:Travellers' pub/2014

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Happy New Year

Hello fellow Wikivoyagers, Happy New Year 2014! --Danapit (talk) 13:44, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Dana. Wishing you a very happy and prosperous new year and warm greetings to everyone from cold Karachi. --Saqib (talk) 14:16, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As you know Finnish I shall say Kiitoksia ja hyvää uutta vuotta sinullekin, Danapit! And happy new year to everyone from a surprisingly warm Helsinki (+5°C and rain, usually we have negative degrees centigrade and snow at the new year). Thanks for the fireworks, Saqib! Ps. At WP's "Did you know" I ran into the article about Scottish new year's traditions and the etymology of the name of the celebration... ϒpsilon (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And New Year's is also a day to plan/dream about things you're going to do the next year. Doesn't the New Year's celebrations from around the world with fireworks lighting up world famous landmarks (just think about Sydney's amazing fireworks) just make you wanna go to those places :)? ϒpsilon (talk) 19:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right Ypsi. Karachi recently started to attract people from other parts of the country on NYE due to its great NYE celebration at Port Grand and Dubai attracts people from many Gulf countries on NYE for great NYE celebration. --Saqib (talk) 20:32, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Happy new year everyone! 2013 was really the first year of the new WV community and it think it bodes well for what can be achieved in 2014. Andrewssi2 (talk) 19:37, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to a fantastic 2014! :) --Nick ^talk 02:50, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Very much success and health in 1914. --RolandUnger (talk) 08:38, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year from Japan! In 2014 let's all contribute a lot of content, that's really what makes Wikivoyage better in the end :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 14:58, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year all! Kaldari (talk) 08:03, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fatal exception of type MWException

When I'm trying to save articles, reload pages and click edit I've been getting stuff like this for the last couple of minutes: [babeee3a] 2014-01-02 18:16:08: Fatal exception of type MWException. Are the servers suffering from a hangover after partying too hard on New Year's or what? :) (let's see if I can post this at all) ϒpsilon (talk) 18:20, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've filed Bugzilla: 59221. See also w:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Commons down. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:33, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should be mostly back now. --Rs chen 7754 19:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Few Wikimedia projects projects were broken for about 1 hour and 45 minutes due to localization cache update issues but its fixed now. --Saqib (talk) 19:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discover

The most recent entry on the "Discover" section of the Main Page reads: "Nicosia is the world's last divided capital." Given the status of Jerusalem and our policy of political neutrality, I think we should stay away from contentious statements like that.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. --118.93.244.91 22:37, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree as well. Pashley (talk) 23:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Matter of fact, our Israel article says Jerusalem's status is not recognized by the United Nations. I have nevertheless changed the sentence in Discover now - as well as in the article itself. ϒpsilon (talk) 05:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, neither does the UN recognize the division of Cyprus, the Turkish occupation of the northern part of the island, or the division of Nicosia between two nations. The Turkish Cypriot nation is, to my knowledge, recognized by only one other country in the world - Turkey. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:29, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In my estimation, the status of Jerusalem as capital of Israel and the status of Palestine and Northern Cyprus as independent nations are all contentious political issues that, per policy, we should avoid taking sides on. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:20, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We do not take sides in how things should be, but we do recognize conditions as they are. Jerusalem is capital of Israel and Nicosia is divided between Cyprus and Turkish Cyprus. Those are facts. If the facts change, we will edit our articles accordingly. I'd like to hear more from you about what you mean in regard to the status of Palestine. Palestine is recognized as an independent country by most of the world, but not by Israel, and it does not control a large portion of the territory it claims. How do you suggest Palestine be described in this guide, for the benefit of travelers? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ikan: Certainly there's a de facto reality in any geopolitical scenario that may not match up with the opinions some people may have about how things should be. And certainly sometimes it's necessary to broach the subject of sensitive political disputes for the benefit of travellers, which we usually do with disclaimerboxes that include text emphasizing that nothing in the article should be construed as a statement for or against either side. We do a fine job of that in our article on Palestine (and, for that matter, on Northern Cyprus) so, to answer your question, I have no problem with how they're handled here.

My original post was intended only to say that, unless absolutely necessary, it would be best for us to avoid bringing these things up at all - and needless to say, I don't think that a randomly selected blurb from a randomly selected article on the "Discover" feature constitutes "absolute necessity". Naturally, Wikivoyage does not want to offend anyone on any side of any political argument if we can help it, and while useful, disclaimerboxes aren't a foolproof method of avoiding controversy. And my subsequent comment that you address immediately above was intended as a response to Ypsilon, that just because the UN denies that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel does not mean the point is moot. Rather, the question of what is the "rightful" capital of Israel is itself a contentious political issue, and another reason why the choice of blurb for Nicosia was less than ideal. Again, my opinion is that the parameters within which it's appropriate even to broach the subject should be as limited as possible.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We are basically in agreement, though the Israel article needs some editing, now that the West Bank has been removed from it. One issue, though, is whether to rename the Palestinian territories article to Palestine. I would welcome the participation of anyone in the discussion on that topic at Talk:Palestinian territories. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:26, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For that matter, can we rename Northwest Territories to "Bob"? K7L (talk) 16:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that's just silly. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:52, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikivoyage's Top 10 Countries for 2014" ?

Some guides are launching such pages on the web in a bid to attract clicks surfing on the New-Year event. Should we do that to? If yes, we have to be fast or keep it for 2015. I am sure not sure what the criteria should be for "top" destinations. Maybe just our 10 best articles? Cheers! Nicolas1981 (talk) 12:38, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking of having a list which display the most popular articles. An example is here. There're few MW extensions for this purpose but would this benefit us? --Saqib (talk) 13:52, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The latter proposal is infinitely better than the former for a myriad of reasons. I support having "Most popular articles" (of the past hour or day) displayed somewhere prominently. PrinceGloria (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To get this extension installed on this wiki, we need some local support. Can we've some please? --Saqib (talk) 15:14, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a cool idea. Does this Wikinews extension count the viewers just once or does it count how many times the page is loaded? If someone is working on an article and frequently saves it, the article will get a high view count even if there's just a one person "viewing" it, especially if the list is about the most popular articles of the last hour. ϒpsilon (talk) 15:33, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with PrinceGloria here. As a WMF site, we're first and foremost a trusted source of accurate, unbiased information. There are subtle but important differences between our goals and those of a Lonely Planet or a National Geographic Traveller or what-have-you. Plus, our own policy forbids touting and overly promotional-sounding language, so we have to walk a very fine line when it comes to stuff like this. Providing resources to readers regarding which are our most popular articles would likely fit into those parameters, so long as we do it in a way that avoids the appearance of "marketing" those destinations to our readers (that probably precludes any overly prominent links on the Main Page); anything beyond that seems questionable. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:52, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If that rationale would really be followed so strictly, how could we have a DotM? It's basically the same thing, right? We highlight articles. Sure, for the moment we rather highlight based on our guide quality than on the destinations, but that's just because we don't have a huge number of excellent guides yet. A reader doesn't see that difference. For me, inspirational stuff is exactly what I miss at WV, as a traveller. I love our Thailand guides, for example, and its destination coverage beats that of LP, in my recent experience. Yet, I would buy a LP again, for their "picks" and "highlights" and suggested itineraries, which I always use to build my own travels around. (Okay, and their English maps instead of Thai ones, but that's a different story ;-)). Despite all the time I spend on this website, I still browse to those others and buy those NG travel magazines to be blown away by stories and make up a wishlist. If we would use "most popular", we'd end up with the standard picks and articles one of us has recently been working on constantly, instead of new discoveries or hidden treasures. I think we can win it in the wordings, though. "Top destinations" is a tricky term, I can see that. But I don't think highlighting things necessarily compromises our non-touting policy or strive for accurate information, if we're clear and clever in choosing the words. JuliasTravels (talk) 16:28, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good point Julia and I guess I'm very much inclined to drop this idea now. --Saqib (talk) 16:33, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We do have stuff in the 'F' column of the table at Wikivoyage:World cities/Large that indicates the most popular destinations. It is objectively sourced, taken from a Forbes article based on a report from Mastercard. Could we find ways to improve that (are there other sources?) and/or to make it more prominently available, perhaps as a travel topic? Pashley (talk) 18:56, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikivoyage - The Difficult Second Year

I think this project is great, I really do. It hosts a wealth of fantastic information and is populated by a community of kind, highly motivated editors.

That being said, however, my liking for Wikivoyage does mean that I sometimes feel that it's necessary to highlight difficulties that the site's going through.

At present, it feels just a little like the site is stagnating; that we've lost some of the verve and vigour that shone from Wikivoyage when it launched on WMF servers almost a year ago. More than ever, we seem keener and keener to argue at length about every issue, whilst 'consensus' continues to elude us. Over the past few months many discussions on the site have degenerated to the point of personal attacks, whilst we seem less inclined than ever to plunge forward and many people who do so are admonished for following the project's mantra.

For these reasons (and others) we seem, if anything, to be losing editors - certainly not what Wikivoyage needs. Indeed, what we really need to do is make a concerted advertising effort, bringing in contributors both from other WMF projects and beyond. Whether they wish simply to improve the article on their home town or fling themselves into the discussions that proliferate behind-the-scenes, we should be welcoming (and dragging) them in with open arms (closed ones if we're dragging).

When I looked back at this discussion from last August, it made me quite sad to see that lots of people's excellent ideas and important priorities have simply passed us by (I believe Ryan's list of policy priorities is particularly important). It would be great to recapture some of that optimism and put it back into improving the site.

What then can we do? Personally, I would suggest two things that I feel need to be done as a matter of urgency:

As difficult and unpleasant as it may be, I really feel that we need to sort out our understanding of consensus. At present, too many comparatively minor issues become unending battles, distracting us from the larger issues facing this site.
Get more editors. This is far harder to achieve than it is to type, but quite simply, we need more people to work on the site in every way. There are many varied methods we could go about trying to do this: use our social media presence to greater effect; advertise on other WMF sites; target tourism and travel groups and forums around the web; engage with the press; launch some sort of large-scale campaign (perhaps on Reddit?). Whatever we do, we need to do it soon: at present there aren't enough of us to really look at more than a couple of issues at a time, so new ideas (whether acclaimed or condemned) simply fall by the wayside and large swathes of our articles are untouched for years.

