Swept in from the pub

There's a month and a half left until April fools, so we could start thinking about what article (or which articles? if we run more than one) we should run. Some suggestions from previous discussions that sound interesting to me are Gibberish phrasebook or Captain Obvious travel guide. Ypsilon (talk) 18:04, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

We can make a popover for "Plan your next trip with Wikivoyage AI (Beta)!" And however you interact with it, it just sends you to a random Itinerary article. Gerode (talk) 20:22, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Another idea: we can have the homepage/featured articles have constant popovers/warning boxes saying things like "39 Wikivoyagers already searched for destinations like this today", "Hurry! Only 4 Stay listings left for your dates!", "This is the lowest price we've seen for Creative Commons content". And a huge red blinking clock. Gerode (talk) 20:55, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure how technically feasible those ideas are. //shb (t | c | m) 22:04, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

The AI one should be pretty easy: Link everything to Special:RandomInCategory/Itineraries. You could do the same for Category:Star articles or Category:Travel topics if you wanted to offer destinations or general advice as alternatives. It can be set up as an old-fashioned choose-your-own-adventure series of pages, or perhaps someone could make a little Javascript interface (radio buttons or tickboxes – they [or at least most of them] don't have to do anything, so long as you can click on them). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Or the AI one can simply be a link to Special:Random. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:34, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

That would usually result in the person ending up at an "Outline" article. I'd rather have them end up at one of our better articles (Guide or Star status). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seemingly that can be done with Special:RandomInCategory/Star articles. However, is there a technically feasible framework that would make this suitable for 1 April? Just redirecting a feature to an excellent article doesn't look like a joke.

(Should we have that link on our main page year round?)

–LPfi (talk) 07:28, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah that doesn't seem nearly as fun of a prank. //shb (t | c | m) 08:01, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Imagine a long list of questions like this:

1. Do you like to travel by yourself or with others? 🔘 Solo travel 🔘 One special person 🔘 Groups
2. Do you prefer short trips or long trips? 🔘 Day trips or overnight 🔘 Weekends 🔘 A week or more
3. How soon? 🔘 This month 🔘 Next month or two 🔘 Later this year
4. How far? 🔘 Close to home 🔘 The farther, the better
5. What's your favorite travel mode? 🔘 Car 🔘 Bus 🔘 Train 🔘 Plane

and at the end it has a button labeled something like "Have AI find your best destination!" that takes you to a random page (or to a page that we think would be a funny result, like Staycation). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

That could work, but e.g. the fourth and fifth questions above require analysis of the answer and the user's location, for giving a sensible answer. We might intend to make fun of lousy AI engines, but the reader might just blame our judgement in choosing what AI to use.

Staycation might work, if "Close to home" is chosen, and Mars for "The farther, the better". One could provide star articles for some ("right") combinations of answers, with a good-enough probability that somebody trying alternatives would get one or more of those.

What framework is there to code this thing?

–LPfi (talk) 09:14, 19 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Your house is another possibility for "Close to home", if we want the result to be obviously joke-y.

I assume that if we don't take the hypertext route (i.e., each question is on a different page, with each answer taking you to another page, and the last one taking you to the destination), then it would have to be written in Javascript. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 19 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

As I'm now adding April's Discoveries to the template, I'll be adding three references to Joke articles from previous years for the set displayed on April 1st. If there is no interest in creating a Joke article this year, then there'll at least be something. Ypsilon (talk) 19:32, 11 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Great idea, just write my first post Time and Clock here in OZ. WolleNadel (talk) 17:02, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Caption Obvious idea sounds awesome and I've whipped together Draft:Travelling with Captain Obvious. Please chip in! I'm not quite sure if the best tone for this is "absurdly obvious" or "absurd explanations for obvious things", so currently it's a bit of both, but let's see how this develops, we've still got two weeks. Jpatokal (talk) 03:15, 14 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's a great start! One small thing, though: the draft namespace doesn't technically exist on Wikivoyage – I'll move it to Wikivoyage:Joke articles/Travelling with Captain Obvious instead for the timebeing. //shb (t | c | m) 03:20, 14 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hey, thanks for starting up this! I added some good advice from Captain Obvious but surely there has to be a lot more that travellers need to be informed about. --Ypsilon (talk) 10:53, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Travelling with Captain Obvious

Latest comment: 28 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Featured travel topic

It is obviously not. And do click on the banner, because there's a lot more you need to know about travelling.

• Support I love this. //shb (t | c | m) 11:58, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
• I would also like to vote support, because I support this banner. Therefore, I must state my vote, which is support. This support vote comment signed by ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) at 19:34 MDT (01:34 UTC) on the twenty-eighth day of March, in the year Two Thousand and Twenty Five of the common era.

The main page has been updated. By updated, I mean the old banner has been replaced with this new one. This comment was signed by SHB2000 at 12:17 on 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been reading this reply for three days without rest and still don't understand. What do you mean? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 01:12, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply