It appears to me that I have now completed the description of itinerary E11 hiking trail. Could somebody please check if this is what WikiVoyage understands as a good article about an itinerary? Please read the Discussion page of the article first. DrMennoWolters (talk) 13:30, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This sort of request can go to Wikivoyage:Requests for comment. I will add it there. At some point, it can be deleted here. Pashley (talk) 14:23, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Where should we comment? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Specific suggestions for the article which cannot edited directly, should go to the Discussion page of the article. General ideas about how itineraries should be written, may come to the pub or the Project page or perhaps elsewhere. DrMennoWolters (talk) 17:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We need to get something together for the launch. Currently I have proposed "This week we are launching Wikivoyage. Join us in creating a free travel guide that anyone can edit." Feel free to adjust . Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Try to keep it under 140 characters so it will fit on twitter, and lets decide on a hashtag too, maybe #Wikivoyage --  S.Bryan  04:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you to everyone who volunteered last year on the Wikimedia fundraising 'User Experience' project. We have talked to many different people in different countries and their feedback has helped us immensely in restructuring our pages. If you haven't heard of it yet, the 'User Experience' project has the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries (outside the USA) and enhancing the localization of our donation pages.

I am (still) searching for volunteers to spend some time on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. **All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be very low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)**

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email [email protected]. All countries needed (excepting USA)!!

Thanks!

Pats Pena
Global Fundraising Operations Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Sent using Global message delivery, 20:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone know why these urls are redirecting to other images? Wikilink example: File:Pantheon.jpg. --Peter ^Talk 22:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The image is a redirect on Commons: . -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We have an image page by that name, though—a template is transcluded there that I want to get rid of. Is there any way to edit, delete, and/or view the page? --Peter ^Talk 22:47, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Try replacing the file name as appropriate in the following URL: http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=File:Pantheon.jpg&redirect=no . Since the image is on Commons you can probably just delete the local page rather than editing it. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We're scheduled to leave beta next Tuesday, so I'm wondering if there is a single place where we are enumerating tasks to complete for launch? I've seen discussions in a few places, but it might be useful to have a master list with pointers to relevant discussions. The list below contains some of the things I'm aware of, but if others could append (or move this discussion to a more appropriate place) it would be greatly appreciated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The breadcrumb navigation has a bug with district articles that could be fixed. --Globe-trotter (talk) 13:56, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

From what I've been seeing on the web and from talking to people is that 'Learning Vacations' are getting more popular. The website, Road Scholar, has some great examples of this. Definately something to consider as a topic for the new wikivoyage site. —The preceding comment was added by 216.171.198.40 (talk • contribs)

Travel is often, among other things, a learning experience, we have Gap year travel & a suggestion that we should have studying abroad has been made; I do not recall where. Checking their web site, though, I do not see that Road Scholar offer anything special. They appear to be just another tour agency. Pashley (talk) 03:09, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've nominated myself and User:Inas for local CheckUser rights, with an eye to the upcoming public launch on the 15th. We need at least 25 statements of support per Wikimedia policy, so please weigh in! --Peter ^Talk 07:48, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It must be noted that you two must identify to the foundation with confirmation of being at least 18 + age of majority in your country before you can receive access.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, not a problem. --Peter ^Talk 20:19, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

same. --Inas (talk) 10:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This talk page is getting rather long. I wonder whether there's already a bot on this project for managing the archiving of threads. Tony (talk) 12:57, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please see #Archiving above. We avoid automatic archiving on this page, because most discussions should be swept to appropriate talk pages, rather than consigned to the cellar. LtPowers (talk) 14:33, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikimedia Foundation have published the Wikivoyage announcement on the Foundation blog.

Two Wikimedia chapter blogs also have announcements: Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Ukraine. —Tom Morris (talk) 18:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And the Foundation have a press release. —Tom Morris (talk) 18:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And we, the big slippery never to be owned "we", have the collaboratively written m:Wikivoyage/Launch press release (on Meta, complete with talk page!) :-) Rogerhc (talk) 23:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Congratulations on this new page. We do need more travel forums with travellers input. We also need more forums for travel partners search, especially for countries like Tibet- where there are restrictive policies for solo travel.

Please explain what you have in mind that can't be dealt with, for example, at Talk:Tibet. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Tibet is for discussions relevant to the Tibet article.

What are you proposing? I do not see any obvious need for forums here, but considerable danger of touting. Pashley (talk) 09:45, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.) Next week, the Wikimedia Foundation will transition its main technical operations to a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia, USA. This is intended to improve the technical performance and reliability of all Wikimedia sites, including this wiki. There will be some times when the site will be in read-only mode, and there may be full outages; the current target windows for the migration are January 22nd, 23rd and 24th, 2013, from 17:00 to 01:00 UTC (see other timezones on timeanddate.com). More information is available in the full announcement.

If you would like to stay informed of future technical upgrades, consider becoming a Tech ambassador and joining the ambassadors mailing list. You will be able to help your fellow Wikimedians have a voice in technical discussions and be notified of important decisions.

Thank you for your help and your understanding.

Guillaume Paumier, via the Global message delivery system (wrong page? You can fix it.). 15:12, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A year ago I created the mediawiki skin "synagonism-mw" at SourceForge which improves READING of big files like the wikivoyage's articles. I don't know if it works with current version!! and the code needs improvements. I created to show its functionality and wikivoyage I think needs it. -- Synagonism (talk) 14:59, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Just a quick heads up that the http://en.wikivoyage.org/ link doesn't appear to be working at the moment. This address is currently used by the link on Wikipedia's main page and in other locations too. Is it as a result of today's server changes? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 23:13, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It works for me. Perhaps it was a temporary issue. I've had several temporary issues today with the server move happening but they have all resolved quickly. Are you still having that link problem? --Rogerhc (talk) 02:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, all's well now! Sorry for any alarm caused!--Nicholasjf21 (talk) 16:02, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wonder what people think about using the article feedback tool to allow our readers to provide advice on articles? Details here . If we like it it might be possible for use to get it in April of 2013. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:01, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good idea. As I said at the other discussion, a lot of travellers who use our guides will notice out-of-date info and errors while away but not bother to update it when they return. Having a space where they can make a comment is so much simpler for them, and will mean our guides can stay more up-to-date and organised. It is also more inclusive of the community and encourages new editors. No harm in running it for a few weeks as a trial. JamesA ^>talk 15:10, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