This is not one of the doom-laden prophecies that has been posted in the pub in the past - I still believe that Wikivoyage has a very bright future; it just needs a nudge in the right direction. By no means am I saying that nothing has been accomplished here, but simply that more progress is needed to keep the site functioning as it should. With that in mind perhaps we could, at some point, have a large Wikivoyage 'AGM' at some point (maybe on IRC or similar)?

I'm sorry that this is a bit of a negative post, but I write with confidence that Wikivoyage and its community will grow and prosper.

If we're lucky, maybe one day I'll stop talking about My Voyage. :) --Nick ^talk 00:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your very thoughtful (and thought provoking) commentary, Nick, it's much appreciated! --118.93.235.201 02:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whenever my pessimism about Wikivoyage's future comes creeping back, I consider our competition, Wikitravel, a site that is increasingly useless to travellers. In a short time, WT will be nothing more than a mishmash of touting, unreverted vandalism, and hopelessly outdated information from before the fork. Meanwhile, we have a small but active community that's actively at work improving our product - true, there may not be enough hands on deck to do enough work in that regard, but our counterparts aren't even treading water. Given all that, any advantage WT may currently have in terms of site traffic, I see as being quite temporary.

This is not to say that the issues WV faces now should be ignored or downplayed, but looking at the big picture does tend to put things into perspective a bit.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:28, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that Wikitravel still gets ten times the number of eyeballs each day is really the Elephant in the room and no distractions about sockpuppets or weird Australian IP editors should ever divert us from our primary task right now: search engine optimisation and PR! --118.93.244.91 22:41, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges

http://wikitravel.org/en/Special:RecentChanges

Wish for wt to disappear in one hand, and poop in the other, and see which one fills up first.

Talking about wt as "competition" is so tired. It's been a year. We're here, they're there, and they aren't going anywhere. Like it or not, they get more edits than we do. They have tons more visitors. The site is curated by a staff of admins and they do a good job of manually sifting spam.

Who cares? I'm not here to try SEO tricks that have never proven effective (and frankly sound very 90s). I'm here to write a travel guide. If we all focused on this, we'd all be better off. Nyadgy (talk) 22:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder how seriously your comments should be taken given that you have a grand total of three user contributions, two of which are the creation of your user page and of your user talk page. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:02, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Which ones would you prefer to leave out? The links to stats pages? Find factual fault or quit the ad hominem attacks. Nyadgy (talk) 23:11, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's rather sad that we cannot indefinitely block accounts created like this just to troll. --Rs chen 7754 18:27, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia indefbans vandalism-only accounts. Trolling is a form of vandalism, or close enough, anyway. If that's not a part of Wikivoyage's policy, it ought to be. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Trolling is not vandalism. Just ignore trolls. They want you to respond. Don't play their game. Nurg (talk) 00:25, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Our primary purpose is to write a travel guide. SEO is an important task, as is differentiating our guide from whatever else is out there, but it will never nominally be our primary task. We need to fill gaps in our existing geographic coverage and update our content to differentiate ourselves from the seemingly infinite quantity of outdated data on the web. Once a page reaches 'usable' status, then one can start looking to propose a sibling project or external site link to our content. K7L (talk) 17:01, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've started a discussion that addresses Nick's first point about consensus at Wikivoyage talk:Consensus#Wikivoyage:Consensus/Draft. Feedback would be appreciated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:28, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikivoyage Graphic from Oxford University

The Oxford Internet Institute (part of the university) has produced this lovely graphic which shows the spread of articles by language version. 'This graphic depicts the geographic focus of four major languages of the Wikivoyage project; one of the world's most popular crowd-sourced travel guides'. If you scroll down on the above link, the creators also present their findings about how different areas are represented by the project. --Nick ^talk 21:50, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Nick: Regarding the last thing you mentioned, I seem to recall a proposal a while back to improve en:'s coverage of certain geographic areas by translating content from more comprehensive articles in other language versions. This should definitely be a big help in assessing what we have to work with. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:08, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On a completely different topic, I'm astounded that they don't consider fr: to be one of our "four major languages". It's certainly larger than es:. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They did not take the four biggest languages, but the biggest two, and Italian because it is "geographically concentrated" i.e. most native speakers live in Italy and Spanish because it is "dispersed" - spoken in Spain and South America. They were interested whether people were writing about their home town or somewhere that was in a country that spoke a foreign language. AlasdairW (talk) 23:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Nick - very enlightening! I do find it counter-intuitive that the German language version should have both relatively and absolutely better coverage of the "Middle East and North Africa"... --118.93nzp (talk) 03:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And this is why the English Wikivoyage too would benefit from putting POIs in WikiData :-) We would clearly benefit hugely for Italy, Greece, Germany, France, Turkey, Spain, Egypt, but also for all other (maintaining listing details in several languages means some duplicated effort). Nicolas1981 (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a list of articles that exist in another language, but don't exist in English? In case there is none, would many people here be interested in such a list and translate from languages they understand? Nicolas1981 (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would be interested in lists of French and German articles that don't exist in English, and also a list of articles that are bigger in other languages. I have already used a German article to improve one English article, discussed above.

I know that there is a map with (almost) all the articles in English shown - does this exist for other languages? If such maps exist it would be useful to link them from the main page. AlasdairW (talk) 21:17, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC that OSM slippy map was created by WV.de and does exist in other languages; just replace 'en' with 'fr' or 'de' or whatever in the URL. K7L (talk) 21:33, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A map of articles that exist in X but not in Y would probably be the most useful. Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:05, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bot transforming articles from German Wikivoyage?

I just translated Wiedensahl from German, doing nothing else than what a bot could possibly perform.

The result is small (don't expect too much for a 1031-inhabitants village), but I think it is a good start, and definitely better than nothing.

What do you think? Is it worth transforming like this, or worthless? Nicolas1981 (talk) 17:11, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This particular article had no banner nor pics. Banner would of course be included, and pics can be included as well, with no caption. A problem is with POI names. Often the POI name would need to be translated, for instance "Museum im alten Pfarrhaus". I think that the bot should only translate for instance 10 articles, wait until these 10 articles have been polished by a human, then generate another 10, etc. Nicolas1981 (talk) 17:21, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I presume that "Hauptstrasse" is ",rue Principale" is "Main Street" is "High Street". If the "translations" are from text in the local language for a specific destination, and if they use a Western Euro character set, I suppose it's OK to leave them as-is initially - but we should probably avoid taking a French-language article about Germany (for instance) as "1, rue Hauptstrasse, Une ville allemande" dumped into en: is a little too non-English, non-German. K7L (talk) 17:56, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Such a bot could be useful. However, we would still need someone to translate anything that is actually not in English (descriptions, POI names, the whole of the understand and stay safe sections and so on). Should we have the bot bring over that content too and have lots of non-English text in the guides or have the person who comes to polish the article to locate the right listing in German, copy and translate the text?

BTW are they really writing stuff like "rue Hauptstrasse" (Street Main Street) in French? What use is there to write an extra "Street" or "Rue" or whatever after or before an address that is in Latin characters to begin with? ϒpsilon (talk) 20:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They'd be more likely to replace than duplicate, "810, rue Montréal" vs. "810 Montreal St." for instance. The proper noun is usually left alone, so "rue Maisonneuve" becomes "Maisonneuve St." and not "Newhouse Street". A few other keywords change, like "poste" instead of "ext" for a telephone PBX extension number. The use of anything as ugly as "123, rue Bank Street" normally is only done in City of Ottawa publications which like to say things deux fois twice. K7L (talk) 21:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really in the traveller's best interest to translate street names in our articles? I picture someone headed for, say, Paris' Holocaust memorial searching frantically for "Geoffroy L'Asnier Street" while passing obliviously by street signs that say "rue Geoffroy-L'Asnier". I've travelled with enough Anglo monolinguals to realize that's not a farfetched hypothetical. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:57, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it is really silly (I'd even say idiotic) to translate street names into English, because you will really have no use of those names when at the destination. Also, names of point of interest might be useful to tell the traveler what it's about, but often the English name won't appear on street signs of maps (but often on the POI's website and brochures). For names in non-Latin characters - say for the square and eponymous subway station Sennaya Plochad in St Petersburg - it is useful to have an English translation or transcription as many people cannot read Cyrillic letters, but it's even more important to have "Сенная Плошад" written out in the article, because that's what you'll be looking for once there. ϒpsilon (talk) 22:16, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One thing to watch: if importing an existing article from WV in another language, that article may already contain translated street names. fr:Ottawa and fr:Toronto use "rue" while fr:Londres (London) uses "Street". de:Paris sometimes uses "rue" but more often the likes of "Place Charles de Gaulle, sehenswerter Platz, auf dem der Arc de Triomphe steht." There's also the added wrinkle that the destination city itself may be multilingual or at least bilingual. If the source WV is in the destination's local language, this is manageable. If it's in a third country's language, it's unlikely a robot will be able to avoid a trilingual mess. K7L (talk) 22:36, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It appears you have done only a partial translation of https://de.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wiedensahl . That is really fine, although I am guessing your proposed bot will only be converting listings across with the basic information? You should add the translation template, e.g: {{translate|nl|Den Haag}}, at the beginning as well so that they can be tracked for further human translation afterwards. (I hope you don't mind, however I just added this to your article to illustrate) Andrewssi2 (talk) 15:09, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have just started Great Bernera, which is using de:Great Bernera as a starting point. Using Google's Chrome browser to read the German article, some text came straight from the wiki text in the German article, some from the English translation of the article (I cannot get translate to work in an edit box). This is an island in Scotland that I visited a long time ago, so I don't expect there to be any major translation problems when I have finished. I doubt that the conversion of articles from one language to another could be something that a bot could get very far with, but there may be specific elements that a bot would be good at - like converting listings from the vcard format used in german to our listing format.

