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Moved from Project:Using Mediawiki templates by (WT-en) Evan

So, I think one of the great lessons of ja: is that it's easy for users to contribute listings using templates, and that the output can look quite fantastic. I'd like to see if we can start moving to using templates for listings on en: and other languages.

I realize that moving entirely to templates for listing would be a huge amount of effort, but I think we can make it work, and I think the payoff could be humongous. I think it will make it easier to have structured listings, and I think it will make it possible to store tags and other metadata about listings and use that data to enhance search ("Where are there Chinese restaurants in or near Marseille which cost around €15 per meal?"). We could start putting GPS coordinates in for individual listings rather than cities as a whole, and use that data for making maps or for coordinating with geo-aware Web sites like http://www.semapedia.org/ .

And, also, I think we can help new users input listings information. I think the following is as easy or easier to figure out and use than our current formatting.

 {{resto|name=Ouzeri|address=4690 Rue St. Denis|directions=one block north of Avenue Mont Royal         |phone=845-1336|web=http://example.org/|hours=Tu-Th 5PM-1AM, F-Sa 12PM-2AM         |price=$25-$35|extra=prix fixe on Fr and Sa         |desc=Fine Greek dining, great selection of ouzos and Greek wines. Stylish and modern.               Try the flambé cheese hors d'oeuvre -- it's dramatic.         |geo=45.5253,-73.5857         |tags=greek,modern,wine,ouzo,popular,mid-range,plateau}} 

(The last two entries would be invisibly rendered as RDF.) We could also look into enhancing our interface with e.g. the Inputbox extension to make adding a new listing (or editing one...?) easier. We'd also need to have parameter defaults working so that incomplete listings like:

 {{resto|name=Ouzeri|address=4690 Rue St. Denis|phone=845-1336}} 

...do the right thing. Another benefit of using structured data is that we can start using bots more often for things like geocoding addresses or fixing common formatting mistakes.

The big problem here is not technical but social and organizational. Can and should we do this? Is it worth the effort to get structured listings? Bots and other automation may be able to handle some percentage of the existing listings (...30%? 60%?), but there will be a lot of gruntwork -- I think our experience with removing External links sections, or adding isIn data, is probablly representative.

Of course, if we want to do this, it's not going to get easier later.

I'd like to start talking about this and maybe work up some sample templates that render, more or less, to our current formatting. Comments? Questions? Ideas? --(WT-en) Evan 10:58, 4 March 2006 (EST)

Hell yeah, I've been agitating for this for a long time (you can blame me for doing it in ja: in the first place!) and would be behind this all the way. However, I still think that it's too much to ask for users to be able to edit the raw templates, so enabling/extending Inputbox or equivalent is essential. And sure, there's gruntwork, but there's already a lot of continual gruntwork just in whipping entries into MoS shape and templating would do away with this once and for all. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:08, 4 March 2006 (EST)e

I think this is a super-great idea! I think we've proven with the +isin -ext links our ability to do site-wide cheanges (heck, I think it's a great way to get people working on pages they otherwise never would have seen). Anyway, I think structured data is going to open up a lot of neat stuff and is 100% the way to go. (WT-en) Majnoona 11:48, 4 March 2006 (EST)

What jpatokal said. We should make it structured without making articles ugly to look at or forbidding to edit. Someone visiting for the first time should be able to add or edit listings without the experience turning negative for him. I just had a look at ja: and I think they've got it right. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 11:31, 4 March 2006 (EST)

And while we are at it, I'd like to revive the idea of using a wizard while creating a new page - a simple one which asks if it is a smallcity, bigcity, region, itinerary, traveltopic etc. and simply inserts a template to edit. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 11:56, 4 March 2006 (EST)

I'd like to volunteer to convert Singapore (and for time being only Singapore) to use templates, and work out any bugs in the process. Any objections? (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:32, 2 April 2006 (EDT)

I wouldn't be opposed, but can any templates that are created be given names that are obvious English words? Someone seeing "resto" wouldn't necessarily know what that's for. Also, are separate templates going to be created for hotels, bars, restaurants and attractions, or is one template sufficient? -- (WT-en) Ryan 15:07, 2 April 2006 (EDT)

I think a lot of it is common, but what about doing Template:Eat for restaurant listings, Template:Drink for bars and clubs, Template:Sleep for hotels and Template:See and Template:Do for attractions? I think they're going to be a lot the same, if not identical.

On top of this -- I'd like to develop extended wiki markup for Wikivoyage listings so that a) listings can be rendered as hcard HTML and b) we can save out the listings on the back end into a database, which could then be searched/reviewed/updated/shared/etc. I think getting these templates started is key... at some point we'd just swap the custom tags into the template. I'll put up some examples at User:(WT-en) Evan/hcard examples. --(WT-en) Evan 15:39, 3 April 2006 (EDT)

Agreed with using the verbs for the template names, that's how it's done in ja: and it seems to work fine. I even experimented a little with doing a meta-template [1] which is included into other templates [2] to make the formatting consistent, but I don't think this level of complexity is necessary in the English version.

But Evan, are you saying I should plunge forward with just plain vanilla templates, and the hcard conversion can then be done at some point in the future? I don't really see the big difference between Wikimedia templates and hcard, both are structured forms of information that can be post-processed easily with nothing more than a string parser.

I do think the DB idea is key though: it would be really spiffy-keen to have a shared database accessible across all Wikivoyage versions, so (eg.) changing the telephone number in French version would automagically change the number in Japanese one too. (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:52, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

Yes, I think that's one big use; we might even make that database available separately.

So, I had hoped that we could do this: make templates that contained (vanilla) wiki markup, and then later replace the vanilla wiki markup with listings tags, so that Template:Eat would start off as * '''{{{name}}}''', {{{address}}}, ... but eventually change to * <hcard name="{{{name}}}" address="{{{address}}}" ... >. But custom tags don't work very well with template parameters, so I guess I'd ask either a) plunge forward and be prepared to pull back or b) don't plunge forward for a day or so. -- (WT-en) Evan

A day, as in a single 24-hour period? Egads! I think I can restrain myself that long... (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:54, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

Yep. I've already started work on the custom tags, and I'll get them rolled out on wikivoyage.org by 1PM EDT tomorrow. We can experiment a bit to make sure they look right (I could probably use some CSS2 help on them...) and then start doing a run-ahead on Singapore and its districts. --(WT-en) Evan 13:51, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

So, there are now 5 custom tags to start experimenting with for listings. They are <eat>, <drink>, <sleep>, <see>, and <do>, and all of them have the following attributes:

• name
• address
• directions
• phone
• email
• fax
• url
• hours
• price

None of these are mandatory technically (although things get screwy if you don't use a name). The contents of the tag become the description of the listed attraction. An example:

* <sleep name="Auberge de la Fontaine" address="1301 rue Rachel est" phone="+1-800-597-0597"  fax="+514-597-0496" url="http://www.aubergedelafontaine.com/" price="$100-$280">Fun B&B with 25 rooms.  Located on the Plateau and across the street from Parc Lafontaine. </sleep> 

