but vaccinated EU-citizens can come and go as they please, nightclubs etc. are crowded, and big events are taking place like they used to. You can still find masks and tests in any shop, not as in Denmark where that is finished too. –LPfi (talk) 17:55, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes, in Finland COVID hasn't been the main news topic for several months (partially also due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine). On 1 July they're dropping also the entry restrictions and health controls for people entering from outside the Schengen and in shops I've as of lately seen discounts on home tests and masks being "phased out from our product selection". The Department of Health and Wellbeing (THL) publishes statistics showing cases and deaths have dropped remarkably since the spring. So at least for the moment it seems to be over, but one can never know what the situation looks like in the autumn. --Ypsilon (talk) 18:33, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Confirmed cases per 100,000 per 14 days is still in the hundreds, even though you aren't recommended to take an official test unless you get serious symptoms (as in needing hospital care). In some professions the tests are still taken, I assume. Anyway, the incidence – if counting factual cases – seems to be at least as bad as in the late autumn. 30% of actual tests are positive, when the figure used to be ~1% before the vaccines. There are about 10 persons in intensive care, while the number was about 50 at the worst time. Much better now, but far from over. –LPfi (talk) 13:00, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The health care centre still recommends mask use. –LPfi (talk) 13:03, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Data collection has ended, but I don't think the EU considers COVID to no longer be an issue. I think we should leave, in current circumstances, the COVID notice on our main page until the end of the year, pending future updates on its spread. Apart from that notice and international travel information, COVID is barely mentioned on this wiki. I think the current notices in place make sense in our environment. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:15, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Right now, the focus where I am in New South Wales is mostly the flu (for the record, I've caught it twice within the last 31 days, with the last time just 4 days ago, hence why my editing activity has increased). The only news of COVID that I've really been hearing is either about COVID in China, or about our lockdown last year. However, as some countries still have restrictions on entry, I would say keep the COVID banner on the main page until September, and if September is deemed too early, then we can do another review then. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:51, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

In New South Wales, masking is still compulsory on public transport and the majority of people follow the rule. There is also a 7-day isolation rule if you test positive. I disagree about messaging only being about the flu. Public messaging from the government and media has always been about a dual virus winter here over the past few months (encouraging both vaccinations, etc.). In any case, this wiki is about travel, not just living in one's own city. Travellers started to get affected by Covid-19 from Janaury 2020, not March 2020 when most countries first went into lockdown. International travel will also be the last activity/industry that will fully return to normal so it makes sense to keep the notice for a while longer. Gizza ^(roam) 14:34, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

To me, if the purpose is to help people, it can be removed. I don't think the article has been helpful for at least a year if ever. If the purpose is just to have something there, then it could stay or go. I don't think it's necessary to leave it up until every last country has lifted every restriction. Japan hasn't had any meaningful changes in its policies for 2 years in spite of less severe variants and vaccines, but it is already an outlier and becoming increasingly so. The country articles should still have information about entry which is basically the only information people care about. Leaving it until then end of the summer (September) as suggested seems reasonable though. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:52, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Most of the world has transitioned to living with the virus. The main exceptions are Japan, China and Taiwan. In the case of China, most of the elderly are unwilling to get vaccinated, and given how Hong Kong's hospitals were overwhelmed (to the point that the mortuaries ran out of space and bodies of COVID victims were piling up in the wards) during their last surge due to the same problem, I don't think China will reopen for the forseeable future. They might want to wait until all these unvaccinated elderly die of other causes before they reopen to foreigners. The dog2 (talk) 17:12, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The idea that the pandemic is over is absurd and highly premature. I would strongly suggest for us to wait until at least the end of the year before jumping to conclusions, because it's quite likely that there will be another surge in the fall, and the large number of unvaccinated people around the world are a great source of new strains. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:04, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I think whether "the pandemic" is over depends a lot on how you define "a pandemic". It's basically a political definition, not a biological one, so reasonable people and organizations can disagree on whether the current state should still be called "a pandemic". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 28 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Whether it is still a pandemic by some definition is less relevant. Are the restrictions stable enough that they are better handled together with other entry requirements, and in Cope, or in the current boxes? Is the disease different enough (as disease and as a social phenomenon) that it warrants its own article instead of being a bullet in Infectuous diseases? I think restrictions still vary fast enough that ease of maintenance is important, and then a template is the better solution, and people still see it as different from the flue and tuberculosis. –LPfi (talk) 20:39, 28 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The definition of "pandemic" is basically a medical one. If you'd like to say that the definition of "high degree of death" is a political one, that's another question. "The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 627,000 in 2020" per the WHO, yet it's considered endemic to Africa, rather than even epidemic. Why? I think in significant part because those with enough money to stanch the death rate mostly live outside of Africa and prefer to ignore the deaths, plus it doesn't get spread around the world in areas with no types of mosquitoes that are vectors. But saying that the definition of "pandemic" is basically political is odd, because most people hadn't heard the word used at all until 2019-20, or at least not since at least the days when AIDS was out of control in their countries (and again, Africa suffers from less medical care; see the pattern?). Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:48, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The definition of pandemic varies between sources. Is it an epidemic "crossing international boundaries, and usually affecting a large number of people"? How do you define "affecting", and what constitutes "a large number" of people? Those are both political choices. Is it instead something that happens "over a wide geographical area and that is of high prevalence, generally affecting a significant proportion of the world’s population"? Who decides what constitutes "high" prevalence, and "a significant proportion"? Basically, people make these decisions. They'll decide that these effects are really "affecting" you but these others aren't (e.g., every new version of the common cold), or that the people affected aren't "large" or "significant" enough, or that (as with the malaria decision) the key point is that it happens all the time at a fairly stable rate within each population, rather than being new. (Some definitions say that pandemics must always be a new disease, or at least one that almost nobody has immunological resistance to; others don't.)