It might be useful to have a template to add to the talk page of the article which was translated (the original one in German) to thank the creators of the article and to let them know so that they can join in if they feel able and willing. AlasdairW (talk) 00:04, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

AlasdairW, I created such a template for translated English discussion pages last week: Template:Translated Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:38, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I did ask about such a template a couple of months ago, in this case I used the edit summary - but I will add the template. What I am wondering about is a template to have in all languages - something like {{Translated_To|en|12 January 2014}} which would result in text saying something like "Thanks for creating this article. Some (or all) of this page has been translated to English. If you wish you can see the translated article here." I was thinking that it would a) be nice to thank the creators of the original article b) one of them might pop over and read and correct the translation. c) some of the future changes might be made here as well. AlasdairW (talk) 23:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, actually it would be nice to have the same template in reverse! (i.e. This English article was translated into Romanian on 3rd December 2013) .

In any case I can take a look at creating the German template you suggested. (I never really got active on the German site, but it should be a straightforward task) Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: Working on this here Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And finished over lunch break :) Template and example Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:11, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would be careful about mass-creating bot articles: for example, something like "Berlin is a city in Germany." as the entirety of an article does not do much good. --Rs chen 7754 05:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree. Perhaps rather than a bot, it would be better to have a tool that could create a skeleton article and suck in the listings information (such as name, address, longitude, latitude, phone number, website, etc) that would accelerate the manual translation effort. Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Birthday Celebrations

15th January (just 2 days away!) marks Wikivoyage's first birthday on WMF servers. As we didn't celebrate the project's shared 10th birthday last year, do we have any ideas as to how we could celebrate this milestone? --Nick ^talk 20:02, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If someone could prepare an appropriate site notice that would be a minimum, and if anyone is in contact with the WMF marketing teams a mention in the Twitter feeds and Facebook pages would also be great. I'm sure others will have additional suggestions - thanks for bringing up this milestone. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:07, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello dear Wikivoyage, wishing you a very Happy Birthday and best of luck, but no fresh cake this year. Maybe next time? LOL! --Saqib (talk) 20:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would prefer to frame this as an anniversary rather than a birthday. We were not born last January; that merely marked our official launch under this new partnership. Powers ^(talk) 20:53, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree with you that it's important for us to make that clear, but for outsiders the concept of a birthday is a lot easier to communicate than that of the anniversary of the project's move to WMF servers; saying 'anniversary' alone invites the question 'of what?' Perhaps we could just say 'it's our birthday' and not mention how old we are (we're either 10 or 1). --Nick ^talk 21:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed the design of my banner below accordingly.... --Nick ^talk 03:20, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As it's now started turning the 15th in some parts of the world, I'm going to plunge forward and change the site notice. If anyone has any objections, I'll gladly change it. :) --Nick ^talk 11:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that an anniversary is a more difficult concept to communicate than a birthday is absurd. But I guess I'll just add this to the ever-growing list of my opinions that gain no traction here. Powers ^(talk) 15:19, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That seems a tad unfair, Powers. Your opinions are always welcomed and considered seriously; the ongoing search for a suitable banner for United States of America comes as a result of your objections and opinion - you're not being ignored. Above, I merely meant that 'Birthday' rather than the 'Anniversary of our move to the servers of the Wikimedia Foundation' sounds, to outsiders, like a much more momentous occasion - without a lengthy explanation, the latter could seem a simple technical change that does not warrant celebration. When we're going to have to announce this in 140 characters, brevity and simple concepts are valuable. I am not denying WV's heritage or that many of the contributors on here have been working on the project for a great many years but, for English-speaking people unfamiliar with the workings of the site, Wikivoyage was new a year ago tomorrow. As we didn't celebrate with WT last July, it seems a shame not to designate a day as WV's birthday. How we brand this day in future years is up to the community - anniversary, birthday or independence day - but let's use this day, whatever it is, to reflect on how far we've come and what more we can do. --Nick ^talk 15:35, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly and vociferously disagree with your assessment. Calling it an anniversary in no way overcomplicates the situation. I don't see why you have to change anything about the wording except to replace the word "birthday" with "anniversary". All that stuff about "lengthy explanation" is no more necessary when you use the word anniversary than when you use the word birthday, with the added benefit of not being blatantly false. (Wikivoyage was in absolutely no sense born in January 2013.) Powers ^(talk) 19:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Far be it for me to hop into a disagreement straight off the pitch, but I do feel that "birthday" is more friendly and less coldly professional than the ambiguous "anniversary." And there must be those who consider this particular incarnation of this project to have been born-- or reborn-- one year ago. It seems the right choice to me. Happy birthday indeed, and thank you much for making me feel at home. Not much of a joiner, and all, but I shall give it the old college try. Alhens (talk) 23:27, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Other celebrations

Any ideas for other things we could do to celebrate? This Signpost report promises a 'large public party'! Maybe create a page of highlights from the last year? --Nick ^talk 21:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday, Wikivoyage!

The 15th January marks Wikivoyage's first year on the Wikimedia Foundation's servers. Let's take this opportunity to celebrate some of the things we've accomplished in the last year, your favourite parts of the site and what you'd like to see happen in the next year. --Nick ^talk 11:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've serious plans to travel around Pakistan this year to gather plenty of information for our guides and I beleieve I would able to bring few more Pakistani destination articles to guide status before our next anniversary. --Saqib (talk) 12:14, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy birthday! Seriously we can be proud, Wikivoyage is way better than it use to be last year! Banners and dynamic maps are some of the most visible examples. Nicolas1981 (talk) 12:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A Happy Birthday from me, too. So after the tenth birthday and the seventh we celebrate now our first one in the Wikimedia movement. Wow! A lot of work was done by the community. I think for instance about the integration of 35,000 images to Wikimedia Commons and the importation of interwiki links to Wikidata. We started with seven language branches, now there are 15, and we are waiting for the Chinese branch. I like to thank all the authors and readers for their efforts and their interest in Wikivoyage. Keep it up! --RolandUnger (talk) 16:52, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday and a Happy New Year! :D. Ps. two hours ago the banner was the same size as a page banner but now it's huge?? Is it just me who notices it? ϒpsilon (talk) 17:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's still appearing at the right size for me... any chance you could post a screenshot on my talk page? :) --Nick ^talk 17:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Chinese Wikivoyage actually opened today, though the content ~~has not been imported~~: zh.wikivoyage.org. --Rs chen 7754 00:20, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, User:SPQRobin is importing as we speak. --Rs chen 7754 00:26, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday --Azoma (talk) 00:38, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy 7'th birthday and the first ond as a WMF sister project. Thanks for all the work you guys have done here. -- Der Fussi 05:53, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy birthday Wikivoyage. Just recently crossed over from Wikitravel after learning about the fork and the rationale behind it. --Larkly (talk) 08:14, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Larkly: What was your user name at Wikitravel? You might like to use the same one here and have the accounts joined so that your previous contribution history there will be recognised. Wikivoyage:User account migration explains further... --118.93nzp (talk) 00:06, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy belated birthday, Wikivoyage. And welcome, Larkly. We're glad to have you on board. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment on Commons: Should Wikimedia support MP4 video?

I apologize for this message being only in English. Please translate it if needed to help your community.

The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team seeks community guidance on a proposal to support the MP4 video format. This digital video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC.

Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view and contribute video on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).

However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.

We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not to support MP4. Our Request for Comments presents views both in favor and against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with community and team members.

Please join this RfC -- and share your advice.

All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons, Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from our free media repository.

You are also welcome to join tomorrow's Office hours chat on IRC, this Thursday, January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with our team and other community members.

We look forward to a constructive discussion with you, so we can make a more informed decision together on this important topic. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WT attribution

We usually use Template:Wikipedia for attribution purpose when we copy paste content from WP so I was wondering if its possible to create a similar template for Wikitravel as well and then add that template to talk pages of the articles where WT attribution appears in footers. This way, we can lose the WT attribution in the footers. Ignore this post if the same has been discussed before. --Saqib (talk) 11:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the consensus is that it's not possible or advisable to lose the footers completely without the green light from WMF Legal, then the same would probably be true for any other manner of disturbing the status quo, including replacing the footers with templates. If, on the other hand, we want to take that legal risk, I would say let's not bother with half-measures and let's just eliminate all attribution (other than edit summaries marked with WT-en) entirely. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, such a template might be useful for copying over any post-fork WT content we might want to add to WV, though given the state of affairs at WT these days I would imagine that wouldn't happen too often. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:08, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I don't think developing specific templates for individual sources (especially non-Wikmedia) is a great idea. I think we should try to treat all sources more or less equal, and provide sufficient attribution in the edit history whenever possible. If we really do need a template of any kind, it would be better if it was somehow generic and could be used for any source. As for a template replacing the disclaimer, the search engine effect for such an article would be limited anyway, as it would still have a hyperlink. Better to just leave it until that dreaded disclaimer is gone. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:24, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

According to the WMF Terms of Use, it is sufficient to provide attribution in the edit summaries. However, Wikitravel may have imposed extra requirements. Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the Terms of Use on the date that the content was copied to Wikivoyage? Edge3 (talk) 23:22, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WT changed their requirements after the move, now requesting a hyperlink (although other parts of their terms seem unclear in that). At the time of the move it explicitly stated "For this reason, we ask that you also link back to the original Wikitravel article, allowing your readers to update it. This is just a request; it's not part of the license requirements".[1] JuliasTravels (talk) 23:40, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WT content is under the CC-SA license, so any extra requirements that IB tries to impose would violate the CC-SA and essentially revoke their right to all existing content on the site ("no additional restrictions" per [2]) Regarding the original question about attribution, since they have already resorted to litigation in the past I would suggest that we continue our stance of discouraging copying from them, and err on the side of caution regarding any changes to existing articles that were imported from WT content. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:31, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WT's terms of use during the move were awfully ambiguous... which is a good thing for us. I don't think we are required to provide a hyperlink in the disclaimer. Edge3 (talk) 00:48, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One of the stated goals of the project has always been the ability to print a destination guide to be carried as tourist baggage. The absence of a requirement for a hyperlink is therefore no accident. K7L (talk) 03:24, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So perhaps we can remove the hyperlink, but keep the URL? We could do something like the following, but with the hyperlink disabled: "This article is based on ... text from the article "United States" (http://wikitravel.org/en/United_States) on Wikitravel ...." The Creative Commons guidelines state that we should include at least a URL. Edge3 (talk) 03:51, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pub cleaning

This page has become rather unwieldy, so I have moved some old discussions (around 2 months or older) to their relevant locations. Can someone quickly review and confirm that I'm doing it right?