English has applied it to 10% of articles as a trial. We could look at doing the same. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:34, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good compromise. Would we need to wait until April to start that sort of trial? However, we would need to make it very, very clear that users are providing feedback on the article itself, not the destination or listings. I foresee a lot of misinformed responses. JamesA ^>talk 15:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes as that is the earliest the tech side would be able to get it to us. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:24, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The earliest version 5 (the link) could be implemented because that is the latest version currently under development and is scheduled (subject to change) for a full release on March 26.AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would not like this to be a substitute for people plunging forward and eliminating inaccuracies in articles, and that's what I fear would happen. It's counter-intuitive to quite a few new users that they can edit articles, as shown by the number of complaints I've read on talk pages of problems the complainer is best able to fix, him-/herself. There could be a positive aspect, though: There's a degree of arbitrariness to which restaurants (e.g.) are listed, and perhaps a spate of bad reviews could get a mediocre restaurant like Gandhi on 6th St. de-listed (which I'd love to do but won't take individual responsibility for). Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:14, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We have the issue of people not plunging forwards on Wikipedia which is why they have started this initiative. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:24, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't we get the [add listing] button back? I think that would lower the bar significantly for newcomers to add their favorite listings. Globe-trotter (talk) 20:56, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would echo G-t's plea for the return of the [add listing] button, but perhaps this time with the filip that the new listing is automatically placed in the correct alphabetical order rather than at the bottom of the listings. -- Alice^✉ 03:18, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

This could be a potentially useful feature, but this may be something worth shelving for a while. We still haven't put together all the documentation for creating books, which should be fixed before moving on to another extension. For article feedback, I think there are a few issues that, while possible to work out, will take time to fix because we will need a customized version.

1. The four metrics—trustworthiness, objectivity, completeness and writing quality—are great for an encyclopedia, but less useful for a travel guide. We need metrics like: completeness, writing quality (easy to understand), quality of listings (number/variety of eat/sleep/buy/etc listings), quality of attractions (see/do), Quality of background information (understand/stay safe/cope), Up to date? (is content up to date), and there are probably some more good ones that I can't think of right this second. Of course, we would not use all of those...only 2-5 (reasonable?)...but the list is to give an idea of the direction we should be heading in when it comes to metrics for our travel guides. Also, would we need...or rather, would we want...to have separate metrics or questions (more on that below) for travel topics, phrasebooks, & itineraries than we do for destinations?
2. The questions/statements would need to be changed to reflect our needs...like "How knowledgeable are you about this locations?", "Have you lived in this city/country/region?", "Have you visited this destination? If so, how long have you spent here?", "Do you travel often?", "Do you travel often to destinations such as this one?", "Have you used this Wikivoyage guide while traveling to this destination? If so, did you use any other guides concurrently with the Wikivoyage guide?" and so forth. We should probably have more detailed feedback options for individual sections, like questions for eat/sleep regarding number/quality of listings (quality meaning not closed locations or franchise locations of major hotel chains with just name/address/phone, but price and description...the question would have to include a note that it's not just a rating of hotels themselves, but our content) and whether stay safe is comprehensive/accurate, whether get in/around is comprehensive/accurate, and (once again) there are many more questions that I haven't thought of/included.
3. Another important aspect to look at is the collective data gathered from these ratings! Questions/metrics can be worded/chosen to gather quantitative feedback from editors & readers about the quality of our guides & project. Sure there are some big issues with this, we don't know people's expectations, whether they're telling truth, if people are giving inaccurate feedback (misread something, missed a section or important sentence, etc), but when you take a holistic view, soliciting user feedback can be immensely useful for improving our site. We can learn where our sites weaknesses are (even analyze data per country/region) and use this feedback to track progress/improvement to the quality of our site over time (compare user confidence in quality of listings over 2 years' time). See Article feedback/Data and metrics on Meta to get an idea of how focused use of questions is used to gather data that is interpreted in many ways to—ultimately—encourage users to contribute & improve the site and its pages.