People – not science – pick which definition to apply (different definitions for different conditions), people decide which effects "count" and whether enough people are affected, and then people decide whether to apply this label. There have been hard-and-fast definitions for some similar concepts in the past, but pandemic is a somewhat flexible concept. ("School epidemic" in some places has been defined as a certain percentage of enrolled students being out of school with the same disease/symptoms. An old friend of mine accidentally set off a measles epidemic in her high school in the 1950s. She caught it somewhere, unwittingly brought it to school, and it turned out that almost none of the students in her school had had measles before. The teachers were mostly fine, but a huge number of students were out sick over the next month.)

Here at the English Wikivoyage, though, I think LPfi has good advice. We should consider it from the practical angle rather than the "does the current situation technically match my preferred definition" angle. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

It seems to me, the most likely way to have fair definitions of medical concepts is to let public health authorities and not politicians define them. In any case, I think that it's fairly clear that COVID-19 remains a serious disease that's affecting travel in various ways, so we shouldn't be in a rush to deemphasize it and should let the crisis play out. Seeing how there's been a surge each Northern Hemisphere fall, I would suggest waiting till we see what happens in January, 2023 (i.e., after any effects of Christmas/New Years travel and get-togethers are clear) before possibly making any decisions about a fundamental change in coverage here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Personally, I think that late January 2023 would be a fine time to discuss it. Christmas travel includes Epiphany in some countries, and if you add two or three weeks after that to find out what happened, then we should have fairly clear information.

Thinking long-term, one possibility is to consider a seasonal cold-and-flu-and-covid page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

That could be a good thing in the longer term, if it's not felt to be giving short shrift to other threats like malaria, zika, dengue, Lyme disease and so forth. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:39, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hotel That Never Lands Set To Fly 5,000 Guests Through Sky Not built yet & I can see no significant advantages, but interesting. Pashley (talk) 12:40, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

How many centuries before it is technically possible? The engines (which look like existing jet engines) require nuclear fusion which might just be available on the ground at the end of this century. Consider how difficult inflight refuelling is, then multiply by 100 when you try to use a lift to transfer passengers to another plane inflight. Maybe Wikivoyage will have reviews of it in 3022! AlasdairW (talk) 18:57, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