I got the impression from the guidelines at the top that the Travellers' Pub archive should be the last place that conversations should be moved, although looking at the archive page it seems most conversations end up here?

Additionally the guidelines say one month or older can be swept, although I think applying a 2 months or older rule for the purposes of my specific exercise now will help a lot. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:51, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic article generation from en.wv to fr.wv

Hi all!

I wrote a script to transform English Wikivoyage articles into French Wikivoyage articles. Here is the result: https://fr.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Aarhus&oldid=193198

What gets generated:

Banner
Small intro
Infobox
Dynamic map
All listings
Breadcrumb
Images, in the sections they belong to.

I still need to automatically link with Wikidata. Integration in the article creation page would be a killer feature, but would require way more development effort. Open source of course, feel free to port it to perform German->English and French->English transformations :-) Feedback and ideas are very welcome! Nicolas1981 (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. There must be a way to put this behind a simple web interface and put it on a tool server somewhere, much like https://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py asks for an en.Wikipedia article name and converts all the <ref> tags to a templated form, dumping the result in an edit box. Not sure how we'd handle the fields in fr:modèle:listing that are missing in en:'s {{listing}} like "téléphone mobile", "wikipédia", "facebook" - the extra telephone numbers might need to move to be part of the description in en:. I suppose wget -O - "https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Aarhus&action=edit" could also be replaced by action=raw or the API at https://fr.wikivoyage.org/w/api.php in order to return just the wiki text without any stray MediaWiki user interface bits? K7L (talk) 16:24, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. I would use that on articles that exist in German but not in English. As previously mentioned, it would be good to also add a Template and Category to such pages in order to track the basic conversations and ensure that they are quickly followed up with translation work. Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:51, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks K7L for the tip, fixed! It is open source, so please anyone put it on toolserver or anywhere you want :-) Andrewssi2: Yes there seems to be such a template on fr too, I will try to use it. Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:38, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The goal of this endeavour is also to better understand what we can share between languages via Wikidata. Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:39, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Conservative dogma

Some have written that our work is guided by what is best from the traveller's perspective and this might even be called our Prime Directive.

There are features of the MediaWiki software and HTML that few know about (never mind bother to use) that can be, nevertheless, helpful for travellers.

An example would be the
<abbr title="(explanatory text)">(localised term)</abbr>
construction.
This construction means that the prose flow is not unnecessarily interrupted by explanations in brackets. An example of usage would be: "Nelson's CBD is compact and sheltered from rain." where prose that is universally understandable for Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans offers mouse tip instant clarification for Poms, etc.

Previously our consensus policy has always been that, since this is a wiki, you can use any feature of the English language or the software that is useful to travellers unless it has been specifically forbidden by a consensual policy.

Is that essential wiki freedom threatened by the changes Ryan is canvassing for? --118.93nzp (talk) 22:18, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just for some context, is there any previous discussion around not using <abbr title="(explanatory text)">(localised term)</abbr> ? (or similar) Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not that I'm aware of.

However, I'm also unaware of discussions seeking to prohibit the use of foreign characters in foreign words such as the Spanish eñe in El Niño or the stress mark in Bogotá or the macron in Māori or the cedilla in Eskişehir.

I really don't wish us to arrive at a position where every "innovation" requires a prior permission. Fair enough if somebody introduces a neologism (for us) and there is then a considered consensus to ban the innovation. However, just because a few high profile editors "don't like it", should not mean a blanket prohibition until and unless there is a real and documented consensus for that prohibition.

Consensus should not imply stasis. --118.93nzp (talk) 23:58, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I personally haven't observed foreign characters being suppressed. It would be hard for me to work with Germany articles without them. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The rules regarding diacritics are that we try to avoid them. Namely, if there is a defined and relatively commonly used English name for a city/town/region/country/etc then it should be given preference over any foreign forms. The reason is simple: English Wikivoyage is written in English. Actually, a lot of arguments (mostly from Europeans) have been against English names. For example, Bogota actually uses the diacritic, even though I it shouldn't since English-language maps and most references do not use it. Looking at the non-debate about it, I think User:Globe-trotter's assertion that there is "no obvious English name" is false. It should be Bogota without the diacritic. It's a world capital and it has a well-established English name. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 10:24, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was unaware we had a policy regarding diacritics, but if the rule ChubbyWimbus cites is accurate, I take issue with it. As one of many possible pitfalls that I could cite, there are many cases where a diacritic fundamentally changes the pronunciation of a word (e.g. "n" vs. "ñ") which may lead to confusion as tourists mispronounce place names, for example, to taxi drivers. Also, as Andrewssi2 hinted at, they're often indispensable for disambiguation purposes. I feel we should take at least a neutral, and possibly a pro-diacritic, stance. I'm not sure what policy talk page I should start the discussion on, but I'd like to. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:58, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think in many cases people make a bigger deal out of the differences than actually exist in order to insert diacritics. I've yet to meet a Spanish-speaker who is so dim that they could not figure out that Bogota is Bogotá. Even if there are Spanish-speakers who can't comprehend, it doesn't matter, because the English-language Wikivoyage is not meant for Spanish-speakers; it's meant for English-speakers. The guides should include the local spelling (or characters) at the top of the page anyway, so even if there is a big difference, such as English versus Korean, you could point at the characters if for some reason you needed to reference a city name to a Korean and they couldn't understand you. The same can be done for Spanish. Taxi drivers of all people should be pretty used to strange pronunciations by foreigners. Many taxi drivers themselves are foreigners who don't pronounce the names correctly.

That policy is really only meant to make sure that we are doing our best to use English whenever possible. When it's not possible, diacritics are permitted. There have been discussions about various towns that resulted in keeping or inserting diacritics. I could not myself support a "pro-diacritic" stance. I do believe that the English-language version needs to be firm that we use English names. Diacritics should only be used when there really isn't English to use or the English. I appologize for not being good at locating discussions, but they pop up all over the place. I can't keep track... ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:27, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Policies related to diacritics in article names are mostly covered at Wikivoyage:Article naming conventions#Examples. In the case of Bogota / Bogotá, the former may meet the "commonly used English name" criteria since the latter isn't heavily used in English-language maps and literature, although in cases where the diacritic and non-diacritic versions are equally common we use the local name (for example São Paulo). -- Ryan • (talk) •

A foreign name with the accents missing is still a foreign name. We do need a redirect from the title with diacritics missing as someone might be trying to access WV from a device (such as a mobile) where they are missing or more difficult to input, but inherently "café" "piñata" "maître d'hôtel" and other non-English words in English don't magically become English just because someone forgot an accent or two. Leaving an accent off Montreal/West Island is acceptable (as there's a well-known anglophone minority in that part of Montréal which does routinely strip off the accent and pronounce accordingly) but Bogotà is a Spanish-language name no matter how its misspelled. Nothing English about it.

The awkward part is when a place has two names in different foreign languages, like Chornobyl/Chernobyl (transliterated, Ukraine/Russian) or Gdansk/Danzig (Polish/German). The choice of which to use becomes political. K7L (talk) 16:18, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the English "Bogota" and the Spanish "Bogotà" are spelled the same save for a single diacritic mark in no way means that there is no English name for the city. Certainly not all cities have English names, but Bogota does. Powers ^(talk) 19:01, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK, the <abbr> is not a Mediawiki feature, and its implementation is browser-dependent. I'm not sure if it's widely understood, so I'd be reluctant to expand its use too much. Powers ^(talk) 19:01, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is indeed HTML and I agree it's browser dependent, Powers. [For example, this element is not supported by Mickysoft's Internet Explorer prior to IE7 although Safari has always supported it and Chrome from 2.0 or earlier, Firefox (Gecko) from 1.0 (1.7) or earlier and Opera from 1.3 or earlier]. Although the helpful "tooltip" behaviour is common in modern graphic browsers, you can not rely on it, especially from the accessibility perspective. Some speech-based browsers may give the user optional access to title attribute values, but they tend to ignore them by default. Moreover, people using a graphic browser without a mouse, or with serious difficulties in using a mouse due to a motor function disability probably cannot invoke the "tooltips". And, of course, the explanation of the abbreviation or acronym will not normally be visible in the print version. However, we don't eschew images just because a percentage of our readers can't see them and I think this is yet another instance where the decision can be left to the individual editor and article. My basic point is that I do not wish intolerance to spread and for everything that is not compulsory to be forbidden. --118.93nzp (talk) 20:41, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BTW the city's name is Bogotá in Spanish. À is used in Italian and French (couldn't resist playing nitpicker this time :D), ϒpsilon (talk) 19:14, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Bogota" is not a misspelling of "Bogotà". It's just like ボゴタ, ቦጎታ, etc. They are foreign language names for the city that are all "correct" names in their respective languages. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 07:00, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@ChubbyWimbus: ϒpsilon was pointing out the difference between à and á :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 12:27, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And I see I copy and pasted the wrong one above. lol I can't type with the diacritics. Ugh, an annoyance all-around. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:01, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I just set keyboard as "US International" in regional settings; type voil`a and voilà the diacritic accent appears. That doesn't fix the problem between keyboard and chair... I don't know any foreign languages and make enough of a mess of text in my own country. K7L (talk) 16:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Moving section images to Wikidata?

Hi all,

I realized that all languages have pretty much the same sections (eat, sleep, etc) and we all try to find images relevant to each section (pics of food in Eat, etc). Most often zero, one or two pictures, placed at the beginning of the section.

Wikidata can help! Let's define for each destination a small list of Commons picture filenames for each section, each with a localized legend for each language. It is obviously more complex than what we already do for banners.

Before proposing this idea on Wikidata, better discuss it here and find out what would work best. Thoughts? Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:07, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Quite often the WV discusses the best banner to use in an article, and those discussions can be quite long and difficult between native English speakers.