This becomes:

• <sleep name="Auberge de la Fontaine" address="1301 rue Rachel est" phone="+1-800-597-0597" fax="+514-597-0496" url="http://www.aubergedelafontaine.com/" price="$100-$280">Fun B&B with 25 rooms. Located on the Plateau and across the street from Parc Lafontaine. </sleep>

Note that I haven't yet integrated listings into the list format. I'm going to try to re-style these listings to look more like ja:'s listings, although I'm not sure we want to do that yet. Should we try to convert listings to use this structured format first, then change the look and feel? Or do it first as an incentive to change over? --(WT-en) Evan 13:24, 5 April 2006 (EDT)

P.S. Those of you who use tails will note that these listings are valid (if imperfect) hcard listings. --(WT-en) Evan 13:26, 5 April 2006 (EDT)

Incentive. I'd like to change the stuff and see that I really changed it. Although the editor would certainly have to change the entire set of listings in one swoop or it'll look awfully funny. Anyway, if we waited, we may wait forever. It would be like looking at a Christmas present wrapped under the tree. -- (WT-en) Ilkirk 15:05, 5 April 2006 (EDT)

Another question: I'm making the names of the tags (<eat>, <sleep> ..) and the names of the attributes (address, phone, ...) configurable in each language version. Any reason not to? --(WT-en) Evan 11:14, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Yes, languge-configurability is good (ja: already has localized names). Trying these out in Singapore/Sentosa now, and some comments: (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:18, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

• URLs should be automatically enclosed in [], so they show up correctly. Now you get the full path visible.
• A single blank line after a listing turns into an excessive amount of blank space.
• A <buy> tag would also be useful.
• If the address is missing, the phone number is also swallowed:

<sleep name="Sijori Resort" tel="+65-6271-2002" url="http://www.sijoriresort.com.sg" price="S$120-">Blah blah</sleep>
→ <sleep name="Sijori Resort" tel="+65-6271-2002" url="http://www.sijoriresort.com.sg" price="S$120-">Blah blah</sleep>

A couple of responses. First, it's actually kind of a pain in the keester to tap into that link-numbering mechanism, so I skipped it for now and I'll try to get back to it later. It's not merely a matter of wrapping things in [] since the processing goes tag → HTML, not tag → Wikitext → HTML. I'll see if I can figure out a way to do it.

I don't think the numbers are necessary or even desirable, they're pointless and rather weird. IMHO just "web" and the arrow would be much better! (WT-en) Jpatokal 13:00, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Not sure I understand about the blank line but I'll look into it. MediaWiki doesn't handle custom tags very well if the contents are split over more than one line (gar), so Don't Do That. I'll figure out if there's another way to do it soon.

Test! <sleep>First</sleep> <sleep>Second</sleep>

What I mean is that if you leave a blank line after any entry, then instead of ignoring the line (as currently) it turns it into about 2 blank lines' worth of space. See infobox to the right. (Or is it just Mozilla?) (WT-en) Jpatokal 13:00, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

The buy tag is a good idea.

The attribute is actually phone, not tel. viz.

• <sleep name="Sijori Resort" phone="+65-6271-2002" url="http://www.sijoriresort.com.sg" price="S$120-">Blah blah</sleep>

This brings up a design question: should we have lots of synonyms for these attributes (phone: tel, voice, ph, telephone), which makes it easy for someone guessing to get it right, or should we have just one name for each, which makes it easier for third-party processors to keep up? I favor the latter. --(WT-en) Evan 12:11, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Oops! One name each is enough -- as said, for a long-term solution there has to be a way to enter the templates with a friendly wizard, so people never have to guess at the names. (WT-en) Jpatokal 13:00, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Any progress on fixing these issues? Singapore/Sentosa is now 100% listingfied, but the two bugs that still bug me are 1) the display of links as URLs instead of just "web" [arrow-icon], and 2) the extra white space if I leave empty lines after the listing. (WT-en) Jpatokal 13:26, 8 April 2006 (EDT)

I like just the word "web" (or "website"? or a localized version of same?) for the link. About the whitespace: ugh. I'm going to see what I can do about it; but MediaWiki seems to insist on sticking a "<br />" into pages for no good reason. The last thing I want to do is figure out a good way to render "geo" and "tags". Eventually I'd like to have a Special:Tag that has links to every page and listing that matches the tag (tagcloud, eh?), but I'm going to have to build that out. And I'm not sure how to make it look good (although I think hiding it in the print stylesheet will be good).

Even the word "web" seems superfluous to me; it carries no information. Online, all you need is the box-and-out-arrow graphic in click-me blue (no localization required). Offline, just "http://" is a dead give-away that you're looking at a Web URL. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 21:01, 23 April 2006 (EDT)

Here's what I'd like to do next: let's convert 2-3 other big pages and see if we run into anything that we can't handle with the listing format. Then, if we're OK with it, let's change the MoS (Project:restaurant listings, ...) pages to use this format. --(WT-en) Evan 00:02, 9 April 2006 (EDT)

So, I'd be happy to convert all of Singapore, but I'd like to see the extlink formatting changes — I'm fine with either web-arrow or just plain arrow as suggested by Todd. The extra space after the entries is also a bit bothersome. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:48, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

One more thing: can we add an optional "map" value that just prints out "Map X."? This could be used to point either to a map grid ("A5") or a listing number ("7"). (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:33, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

One additional request: it would be good if it was made policy that when using a tag to create a listing that ALL fields for that tag should be included, even if some are empty. This policy would be similar to the article template policies - we always include the "Sleep" heading, even if there is no content, to encourage people to fill out the section. Similarly, we should also make it policy to always include (for example) the "phone" field in a listing to encourage people to add that information if it is missing. Thus a listing might look like:

<sleep name="Test Listing" address="" phone="" fax="" url="" price="">Description.</sleep>

This is probably a minor point, but I think making it explicit policy that fields MUST always be included, even if blank, is important. Also note that if we make this policy it makes the question of whether or not to allow synonyms (phone/tel/etc) a non-issue since people won't need to guess at values. -- (WT-en) Ryan 22:18, 9 April 2006 (EDT)

How about the GPS coordinates? I think it would be most useful to have the coordinates of the restaurants, hotels etc. listed as well. You could do interesting mashups with Google Maps or if you would have a GPS equipped mobile phone you could query Wikivoyage where to find a restaurant nearby (my problem always with the new cities! :). Street address is a good start but it is not always possible to convert the street address to a correct GPS coordinates. --Timo 18:15, 5 August 2006 (EDT)

Just a little heads up: there's now some template magic on ja: to include pictures into the listings, and display a gray default image if undefined. Take a look at eg. Manila. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:13, 14 April 2006 (EDT)

That's pretty cool. So, I'd like to do that with the tags, but just have nothing if there's no photo. --(WT-en) Evan 08:23, 14 April 2006 (EDT)

Now implemented! (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:09, 30 April 2006 (EDT)

One more thing I'd like to get sorted out: is it really necessary to place the '*' in front of every listing? I think it would be more flexible to enter just <see> and then do the processing under the hood. (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:09, 30 April 2006