Having said all that, adding article feedback will be a BIG project for our site and sorting out the above issues (because, above all, we will need a customized version) will take a lot of discussion and also a lot of work on the software/development side. Given all the work needed in the past week surrounding the launch, working with/guiding new contributors, and fixing unresolved issues (as mentioned...working to improve create documentation for the Book extension should be a high priority before moving on to a project like this) this is something that should be set aside to work out later (6 months? A year?). (Note:I wrote the OP of "Peer Review" at the same time as this...just splitting one long remark in two to keep relevant replies in order.) AHeneen (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You'll probably need a way to hide feedback that isn't useful or that needs to be removed. For example, someone writing "pen1s" or something inappropriate, etc. --Rschen7754 07:43, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are looking at the old version (version 4) please look at version 5. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:39, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Version 5 is what is used on enwp. Perhaps I should clarify that I mean a policy on removing feedback. --Rschen7754 20:57, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I find this system ridiculous. Everyone can tick the box "I am highly knowledgeable", and we have absolutely no way to check this. In my opinion, the present feedback style is highly offensive to editors, because unknown people put some grades based on unknown criteria. Moreover, they do this strange stuff instead of editing and improving the article, which is contrary to the main idea of a wiki. I would like to have the feedback feature, but it should be unobtrusive: no grades, no alleged "experts"... just comments. --Alexander (talk) 20:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On Wikipedia, how is decided which articles get the tool? Or is it a random 10% test now? For Wikivoyage, it would be most useful for guide articles, in order to identify what's missing and get an idea of how readers react to articles we think are pretty good. For the enormous number of outlines and usable articles however, I imagine it would create a huge database of information we already have. We know those are incomplete, need more listings, are sometimes poorly written. We also know that some parts of the world are substantially underrepresented in terms of information available. Analyzing thát feedback information will cost energy I would say is better spent on improving those articles. In short: if we test it, I would say let's start with our more or less complete articles. And then, sure, let's talk about the exact how, and wordings. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:32, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We are completely free to ignore the self-proclaimed expert status. However, a tick-box like "I have visited this destination recently", may offer some insight useful when applying corrections. But I agree that comments are the most useful. --Inas (talk) 21:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I mostly agree with Inas' ideas. The tick-box should be about visiting the destination, and the Feedback tool should be the comments version, so that viewers can comment on things they find to be incorrect or outdated. Maybe ratings are useful on star-rating guides that we think are worthy of assessment, not improvement. Is there a way only star guides can get the rating version? JamesA ^>talk 06:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes so both version 4 and 5 are used on EN wp. Version 4 has the rating scale while version 5 have written comments. I much prefer the written comments but one could potentially use a combination of the two I suppose. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be good to test the feedback tool on some of our guide-status articles. It would be better if readers jumped in and edited the pages directly, but that isn't always the case so if this helps provide more feedback that's cool. I assume if it goes ahead, we'd use version 5 over version 4? (since comments can provide specific points on how to improve the guide) -Shaundd (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes version 5. Should we have a RfC here to determine if there is sufficient support for me to put in a request for this being added in April / May so that we can trial it.Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:44, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• The feedback gadget is potentially useful, but only if the users know what kind of feedback will be useful to us. How will they know this?
• Feedback that is not read is a waste of effort for the provider. I recommend that we only deploy the gadget on articles where someone is willing to read the input and do something with it. That said, as long as there is at least one editor who wants feedback for an article, it should be switched on. The person who activates the gadget should automatically get notification of new feedback, and other editors should only get it if they opt in, otherwise if one gets it for every article on one's watchlist we will be inundated with it, and it will mostly be useless. If my experience on WP is anything to go by, less than 10% will be useful, and the amount of extra reading to sift the wheat from the chaff will soon be overwhelming. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:07, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Another feature that might be useful: If the display for the feedback states who requests the feedback (the person who activates the gadget for the page, it will give the reader the assurance that a specific person will be checking their comments. This may result in better quality feedback.
• A major downside is that there is unlikely to be any dialogue between the editors and the feedback providers. It is not easy to go back to them and ask what they meant, as IP editors are unlikely to look at their talk pages. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• That's always going to be a problem; we are building in a reply feature, however. Having it in an opt-in form is perfectly fine from our end. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say we should implement this as a trial from the planned date of deployment. If we find after a month that it just isn't working, then we can scrap it (but I do think it will be very useful!). As research has shown, it only increases editing, so even if it is implemented and barely used, there is no real damage done. Is there anyone who would oppose a trial of the new, comment-only version? JamesA ^>talk 11:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Could an admin please change MediaWiki:Talkpagelinktext from "Talk" to "talk" to match "contribs"? Also, could MediaWiki:Histlast and MediaWiki:Histfirst be changed to lowercase as well? All the other links on the history page are lowercase. Thanks, David1217 (talk) 03:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. We use "latest" and "earliest", Wikipedia uses "newest" and "oldest". Maybe that could be changed as well? Globe-trotter (talk) 12:06, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Will language versions that were previously offered be offered here soon? (Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) They all show up on the sidebar for destinations that had articles in those languages but if you click them now, they take you nowhere. Also, articles like Osaka have the "Better in Japanese, please translate" tag. If the languages are expected to be added soon, I won't delete it, but if not, these should probably be dealt away with. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 16:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian and Chinese will be added, the others will be placed in the Incubator. Globe-trotter (talk) 18:40, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed that many WP.ja user pages have links to WT user pages and that wiki did appear viable; no idea why this wasn't moved initially. There were a few language projects which appeared to be inactive, dead or mostly empty but it looks like viable languages (es and pt being the most recently created) are being imported piecemeal right now. K7L (talk) 19:07, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed links to some languages that are still in the Incubator being added. I think one was Latin ("la") and when clicked led to the page on the WM Incubator. AHeneen (talk) 22:40, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Japanese Wikitravel was highly developed with an active community. I supported its migration at the time, but am unsure why it wasn't moved. I do remember that some of the notable members of the Japanese community such as Shoestring were not interested in moving and liked things just the way they were. JamesA ^>talk 05:16, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a shame. To me, Shoestring was the pillar of the Japanese version (I mean that as a compliment to him, no disrespect to the other contributors), but the other language versions and their members seemed less affected and certainly less active in the discussions about the rift, so I'm not surprised. Good to know more languages are on the way. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:00, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In any event, if things at the old site under IB continue as they are, eventually the hands of the Japanese community will be forced. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:43, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Current status according to m:Requests for new languages#Wikivoyage: Spanish, Portuguese were created; Romanian and Polish are awaiting creation (per bugzilla); there has been some discussion of Finnish and Chinese (mostly around how to translate the name/logo). WMF is willing to create Hungarian and Japanese but so far no one has opened discussion for either language.

There are many Japanese user pages (not WP articles, just WP userpages) which mention WT; hopefully this doesn't become an obstacle to getting the WT interwiki prefix removed from the table. In any case, it would be best if they were to move sooner rather than later as IB will try to break functionality (such as api.php) used to export any new edits to the old wiki. If there are no new edits on WT, there's nothing left for them to break. K7L (talk) 17:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't the user pages just be changed to real links instead of interwiki links, if you're trying to orphan the interwiki prefix? I don't think that you can change links on user pages in any other way.

As far as I can tell, the functionality for importing old edits is already broken. Those who backed up Wikitravel had to stop doing this back in August last year because api.php and Special:Export were disabled. Thus, any edits made to Wikitravel since August can be considered as lost. It's probably possible to get a backup by screenscraping, but that's going to take an awful lot of time to get all revisions of all pages, and it would take considerable time to write a script which would download everything. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've encountered a weird problem in a Wikivoyage edit I've never experienced in all the edits I've made in Wikipedia. (This may be more appropriate for Bugzilla, but I don't have a Bugzilla account and fortunately the help area says if you're not sure where the problem belongs, post it here first.)