If we do centralize this kind of thing in Wikidata, then would it not be problematic for such a discussion to take place between the different communities? Effectively would you not exclude any non-fluent English speakers from the conversation about what appears on their community's article? Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:15, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pertinent point, Andrew; Wikidata seems quite tantalising in this respect...--118.93nzp (talk) 03:19, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion at USA is interesting, needed, and would happen even if there were no Wikidata.

In all languages, most sections have zero image, and would benefit from any. 99.9% of the section images would not generate any controversy. For the remaining 0.1%, you will always be able to remove the Wikidata template and put hard-coded images like we do now. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:36, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't that risk someone slipping in the naughty (according to some super users) relative image sizing of "upright"? After all, most other WMF projects do use the useful features in MediaWiki software... --118.93nzp (talk) 06:46, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If it is a 'soft' template that can be used or removed by each WV language site it should be OK. Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:44, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it might make sense to ask some editors from smaller WV language sites how they feel. I could well imagine that the German one, which is larger, might have more concerns because they are able to do tasks and discussions on their own, while smaller ones (like Dutch and Polish) might like to take any help they can get for the time being? I don't know though. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe Nicolas1981 means that these templates are optional. For example, my past translations of German articles actually often use the original German images anyway. If I wanted to use different images in the English version then (I believe) I am completely free to do so.

That said, I do wonder if people might regard this as a harbinger of the standardization of content throughout WV language versions? That would surely raise concerns. Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:13, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I understand, my point was rather that the primary reason to put any of this in Wikidata in the first place is to help smaller language versions, or am I misunderstanding? JuliasTravels (talk) 12:22, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the main goal is to help smaller wikivoyagers. But English Wikivoyage might benefit from more editors, similarly to what happens for banners (local people create banners that really express the feeling of the towns they know well). Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if this will work, as usually the length of an article will differ greatly from one language to another - with the most detail being in the local language or the language with the most Wikivoyageurs. The rare exceptions are fully-translated pages like Lac-Mégantic (en/fr) where the same entire set of listings has made the round-trip unabridged through some attempt at a translation. What may be an appropriate number of images for a lengthy, detailed article is likely excessive for a short stub. K7L (talk) 16:25, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, that might feel void in empty sections. And I am not sure whether Lua for instance can detect the length of a section to adjust the number of images to display. Note: Sizes of the see/do/buy/eat/sleep sections will not vary too much between languages, when POIs are in Wikidata. Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(this is a comment from a smaller language version) I don't see the point of this proposal. Images are used to illustrate the content. If some language version has little content, why would it need all images from a star-quality English or German article? Moreover, images need captions, but an English caption makes no sense in Polish Wikivoyage. One can think of writing a bot facilitating image transfer, just like the transfer of listings discussed recently, but this should be always done under human control. And this does not have to involve Wikidata. --Alexander (talk) 18:18, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry that I don't see much benefit in this. Images are are the one feature of an article that can easily be transferred from one language to another without understanding a word of the article - just click on the image to see the image page from where you can copy the title. AlasdairW (talk) 22:30, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Clicking and copy-pasting is easy, yes. A few months ago we were manually copy-pasting banners back and forth between languages, and it was even easier. But it is not sustainable for 15,000 articles. Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How do you propose to enter this template into the 15,000 articles? Would it be a bot? What criteria would you use to determine if the template should be used or not? Thanks! Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a bot would add the templates (for instance {{images_see}} in section See) to each section that does not have any images yet. The hardest would be to develop a legend editor (a bit like the listing editor, but with just one textfield, and potentially showing the legend in other languages for reference). Nicolas1981 (talk) 05:57, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure about this. One issue is the handling of fair use images; I realize that there has been some debate over the use of them, but there are legitimate uses of them, and they cannot be uploaded to Commons and must be handled locally... --Rs chen 7754 09:07, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When I do translations right now, I just reuse the same images, and have not run into trouble so far... Anyway, any potentially unusable image would be left after the template. When trying to insert an image in Wikidata, Wikidata could even check whether its license is OK, thus an advantage over non-Wikidata image copy. Nicolas1981 (talk) 13:22, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The decision of where to place images may still need to be made manually because differences in article length and the absence of {{Info Ville}} on en: do affect how much free space is on a page (and where). K7L (talk) 16:36, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nicolas1981. I just wanted to say that I think it is really great that you provide lots of ideas for enhancing WV and investigating ways in which we could leverage WikiData to our advantage. Although the reception on this thread for the image idea has not been so enthusiatic, I do hope nevertheless to see more of your ideas. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:35, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GAC application includes a "Wikivoyage contest"

The Venezuelan proto-chapter is applying for funding, part of which would be for said contest (see "Number 1"). One can only presume they mean it to be for the Spanish WV. This suggests an opportunity for the en.WV community to identify WMF affiliates that could be interested in collaborating in the development and/or implementation of such a contest. Tony (talk) 08:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Tony - and may we wish you a belated Happy New Year! --118.93nzp (talk) 08:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the tip Tony! I think that promoting the idea of taking picture specifically for Wikivoyage is a good idea, as this kind of pictures (atmosphere, activities, crowds, more lively, I don't know) is difficult to find on Commons. When I upload a picture of a building on Commons, I think "Let's take the pic orthogonally so that every detail is visible" but for Wikivoyage it would be "Let's take the pic with a subjective angle, when the ice vendor passes by and children play with birds". Unlike Wikipedia we usually try to make people want to go there. Nicolas1981 (talk) 12:14, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WLM (and GLAM stuff) is one of the few things chapters are uniquely good at doing; this extends by analogy to involvement in a possible Wikivoyage competition. Perhaps it would work well for this community, via chosen reps, to make a joint applicant via the GAC with one of the chapters that covers an area you feel has a lot of scope for improvement on en.WV (and perhaps the other WVs, especially where the predominant language of a chosen area is that of another WV. Things to work out initially would be the scope (as Nicolas points out), and the extent to which there's already a track-record for WLM (more than 50 countries participated in the most recent WLM comp). You'd need funding for transport and associated costs of visiting the photographic sites, possibly for cameras and tripods, if that's a problem in the area, and for prizes and a local ceremony. You'd need to consider whether videos could be part of it (I have no idea, but some cultural displays like dance, parades, might lend themselves to vid (do you have vids on WV?) WV could contribute guidelines for what is needed and what type of images are appropriate for this site (as opposed to the WPs, for example). Copyright issues like freedom of panorama would need to be determined in short-listing chapters that could be approached. Tony (talk) 12:39, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a big endeavour... the good thing about a voyage wiki is that some of us travel there at some point, for personal pleasure, often with a camera. So if contest there is, it will probably be different from WLM contests. Nicolas1981 (talk) 13:16, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template asking to avoid too much politics on discussion pages

I noticed there was a disclaimer box on the Talk:Croatia page asking people not to get too involved with politics on a sensitive article. I created a template from it and used the same text verbatim:

This is not a political forum; please restrict all discussion here to discussion about how best to improve the Switzerland article. Off topic debates, political rants, nonsense poetry, etc. will all be removed as it is added. This is a travel guide and political disputes are utterly irrelevant except insofar as they directly bear upon the experience of a traveller. See Wikivoyage:Be fair#Political disputes for further guidelines.

Please note that this is only for a few sensitive discussion pages and NOT main articles.

If anyone wants to help improve the text then please feel free to jump in. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, worldwide travel is not something that takes place in a vacuum... we do have to acknowledge the political situation on the ground as it affects the traveller. To ignore the political situation in North Korea or to neglect to mention that Syria is a war zone would be foolhardy, even if it becomes WV:NCO at times. K7L (talk) 02:15, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't suggesting to remove politics completely ("asking people not to get too involved with politics"). Just a reminder to contributors of the scope of WV.

As I said I just used the original text (not mine) and therefore please amend to a wording that is appropriate for WV. Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:23, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we will continue to tell it how it is from a traveller's perspective, but this template may be a useful gentle reminder for some discussion pages... However, I do think a more practically useful template would be to specify which language variety the article is written in (or should be corrected to) for those destinations where it is not obvious such as Israel or Belize or the BVI... --118.93nzp (talk) 02:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks 118.93nzp. It is indeed a gentle reminder, and not a directive. Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:18, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think the purpose of the template is/should be trying to keep the discussion related to Wikivoyage and the Wikivoyage article, rather than adding some off-topic rant about a country's politics or culture. --Rs chen 7754 18:54, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it is good to highlight the fact that each and all of the most paramount and pressing problems of Wikivoyage can be remedying by adding more templates to talk pages. PrinceGloria (talk) 20:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template for discussion pages to indicate English language variant

To my knowledge, all WV articles use either a Commonwealth (British) or an American style of English. This determination appears to be largely based on that country's historical links either with Britain or the United States, with commonwealth English being the default if no clear association can be identified.

From time to time new contributors do come onto WV, see red when they encounter American spellings and we then have to spend some time to explain and clean up.

118.93nzp has asked (I'm extrapolating his comment) whether we could have a template that could be placed on a country's discussion page that indicated what form of English should be used?

Would such a template be useful? Especially for 'grey areas' such as China and Israel? Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:35, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just a wee note of correction: articles currently should default to US English if there is no obvious connection to another variety (such as Australian, Canadian, Indian, etc).