In some situations it might be desireable to number listings instead of just bulleting them, to match the numbers used on the corresponding map. (I did this with campsite listings for Isle Royale.) -(WT-en) Todd VerBeek 12:19, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

That's quite brittle though. I've been thinking about doing some sort of automated overlay where you could feed the listings data directly into the map, but creating this would get a bit kinky. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:56, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

After a week at the Where 2.0 conference, I think this is a huge benefit we could create with Wikivoyage. I think if we served information about listings as a WFS and/or KML service, we could let people include Wikivoyage data in lots of fancy mapping mashups -- some innovative stuff is going on out there. --(WT-en) Evan 15:48, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

The big problem with doing the <li> tag under the hood is that there's no way to generate valid XHTML that way; you can't tell when the list started or ended. I much prefer the ja: style of one table or div per listing. --(WT-en) Evan 15:48, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

Doesn't using the closing </li> tag after every list item make it valid XHTML? --(WT-en) Rogerhc 15:56, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

So the following attributes would come in handy:

• "alt=Blah", for giving a secondary name, esp. in another language. Should be parenthesized and printed in italics after the main name: Sultan Mosque (Masjid Sultan).
• "map=A1". Reference to a map page/grid.

Also, a "contact" tag for netcafes etc would be handy. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:12, 14 May 2006 (EDT)

Just a bump for at least the 'alt' tag -- secondary names look really ugly without this. But if you want to be really high-tech, it'd be nice to italicize only Latin scripts (Ux0000-02FF) and leave anything else untouched. (WT-en) Jpatokal 15:43, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

Do I understand correctly that <see>, <do>, <eat>, <drink>, and <sleep> all have the same attributes? If so, do we really need multiple tags, rather than just a generic custom <item> tag? After all, we place and format all of these attributes the same regardless of whether the item they're describing is a nightclub or a museum or a hostel. The only exception I'm aware of is that the Japanese WT uses color coding for the different types (which is nice), but can't that be done with a CSS attribute attached (via a class?) to the section rather than on each item? Another benefit of a generic tag is that it could also be applied to Get in/Get around/Contact items when those call for compatibly-formatted lists. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 18:49, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Yes, they all have the same attributes. I kind of like having the type of the item in the tagname. Would it be good to add an extra <item> tag (or maybe <listing>...) as a "catchall"? --(WT-en) Evan 22:08, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Yes, it would be good, and <listing> is the better name of the two. I've already run into the problem of not having a 'type' for eg. netcafes, tourist information offices, laundromats, gyms... (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:21, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Why couldn't listing tags figure out their own type from the context in which they appear in the file? Didn't somebody figure out a way to do that with the old style listings even? -- (WT-en) Mark 01:05, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

So I hacked up a couple of lines of Ruby to convert Manual of Style listings to the tagged format, the source is now available at User:(WT-en) Jpatokal/listing.rb. Basically it works by tokenizing each listing on "," and ".", then using regexps to figure out which piece is which -- so you need to follow the MoS pretty closely, but it does seem to handle most permutations pretty well. The tag name to use is figured out from the previous header. (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:41, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

I have a bunch of listings I want to add to the Bombay pages. Does it make sense to wait?

No, it's a good idea to start with these listings now. There are a couple of technical fixes that need to be done, but they'll get added soon. --(WT-en) Evan 14:27, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

Can I add tags for future RDF implementation? — (WT-en) Ravikiran 14:43, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

Yes! All the parts of the listing element can be used. However, one point to note: the list item format is probably going to change to work more like the listings on ja:, so be prepared to get rid of the initial * in the future. I think this will just mean a regexp-replace of '^* <' with '<'. --(WT-en) Evan 15:21, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

I'd like to reiterate my whinge that it would be really, really nice to get the wizard-type pages for adding and editing listings created before we plunge too far forward with this. (WT-en) Jpatokal 15:47, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

Are listing tags approved for use now, or are there still outstanding issues? If so, what are those issues? -- (WT-en) Ryan 23:52, 1 November 2006 (EST)

Bumpity-bump. I think there are now stable and so widely used that it's time to officially make them official, officially-like (that is, rewrite the MoS to recommend them). Can or not? (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:44, 10 June 2007 (EDT)

I think so, is there any reason not to? What's the wizard-type thingy for adding listings that you refer to above? That sounds potentially amazing. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:12, 10 June 2007 (EDT)

I recall Evan mentioning that the wizard was up for testing on review, but I wasn't able to find it...? (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:21, 10 June 2007 (EDT)

Try your beloved hometown [3]. (WT-en) Maj 08:50, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Yep. Just click on the [little gray] "edit" link [at the end of each list item]. It's not finished yet (doesn't save, not all fields) but it will be working RSN. --(WT-en) Evan 08:53, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Spiffy-keen! Now can you conjure up a button for adding new entries like that as well? (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:19, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

The text fields in the wizard need to be longer. Maybe use a <br/> in the Wizard after each input text field to create room for that. --(WT-en) Rogerhc 16:10, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Wow! That is an excellent piece of work. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 16:32, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Holy ravioli, that's a work of pure genius, sent down from the heavens above. Hallelujah. Indeed, a button for adding new entries like that would be at least as useful. Yay! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:24, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

How will we convert existing listings to be editable in that way? By templating them the way we already are? Is it worth continuing to implement the tags that we have now? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:57, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

Should we continue implementing the tags we've got now? If they're going to be convertible then great, otherwise is it a waste of time? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 02:55, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

Sometimes on long road trips I pee in a bottle so that I don't have to pull over. Then if someone's tailgaiting me I launch a piss-bomb out the sunroof... keeps me amused – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 05:04, 23 June 2007 (EDT)

In an effort to head off whatever will be the next attention-getter before I have another such visual burned into my brain, you may want to leave a note on Evan's talk page to get his comments, since he's really the only person who can answer this one. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:34, 23 June 2007 (EDT)

Any chance you're related to this chick? -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 14:46, 23 June 2007 (EDT)

Ha! First time I've ever been compared to a lesbian in adult diapers. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 15:19, 23 June 2007 (EDT)

cacahuate: I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking. I don't think it makes sense to do any templates ({{sleep}}, {{eat}}, {{drink}}) to replicate what these custom tags (<sleep>, <do>, <buy>, etc.) are doing. The form-based editor currently on review: uses the same custom tags we're implementing here. You should be able to edit the listings on review either in "form mode" or using wiki text. Ideally there wouldn't be much difference. --(WT-en) Evan 09:25, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

That's what I was asking, I was just using the wrong word... should have said "tags". Wanted to make sure those tags are going to be readable by the new form-based editor, and it seems you're saying yes. So, great! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 05:20, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

The following seems not to format well:

* Here's a bunch of attractions I want to list under some '''common idea''':  ** <see name="some attraction">Some details</see>  ** <see name="some other attraction">Some other details</see> 

Here's the output, and the last bullet point is doubling:

• Here's a bunch of attractions I want to list under some common idea:
  • <see name="some attraction">Some details</see>
  • <see name="some other attraction">Some other details</see>

(WT-en) Hypatia 23:00, 23 June 2006 (EDT)

Actually, in general there seem to be some whitespace issues. If I follow the common convention of leaving a blank line after all the entries of a section, I end up with an extra line of whitespace in the output. (WT-en) Hypatia 23:13, 23 June 2006 (EDT)

I just encountered the same problem. In my case, in Columbia River Plateau#Other destinations, I had text like:

* <see name="Waitsburg Horse Track" alt="" address="blah" phone="+1-etc."></see>, in [[Waitsburg]] 

And it renders with the text after the </see> pushed to a new line, i.e.