Yesterday morning I booted up my laptop, launched Opera and went into the Wikivoyage entry on West Jefferson (North Carolina) to list the places to stay there under "Sleep." One thing led to another, and it was late afternoon before I signed out of Wikivoyage, but at least I had the satisfaction of knowing it had been a Saturday well spent. That is, until about an hour later when I launched Safari on the iPad to review my work.

When I went to the West Jefferson Wikivoyage page in Safari, none of the three entries I'd made in the "Sleep" section showed up. According to "View History," I hadn't made any edits in that entry for over a week. Luckily, all the other work I did yesterday showed up in Safari - the new entry on Mountain City (Tennessee), information in an almost blank existing entry on Damascus (Virginia), adding a restaurant and the Best Western to Jefferson (North Carolina), adding the two hotels I stay at in Boone and some restaurant information.

I know Wikimedia is migrating from servers in Tampa to a server farm outside Washington, so I thought it might be a replication problem. Perhaps the server I used to do the edits on the West Jefferson page hadn't yet replicated the new data to other Wiki servers. Yet, since all the other edits I made yesterday were showing up in Safari, I feared it was more likely a mysterious glitch and I'd need to retrace my steps to find the phone numbers, addresses, etc., for the three lodging establishments in West Jefferson.

Late last night I launched IE 10 on the laptop to listen to ZRadio, and when I checked Wikivoyage in Internet Explorer it was the same experience as Safari - nothing under "Sleep" on the WJ page, but all my other edits showed up.

Today I opened Opera, went back to the West Jefferson page in Wikivoyage, and the info I added under "Sleep" showed up. I hurriedly copied and saved it to WordPad so I wouldn't have to recompose the text if it should be necessary. I refreshed the page in Opera to make sure it wasn't pulling from the cache, and the updated "Sleep" section was still there. Then I launched Safari on the iPad, and ... no entries under "Sleep" on the West Jefferson page.

So I don't know whether the lodging entries I made are in Wikivoyage or aren't in Wikivoyage. Should I use the "old version" of the page in Internet Explorer to re-add the info I entered yesterday? Or would that cause a bigger problem if the edited version is floating around the Wiki servers? Dlewis77 (talk) 20:43, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing Hampton Inn, Nations Inn, and Buffalo Tavern B&B under "Sleep". For the record, I've never accessed the West Jefferson, NC article before in my life, so it's not an issue with my file cache.

I experienced the same problem from time to time when we were migrating content onto the WMF servers for the first time. In my decidedly non-expert opinion, I'd say there's a good chance it has to do with the server migration from Tampa to Washington.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:41, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same issues on Wikimedia Commons. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the migration. Globe-trotter (talk) 01:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Like everyone suggests, it probably has something to do with the migration. A couple days ago, I added a couple "Other destinations" to the Sudan page and uploaded a new version of the Sudan map to Commons. Even when I refreshed the page in my browser, the "Other destinations" page remained blank and the old version of the map was displayed. However, when I clicked edit, the ODs were displayed in the edit box. AHeneen (talk) 02:47, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We had (have?) problems with purging image caches after the data center migration. This is currently being handled in bugzilla:41130; bugzilla:44391 might be related and got fixed a few hours ago after the operations team spent the weekend investigating the (very low-level) server problem. I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused by this. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Two things to be aware of, Call for participation and scholarships to fund travel. Pashley (talk) 19:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've put it at Wikivoyage:Get-together if any wikivoyagers are interested in meeting up there. --Inas (talk) 11:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

I would like to know how the Wikitravel attribution message at the bottom of imported pages was set up. Over at pt:, import seems to have been done incorrectly, and we don´t have enough knowledgable users to know what to do. First of all, it seems pt: was imported not directly from Wikitravel, but from JAMGuides, though in the history of the pages imported, the only indication of this is an entry from "JAMBot" with the summary of "Imported by JAMBot", which to my knowledge is insufficient attribution. So, a few questions:

• Does our attribution message for such pages need to mention users of both JAMGuides and Wikitravel in our case, or is attribution to the last place imported from sufficient?
• Does the history need to contain a link to the specific page from which it was imported (as it does here), or is a message specifying "users of" sufficient?
• How is the attribution message at the bottom of imported pages here displayed only for those specific imported pages? It does not appear to be from inside the work itself.
• How were the WT prefixes added to user names in the history of such pages?
• Will it be possible to use a bot/script to retroactively add the page footer message and history username prefixes to only the relevant imported pages on pt:

Sorry to bring up such a pt-specific topic here, but I´d like to use en:'s solution if possible, and there are plenty of knowledgable folk here. If there is a better place for us to get answers, please point me there. Thanks! Texugo (talk) 10:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have an example of a page with a "JAMBot" entry in its history? When data was imported on the original Wikivoyage I gave Hans raw XML exports from Wikitravel, so I'm not sure how any mention of "JAMGuides" would have appeared unless I screwed something up. As to any credit to "JAMGuides", that site was just a read-only mirror of Wikitravel, so there is no need to mention it for attribution purposes. Regarding your other questions, someone else will need to address those for reasons outlined at the top of my user page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:02, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Portuguese and Spanish versions were taken from JAMguides, because Wikivoyage e.V. never bothered to hand over the pure exports from Wikitravel to the Wikimedia Foundation. Globe-trotter (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look here for instance. That´s all the extent of the attribution we have on most of our pages there at this time. Texugo (talk) 16:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They imported it without any attribution? Wow that's totally against the spirit of the license. Someone should contact the legal department of Wikimedia I think. Globe-trotter (talk) 18:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Full history XML dumps of all Wikitravel content (through August 2012) are available and should be used where possible since they show every contribution and the individual who made it - Hans should be able to provide access. Hopefully that is enough info to help resolve any issues as I need to bow out of this discussion for reasons already mentioned. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, who is Hans? How do I get in touch?Texugo (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I presume this is (from whois) Hans Musil, Wikivoyage e.V.. Taunusstr. 39 Boeblingen DE 71032. DE +49.7031281729 hans.musil (at) gmx.de? K7L (talk) 18:55, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

User:Hansm here, and at the German Wikivoyage. However, the Wikimedia Foundation hasn't been able to get the dumps from him yet (and supposedly has tried to get them for some months). Globe-trotter (talk) 18:57, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

ArchiveTeam has 2011 dumps in a dozen languages but newer data would be preferable. We also still need Japan? K7L (talk) 19:06, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Incubator:Incubator:Wikivoyage import. Globe-trotter (talk) 15:49, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

/me stands up, waves. Hi. Legal now knows.  :) I'll see if we can't nudge Hans. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Sit back, I've got to give some background on this. Follow me back to the WT days.