[The two compromises/concessions that were conceded by the US-centric camp many moons ago to arrive at this state of affairs were

1) the rare US English spellings of "traveller" and "travelling" were to be used everywhere in preference to "traveler" and "traveling" and

2) dates default to dd Mmm yyyy (eg: 22 May 2014) in a similar style to that visible in the time stamp of everyone's signature here.] --118.93nzp (talk) 04:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I'm aware, the preference for "traveller" is an affectation and only applies to project space. Powers ^(talk) 13:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If even that small point is ambiguous, then we should probably move the discussion to another part of WV. Any suggestion where? Andrewssi2 (talk) 14:23, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not everything needs to be spelled out in exacting detail. Our community's philosophy has long been that spelling and grammar and other niggling details are subservient to, and far less important than, generating good, readable, and useful travel content. That this is a "small point" means that its ambiguity is just not that important. Powers ^(talk) 15:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's sorely tempting to banish the word "kilometer" from Wikivoyage. It's not in common US usage as they still use miles and it's incorrect in any other country as "metre" is the unit of length and "meter" a measuring device. K7L (talk) 15:46, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thoroughly agree. In most places I substitute its universally known symbolisation of km. Likewise for meter as a unit of measurement where m is universally understood. Except for the historic compromise, Powers is correct in his general summation. However, it's always amazing how much heat and energy those who profess a deep disinterest and scorn for these small matters of abbreviation and grammar often expend on obstructing and thwarting those who spend much of their time copy-editing these trivia; not everyone can be a Dickens or a Melville... --118.93nzp (talk) 16:59, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think for most countries the language variety has been agreed upon, or not? So a template would mostly serve to instruct people which version to use? We shouldn't forget that for many people who contribute here, English is a second or third or (in my case) fourth language. As natural as the distinction between varieties of English is for native speakers, it's a good lot less so for many others. I like consistency and I'm perfectly fine with rules about which variety is preferred on which articles, but I do think we need to be very forgiving when people use the wrong version and thoughtful about the wordings we use when instructing a particular one in a template or otherwise. What we want to do is discourage "correcting" of one version to the other, we don't want to discourage people to contribute when they're not sure about spellings. I know I'm not always consistent and in all honestly, I get confused about the meters and metres, centres and centers, travel(l)ers, sizable and sizeables and all the rest. I'm very happy with the copy-editors who fix my mistakes way faster than I could look them up. But I'm even happier with the general understanding that these are details compared to our goal of creating good travel info ;-) JuliasTravels (talk) 22:13, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

George Bernard Shaw once said: 'England and America are two countries divided by a common language' - this is so true for English speakers throughout the world. I think we are educated enough to be aware of variations in spelling and context but not become too involved or intense about them. I only take light notice of such words as I speak 4 different languages. The travel article is the thing to be concerned with more. We could always add a separate page listing common variations for those who can't figure out such things. The wiki editor also makes one aware of variations by underscoring such words... (biased toward US style English)... Just a thought on the subject. Matroc (talk) 00:12, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that's your browser marking misspelled words, not the wiki software. =) Powers ^(talk) 00:47, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting point from Powers. If I edit in British English then the my browser marks some words with a nice red underline. Although this isn't a problem for me, I can't help but feel that it would work against ESL contributors. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:03, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, so you speak English? Jolly well old chap, give this a try... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/british-english-dictionary/ :) K7L (talk) 04:37, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know I should have said browser ;) - Spell checking in Firefox since version 2.0 -- I have the correct dictionary installed and selected, check-spelling selected and correct language selected. There are separate dictionaries such as English/United States, English/United Kingdom etc. - Glad to "awaken the sleeper"(s)_Dune - Happy New Year! - Matroc (talk) 06:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, actually a template could point the user to that dictionary? (For Mozilla ppl) Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:02, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Templates could point to anything, but I'd say such general external links (indeed several, for different browsers) don't belong on every talk page. When working extensively on a particular article one may change it, but we can hardly ask from editors that they keep changing their dictionaries for every tiny addition they make. I think I'd prefer to not make a big deal out of it on talk pages and rather point people to relevant policy pages and discussions when they use the "non-preferred" version too much. But maybe you should indicate what kind of text you imagine on such a template, so we're talking about the same thing? JuliasTravels (talk) 08:22, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is obvious now that there isn't a groundswell of WV'ers crying out for this feature, so I think that I'll just consider it discussed for now and let it go. :) Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:32, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many listings use wrong templates (eg. See is a Eat)

Dear all,

I have noticed that MANY listings use the wrong template, for instance {{See}} for a restaurant. Is there ANY case where this is intended? Is there ANY situation where a listing in "Eat" is intendedly not {{Eat}}, or where a {{Eat}} is not in section "Eat"?

Thanks! Nicolas1981 (talk) 04:15, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A listing in any of the six sections See, Do, Buy, Eat, Drink, Sleep should always have the corresponding type (see, do, buy, eat, drink, sleep). Wrong templates there are likely mistakes or the result of moving an item ("British pub" from Eat to Drink, for instance). A listing in any other named section could be anything - particularly in itineraries, where the section headers are in geographic order instead of attraction/activity/food/lodging categories. K7L (talk) 04:58, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Is there any tool to fix or at least detect these problems? Is anyone working on creating such a tool? Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:08, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not all listings are in template form yet and many are still using asterisk (*) bullet points. http://tools.wmflabs.org/catscan2/catscan2.php can help us find those articles (or at least narrow them down) that still have no template listings for 'see', 'do', 'eat' and 'sleep'. Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:00, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I guess all not-so-developed-yet articles would be false positive though. Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:41, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it is possible, but unlikely that a cafe might be listed inside a see listing. I am thinking of a large paying attraction like a theme park or zoo, which has places to eat inside. Because you have to pay to go into the park, they probably should not appear in the main Eat section, but we might want an eat symbol to show on the map, and to mention them in the section about the park. AlasdairW (talk) 23:51, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, but in that case where the point of interest will probably appear in run-on prose, it might be best to use the {{marker}} template so that the intrusive, little, grey "edit" text does not interrupt the prose but the appropriate symbol still appears on the map? --61.29.8.41 00:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Another expedition? Rescue Expedition?

I don't know if this has been discussed before but in-case if it is, I doubt it has been addressed. Sometimes our important articles (especially those that are at guide status and previously featured on the main page) become outdated and less developed than formerly, but is that sufficient and a good decision to demote them from being a guide status article? Not at all! If a featured guide status article become obsolete, the article must be improved and properly addressed rather than simply demoting it. In-fact, featured article don't deserve to be demoted, after-all, a lot of efforts has been put on it once upon a time.

Actually, I've myself demoting few featured article recently that were having the issues of style, formatting and outdating. I believe it wasn't fair but it was seems to me in the best interests of WV. After all, our mission is "complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide." and an outdated or poorly formatted article with a previously featured symbol on top right will gave a bad impression to our users and readers.

So, I don't know if we need another expedition to address this very important issue. After-all, we've already so many expeditions on-wiki and mostly are rather inactive. So, if we've a good support for starting such expedition or we've another solution, that would be great and I'm ready to do my part as a map-maker. That's the only I could do. I'm not been to places, who articles has been demoted except Dubai thats why I don't know about what content to add to rescue an article nor I'm good with formatting and improving the style. And at last, I would say rescue an article — rescue the WV's standard. --Saqib (talk) 17:33, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I support this effort. I don't know how much use I'd be in gathering updated information, but I can definitely pitch in on style and formatting problems. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dubai article was featured as DotM in early 2008, but later the article become very outdated thus I had to demote it last year. Dubai is world's 7th most visited cities so definitely its important that the its article should be at guide status. Recently, the article has been districtified (Thanks to our now-retired editor Jan who initiated the districtification discussion) and lately, Nurg has visited Dubai and contributed significantly to Dubai and its districts. I've lived for many years in Dubai (in-fact still living) and I think that the article is very much close to gain its guide status back which I snatched from it last year. Concerning the Dubai map, its lack a map but I better wait and not do the map right now since the "Discussion on defining district borders for Dubai is in progress.". --Saqib (talk) 21:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This issue surely deserves some attention. But I do think you're right about expeditions in general. Also, as Andre says, it's not always easy to fix content if you don't know the place, so I'm not sure an expedition is the ideal way (although I don't know what is, a template maybe?). Even if you can find people willing to join, none of them may know the particular places. Can you give a couple of examples of previous feature articles that you've demoted and need rescue? JuliasTravels (talk) 21:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're right and that's why I said in my post that either an expedition or a solution will be need. OMG! I found plenty of previously featured DotM articles (leave aside OtBP and FTT) and all demoted: Perhentian Islands, Guatemala City, New Orleans, Melbourne, Expo 2005, Edinburgh, Kuala Lumpur, Budapest, La Paz, Taipei, Pattaya, Boracay, Death Valley National Park, Tashkent, Falkland Islands (outline) and Elsinore (outline although questionable). I only demoted 2 or 3 but I don't know who demoted the rest of them. --Saqib (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Edinburgh was demoted in September 2010, with the comment at the time being "sorry, cannot by guide with districts being outline". I am not sure that was a valid reason, and today only one district Edinburgh/East is outline. Maybe some others would like to have a look and change it back if they agree. AlasdairW (talk) 23:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It was demoted by one of our admin User:ClausHansen and although the article and its district articles are quite detailed but they haven't changed much since what they were back in September '10 so it would be better if someone who knows the place best will look into the articles and then decided whether to keep it at usable status or promote it back to guide. --Saqib (talk) 00:02, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One might also find articles in need of attention by looking at Wikivoyage:World cities/Large, which has the world's 100 biggest cities, or checking UNESCO World Heritage List. The Large list can be sorted in various ways to reveal more; e.g. sorting on the F column shows that about half of the 20 most visited cities have articles still at Outline status. Pashley (talk) 22:15, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure all of those have been demoted, Saqib. In earlier years the requirements for featured articles weren't what they are now. I suppose some of them never made it to what we now call guide status in the first place ;-) JuliasTravels (talk) 22:21, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Julia. You're right. That same thing is currently going on at Italian WV for instance. Their current DotM is at outline status by English WV standard. And even though, if articles were previously featured on the main page without having at guide status, I think we should work on to bring them at guide status or otherwise, if we can't bring a previously featured article back to guide status, simply remove the featured icon from that article. In-fact, Wikipedia is doing the same. They simply demote the article (which is once used to be featured article if the article become outdated) and remove the featured article icon appearing on top right of the article. Wikipedia do not compromise on quality then why we? --Saqib (talk) 22:38, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's not really a good comparison: Wikipedia's featured articles are what we call star articles. We do have a "demote"-option for star articles as well, in which case an article loses the star icon. Removing the previously-featured icon here would be strange I think: it's just part of history. Nonetheless, it's good that you're raising attention to the issue, and it would be nice if some of those articles could be polished up to meet our current standards :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 22:53, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okay but can I compare our guide articles with Wikipedia's "Good articles"? They demote their good articles as well and remove the icon. Anyway, I'm not in favour as well of having icons removed from our articles that were previously featured. I raised this issue to rescue those article, not to remove the icons. I hope a solution will be provided and this issue will be addressed. --Saqib (talk) 23:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To JuliasTravels: Saqib was right in correcting his analogy: Star articles on Wikivoyage are analogous to "Good articles" on Wikipedia, rather than "Featured articles". However, I think it's important to note that up to now, Saqib has been speaking about Guide articles. As you mentioned, anyone who comes across a Star article they don't feel is up to snuff anymore has to nominate the article for de-starring, which has to be deliberated on in much the same way as promoting an article to Star status. Usually, the very act of nominating an article for de-starring is enough to impel the community to make the necessary changes. However, Guide articles are pretty good too, and unlike Star articles, they can be demoted unilaterally without consultation. I think it's totally worthwhile to explore ways to prevent them being demoted, and I think that an expedition - provided we can sustain interest in it over the long term; a tall order, I admit - is as good a way as any of tackling the problem. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:00, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, Andre, that comparison would be accurate and indeed the "usable" or "guide" status of the article can be changed without much issue. However, all of the examples he gives are already not at guide status - some because they've been demoted since, others because they were never guides. So it's not really a matter of demoting or not. Our "previously featured icon" says nothing about guide or usable: it only says the article was once featured on the main page. And that part remains true all the same, even when we would now consider such an article unsuited. (This to clarify my comment: the icon question is not the main problem of course).