• <see name="Waitsburg Horse Track" alt="" address="blah" phone="+1-etc."></see>, in Waitsburg

I'd like to see the structured tags render as if they have no paragraph break at the end. I'd like to be able to use them in a second-level list context, outside of a list, and be able to use text in the paragraph after the listing. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 03:21, 7 August 2007 (EDT)

• <eat name = "Britannia and Co" address = "Sprott Road, Ballard Estate, Fort, Mumbai" directions = "next to New Custom House." phone = "+91-22-2261-5264" email= "" fax = "" url = "" hours = "10 am to 3:30 pm (''Open only for lunch'')" price="Rs. 180 will buy you a good lunch.">This rundown restaurant run by a partnership of geriatric brothers (by the name Kohinoor) is a South Bombay institution, having been in existence since 1923. The signature dish is '''Berry Pulav''' the recipe for which the Late Mrs. Kohinoor found in [[Teheran]] while she was working with Iranian Airways. The Parsi favourite '''Dhansak''' is of course available and tastes great. Try the '''Caramel Custard''' for dessert. The waiter may con you to try the Raspberry soda — the first sip is sweet, but the whole bottle is cloying. </eat>

Renders as:

• <eat name = "Britannia and Co" address = "Sprott Road, Ballard Estate, Fort, Mumbai" directions = "next to New Custom House." phone = "+91-22-2261-5264" email= "" fax = "" url = "" hours = "10 am to 3:30 pm (Open only for lunch)" price="Rs. 180 will buy you a good lunch.">This rundown restaurant run by a partnership of geriatric brothers (by the name Kohinoor) is a South Bombay institution, having been in existence since 1923. The signature dish is Berry Pulav the recipe for which the Late Mrs. Kohinoor found in Teheran while she was working with Iranian Airways. The Parsi favourite Dhansak is of course available and tastes great. Try the Caramel Custard for dessert. The waiter may con you to try the Raspberry soda — the first sip is sweet, but the whole bottle is cloying. </eat>

Note that single quotes in ''Open only for lunch'' have been converted to "Open only for lunch" and I cannot get to show it in italics.

Bug. Not all tags support markup. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:31, 9 July 2006 (EDT)

I'd like to keep the contents of the different attributes as easy as possible to edit, and have meaningful separations. How would you feel about an "hours-extra" field for comments about the hours? In fact, most of the different attributes have an italicized extra element that comes after them... --(WT-en) Evan 12:11, 3 November 2006 (EST)

Swept in from the Pub:

Has anyone discussed the possiblity of creating some standard icons for various systematic information, such as hours of operation, admission charge, telephone number, guided tours available, photography not allowed, handicap access, restaurant or cafe at the location, etc? Perhaps a small section behind each location description that would include the icons and the related information? I can provide a Photoshopped proof-of-concept if anyone is interested. - (WT-en) Cybjorg 12:37, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

A little bit of that may be coming with a current project to develop custom tags to format listings. You can see an experimental example of a little telephone icon at Singapore/Sentosa#Sleep. I'm not sure that all of the things you mention would be practical, however. For example, handicap accessibility is mandated by law in the U.S., so that icon would have to be added to pretty much every hotel, restaurant, etc. in the country. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 15:07, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

I like the idea of tags for various subsets of information. I can't, however, see the telephone icon in your example. My browser (Firefox) simply displays a question mark in place of the icon. Here is a basic sketch of what I had in mind, although it far from refined. - (WT-en) Cybjorg 02:13, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

If you're not seeing the phone, that's probably a font issue; this is using a font character rather than a font image, and the font in use on your system probably doesn't include one. I do like the idea of using icons like this in the listings. It helps break them up visually, making it easier to find information quickly. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 08:04, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

(WT-en) Mark's new stylesheets automatically use a section-appropriate icon instead of the usual bullet for the "bulleted list" -- this was part of his style redesign which was done as his entry to the new logo contest. It's a bit of a mystery to me why Evan hasn't implemented it. See his demo site -- (WT-en) Colin 15:42, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

It's a nice looking redesign. I would like to see a full page option, as well as a refined print style sheet, but I like Mark's ideas. I especially like the Table of Contents floated to the right-hand side. - (WT-en) Cybjorg 01:16, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

If you click the arrow in the upper-right of the page, it will widen to full-width. -- (WT-en) Colin 01:32, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

Now that I've explored the page a bit more in depth, I also notice that he placed links to various style sheets, including one for print. Very clever. - (WT-en) Cybjorg 02:27, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

Colin: sorry about the mystery. I think there are some great features in the skin. I'm currently adapting some of the ideas from Mark's skin into Wikivoyage, but it will probably not be included in toto into the site. --(WT-en) Evan 10:05, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

Which ideas make the cut? Which ones don't? I wouldn't have spent quite so much time on it or worked so hard to satisfy Niels' requirements if I'd known that it was only ever going to be a demo. -- (WT-en) Mark 16:47, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

I like the sharp edges and the colors as well as moving the table of contents. I like the stylesheet switcher -- it's elegantly executed. I'm not so hot on the per-section listing icons, since we've already got so many images loaded per page. I understand the motivation, but I'd rather reduce than increase the number of files that need to be loaded to see any one page. (See [4] for some points about optimizing our pages.)

I also think it might be possible to do the per-item icons using CSS2 rather than by reparsing the HTML output; Maybe with a CSS selector like: h3#Eat + ul li, but that would require changing how headers are generated (a good thing, in my opinion). I'm not sure how well the "+" in a CSS selector works.

Do you have some key parts that you think are vital to include? --(WT-en) Evan 17:13, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

The one-column style is emotionally important to me since it took the most time, and since I made it directly in response to a user's (Neils') requirement. Do you really think that the listing icons are so heavy? They are less than 1k eeach after all, and should get cached anyhow.