That looks about as absurd as the Titanium Turkey from TaleSpin. El Grafo (talk) 10:05, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Inflight refuelling... like in the Stealth? Veracious (talk) 10:24, 15 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Do we really need to separate out a single country's food/drink into separate articles, like Vietnam#Eat vs Vietnamese cuisine? Most readers will not click through on the little Main links, so in practice this seems to lead to an awful lot of duplication, since anything dropped from the main article just gets added back in because it's "missing". The size savings are marginal, eg. Vietnamese cuisine is 20k bytes vs over 150k for Vietnam even with the sad, truncated food section. Jpatokal (talk) 04:17, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Jpatokal: I'm not so sure on this one. Some cuisine articles such as American cuisine have an awful lot of encyclopedic content, while others like Thai cuisine or Central European cuisines don't duplicate their parent articles, they simply aren't long enough to warrant a separate article. We do have a lot of other good cuisine articles like Georgian cuisine or Chinese cuisine that ideally all cuisine articles should follow suit. But what about Overseas Chinese cuisine? It obviously doesn't go in China#Eat, and is way too long to go in the 76,733-byte Chinese cuisine article. We did have a discussion about these cuisine articles earlier this year (see Talk:Food and drink#Renewed discussion for 2022), so maybe it's time to revive that discussion again. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:21, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I had only gotten started looking through cuisine articles here and comparing them to their Wikipedia counterparts and any Wikipedia subtopic article, with some help from you and several other people, but it would be good to complete the survey, even if only to start again, because of course some articles have been significantly improved since I started. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:28, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Instead of getting bogged down in individual articles, I would suggest we go up a level and get agreement on a) when separate cuisine articles are needed/beneficial, and b) how do we draw the line between what goes into the main article and what should go into the cuisine article. Jpatokal (talk) 09:12, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

First, if you haven't looked at the discussion thread linked above, do, because we've already gotten into that discussion in regard to several articles, but at the simplest level, the reason to start a "cuisine" article is if and when there's too much information for it to really fit in a country (or sometimes region) article, just as is the case with "Driving in" articles and so forth. And whenever that happens, a summary should be left in the relevant section of the country article, with a link to the spinoff article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:45, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps we can reorganise these articles by region instead of by ingredients and types of dishes. Then we can describe what to expect of the cuisines of each region, and what dishes to try. The dog2 (talk) 19:16, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't know what you mean, in particular by "region," which can mean a group of several countries or an area within a country. If you mean a group of countries, I don't know how logical it would be to conflate Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and Burmese cuisines, just because they're all in Southeast Asia, or for that matter, Spanish, French and German cuisines because they're all in Europe. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:42, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

We could discuss your suggestion more at the linked thread, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:42, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ In the case of Vietnamese cuisine, we could discuss the differences between Northern, Central and Southern Vietnamese cuisines, and if someone knows enough, perhaps some of the ethnic minority cuisines as well. And likewise, Thai cuisine can be broadly divided into Lanna, Isaan, Central Thai and Southern Thai cuisines. And in the case of Malaysia, there are also many local specialities, so laksa in Penang is not the same as laksa in Sarawak for instance. Unfortunately, I have never been to Kajang, but I have been told that their satay is a little different from our satay in Singapore. 19:49, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Of course. As this is a travel guide, we need all articles to focus on travel, and letting people know what dishes you can expect in x, y and z region and whether there's a particular place or set of places to get the best a and b should be part of the heart of Wikivoyage cuisine articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:08, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Precisely, so I am suggesting this as a way to make the cuisine articles more directly relevant to travel. So people can then know what to expect as they travel around the country. The dog2 (talk) 20:27, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Ikan Kekek: "if and when there's too much information for it to really fit in a country" So where do we draw the line at what's "too much information"? AFAIK there's no real technical limit (Mediawiki caps out at 2 MB per page), so is the concern that people won't scroll if it gets too long, that the articles will devolve into encyclopedic lists of dishes, or what?

Also, "Driving in X" articles are only relevant to people who want to drive in X. Everybody has to eat, and we don't spin out "Sleeping in X" articles (even when that section gets really long, eg Japan#Sleep), so I don't think we should do that for any other top-level heading either. I have no objection to regional cuisine articles spanning several countries though, as long as they form a cohesive whole (Singaporean and Malaysian, sure; "Asian", nope). Jpatokal (talk) 06:50, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