So what we mostly have, is articles that we once featured on the main page but are not guide quality. I think Saqib is quite right that many of those articles deserve some kind of priority due to being previous features, but the same is true for some others, like "most visited destinations", "most requested articles on our site" etc. I have nothing against an expedition, I just think we all know how hard it is to keep one active, most of all when it's about content. Just brainstorming.. would it be a good idea to come up with a broader list/expedition of "high priority" articles that need polishing up? So most visited, previous features, key articles in making a whole region usable or something like that? If the scope is somewhat wider, it might be easier for people to join the effort. We might also pick a collaboration of the month out of them. Just a thought. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid too that an expedition might die. Maybe reviving CotM will be good idea and rather than nominations, just put the list of articles that were previously featured but now at usable status and work on those as we used to do previously. See Wikivoyage_talk:Collaboration_of_the_month#Outdated.2C_again. --Saqib (talk) 15:12, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is died as I was expecting without any outcome or conclusion. I think it was a wastage of time to raise this issue at first. Anyways. Andrew, this page says "featured article on WP are star article or destination of the month on WV" and nothing says about WP's good articles but you said above our star articles are analogous to WP's Good articles. I think its bette to solve this matter first. WP's featured articles are their best work whereas our star articles as WV's best work. If our star articles are analogous to WP's good articles, then it means our best work is analogous to WP's (not best) work. Confusion! --Saqib (talk) 12:45, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think it's terrific that you've made that offer to help with drawing static maps, Saqib. Although our new dynamic maps offer many advantages for those who are on-line (and the development of {{mapmask}} may extend it's usefulness to show the districts and regions that we ourselves create) they'll probably always be inferior to those readers wishing a hard copy (or those offline, of course).

I've been away for while, so can I use this opportunity to comment how sad I was to see your admin tools removed for an "offence" that had nothing whatsoever with abusing admin tools? Eventually our public visibility will increase with search engines (even if we do keep shooting ourselves in the foot with our lack of active SEO) and then it will be "all hands to the pump" to stem the flood of spambots. In the time I've been away I've already noticed an increase in the number of spambot accounts being created when I look in "Recent changes".

One thing that does seem sadly lacking here is an awareness of how awful most of our articles actually appear at certain common screen sizes and resolutions. I'll post some screenshots later when I get home and gain access to faster speeds, but there are many visual aberrations that need correcting. I think much of this aesthetic "blindness" is caused by may of our most frequent contributors working principally with wikitext differences on large screens rather than examining final results. --61.29.8.41 23:25, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now that you said in favour of dynamic maps here, I wish this discussion won't derails. I prefer to talk here over the subject and nothing else. --Saqib (talk) 23:44, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia used to have a "Collaboration of the Week" or "Collaboration of the Month", but both of those projects are now inactive. Now it's Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement. I think we should consider a similar expedition, where we identify our highest priority pages and improve them to our current standards. Edge3 (talk) 14:05, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is going to die so thought of giving an update here. Dubai article has been rescued and probably back at guide status now. --Saqib (talk) 13:11, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indicator of featured articles

On a related note: would it be possible to add a star to the list of interwiki links when an article is featured in one way or another – star, DoTM, or guide status, depending on the traditions of each language version? Basically, two questions in one: i) How to implement this? ii) Do we need this mechanism? It could facilitate translation of good content... --Alexander (talk) 08:55, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Very good idea. I'm not an expert in graphic design and such, but a simple way to indicate this is to use a sign consisting of a recognized 2-letter linguistic abbreviation, such as "RU" for a previous feature on Russian Wikivoyage. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:39, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon me but I didn't got it. Alexander, are you saying that we should add an icon on top right of an article (star, DotM or at guide status) if the same article is star, DotM or guide on other WV language editions? OR are you suggesting that we add icon on article when the same article is featured, star or guide on other WV editions but the same article is either at outline or usable status on this edition of WV? --Saqib (talk) 14:49, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I mean same system as in Wikipedia. We have a list of interwikis in the left panel. If an article is featured, say, in Polish Wikivoyage, it receives a star against the link "Polish" in all other languages. --Alexander (talk) 14:54, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh okay, thats a good idea but having a star (as in WP) is more than enough rather than abbreviation icons. --Saqib (talk) 15:05, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't recall seeing this kind of indication on Wikipedia. If someone could post a link to a relevant article, that would be helpful. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:09, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

~~I didn't understand. Sorry! --Saqib (talk) 15:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)~~[reply]

Ikan, here is an example of such a WP article; look at the languages section on the left side. ϒpsilon (talk) 15:23, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the indicators regarding feature and good articles on wp en show up on creators user pages at the top right hand corner and they almost every time look a really horrible mess, however if it is an unassuming marker like as indicated like Ypsilon has indicated - it should be encouraged and used - unobtrusive but informative. sats (talk) 15:30, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alexander, I think we will have to create a template such as this and then manually add the template to desired articles. --Saqib (talk) 15:33, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is rather about changes to Common.css. The template itself is not necessary, because we already have stars and DoTMs reflected in {{pagebanner}}. The question is whether this special "id" for featured articles will work on Wikivoyage. One has to try... --Alexander (talk) 15:50, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link, Ypsilon. It seems like a no-brainer to just add the star symbol to the sidebar in the way the Wikipedia article does. But another symbol would have to be used if we want to show that the article had been featured on the front page of another language version. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:00, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How about a laurel wreath, to indicate that in this and that language, the article has been specially recognized in some way. Nicolas1981 (talk) 16:25, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see one major problem. The mechanism of featured articles in Wikipedia requires that an appropriate template is added to each language version. Of course, this never happens. An implementation through Wikidata is needed... --Alexander (talk) 16:32, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That is in the works, and will hopefully be done soon. --Rs chen 7754 18:33, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Our banners are being re-used outside Wikivoyage :-)

Our banners are being put to good use by other projects :-)

See Reasonator: http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/?q=Q350 The banner is from Wikivoyage.

With Wikidata, your contributions benefit to more people than ever, even in a ways you would never have imagined when contributing. Nicolas1981 (talk) 16:13, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One more image for each article?

Wikidata has a "image" field for each city/place. The image is used by Wikipedia infoboxes, for instance see the upper-right image at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge . These images always show a nice view of the city or one of its most famous landmark, in fair weather.

How about reusing this image in Wikivoyage?

Maybe 1% of our articles have enough (or even too many) images, but 99% of our articles are in desperate need of more images.

So: the drawback would be that we will have to adjust for a few articles, but the gain is so huge it is really worth it, I think.

What do you think about it? Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:50, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've held my tongue about it up to now, but I am extremely skeptical of the one-size-fits-all, assembly-line approach to our content that Wikidata has engendered in a growing number of our users. We've already used Wikidata to standardize the decision of which pagebanner we use for the same destination on all language versions that currently use them, seemingly without stopping to consider that en: is thereby pre-empting discussions on all other language versions which, if they had taken place, may very well have resulted in a different consensus on which image to use. We've talked about moving listings to Wikidata, seemingly without stopping to consider that some attractions may be relevant to some language communities and not to others. We're also talking about standardizing section images across language versions, seemingly without a thought as to whether other Wikivoyage communities might prefer a different alternative.

I say "seemingly" because, although I haven't heard anything to indicate that there's a mechanism in MediaWiki that allows individual communities to deviate from the preset selections on Wikidata if they prefer, that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. If I'm wrong about this, I apologize and retract this statement.

I think Wikidata can certainly be a valuable tool in some cases, but if we don't seriously circumscribe the range of scenarios where we use it, my fear is that Wikivoyage will turn into McDonald's, where all the originality is standardized and automated out of the product and the author's role is reduced to little more than transcribing information into a preset template. Instead, I want Wikivoyage to be a gourmet haute-cuisine restaurant, where talented authors create exciting articles to entice readers in ways that are artful and a little bit different (and hopefully better) than what can be found elsewhere. I want to write; I don't want to do data entry. And I certainly don't want to presume to tell de:, fr:, it:, etc. what's best for them.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliantly written and analysed, AndreCarrotflower! Bravo! --150.101.89.130 08:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In cases where an article doesn't have a lead image I would be in favor of plugging in whatever wikidata has on the theory that it would be better to include an image automatically than not have one. I think Andre's fears of turning over too much control to wikidata are something to be aware of, but we should also be making an effort to consolidate data that doesn't change across language versions to make maintenance easier. I also think using wikidata to set a "base" data set for things like banners is a net positive - a new language version can launch with banners on all articles, and override as desired, for example. Hopefully the wikidata interface will eventually evolve to the point where we can view an article on English Wikivoyage and have a tab or other UI element that allows us to see all data that comes from (and is available for use from) wikidata for that article so that we can easily pick and choose what to include, but that day is probably a few years off. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As an administrator and oversighter on Wikidata, I of course support the use of its data wherever it is effective.