As for the method for delineating the sections, there's a comment right there in the PHP code begging for a better way to do it. -- (WT-en) Mark 17:54, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

Considering the size and repetition of the wee icons, I can't see them adding substantially to the "weight" of Wikivoyage's pages. I developed a web site 10 years ago that used several images that size in much the same way, and even at 19.2 or 33.6kbps it didn't noticeably affect page-load times, even on the entry page. (Of course all of my HTML was lovingly and optimally hand-coded with height and width attributes, but still...) - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 18:16, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

I'd like to create a new listing tag, which I guess would be called <event> or what have you. The idea of the tag is to provide the information needed for large festivals or events, but is not covered with the other tags. Something like this:

* <event name = "Oktoberfest" location = "Address or location of event" directions = "directions" transportation = "Bus and subway routes" parking = "Where to park and cost" url = "http://www.fakeurl.com" hours = "9 pm -5:30 pm" admission="Rs. 50 for entrance">Stuff about the event. </event>

How would I go about creating this? -- (WT-en) Sapphire 05:41, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

As someone who has done his share of MoS edits, I feel entitled to put my two cents worth in. I can see the obvious DB benefits to all this, but I really see the method as burdensome to those creating and editing listings. Adding the labels adds a lot of work which will fall on those who are not too lazy to just stick down the name of a place and it's URL. Seems to me like it will work against contributors unless a way is found to translate via some "listing maker" script or something. (WT-en) OldPine 13:15, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

The reason I like these listings is because users seem to provide more information than they normally would with these new listings. Here's my evidence that they seem to provide more information with these listings. -- (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 14:57, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

I appreciate this note, David. One major goal with these tags is to make a popup form for editing, so that you don't have to remember all the fields. There may be some other ways to make them work better, though. --(WT-en) Evan 21:38, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

I am with David on this. A lot of my editing is cut and paste from other sites, then editing to MoS or as close as a hillbilly can get. It seems to me this will be a lot of work for those of us who scour the pages and do MoS edits. Now if there is a script that will go out and do it, then great! But I am thinking this will take me extra time to use. The rigid format is nice, but will it really help to get the job done? Everytime I bring it up, I go ick! I'm not spending that time. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 10:40, 23 September 2006 (EDT)

I'd like to start using these tags on the Dalian article I've been working on, but as things stand I can't because there's no way to properly handle Chinese names. For example, the Shagri-la hotel listing currently looks like this:

• Shangri-la (香格里拉大饭店 xiānggélǐlā dàfàndiàn), 66 Renmin Lu, +86 411 8252 5000 [5]. Blah Blah Blah. 880-1,900 RMB

Now, if I were to change that to use tags using the following code:

*<sleep name = "Shangri-la (香格里拉大饭店 ''xiānggélǐlā dàfàndiàn'')" address = "66 Renmin Lu" directions = "" phone = "+86 411 8252 5000" email= "" fax = "" url = "http://www.shangri-la.com/dalian" hours = "" price="880-1,900 RMB">Blah Blah Blah.</sleep>

it would come out as follows:

• <sleep name = "Shangri-la (香格里拉大饭店 xiānggélǐlā dàfàndiàn)" address = "66 Renmin Lu" directions = "" phone = "+86 411 8252 5000" email= "" fax = "" url = "http://www.shangri-la.com/dalian" hours = "" price="880-1,900 RMB">Blah Blah Blah.</sleep>

With the characters in bold and no way to italicise the pinyin (which is what Project:Romanization recommends). The only way I see around it would be to create two extra fields, one for non-latin characters and another for romaised pronunciation guides. A pain in the arse, I know, but until that's done these tags aren't going to be much use for articles relating to countries with different writing systems.

On an unrelated note, I was thinking about the phone/fax number field and was wondering whether or not it'd be an idea to add separate fields for country/area codes. That way any distributers of printed/CD versions could easily ommit the codes if their guides are limited to one country or area. I realise it'd create even more fiddly work for editors, which is why I'm somewhat ambivalent about it. Having said that it might, perhaps, be theoretically possible to automate the codes by checking what country/city the article belongs to. I know it could be done, albeit in a long winded way, through meta-templates but I'm not sure exactly how these tags work. --(WT-en) Paul. 10:17, 9 September 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, I was already suggesting this above in Additional attributes and tags, so the listing above would be name="Shangri-la" alt="香格里拉大饭店 xiānggélǐlā dàfàndiàn". This is absolutely critical for Japanese and Korean too. (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:47, 9 September 2006 (EDT)

Agreed. I'm going to hunker down and get all the outstanding feature requests and bug fixes done for listings next week. --(WT-en) Evan 11:42, 9 September 2006 (EDT)

Hi, how is it going? I bumped into the same problem with the Guangzhou page. I converted the eat/sleep parts to listings, but the bolded Chinese characters look like a mess (especially with anti-aliased fonts). --(WT-en) Trsqr 16:45, 16 September 2006 (EET)

The example given changes the standard time indicators from AM and PM (in the old listing examples) to am and pm. Is this done purposely? Are we tossing out the italicizing of the optional part of phone numbers? Maybe I care too much about standardization? (WT-en) OldPine 18:45, 17 October 2006 (EDT)

No, that's fine. I'll fix the AM/PM thing.

For the optional parts of phone numbers, I'd like to consider some other options, as discussed with Andrew and Mary in IRC. Namely: guides can have a special RDF tag, {{phoneCode|123}}, which sets the phone code for that destination to 123 (or whatever). The default phone code is prefixed to all the phone numbers in listings.

The prefixes are strung together geographically according to the IsIn hierarchy. That way, if the phoneCode for United States of America is 1, and the phoneCode for Santa Monica is 310, then the phone numbers prefixes will be automatically prefixed with +1-310- . If there's a funky phone code situation, then you can add an override at the guide level with {{fullPhoneCode|4-333}}</nowiki>, or at the listing level with a phonecode attribute.

No matter what the phone code is, it will be formatted in italics just in front of the phone number. Does this sound OK? --(WT-en) Evan 15:36, 2 November 2006 (EST)

Yep! Sounds good! (WT-en) OldPine 16:46, 2 November 2006 (EST)

That clever scheme won't work. A hotel open only in winter is going to have a reservations number in a different city with a potentially different area code. In the US, some hotels have only tollfree numbers and no alternative. Or maybe a hotel will be part of a chain, and the chain takes care of running the reservations lines but has a single central number even though the hotels are scattered about several area codes. And once you step outside of the US, I'm pretty sure you can get multiple phone carriers in some areas each with different prefixes. I think you need a different plan for how to cope with the italics. -- (WT-en) Colin 16:49, 16 November 2006 (EST)

Oh, absolutely. If a listing has a phone number that doesn't match the default phone code for the destination, it can have the full international dialing version. If a phone number in a listing tag starts with a plus ("+"), it will be rendered verbatim, without any of the other phone codes prepended. So <sleep name="Some Hotel" phone="555-1234" tollfree="+1-866-555-5678" .... I'll need to do some phone-number-parsing to determine which parts are prefixes and which parts aren't, but I'm sure that's a tractable problem. --(WT-en) Evan 10:01, 12 December 2006 (EST)

This sounds an excellent idea. One big plus is that it would make it easier for others (either mirrors or printers) creating tailored guides to individual areas to customise what the phone listings look like. So somebody distributing a guide solely for one city wouldn't have to include the local and national code every time. --(WT-en) Paul. 11:27, 12 December 2006 (EST)

I think there are only a few things left to do on listing tags. Here's my todo list, roughly in order:

• Automatic area codes, country codes, or city codes. As described above.
• HTML form editing. Each listing would show an [edit] link (maybe only if you mouse over it). When you click edit, the listing is replaced by a form, with one textbox for each attribute, and a "save" and "cancel" button. Saving will do an AJAX call to the server, and replace the contents of the page correctly.
• Do something with the geo attribute. I'd like to use the Mapstraction library to make some automated mapping for listed items. I don't think this is a good replacement for real maps, but it might be helpful.
• Do something with the tags attribute. My goal is for each tag foo, to make a link to Special:Tag/foo, which would list every page and listing tagged foo (maybe with fancy tag clouds and stuff).
• Conversion bot. Expand Jani's script for converting listings so that it's more forgiving, and apply it to as many pages as possible.