You make good points. Of course, "too much information" is always a judgment call. I'd again invite you to have a look at Talk:Food and drink#Renewed discussion for 2022. I do have some preliminary thoughts, though: Yes, everyone has to eat, but not everyone cares greatly what they eat, as long as it's in their price range, doesn't make them sick and gives them energy. I know people like that. And then there's a continuum, the other end of which would be a trip specifically or mainly to dine. Similarly, we have a Grand old hotels article for people who prioritize a particular type of accommodations and have or save up money to indulge. Leaving a useful summary is not the same as merging an article like Georgian cuisine into the Georgia (country) article. If you'd favor doing that, we really have something to talk about, and I suppose since this discussion is continuing here, it'll eventually be swept to Talk:Food and drink. I would note that some cuisine articles have been judged to be too short and light on information to stand on their own and have been merged and redirected to the "Eat" sections of country or even multi-country region articles. See Talk:Balkan cuisines, Talk:Benelux cuisines. I feel like we can and should judge each "Eat" section and each cuisine article on its own, but if you'd like to propose to merge and redirect every one to "Name of Country#Eat", I would suggest to you that that is not optimal, but that if you want to make that suggestion, you have to argue that in regard to the very best cuisine articles on the site, the ones that are guide-rated. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Jpatokal, I just looked at Vietnamese cuisine. It's not very good, and for an "Eat" section, Vietnam#Eat is quite a detailed summary that I think is more tightly organized than the cuisine article. I agree with The dog2 that reorganizing the article by region, with remarks about the character of regional cuisines and then subsections by type of dish, may be more helpful that the current organization. Right now, I definitely see why you could prefer to just merge the additional information and redirect, and I don't oppose that outcome, as the watchword, as always, is The traveller comes first. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:24, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't be opposed to spinning off Sleep sections into "Accommodation in X" if the section gets too long. There are detailed blogs and online articles on the hotels/motels, campsites, Airbnb sitautionm etc. of a particular destination so it is certainly feasible. I suspect they haven't been created because the topic in general is more boring than cuisine, shopping or other sections. Gizza ^(roam) 03:39, 4 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

"Everyone has to eat", but not everyone wants to explore the cuisine of a country. There are people who travel to other countries to see the sights, but prefer to seek out familiar cuisine or eat only in their hotels.

When a subject is branched off from a country article, usually it ends up being expanded because writers no longer feel the constraint of overwhelming the main article, so more information is available to readers. There should always be a concise summary in the country article, but details should be branched off. Ground Zero (talk) 14:00, 4 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

55°46′38″N 37°36′22″E

Map of Travellers' pub

Results as shown on the map, how to fix a bunch of grey unnecessary markers on the map? Can help? thanks. ✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 17:17, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Yuriy kosygin We've discussed this quite a number of times before. The issue is this data comes from OpenStreetMap and there's no way to remove the unnecessary grey markers unless you completely comment out the transport lines. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:31, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Alas... Wikivoyage is really weak, I'm afraid we'll have to draw the route own. ✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 15:34, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

There has to be a way to fix this idiocy on OpenStreetMap, but in the meantime, we need to eliminate this crap from our site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:25, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Could we make the gray actually be 100% transparent? It would still be visible, but perhaps not such a disaster. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

If I recall correctly, the issue at hand was that we couldn't make the distinction between line elements and point elements. I don't master Lua myself, so I can't make sense of whether this would be a viable workaround for Module:Mapshapes. @Andree.sk, any words on this?
-- Wauteurz (talk) 18:22, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Mapshapes is just a thin helper to instantiate {{mapshape}}, which is the main culprint. In turn, that one uses the kartographer stuff, which can't be trivially adjusted. But there may be some hacks, I'll try to try something in the coming weeks... -- andree 20:47, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

The only other solution is to manually trace out the route on geojson.io and then add it to the article (see Canberra/Acton for an example of how this is done) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:32, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

While I don't question this working, it does come with a substantial downside: It's not 'automatically' updated whenever the line changes route (in reality, OSM-contributors update it and we import the dataset they edit). This leaves us with a lot of extra work, which I expect will get out of date quite quickly. Perhaps not for metro's, but definitely for trams or BRT's. Drawing the lines ourselves can work for cities that see regular edits or that have docents capable of editing GeoJSON data (and willing to do so). I strongly prefer making Mapshapes work, even if it's a workaround over manually doing the work ourselves.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 08:30, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

At the German Wikivoyage I added a rule to MediaWiki:Kartographer.css which hides the grey pushpin markers.

/* Removing grey pushpin markers on mapframe maps */ img[src$="pin-m+7e7e7e.png"], img[src$="[email protected]"] { 	display: none; } 

Unfortunately, I cannot make the edit by myself. But I am sure your admins can do it. --RolandUnger (talk) 09:24, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Andyrom75: given you're the only active interface admin here, can you add the three-line code? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:16, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I checked the positions of the markers, and they are the stops/stations of the public transport lines. However they don't give the name of the stop, but only the name of the line. The name of the line is already displayed by clicking the line. So, with the present marker texts, no new info is available. If the marker info would have the name of the stop it indicates, displaying them could be useful. I tested from which zoom level displaying the markers is not disturbing anymore, and came to zoom level 14-19 may show the markers, below 14 not. And this zoom level dependent conditional showing of the markers should only be done if the markers contain the names of the stops. If it is impossible to have the names of the stops in the markers, markers should never be shown. --FredTC (talk) 11:18, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