In 2005, an article was created at the title "Eden". This article was about the fishing town in New South Wales. In 2008, an article was created called "Eden (New York)", and it was about the suburb of Buffalo. In 2011, Globe-trotter moved the NSW Eden's article to "Eden (New South Wales)", and moved the disambiguation page (which I had created back in 2008) to the base name "Eden". This all works fine to this day on WT.

But here on Wikivoyage, something went wrong. The move of Eden (disambiguation) to Eden is still recorded in the edit history of the former title... but Eden is the NSW article, not the disambiguation page! Even more bizarrely, Eden (New South Wales) is also a (different) copy of the NSW article, with its own edit history, and it does record the move. On the other hand, I can't find the history of the disambiguation page anywhere.

Now, this is reparable (not without some effort, but any admin can do it... though I don't think there's any way to retrieve the disambiguation page as I created it in 2008). But it points to a potential problem with the import, and so I wanted to bring it to light, in case a similar problem exists elsewhere in the wiki. Alternatively, I may be missing something here, in which case it'd be nice to have that pointed out. =)

-- LtPowers (talk) 20:59, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's bizarre indeed, the Dutch Wikivoyage had at least 100 of such cases. I had to redirect all of them to the newly created page. I hadn't encountered it yet on this wiki though. Globe-trotter (talk) 21:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The scripts I used to create XML backups had some issues with page moves - it wasn't feasible to repeatedly run a full backup of all pages (doing so took weeks or months given the 30 second limit applied to spiders), so my scripts instead tried to track recently changed articles. Unfortunately, page moves proved problematic as the change wasn't recorded as a normal "change", so if the articles weren't subsequently edited then the page was sometimes not updated. I had thought this issue was resolved by forcing a re-spider of most of the articles in the page move logs, but apparently there were still issues. I apologize for the problem, but at this point I think the only solution will be to manually correct problem articles as they are found. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

There's a strange bug - I am guessing it's got something to do with the new URL icon we placed in the listings, but I'm not 100% sure - that is messing up the formatting of the first listing in User:AndreCarrotflower/Elmwood Village#Jewelry. I know it's not anything I myself typed in there, because I haven't edited the listing since I wrote it, and it was fine at that time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to fix it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It should be OK now - it looks like the code was confused by the apostrophes around ''Artvoice'''s (two open, three closed, even though the close was supposed to appear in the text). -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:51, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Looking at http://www.wikivoyage.org/, I noticed that the word for "search" in Romanian directly above the search textbox appears to be incorrect. Assuming that the words for "search" in the different languages that Wikivoyage supports are given in the same order as the links to the respective language Wikivoyages, Romanian would be last. The word given is "Salt", which a quick Google translate shows as meaning "jump" in Romanian. Checking http://ro.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Pagina_principal%C4%83, I see that the "Search" textbox in the upper right of the page is labeled "Căutare", which another Google translate seems to confirm as the correct word for "search" in Romanian. Is this indeed a bug? If so, where should it be filed? 64.252.206.116 01:25, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've reported the problem, thanks for letting us know. –sumone10154^(talk) 01:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi everybody. I have some news from de:

• The guy with the POI maps has created a world wide map feature with all WV articles. here.... Nice. Isn't it? We considering to have it run on our own association's server. I am going to ask him how to adapt it to the other language versions. Are you interested?
• We started a project with a town government in Lower Saxony to create a kind of template article. A perfect article that we can show to our new contributors. "Look! This is how a perfect article can look like" Our manual of style can benefit from these experiences. During this process we want to improve our VCard. It should provide different styles (inline and block style as well as a print style and a style for small screen resolutions). We picked your old layout suggestions from Texugo as well. We think about creating icons to be placed at the hotels, sight's descriptions. Icons for WiFi, Bed&Bike, offers for disabled people, pets allowed, gay friendly..... Do you have a discussion about it running already? Do you want to participate? Then we move this part to Meta.
• We just established a Paypal account. If you want to support the association and/or becoming a member, just take a look at our associations wiki. It's renewed and some parts have to be translated. Everybody is invited to participate. here... Please tell me, if there are some errors or missing information. I've just moved it from the old server. But I did not find out how to make the wiki interface multilingual and what settings are to be changed. If anybody knows, just give me a hint. -- DerFussi (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We were working on an hCard as {{listing}} which was to handle all data from the <listing> tags once the bugzilla:43220 fix is deployed in mid-February. There was a long discussion at Project talk:Listings but no clear consensus for or against using icons in listings, on linking to Wikipedia or on how to display geographic co-ordinates for individual listings. A locator map showing each listing in a city would be valuable but currently WikiSherpa, a third-party mobile application, is the only one doing this as we have almost no co-ordinates on our individual listings within a city. Many listings here are not tagged or templated at all. K7L (talk) 18:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That world-wide map is really cool. I can think of a lot of uses for it beyond the basic navigation it offers right now too. We could filter by article status, for one. We recently have added geocoordinates to almost all of our destination guides, so we're ready for it. Adding lat long info to our city district articles might be a good thing to get working on... --Peter ^Talk 19:25, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I love the world wide map. Ours is going to get really crowded, though, as en has a lot of articles! Could we possibly link to this from the Main Page under a Interactive map header? I also like what you've done with the town council. I've always thought that collaborating with local governments and tourism boards is a great way to improve our articles, as they will certainly provide resources to those who wish to boost tourism for free! JamesA ^>talk 02:15, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think Mey2008 can change the feature and process the guide/star/stub information. Will ask him. The city council of Wennigsen has invited other local tourism boards and the local ADFC team (German cycling association) as well. So we can improve the affected town, region and cycling route articles and provide a set of featured articles and improve our manual of style as well. Besides we want to create a guide for tourism bords as well to avoid advertising style in our articles. Our articles are for travellers and not a competition about what town the most beautiful sky has. -- DerFussi (talk) 08:53, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