I think that once the phone code thing is sorted out, we can start moving to this format. The other stuff doesn't require any changes to the data. Is this about right? --(WT-en) Evan 16:19, 2 November 2006 (EST)

Please don't forget the alt tag proposed above. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:03, 2 November 2006 (EST)

It's done! --(WT-en) Evan 01:48, 3 November 2006 (EST)

Err -- could you fiddle the code so it italicizes only Latin characters (Ux0000-02FF), and not the rest? Most non-Latin scripts (see below) should never be italicized. (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:24, 3 November 2006 (EST)

<do name="Test entry" alt="해수피아 Korean 赤あかアカ Japanese 中华人民共和国 Chinese">Sniff sniff.</do>

If that's the case, can you do some work on Project:Foreign words to make that clear? As far as I can tell, they should be in italics. --(WT-en) Evan 11:10, 3 November 2006 (EST)

Edited. Basically, italics are a Latin convention and should only be used for Latin scripts (and maybe Greek, but probably not Cyrillic). (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:29, 5 November 2006 (EST)

Cool, and good to know. I'll try to fix the listings code in the next 48 hours. --(WT-en) Evan 00:01, 6 November 2006 (EST)

Any progress on this? It's still not possible to convert Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc. articles as things stand. --(WT-en) Paul. 15:20, 28 November 2006 (EST)

Yes, this is done now. You may need to do a force-reload to get the new stylesheet, but non-latin chars are now put in an extra span in the alt attribute, which should not show up italic. --(WT-en) Evan 17:38, 6 December 2006 (EST)

Is it too late for another request? How about an IATA/ICAO code attribute so I can get a little creative when I make an airport listing? -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 01:53, 3 November 2006 (EST)

We don't usually do structured airport listings, though. Could you maybe start Project:Airport listings or bring it up in the Pub? I'd rather have the listings format follow the MoS rather than lead it. --(WT-en) Evan 11:10, 3 November 2006 (EST)

Maybe not the place to ask (apologies in advance), but why do external links open in the same window and not a new window? Seems counter-intuitive to me. (WT-en) OldPine 11:14, 3 November 2006 (EST)

On Safari and Firefox (and maybe the new Explorer), a middle click on a link opens it in a new tab or window. I prefer this because it lets me decide if I want a new window instead of forcing this on me. -- (WT-en) Colin 11:34, 3 November 2006 (EST)

That's my feeling too. The best place to ask this kind of question is on wts:Technical requests. --(WT-en) Evan 12:08, 3 November 2006 (EST)

Sounds right, and though I have never wished to have it in the same window, I support what you're saying. I guess there's some easy way now to log into en and shared all at once, but frankly I'm too old a dog to handle more than en. (WT-en) OldPine 16:56, 3 November 2006 (EST)

There was a request made a long while ago to have Special:Recentchanges for each language version also include changes made to shared, which would make it easier for everyone to keep track of what's happening on shared, although I can't find that discussion now. I also tend to log in to shared very seldomly, and thus miss a lot of what's going on there. -- (WT-en) Ryan 17:05, 3 November 2006 (EST)

• tollfree - these numbers are common in the US and are convenient if are dialing from the US.... but they are inaccessible to international callers so it would be nice to tag them differently than mere phone numbers so that international users don't have to memorize the seven different tollfree area codes in +1
• toll free fax - ugh.
• reservations vs. hotel main line - Sometimes a hotel lists separate numbers for calling the hotel itself vs. calling to make a reservation. I suppose the hotel should be able to refer your to the other, but maybe we should support having both
• geo - are you sure (y/n)? lat and long as separate entries makes a ton more sense to me and a lot harder to get wrong, but hey I don't have to write the parser so if you're sure that's how you want it...
• check-in and check-out for sleep entries. The examples suggest using hours for this, but that's going to lead to style differences in exactly how to phrase it.

-- (WT-en) Colin 16:59, 16 November 2006 (EST)

Some comments, for which I'm sorry I've taken so long. I'm a little reluctant to add attributes for every kind of phone number an establishment can have, but I'm not sure what our alternatives are. One possibility is just having phone2, phone3, phone4, ... attributes. That's pretty blecherous. Another is to have a phone-extra attribute, which renders as an italicized parentheses, which you can put alternate phone numbers or comments in, whatever. So phone="+1-514-555-1212" phone-extra="tollfree: +1-866-123-4567, reservations: +1-514-555-1111". I'm not crazy about that one either.

w/r/t geo, it's not killing me to do a single pair of comma-separated numbers, but you may be right there.

w/r/t the checkin and checkout times, well... I dunno. I think there's a tension in designing this kind of thing between having relatively large attributes with maybe some structured data in it, versus having fields broken down at the atomic level. For example, we have address, but many user interfaces have street-number, street-name, street-type (St., Rd., Blvd., ...). I think the checkin-checkout items might be a good idea, though. --(WT-en) Evan 23:26, 20 November 2006 (EST)

Totally understand about not wanting to put in lots of extra fields. But if there's only one phone number, then the US-o-centric contributors (and marketeers) are going to add the internationally unusable numbers. And that pretty much defeats the point of using internationally dialable phone numbers. -- (WT-en) Colin 23:58, 20 November 2006 (EST)

Another option, and this is probably as ugly or moreso than the existing proposals, is instead of using lots of attributes to instead use child elements which could then have their own attributes. For example:

<sleep name="hotel name">     <phone number="+1-999-999-9999" />     <phone number="+1-888-888-8888" label="toll-free" />     <hours checkin="1PM" checkout="11AM" />     This hotel is wonderful and has two phone numbers. </sleep> 

I don't know how the existing tags have been implemented, and using child elements may be technically too difficult to consider, but from a practical standpoint it seems like it might add some flexibility. -- (WT-en) Ryan 00:44, 21 November 2006 (EST)

Actually, I think that's pretty elegant; using sub-elements would actually be nicer than attributes if we have a lot of optional fields. However, I'm less concerned with complicating the markup than with complicating the ultimate form interface. Having lots of optional text boxes will make it look pretty daunting... although I guess we could do a basic interface with the most rudimentary fields, and an advanced interface with more of them. --10:18, 21 November 2006 (EST)

So, I'd like to split the difference here and limit our phone number fields to four: phone, fax, toll-free and phone-extra. The last one would be a catch-all text field in which extra phone information or extra phone numbers could be added (without any special styling). I'll add separated lat and long attributes and fall back to geo if they don't exist. Finally, it will make me sad, but I'll add the check-in and check-out attributes for sleep entries, with a fallback to hours if they don't exist. Finally, I'm going to add an hours-extra and price-extra attribute for extra price and hours info. --(WT-en) Evan 14:54, 4 December 2006 (EST)