While I agree that they could be useful to some extent, the thing is that we can't properly make the distinction between lines, polygons or points/markers in the data that we fetch from OpenStreetMap. At present we also cannot import the names of these stations/halts (I believe this data gets lost between Wikidata and OSM, but I might be wrong). Roland's solution above is just a workaround that hides the marker, but the point itself stays on the map albeit invisible. So long as we can't make the distinction properly, we sadly can't implement these markers in a more useful way either. For that distinction to be made, the Kartographer extension needs additional functionalities, which we've been asking for for several years already. Until we get that, it's either hiding the markers or accepting them as-they-come, the latter of which is a lot less popular.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 12:48, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek, do we have any other admins who can do this? Another option would be using JavaScript, but using CSS is much cleaner... Also, alternatively to 'display: none', we could change opacity to e.g. 0.3, that also looks quite ok. -- andree 09:31, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I really don't know. I hope other admins are reading this thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:35, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

This needs an interface admin to do it and as far as I'm aware, @Andyrom75: is the only interface admin who has been active recently. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:38, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I'd say it wouldn't hurt to have at least 2-3 people with those permissions - even if they need guidance for doing technical changes... -- andree 10:15, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

@WOSlinker maybe, then? -- andree 10:51, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Sorry guys, I've read the conversation just right now.

RolandUnger, I have created MediaWiki:Kartographer.css as per your code, but not so much time for testing. The gray POI has disappeared; it's enough? Any side effect to be checked?

SHB2000, thanks for pinging me twice. Next time, in case of emergency, leave a message on my it:voy talk page. --Andyrom75 (talk) 16:35, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

It helped, thanks both to you and Roland! :) -- andree 19:28, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

There are no side effects. The names of the pushpin images contain their colors, and this particular color is not used elsewhere. Of course, the way proposed is a workaround not a real solution but it is useful. The grey pushpin markers are present up to now, but they are invisible (hidden). --RolandUnger (talk) 04:23, 14 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

RolandUnger, thanks for your confirmation. --Andyrom75 (talk) 10:00, 14 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Brilliant work. Thanks to everyone who contributed to finding a workaround.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:52, 14 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Is this something that we should share with other wikis? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 14 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ A permanent solution to this problem has been implemented but not published for whatever reason (see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T292613). --Renek78 (talk) 14:14, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Please help translate to your language

Hi, Greetings

The winners for Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 is announced!

We are happy to share with you winning images for this year's edition. This year saw over 8,584 images represented on commons in over 92 countries. Kindly see images here

Our profound gratitude to all the people who participated and organized local contests and photo walks for this project.

We hope to have you contribute to the campaign next year.

Thank you,

Wiki Loves Folklore International Team

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:12, 4 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Right now, our current Wikivoyage style for static maps is to use red for a main road, while use yellow for secondary roads. While the criteria for what's a main road and what's a secondary road is fairly arbitrary and up to whoever's making the map to decide, I was wondering whether we should consider using a different colour for freeways/motorways? While I'm still new to this static mapmaking business, I personally find such a distinction of what's an ordinary road and what's a freeway useful, and many people often either want to use freeways or try to avoid them. Our dynamic maps already use a different colour for freeways, so why not static? I wanted to make such a distinction when I made a static map for Greater Brisbane today (on right), but such a change would be against Wikivoyage-style, so I'm asking the community for input; and if we do use a separate colour to distinguish freeways from normal roads, what would it be? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:24, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I tried using orange to identify freeways in the map of Southern Tasmania that I just created (on right). Is it obvious that the route coloured orange means a freeway? (I really want answers so I can take note of what I should do differently for my next static map) --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:32, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

What a colour means is never obvious, unless you know something about the destination. The colour could just mean "main highways" or whatever.

I think that there are many more things that might be interesting for at least some travellers, and most travellers to some destinations. How do we show good cycling routes? Roads with good bus service? Nice pedestrian routes? –LPfi (talk) 17:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't think any colour schemes are immediately obvious wordwide. For a UK map, I would be tempted to use the same as some OS maps - blue for motorways, red for A roads, brown for B roads and yellow for minor roads, but some UK road atlases use green for A roads as this is the colour used on road signs. Another complication is the use of different colour fills for regions - a yellow road on a yellow background isn't good - spot the roads going to Richmond in Southern Tasmania.