bplaced says: "Sorry, access forbidden, error 403" Nicolas1981 (talk) 08:00, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the English articles -- DerFussi (talk) 15:14, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is really, really cool! How will it be updated? For instance, I added geo tags to Washington, D.C.'s district articles, but those are not appearing. --Peter ^Talk 15:40, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to add this to the Destinations page, with a BETA notice. Can we put it in the article directly, like this? Or can we only link to it for now? --Peter ^Talk 17:00, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For reasons regarding publicity, I'd really like to put this directly in the article today, if it's possible. --Peter ^Talk 17:01, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any means to make corrections to http://maps.wikivoyage-ev.org/w/artmap.php?lang=en — it appears to have moved Brockville southward into foreign territory, even though the co-ordinates look valid on the article. K7L (talk) 00:11, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The coordinate in the article was inaccurate. I have corrected it. The map will be updated in the next time. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 10:01, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We are going to move this to the Wikivoyage association's server next weekend. Then you can use it. We'll let you know when it's online. -- DerFussi (talk) 10:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's great that the association is able to have these sort of innovations. Well done to you both!! Once on WV.eV servers, will it be possible to embed the map into Wikivoyage, keeping its interactivity? JamesA ^>talk 10:34, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch Wikipedia has pages like w:nl:Thousand Islands with a link (Kaart) at the upper-right which drops down an embedded map with a marker for each WP article with co-ordinates. That's not the same as a city-level locator map (which would need to pull co-ordinates from individual {{listing}}s within the one article being viewed, so likely WV-specific) but still impressive. K7L (talk) 20:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like this is live for :en now ! --Peter ^Talk 01:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! Imagine how useful that will be for maintaining routeboxes. =) LtPowers (talk) 02:38, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is just fantastic! How can we promote this wonderful clickable world map? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let me update the url, since it is now on WV-ev servers: . I'm still not sure how to add the map to a wiki page, but I think DerFussi is working on that. We need to get our articles better geocoded now! --Peter ^Talk 18:50, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This new version of article map works for all eleven language versions (?lang=nn). The map search field also, even with Cyrillic letters and international names (eg. Wien, Vienna, Bécs or Вена for Vienna). Actuality of data is the last dump date. - You only can add the interactive map to a wiki page until now, by click on a thumbnail picture. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 06:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to add it to an article using the Slippy Map MediaWiki Extension as it is used on :it? Here is an example of its use. --Peter ^Talk 07:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is not possible to using Slippy Map. The Slippy Map and the Wikipedia map application are not compatible with most mobile devices I know. My solution is compatible with WV mobile mode on most mobile devices. The Map is automatic in full screen mode on those small screens. The button "Show me where I am" (left top) is compatible with modern gps devices. Application will use wlan spot and mobile net triangulation also (for devices without gps eg. your notebook with wlan). So you can find out all WV articles around your location with a single tap the location button and a little zooming out. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 10:43, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you mean that you think it is not desirable. But is it possible? We have some mobile-specific and desktop-specific pages, so we can use this in the latter. Or have a mobile users link above a slippy map. Having slippy maps in our articles is a clear goal that we have set, and it would be good to use this map as a test case. --Peter ^Talk 22:46, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Please fix the following protected double redirects:
MediaWiki:Country →‎ Template:Country →‎ Template:Country skeleton
MediaWiki:District →‎ Template:District →‎ Template:District skeleton
MediaWiki:Hugecity →‎ Template:Hugecity →‎ Template:Hugecity skeleton
MediaWiki:Region →‎ Template:Region →‎ Template:Region skeleton
MediaWiki:Smallcity →‎ Template:Smallcity →‎ Template:Smallcity skeleton
-- Cheers, Riley 08:24, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Rschen7754 08:27, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why are these in mediawiki: space? That's usually for interface messages like mediawiki:edittools. K7L (talk) 19:18, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this does seem a bit bizarre. --Rschen7754 20:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the username of the bot that did the original move back in 2004, it appears that these were originally created before the Template namespace existed. LtPowers (talk) 02:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• MediaWiki:Bigcity →‎ Template:Bigcity →‎ Template:Bigcity skeleton aswell -- Cheers, Riley 07:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done. --Rschen7754 07:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why not orphan and delete the redirects if/when they are unused? --MGA73 (talk) 18:05, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

As we're currently attempting to overhaul our main pages for both desktop computers and mobile devices, I thought it might also be nice to have a look at what we could do with the Interlingual Portal as it was earmarked for improvement on the Roadmap. I assume it's made in pure HTMl, so is probably harder to edit collaboratively. What sort of things would we like to see? Such a decision would also, presumably, have to take place with the involvement of the other language communities too, so might be more complicated on that fron too. --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 21:34, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The HTML for the portal can be found (and edited by Meta-admins) at meta:Www.wikivoyage.org template. On important thing that still needs to happen is filling out the meta description, which Google will display as the description for www.wikivoyage.org in search results. —Ruud 11:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Hi,

fyi, wikivoyager.de and wikivoyager.org have both been transferred to WMF and we redirect them to wikivoyage.org. Related RT ticket is RT-4333. The Apache config can be found in the (public) operations/apache-config git repository. Mutante (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• And now you also have wikivoyage.eu. It also redirects. Mutante (talk) 23:05, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Not sure if this is of interest, but I thought I would mention it here. --Rschen7754 02:24, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