Please also consider "textphone", as used by people with speech or hearing disabilities. Thank you. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 09:55, 5 December 2006 (EST)

"textphone" is the kind of exceptional situation which would fit nicely in the "phoneextra" section. --(WT-en) Evan 17:41, 6 December 2006 (EST)

People who need to use such facilities also need to know which number they're available on. You might also like to note the "types" of telephone number currently catered for by hCard, based on those for vcard: home, work, pref, fax, cell, pager. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 04:18, 7 December 2006 (EST)

OK, I've done all that I said I would just above here on 4 Dec. The only exception is that all the attributes I had hyphens in, like "check-in", don't have hyphens, so it's "checkin". It's part of the deal with MediaWiki. I've updated the main part of the listings page, but it could probably stand to propagate to each of the tag types. --(WT-en) Evan 17:41, 6 December 2006 (EST)

Whoo hoo! Too bad I have to work late tonight and can't launch the bot until late tonight. Thanks! -- (WT-en) Colin 20:52, 6 December 2006 (EST)

At Ryan's suggestion, I'm having my bot insert the full set of applicable tags for the sleep listings -- even the optional ones. I'm skipping hours, geo, and tags. I guess the reasoning is that this invites editors to add the extra info. This would not be the normal way a human would do this since I think it's too much to ask of our contributors that they stick in all the fields.

Any second opinions on this? -- (WT-en) Colin 00:18, 17 November 2006 (EST)

Colin and I have already discussed this issue somewhat on his talk page, but I suspect seeing the full set of listing attributes would encourage people to "fill in the gaps", just as they do with articles having empty template sections. It would be nice if there was an easy way for Joe Average User to insert an empty listing tag complete with empty attribute tags, but I'm not sure how to handle that - I normally just copy a full tag from Project:Listings, but it's kind of a pain to do so. -- (WT-en) Ryan 00:56, 17 November 2006 (EST)

Writing a bot to add the missing tags would be kinda trivial :-) -- (WT-en) Colin 01:06, 17 November 2006 (EST)

If we need to, we can add a set of edit tools like Wikipedia:MediaWiki:Edittools. It's probably also worth noting that with form-based editing, there will be an empty box for every item that isn't filled in. So I don't know if there's much need for the empty attributes. --(WT-en) Evan 09:02, 17 November 2006 (EST)

For properties such as "toll free", "dog friendly", "licensed", we could use the 'rel-tag' microformat, linking to pages such as http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/licensed, where there could be a definition of the term, links to other relevant pages, or whatever. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 16:31, 25 November 2006 (EST)

The property "name" is described thus:

the name of the hotel, bar, restaurant, museum, or whatever. Recommended.

Note that it's required for hCards. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 16:40, 25 November 2006 (EST)

Yes, but you can't require much of anything on a wiki. So, listings without names won't be valid hCards. --(WT-en) Evan 17:10, 25 November 2006 (EST)

Better to not parse them, than publish invalid hCards. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 16:45, 26 November 2006 (EST)

ITU-T Recommendation E.123, or the Notation for national and international telephone numbers Recommendation E.123, defines a standard way to write telephone numbers. It recommends the following formats (when dialling the area code is optional for local calling):

   Telephone number, national notation:      (042) 123 4567    Telephone number, international notation: +31 42 123 4567  

The parentheses are used to indicate digits that are sometimes not dialled. Parentheses should not be used in the international notation. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 18:21, 25 November 2006 (EST)

I think that's the format we use; see Project:Phone numbers. --(WT-en) Evan 14:57, 4 December 2006 (EST)

I'm sure I've seen parentheses in numbers, but can't recall where. Sorry. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 10:50, 5 December 2006 (EST)

I've just added a listing for RSPB Sandwell Valley to the page on Birmingham (England). It seems that the whole address is marked up as class="street-address". I believe that it should be just "adr" (but feel free to check on the uFs wiki or mailing list). More helpful would be to mark up the postcode (or zip code) separately (class="postal-code"), as some tools then pass these to mapping sites.

Also, for UK locations, an Ordnance Survey grid reference [6] (e.g. SP035928) would be useful as an optional attribute. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 16:41, 26 November 2006 (EST)

The address section is only for the street address, not for post codes or other postal information. These listings are for finding restaurants, hotels, etc., not sending them postal mail. --(WT-en) Evan 14:58, 4 December 2006 (EST)

I don't see why not; but, as I said, postcodes are also useful for mapping/GPS (not to mention orientation); and class="adr" is required, for vCard addresses, so "street-address" MUST sit within such a span to be included as part of a valid hCard. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 10:50, 5 December 2006 (EST)

Seems like it might be a good thing to add the rest of the address information to the tag and then not display it, especially since it should be possible to derive at least the city name from the breadcrumb. It should also be possible to have a bot scrape the web for postal code data and add that later. -- (WT-en) Mark 19:15, 7 December 2006 (EST)

I entered hours="'''closed throughout 2007'''" (on the entry for Aston Hall), but the apostrophes were displayed literally, and the text was not emboldened. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 08:04, 28 November 2006 (EST)

The attributes hold plain text, not wiki text. Styled stuff like that won't work. --(WT-en) Evan 15:00, 4 December 2006 (EST)

I'd suggest that that's documented on the main listings page, then. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 10:50, 5 December 2006 (EST)

User:(WT-en) Pigsonthewing added this to the lat/long info: Note: lat and long SHOULD have the same number of decimal places (using trailing zeroes if applicable). I think if we're going to support the geo microformat this is important for output, but that doesn't mean that people need to put any particular number of digits in the input. So I removed it. --(WT-en) Evan 19:23, 10 December 2006 (EST)

No. In coordinates, the number of decimal places specifies the level of precision, so 52.1200 != 52.12. I'll restore the wording.(WT-en) Andy Mabbett 06:24, 11 December 2006 (EST)

In wikis, we try not to set arbitrary rules on input, especially if they can be handled by the software (like this one can). If it's important, I can balance out the number of decimal places programmatically for the output. --(WT-en) Evan 10:27, 11 December 2006 (EST)

It's not arbitrary, and it cannot be handled programmatically, because, as I said, for coordinates, 52.1200 != 52.12. It's also a SHOULD not a MUST, which should satisfy the casual approach taken in Wikis. Incidentally, those words are usually capitalised, in such contexts, per RFC 2119. Balancing decimals certainly is important for output, when I believe MUST applies. This issue is, if you balance while creating the output, do you discard precise data from one value, or infer it, perhaps wrongly, for the other? (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 11:30, 11 December 2006 (EST)

This is a user manual, not an RFC, so in fact the context is different. We use italics for emphasis if we need to. And I'll try to remember to balance out the decimal for output here. --(WT-en) Evan 11:33, 11 December 2006 (EST)

The convention is common in user manuals also, in my experience. RFC 21109 applies to the use of the terms in any document, not just in other RFCs. Also, not that "If latitude is present, so MUST be longitude, and vice versa". (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 14:29, 11 December 2006 (EST)