Is it possible to use slightly different line widths to indicate road importance? We also need to allow for things like long distance walking tracks or off-road cycle routes. As both examples have a lot of sea, they could have a key explaining the colours. AlasdairW (talk) 21:45, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Map making 101: Every map needs a legend (key), and every symbol used in that map (intuitive or not) needs to be explained in that legend. That way you can add whatever is needed. Having a consistent style for static maps is a nice to have; it should not get in the way of making maps useful.

The color issue mentioned by AlasdairW is part of of a bigger problem: The different elements used in the map are unbalanced in terms of contrast (color, saturation, brightness) and visual weight (size, thickness).

1) The lines used for the roads are too thin in relation to everything else. After enlarging enough to properly see the roads, the text labels are way larger than they need to be. This is a static map: pick one scale and apply it consistently, using an appropriate degree of generalization.

2) Visual importance of borders (thickness, color contrast of the white vs. area colors) is too high given that areas already have different colors. Line thickness of borders is also inconsistent in the second map.

3) In general, having areas colored that heavily (dark & saturated) creates all kinds of problems for the visibility of makers, line elements and text labels. "Brisbane" in the first map is practically unreadable, for example. In File:Georgia_regions_map2.png, for example, that is much less of an issue due to different color choices.

Unfortunately, the region maps template is basically calling for many of these problems to occur. El Grafo (talk) 13:41, 6 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I've added a key to the Southern Tas static map (on right). How does this look? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:24, 9 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

But unfortunately, I have to agree with El Grafo that our region maps are at the very least, unreadable and awful-looking. If I had to design a static map from the start, this is not the way I would do it, but unfortunately the community is unwilling to accept that, in this very day and age, dynamic maps are far superior to static maps. There are few people who can edit static maps in the first place, and the two only editors (excluding myself) that I'm aware of who have even edited in the past month are Shaundd and SelfieCity. The only reason I'm making these maps is because our policy favours static maps in region articles but otherwise I think we need to revamp the region maps template. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:15, 9 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I know this is a minor point, but I like the color scheme you are using. It feels just the right amount of trendy/modern/not outdated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 9 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I do like the lighter colours in the color scheme though. From Template:StdColor, T1, T6, T8 and T9 feel a bit too dark (hence what's causing these problems), but a static map does look very nice if the right colors are used. So far, my favorite has to be the map I made for Southeastern New South Wales, and I've been trying to make more maps like that. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:37, 10 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi SHB2000, I think it's fine if you want to experiment a bit use different colours and distinguish motorways. I did motorways differently for a while on maps I drew but eventually stopped because I felt it was more detail/clutter than benefit and it became another colour that had to integrated with the colour palette (which didn't always work).

I also agree with the others above that our standard colours don't always work. I ended up moving away from them so I could get a better contrast between the region colour and the text (improves readability quite a bit). -Shaundd (talk) 07:05, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

The problem may be that our regional map template colors were not originally designed to accommodate details like roads. They work fine for plainer regional maps like New York (state) or Massachusetts. Powers ^(talk) 20:34, 15 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

There have been some discussions and addition and removal of galleries related to European road signs. As European non-driver it is hard for me to guess what signs are important to explain e.g. for US drivers. As the signs are pictogram-based, many of them are intuitive, but certainly not all. I assume other European editors also don't know what would be optimal, so I think we need others to weight in.

There are some galleries in Driving in Europe and more for individual countries. As the variation is small between continental EU countries, there is little need for duplication per se, but I don't know to what extent one can assume drivers to read both the European article and the ones for individual countries (which have their peculiarities).

Do drivers study traffic law or traffic signs before driving in a new country? I assume they are not, at least not to any great degree, but I might be wrong, and that would of course affect what we need to tell.

Some of the articles became rather picture-heavy with a few less-established editors doing a lot of editing regarding images. I think we shouldn't apply our minimal-use-of-images policy to hard, as most images in these articles are informative rather than decorations. Some are of course also needed to give a feeling for the driving environment.

–LPfi (talk) 07:57, 11 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

As a US driver, I think that stop signs and signs for speed limits would be the most immediately necessary. You can't really drive anywhere if you don't know those two. There are others that might be useful (e.g., Yield) but won't turn up as often. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

EU driver here. Wikipedia has a great w:Comparison of European road signs. Road signs in Europe are indeed pretty consistent and mostly follow the Vienna conventions. I think it would make sense for the individual Driving in country X articles to mostly rely on (and prominently link to) a central article about that (e.g. Driving in Europe or the Rules section of w:Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals), so that the country articles can focus on pointing out where the country diverges from the norm in a way that could cause confusion.