I know this is wikivoyage.ORG, but is anyone else directed to Wikiquote when they type wikivoyage.COM? I am. 183.76.115.214 15:22, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes! I got that this morning. I thought I my iPad had just auto-corrected me or something... Texugo (talk) 15:26, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

google in my neck of the woods directs to wikivoyage.org when i type in wikivoyage.com, however typing in wikivoyage.com inside firefox - yes it directs to wikiquote... sats (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest posting this sort of thing to bugzilla: if it's not already open there. K7L (talk) 15:51, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm this. Filed under bugzilla:46033. And already closed as a duplicate of bugzilla:46018. —Ruud 17:52, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Should be fixed now. —Ruud 20:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is totally fixed now. It was done to #redirect the page without getting crashed. But, since WikiVoyage is launched and runs successfully, it is functioning cool. Aminuddinshroff (talk) 21:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

I'm finding the WV site reeaaalllyy slow. Anyone else? Non-Wikimedia sites are fine. Nurg (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Y....e.....s........ T...h...e.......s....a....m...e......i....s....h..a..p..p..e..n..i..n..g......h...e...r..e....Texugo (talk) 23:25, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the price for being on Wikimedia? :-( Nurg (talk) 23:29, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I had it earlier, but it seems to have sped up here now. Just a temporary thing? --Nick (talk) 23:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's been happening for a day or so, but was partic bad when I posted. WP has been slow at the same times. Nurg (talk) 00:14, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that "something" happened around 23:15 UTC that didn't affect just WV. (A large part of the new datacentre seems to have gone down for a few minutes , perhaps a broken router or switch?) —Ruud 00:17, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Very slow right now. So is WP. Nurg (talk) 22:56, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Dear colleagues

Some time in the next month, the Signpost may run a special report on the real-life travel experiences of Wikivoyage editors. At the moment, this is a fishing expedition to gauge whether there's a suitable basis for a story.

We're particularly interested in editors' dramatic, colourful, surprising, or otherwise interesting incidents or experiences while travelling. These incidents or experiences need to be related to either the writing/editing of a specific article or to the process of contributing to the site generally. We obviously can't be too ribald in what we report, though.

More recent accounts are preferred to experiences from many years ago, but news-value trumps the age of the story—as long as there's a solid connection with an editor's onwiki contributions, either to the modern version of the site or to its predecessors. Willingness to be identified in the feature by user name is preferred, but not essential.

If you fit these criteria and would like to be interviewed by email for the feature, please let me know by email, providing a couple of lines of information about where, when, type of experience, and the article to which it's related. If you know someone else who hasn't read this post and might be a good source, we'd like to know too. Currently active editors are preferred, but ex-editors could be valuable to us if their experience is newsworthy and they can still be contacted. I'll leave a similar note to this at the German-language Wikivoyage site, and any others that are reasonably active by now.

Thanks Tony (talk) 09:28, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are you guys planning to publish interview of only one editor or more than one? --Saqib (talk) 10:53, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

More than one, I expect; depends on what we can find (there may not be enough material). Tony (talk) 11:26, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, what do you mean by "related to" work on the site? Does the story itself have to be reproduced here in some way, or could it be more along the lines of having a crazy travel experience tangential to work on the site regarding the destination? --Peter ^Talk 18:06, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Am I hallucinating, or is IsPartOf broken for Categories, making the whole region category hierarchy appear to be non-existent? Texugo (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, my fault. Fixing one minor problem I went and broke something else. Have now reset back to previous method until I figure out a better method. Give it a few minutes to rebuild the contents. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Hi! A while ago I saw that one of the goals on the Roadmap was to improve WV's interlingual portal. So, with that in mind, I tried my hand at making a new one. Unfortunately the page is made in HTML; not Wiki-markup, however, you can find the code here and a screenshot of the proposed design below. The background image is only 50kb so shouldn't cause any loading issues. I've also posted this on the Wikivoyage Lounge in Meta. I dare say some of the translations are a bit rubbish too, so please let me know what they should be! The reason the Romanian page is away from the rest is that it would be the first of any others that joined at this time as there's only room for 10 around the logo - I chose it because it had the fewest articles of all the WV language versions. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! --Nick (talk) 02:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I love it! I particularly like the graceful and elegant shading of the colours that provides good contrast for readability and the maritime theme in keeping with the "voyage" part of our name. Great that you've thought about readers with slow connections too! Will you be doing a mobile version, Nick? -- Alice^✉ 02:55, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I echo Alice's comments. Excellent work, Nick. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much! I think, as this is based upon the current portal, it should automatically optimise itself for mobiles... but we'll see! --Nick (talk) 09:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a good start, and thanks for putting it out there, but could do with some refining. I think the shaded corners seem a bit odd, and the ocean picture just reminds me of a romantic beach scene. I dunno; it stands out but just doesn't cut it for me. Any other ideas to improve upon Nick's design? JamesA ^>talk 10:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, I don't think we have a tagline. "The Free Travel Guide" was taken by Wikitravel, and we never came up with an alternative. Could we perhaps put eight languages around the logo instead of ten, so that Romanian doesn't look so lonely below? I'm also afraid the dark gray background at the bottom makes some of the sister project logos look really bad. Still, this is certainly along the lines of what I'd like to see. LtPowers (talk) 14:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right- I've changed it a little in order to reflect some of the above opinions. You can view it 'live' here. Please ignore the chinese characters at the bottom - they are not part of the design, but something either inflicted upon me by the host or an internal WM script that won't work on that host. Any thoughts? --Nick (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For me it looks super-freakin-awesome except for the links to sister projects section, which is enormous. Would it be possible to shrink that section down and lose the white box behind them, overlaying them directly on the sunset? Texugo (talk) 15:58, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions: (1) I also feel the WMF sister projects are too prominent there. This is the WV portal, not a portal to the MWF family. So I'd make the sisters much less prominent on the page, think footnote at most. (2) Let's not leave any of our WV language versions out of the main hallow display. They will all fit if we squeeze. They are all important players on this WV portal. Think group photo, shoulder to shoulder. Don't leave the baby out. We don't have hundreds as WP does. To make room, leave article count line out except for the top few. No need to show meager numbers anyway. More important to fit everyone in. (3) Our tag line is an even more important clarifier of what we are than in was at our former host. We are a travel guide. We need to keep it, at least that part of it, or newcomers wont know what we are. Cheers! (4) Maybe lighten the sunrise a little so it is a little closer to daytime. In fact, might be good to play with it actually being day time and see what we get. The sunset look is pretty but could has problematic connotations. --Rogerhc (talk) 16:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