However, I'm not convinced that this particular use is effective; on an implementation level I'm not sure that it is possible, for one. --Rs chen 7754 03:57, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of images, how about we look at data that is not subjective and equally applicable between languages and communities?

How about climate data? Is it a compelling use case to centralize the monthly rainfall, temperature and humidity levels of a location in WikiData? Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now there's a good idea! Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:03, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't even say I'm against Wikidata being used for things that are more subjective, if and only if there's an easy way to opt-out in each individual instance. I remember a few months ago a Wikidata glitch led to the pagebanner for Syracuse (Italy) being used for Syracuse (New York). It was fixed easily enough, but the lingering problem is that if there's a way for anyone who stumbles upon the perfect image to use as a new pagebanner for either of those articles to put it in place without navigating a tortured, sluggish interwiki bureaucracy, I have yet to figure it out. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:15, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We all strive to make gourmet haute-cuisine for all articles here. But it will take years. Meanwhile, how about making sure all destinations are at least palatable?

Quality: Wikidata's image field is better than McDonald-level :-)

Implementability: Got implemented today on French Wikipedia.

Edit wars: More disputes will probably arise between en.wv members trying to find 20,000 new suitable images, that if starting with Wikidata's already-curated set.

Catering to different communities: Just my opinion, but I see our goal as universal. There are more cultural differences between some English-speaking communities than between some Spanish-speaking communities. For instance, religion is probably a bigger cultural difference than language, yet nobody would not even consider splitting Wikivoyage into religious groups. Let's face it, if the whole world had only 1 language, then there would be only 1 Wikivoyage... which means that having several Wikivoyages is a technical necessity, not a higher goal. Why export this technical necessity to non-language realms?

"en: is pre-empting": For what I have seen, other languages are happy to collaborate, and simply override Wikidata values when it does not fit (yes, opting-out is easy).

Cheers! :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the lead city images on Wikipedia (only some of which are encoded in Wikidata) are montages (ex: File:Boston Montage.jpg), which violate our image policy. Powers ^(talk) 14:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's a solid counter-argument indeed! I don't know whether such montages are OK on Wikipedia actually, the closest policy I could find is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Collages_and_montages and it says "If a gallery would serve as well as a collage or montage, the gallery should be preferred". In fact, I could have fun writing a small algorithm that recognizes whether an image is a montage or not :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 16:14, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pages without lead pictures often mean pages without much content of any kind, so putting a picture on such articles really doesn't matter so much. Generally, with content comes pictures either uploaded from the person adding the content or someone (still likely the one adding the content) will likely search for pictures when the article has enough content to hold them. Articles with no or little content do not bother me if they lack a picture. I like the pictures to be organically added. Having no pictures can inspire contributors to upload their own new images as well. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:40, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I share the concerns of LtPowers, ChubbyWimbus and others. I think a personal, organic approach is better here. Our empty articles are not going to actually benefit from showing the reader the same lead image they will see as soon as they inevitably click over to Wikipedia to find some actual information. Texugo (talk) 17:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Empty See and Do sections in country articles

Have you noticed that the either See or Do or both are empty in quite a few country or "area comparable with country" articles (like Jersey), particularly in those places that don't get many visitors. In my opinion these are the most important sections, so it's a shame that they are empty (especially See). It would perhaps be too much to call together an expedition, but if you spot such an article, feel free to fill those sections with a few sentences. If there are UNESCO world heritage sites in the country those sites are obvious candidates. You can of course also click on cities and other destinations to see if there's anything interesting in their See and Do sections that could be mentioned in the country article. ϒpsilon (talk) 05:35, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A content priority indeed! A few people (including me) have been working actively on country see sections as part of the Wikivoyage:Country surgeon Expedition. Unfortunately, although almost everyone agreed it was important and a bunch of people signed up, only a few found the time to really contribute. And then there was so much going on with the move. I'm glad you brought it back to attention :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 10:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dynamic map problems

Why are none of the dynamic maps visible now, unless clicked on? I hope everyone else is having the same problem. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There were some stability issues with the internal page frame and the 'plug was pulled'. There are hopes this can be resolved within the next couple of weeks. Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:15, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I hope so. It's a pretty bad problem. Thanks for the explanation. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:25, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is a bad problem. I'd like to give the guys a chance to fix it without any pressure in the first instance, although afterwards we need a discussion around the technical support for the Dynamic Maps and how stability can be addressed.Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:05, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be working fine in French Wikivoyage. I have raised it with the map guys here. Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:26, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Birthday and congratulations

Yesterday we celebrated our 7th birthday. On December 10, 2006 we started Wikivoyage with the German branch. One year later, the Italian one started. And we got a nice birthday present from Google: The central Wikivoyage home page has now a PageRank of 7, and the English main page a PageRank of 6. Now, if that is not enough to keep thinking positive. --RolandUnger (talk) 09:36, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Congrats and well done. --Saqib (talk) 09:51, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great news! Congratulations, and many thanks to the German community for initiating this project! --Alexander (talk) 09:55, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday! And thank you very much for all you've done to welcome those of us from other language communities! Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:10, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Happy ♥ birthday to you dear Wikivoyage --Walta (talk) 00:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy 7th birthday Wikivoyage! --Sonusmarty (talk) 23:23, 7 February 2014 (UTC)Sonusmarty[reply]

4x4 abbreviations

It seems we have a split usage on voyage in relation to the 4WD and 4X4 (and their variations with and without caps, 4wd, 4x4, etc) - as consistent usage might help, is there any indication of why or why not one might trump the other? or is it as found - about 50/50...

One only hopes there is some good reason for usages one way or the other sats (talk) 06:12, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although both are understandable for most native English speakers, I prefer 4x4 because

1) it's more immediately understandable for most users of English as a secondary language

2) it's less noticeable when the the case flip flops in the way you noticed

3) it's a short step to be able to write something like "2x4 vehicles can also successfully negotiate this road in the dry season..." --150.101.89.130 08:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It wasnt a personal question or asking for your personal opinion, If it was I would have gone to your talk page - I am interested what other editors of voyage actually think as it involves a large number of articles - and others might be interested (or not) as well. sats (talk) 09:44, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First of all: I know very little of cars. I think both words are easy enough to understand, also for non-native speaker. I always thought they were just two words for the same thing, but Wikipedia makes a difference in definitions:

Four-by-four (4x4) refers to the general class of vehicles. The first figure is normally the total wheels (more precisely, axle ends, which may have multiple wheels), and the second, the number that are powered.
Four wheel drive (4WD) refers to vehicles that have a transfer case, not a differential, between the front and rear axles, meaning that the front and rear drive shafts will be locked together when engaged.

If that is true, 4x4 is clearly the better choice for me when writing, as I wouldn't know the difference when I see such a vehicle. It seems smart to have that general term as a preference. However, it seems a bit silly to tell people who do know their cars which word to use. JuliasTravels (talk) 10:31, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I do know a moderate amount about cars. I think the WP text quoted above is seriously wrong.

To me, "Four-wheel drive" or "4wd" is the general term for a vehicle that sends power to all four wheels; the term contrasts with "front-wheel drive" or "rear-wheel drive". This is the term we should use in almost all cases.

Contrary to WP, calling something "4wd" has absolutely nothing to do with whether a transfer case, a diff or a torque converter is used to distribute the power.

To me, "Four by four" or "4x4" is more a description of vehicle type, albeit rather an imprecise one; it implies something along the lines of a light truck with 4wd and some off-road capability. There are a number of vehicles — notably various Audi and Subaru models — that are 4wd but that I wouldn't call 4x4 because they are insufficiently truck-like. Pashley (talk) 22:29, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This has gone no-where in s month, any further suggestions, as voyage still has the 2 uses and no convention or agreed resoltuion on this matter - and the inconsistency shows, if you look at this particular issue... sats (talk) 10:57, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to consensus building

Anyone who is interested in potential modifications to our consensus-building process, please consider commenting at Wikivoyage talk:Consensus#Wikivoyage:Consensus/Draft. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:42, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem!

Please take a look at a post I wrote on the talk page of the article about the island of Nevis. Invertzoo (talk) 00:14, 5 February 2014 (UTC) Copied from: Wikivoyage_talk:Community_portal#Copyright_problem.21 --Nick ^talk 00:34, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Nick, although I think the protocol is fairly straightforward for dealing with Copyright violations? What is your question/intent for reposting on the pub? Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:40, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was just moving Invertzoo's original post as it had been placed on the community portal talk page, which isn't where I think she intended it to go. I've asked Invertzoo to highlight the specific parts that she believes are copyvios. --Nick ^talk 02:43, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK thanks, understood. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:08, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, although the (mostly basic) information is comparable, I'm not finding a lot of verbatim texts so easily, but I should look further. The strange part here is that the user who is pointing to this copyright gradually wrote most of the article his/herself, about a year ago. I'm not sure if he/she has been told by TA to stop also posting things elsewhere (which would be questionable, since their terms of use include a noninclusive license) or that he/she's forgotten they wrote it.. I'll ask on her talk page too, but it seems to me this user has claimed and holds (co)ownership and uploaded under our cc license? JuliasTravels (talk) 10:06, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again, I believe this was my error. I was tired when I posted my note and I had not realized that I was the one who originally wrote virtually all of the text, so I mistaken thought that it had been copied from TripAdvisor articles which myself and a friend had written some years before. I will check again, but probably everything is just fine. Sorry to raise an alarm unnecessarily. Invertzoo (talk) 14:23, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, good that the info can stay and lots of thanks for your contributions! Now that we have pub attention for Nevis, maybe some of our great banner people can whip up a somewhat more colorful banner? :-) Suitable pictures are hard to come by for it, and the ones we have are mostly from StKitts, but there are a few on Commons and I added one there that I found on Flickr and has at least a bit of Nevis. Would that work? JuliasTravels (talk) 16:24, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can the copyright tag be removed from Saint Kitts as well? Texugo (talk) 16:25, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Check the banner, but it won't be very nice because of the low quality of this photo. --Alexander (talk) 19:44, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks! I figured, but in any case it's more inspiring than the grey default banner for a sunny destination like this :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 08:18, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to Joachim

for helping to get our dynamic maps up and running again! --118.93nzp (talk) 00:25, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Absolute