So for example, Driving in Europe would tell you that stop signs are always stop sign-shaped, always stop sign-colored and almost always use the word STOP, whereas Driving in Turkey might tell you that Turkey is pretty much the only country in Europe where they use local language (DUR) instead of STOP. Driving in Ireland might feel tempted to point out that the country uses MUTCD-style warning signs, but that's probably more of a nice to know. Pointing out that they (apparently) use w:Belisha beacons for pedestrian crossings would probably be a good idea, though. Driving in the Netherlands would probably talk about the relevance of blue vs. yellow curbs for parking rather than re-iterating that the prohibitory signs are round?

Looking at existing Driving in X articles, I feel that

• most of the example pictures in Driving_in_France#Traffic rules are unnecessary, as they are no different from other European countries and thus redundant to Driving in Europe (currently not linked).
• Driving in Portugal#Road signs contains so many redundant examples that it's difficult to identify the ones that are specific to Portugal.
• Driving in Sweden#Road signs and Driving in the United Kingdom#Road signs are mostly redundant too, but at least they stick to the important ones.
• I don't know how I feel about the use of miniature versions of road signs in lists in Driving in Norway#Rules and regulations and Driving in Iceland#Rules and regulations.

The other articles listed in Driving in Europe#Countries loo fine to me. Links to Driving in Europe are largely missing, though. El Grafo (talk) 14:49, 12 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Australian driver here. Our signage is very similar to US signage, but with four major exceptions:

• we have give way signs as opposed to yield signs
• passing cars is called overtaking as passing is only used when you pass cyclists
• signs that are only used RHS countries are flipped (e.g. roundabout signs)
• our speed signs is a mix of both US and EU speed signs; we have that white background but use the red circle (a sign in the NT for ref)

Sometimes we do have our own minor modifications, such as exit signs (cf. US and Aus (specifically Qld)), but whenever I travel to the US, I've never had an issue with understanding signage. For the record, from my limited experience in NZ, they look very similar to Australian signs but with a few minor differences.

In Europe, were very different to what I saw in Aus or the US, but thankfully due to standardised signs, I did not have a problem when travelling in different countries (the signs in Norway, albeit different were very similar to the signs in France). However, most EU signs were self-explanatory, so for the most part, comprehending them wasn't a problem. In South and Southeast Asia, they weren't standardised, but they were very similar.

Re WhatamIdoing's comment: I understand speed signs (though they're pretty much the same everywhere outside the US, Canada and maybe Liberia), aren't stop signs the same, octagonal sign everywhere? I've yet to see a stop sign that isn't red and octagonal. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:57, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Most places are using red octagons, frequently even with the English word "STOP", but not quite everywhere. Even in places where the red octagon is common, there may be a few old signs that haven't quite been replaced yet or the occasional variation, like Hawaii's blue stop signs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

After doing more digging, it seems Cuba's stop sign is also triangular (like Japan's), but if a country uses the standard octagonal sign, wouldn't it simply make more sense to write that in plain text? (e.g. New Zealand's stop sign is exactly the same as in Australia or the United States or something like that) --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:07, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

It seems stop signs are among the most standardized signs worldwide, both in areas that use Vienna convention and MUTCD-style signs. I'd go so far to say that they are not worth mentioning (let alone showing) at all unless they actually diverge from that de-facto norm (red and white octagon). Interestingly enough, you can actually find the Cuban design in the w:Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals as an alternative design. El Grafo (talk) 08:58, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

The "Cuban design" is (or was) a fairly common alternative. It was being installed in the UK up to 1975, and in Italy to 1990. AlasdairW (talk) 22:06, 13 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi all,

Community members in the 2022 Board of Trustees election are invited to propose statements to use in the Election Compass.

An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.

Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:

July 8 - 20: Community members propose statements for the Election Compass

July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements

July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements

August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements

August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements

August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision

The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August. The Elections Committee will oversee the process, supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance team. MSG will check that the questions are clear, there are no duplicates, no typos, and so on.

Best,

Movement Strategy and Governance

This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 13:26, 11 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

What if we had a way for a user (probably a logged-in user) to save individual listings to a custom itinerary? (Not a Wikivoyage Itinerary, just in the generic sense of the word.) Or even save individual listings to a Google Map? Some way a user could record places he or she wants to go? Powers ^(talk) 20:37, 15 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Something kinda like this? User:Nelson Ricardo 2500/test places --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 23:29, 15 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Roughly, but see my response to WhatamIdoing well below. Powers ^(talk) 19:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

The way I understand the idea, is it's like a personalised version of an article, that lists only the POIs that the owner is interested in. That is already doable by a manual copy-and-paste, but I assume the idea is for something more high-tech, where the user could just tap or click a button on a listing in Prague, which copies the listing over to ThunderingTyphoons!' Prague itinerary.