With regards to sister projects links, I'd strongly suggest that we stay consistent with how other Mediawiki site "portal" pages display them, and I think Nick is doing that. See http://www.wikipedia.org/, http://www.wiktionary.org/, http://www.wikiquote.org/, etc. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The sisters on subdued (gray version) background gave them acceptable prominence. The sisters with a light background when everything else had a subdued background put the spotlight inappropriately onto the sisters. It is probably a matter that lighting could fix. The "spotlight" needs to be on WV on this stage. --Rogerhc (talk) 16:39, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don´t know if it´s because of my small monitor here at work, but what I´m seeing is a super tall white box with two columns of 6 sister sites.Texugo (talk) 16:54, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The sister icons might just look fine against the sky with no box behind them, or maybe just a line between them and the main players on this stage. Maybe put them in a centered div of width 90% or so and let them wrap into a rectangular space against the sky? Probably best not to sink them into the briny deep of course ;-). --Rogerhc (talk♣) 17:10, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Other concerns aside, I daresay we don't want to invite legal issues by using "The Free Travel Guide". LtPowers (talk) 18:12, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A few responses:

• I'm more than happy to try other ways of displaying the WMF links, but I do agree that they should be kept at the same prominence as on other projects - we don't want a family feud!
• I would be happy to try and shift the links around the logo a bit, but it's based on a WMF-wide template that would have to be rebuilt. Also, as soon as a new language arrived (there are several in the pipeline) a list would have to be created, so we should probably accept that it is a necessity now.
• Personally, I think the colours of the photograph suit our logo quite well, but if any one can see a good alternative, please let me know!
• I too think that a tagline is important here (see below!)

--Nick (talk) 19:38, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rogerhc has had a play and come up with something rather nice. You can see it here: meta:Www.wikivoyage.org_template/temp sky background just use the drop down arrow to 'preview as html'. --Nick (talk) 11:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks quite nice. I have an additional idea: how about changing the background picture every now and then? We used to have a "picture of the moment" back at WT Shared... Ypsilon (talk) 10:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure we could do that! We'd just have to be careful with the colours. --Nick (talk) 11:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure we can do pictures well on our portal. The sky picture really only works because it is more a background gradient than a picture. Plain white might actually be even better. Beauty in function. Google.com is a famously user oriented page; plain white and beautifully simple. Bing.com introduced beautiful photos to their Search page and I love beautiful photos. I still like Google better. (I'm biased also and don't use Microsoft product when I have good alternatives, but I believe plain white serves Search users better than a random distracting beautiful photo.) Portal pages really are very annoying. Users want the site, not the portal. I believe WikiMedia community has made a gross mistake with this "portal" thing. Why do we send people to a portal? People want to see our product. Our Main Page shows it. A portal does not. I say the best portal is no portal but instead a Main Page. --Rogerhc (talk♣) 04:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a great idea, but we have eleven Main Pages. Which one do we show? LtPowers (talk) 17:16, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

None, we make www.wikivoyage.org the page to die for. Nick and I are working on it -- feedback please. --Rogerhc (talk♣) 18:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're absolutely right Roger - I love how clean but interesting you've made it look! --Nick (talk) 22:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm missing something. That still looks like a portal to me. LtPowers (talk) 22:47, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think what Roger meant was that we need to make the portal look less 'portal-like' than other WMF ones: it needs to be engaging on its own merits and not just a page of links. --Nick (talk) 23:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please discuss www.wikivoyage.org changes at m:Wikivoyage/Lounge, concerns all WV language versions. I'd like to see if we can build a consensus there on switching to this sky background version. Thx --Rogerhc (talk♣) 00:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted a (poorly translated) link to that page on each language version's 'pub' equivalent. --Nick (talk) 00:52, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Roger's spent a lot of time and effort perfecting the portal and coming up with alternatives - please take a look at his designs here: m:Wikivoyage/Lounge. Thanks! --Nick (talk) 10:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe in the meantime, you might like to make the main page similar to that image (or maybe even better). Curtaintoad (user · talk · contribs) 11:00, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Tried to redirect Benton to Benton (disambiguation) but get error. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:55, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

fixed. --Inas (talk) 09:18, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

"10 Terribly Overrated Destinations (And Where To Travel Instead) " Pashley (talk) 17:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Couldn't disagree more about Asheville. It's one of my favorite places in the South.

Also, I find it very interesting that Detroit is on this list as an alternative to Chicago. While my strange fascination with urban prairie, post-industrial decay, and the Rust Belt in general have led me to truly enjoy my visits there, I would be hard-pressed to say the least to recommend the Motor City to the quote-unquote "average" HuffPo reader. It's an incredibly depressing place to those who haven't come with the right mindset or expectations. Even downtown and the New Center have veneers that are easy to penetrate—much of that world-class architecture is vacant, derelict, and crumbling.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:48, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although I agree that the article is pretty lame, I must admit that to all of the places I've traveled Detroit was one of my favorites. Not because of any of the reasons listed in the article (although I did like the art museum) but because of my fascination with the urban decay. I've gone twice on self guided 'urban spelunking' trips with a few friends through abandon buildings and the scale of the decay is beyond anything else I have experienced. Detroit would be on my short list for anyone wanting to get a holistic view of the USA and see its dark-side. Not safe, not recommended but still near the top of my list for adventures. --Lumpytrout (talk) 16:43, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've found such articles to be barely worth the pixels on which they're printed. Mostly it's an attempt by individual travel writers -- who I'm convinced may have actually reached the thought-impossible "travels too much" threshold -- to rationalize their own personal and usually quite irrational responses to individual destinations. Your Chicago/Detroit complaint is spot-on; it's painfully obvious that he chose to ignore certain negative aspects of Detroit that he'd just finished decrying in describing Chicago, while touting Detroit features that Chicago