That seems like a great idea to me, but I don't know how to implement it.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:22, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose First of all, there are multiple issues with this proposal. The first and the foremost is that most readers don't have an account and IP users are not allowed to have user pages or user subpages; IPs periodically change over time so if we are going to be the only Wikimedia project that openly allows such, then we're going to have to do some serious janitorial work in deleting these subpages after a few months. Additionally, this is going to require some brand new tools and gadgets that will take a lot of time – really not worth the time and effort. Finally, saving individual listings to Google Maps is against our what not to link to policy, so no, I oppose this proposal. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:04, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

What do you mean, IP users are not allowed to have user pages or subpages? Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:32, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't know whether it's a global policy or a policy only on Meta-Wiki and I think Wikipedia too, but as far as I'm aware, both those projects speedily delete IP userpages or IP subpages as IPs aren't permanently assigned to one user. Our policies don't seem to say anything about this, but maybe WhatamIdoing might be able to explain this better. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:41, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

enwiki allows IP user pages, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:220.101.28.25 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:81.168.80.170 Twsabin (talk) 14:39, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

We do, too. IPs' user pages are never deleted here unless they are spam or vandalism. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:50, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Those seem to be at least a decade old though. I just tried making one and the software wouldn't allow me. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:23, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

That's very disconcerting. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:07, 17 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I managed to create one, first ensuring I was in an incognito window. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 23:25, 17 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

With respect, SHB2000, I think your objections are ill-considered. Firstly, I didn't say anything about IP user pages or subpages; there may very well be ways to implement this that don't rely on them. Second, while it's true that this would require some development effort, you don't even attempt to make a case that the benefit isn't "worth the time and effort". Yes, it would be a lot of effort, but if the return is great enough, it might still be "worth it". (I'm not making a claim either way, just pointing out that you failed to support yours.) Third, what not to link to is about things that are better done here on Wikivoyage; if you're claiming it shouldn't be on Wikivoyage in the first place, then what not to link to doesn't apply. Powers ^(talk) 19:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Okay, so if I wasn't clear enough, here's a longer but briefer explanation. Such a tool would work very similar to the already existing editor, but maintaining such scripts is very difficult (I do maintain a few of these scripts IRL) and even if this went ahead, there are a few issues:

• Like the listing editor, users will need to have javascript enabled. Without javascript, it simply won't work.
• If this tool just copies down all the important pieces of a listing to a separate page, the tool needs to give attribution in the edit summary – otherwise, it's a violation of our copyleft license.
• This won't work for outline articles that have little to no content
• Users might be intimidated if they want to edit the listing – I'm guessing only maybe 1 or 2 per cent of our readers will know what Wikidata is (which is one of the main sources we use to get coordinates).

What more, this exact same thing can be done with geojson.io. We have few editors who actively maintain scripts like these, and only a fraction out of the few who can will be willing to spend a lot of time and effort into something that isn't even really worth spending that much time anyway. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:22, 19 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Powers, were you thinking about individual listings (first the museum, then the restaurant, back to the hotel), or about destinations (San Francisco, then Napa Valley, then Yosemite)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 17 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Individual listings. Powers ^(talk) 19:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

• What's stopping a user from creating a personal itinerary in userspace under current policy? I'm curious as to the need for a change. As for as I'm concerned, I could create an itinerary in userspace based on an OSM map, and surely, it wouldn't be deleted as out of scope? I'd prefer for the above reasons to avoid Google Maps. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:22, 18 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

  I already have that: User:AlasdairW/Testpage. This is currently showing a few places that I stayed in in 2018. At that time it was used to send to friends showing where I would be staying on a trip - they got the dates etc in an email that linked to this page.

  I would support having a policy that explicitly allowed such a page (for signed in users), as they might be more inclined to also update the article pages at the same time. I think that such pages should stick to using our mapframes, although I would be happy with a tool that allowed a list of lat/longs to exported for use with other tools including Google maps, car GPS systems etc. AlasdairW (talk) 22:54, 18 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

There's a new user ban nomination going on to ban a fairly long-term contributor and any input is more that welcome. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:58, 16 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for alerting us to this. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:22, 18 July 2022 (UTC)Reply