I don't really see any harm in having the software balance out a user's input by padding a couple of "0" on the end of the latitude string if necessary. Am I wrong? -- (WT-en) Mark 01:41, 2 January 2007 (EST)

Yes. If you add zeros, you're adding information that isn't there - how do you know that the user didn't omit a pair of nines, or some other figure. The only acceptable way to treat mismatched figures is to truncate the one with more digits. Far better to encourage users to be more through in the first place. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 09:22, 2 January 2007 (EST)

See the "check out time" on the mid-range sleep listings on the Chittagong page... needs a period and a space after, before the description... (WT-en) Cacahuate 00:52, 6 January 2007 (EST)

*BUMP* -- (WT-en) Ryan 13:42, 15 January 2007 (EST)

This is fixed now. I also fixed a problem with italicizing the "directions" field. --(WT-en) Evan 13:01, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Is there any recommendation on having two emails for a single hotel? Using email="[email protected]; [email protected]" obsiously gives mailto: them both at once, which may be not supported by some email clients, and it feels better for me to provide traveller a choice which email to use even before email compose window appears. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 18:27, 6 January 2007 (EST)

BUMP. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:50, 7 August 2007 (EDT)

For sleep tag, prices sometimes drop away from the bulleted block, appearing with no indent. I created a sandbox page demonstrating that: User:(WT-en) DenisYurkin/Sleep sandbox (note the last line on that page). --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 19:32, 6 January 2007 (EST)

You're supposed to format the stuff inside the tags as a single paragraph. Even when things are manually formatted, that's how the MoS asks for listings to be formatted. -- (WT-en) Colin 19:59, 6 January 2007 (EST)

Now we have the same problem in Budapest/Pest#See (see Budapest/Pest#Museums for just one of many examples). Unlike accommodation and places to eat, attractions have every right to have long and detailed descriptions--and they usually have indeed. How are we going to deal with cases like that? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:56, 7 August 2007 (EDT)

I think you can get around this problem by filling out the template, but leaving the description blank, then writing the multi-paragraph description immediately below. I sort of did this for Gori#See, although those descriptions were not actually multi-paragraph. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:16, 7 August 2007 (EDT)

It's only a workaround, not a recommended solution, right? I mean, in my belief this solution doesn't fit well into the concept of the tags. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 10:49, 8 August 2007 (EDT)

The example that is in your sandbox could be edited down to about 2 sentences... I don't think we should be adding <br>'s into the listings... but I do see the problem with the museum example you gave. It's odd that the 2nd paragraph gets indented properly, but not the third... strange... maybe listings that require more than 2 paragraphs should be made into their own subsection... see San Francisco#See – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:48, 9 August 2007 (EDT)

I just noticed this on the Eger page

 * <sleep name="Senator Ház" address="Dobó tér 11." phone="+36(36)320-466 (tel/fax)" email="[email protected]"  fax="" checkin="" checkout="" price="" url="http://www.senatorhaz.hu/"><span id="Senator_Haz"></span>Owner: András Cseh--  very helpful in person, which is not obvious from emails until you arrive.<br>Most recommended is '''Pátria Panzió''',  a new building just a quarter away (at Szúnyog köz 3).   <br><u>Details:</u> Recommends horseriding  at [[#Matyus_Udvar_Haz|Mátyus Udvar Ház]], but can't help to book with  them.</sleep>  

Which shows up as

• <sleep name="Senator Ház" address="Dobó tér 11." phone="+36(36)320-466 (tel/fax)" email="[email protected]" fax="" checkin="" checkout="" price="" url="http://www.senatorhaz.hu/">Owner: András Cseh--very helpful in person, which is not obvious from emails until you arrive.
  Most recommended is Pátria Panzió, a new building just a quarter away (at Szúnyog köz 3).
  Details: Recommends horseriding at Mátyus Udvar Ház, but can't help to book with them.</sleep>

Am I wrong in thinking this goes against the MoS or did I miss a discussion? It really adds more complexity to it, and I don't think it looks great either . I'm also not happy with the "recommends..." wording, that's also not our usual MoS. (WT-en) Maj 23:04, 20 January 2007 (EST)

(WT-en) Maj, all HTML here is mine--and it's solely my idea to introduce it here. As I already replied in my talk page, there was no previous discussion on my usage of HTML pieces like this.

I used only 3 pieces of HTML here. First is <span> used merely to put an anchor we can link to, both from another piece of the article (Eger#Matyus_Udvar_Haz) and from a blog (so I can list places I visited / stayed at in my personal blog, it's in Russian) while driving people to Wikivoyage for details of specific places I recommend (thus developing content at Wikivoyage). Is there a better way to attach an anchor to a specific hotel or restaurant?

Second and third are <br> and <u>. They are used in Senator Ház (which Patria Panzio is a part of) to introduce some structure to a soon-to-be-longer description like in Matyus Udvar Haz or Fanari Villas. You're right that right now there's not enough content for structurizing--but I will add more in a couple of days. Same for 'recommended' piece--I will add specifics and hopefully end up without recommendation clause at all, at least this will be more MoS-compliant.

Please let me know what you think. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 02:42, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Please don't do weird-ass shit like this in templates. Listings are supposed to be short, sweet and cover one thing at a time: now you're covering what appears to be two apartments and a horseriding service in the same one!? And the hardcoded BRs, Us etc may not render well if the listing is printed, displayed on a PDA, etc. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:13, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Is there a policy about using a lot of the internal links like Eger#Matyus_Udvar_Haz? I've been meaning to ask that lately anyway... I'm not sure they're usually all that necessary, and especially to a specific hotel or listing, I can't think of a scenario where that would really be needed... Project:Internal_links is pretty sparse at the moment... (WT-en) ::: Cacahuate 02:54, 21 January 2007 (EST)

HTML in listings is probably just a bad idea, as the articles should be editable by anyone, not just those with html skills; same goes for html in articles, except for a small number of exceptions where I think html is useful or even require; African_flora_and_fauna would not look to good without the <br clear="all"> tags.

Internal links can also sometimes be very useful, Air_travel_in_South_Africa#OR_Tambo_International from South_Africa#By_plane is one example where I think it is better to use an internal link rather than linking to the main page. Linking to a specific hotel does however seem rather silly. (WT-en) NJR_ZA 06:33, 21 January 2007 (EST)

I have just finished editing information on Senator-Haz which evoked this discussion. I managed to make it without <U> and <BR> tags. However I have something to say on the rest of above comments.

• I used <span> tag merely to make an anchor that I needed for reason. Do we have a better way to put an anchor we can link to? Can I create an {{anchor|name}} template to allow contributors to make a tag without knowing HTML (or forcing future editors of their contribution to know it)? The reason I need to put an anchor on a specific hotel (to repeat what I wrote above) is the following. When I describe my completed journey to friends in my blog, I only list hotels, restaurants and places I tried (and not/recommend). However, for detail on every item I list there, I link to review on it at Wikivoyage--thus driving more readers to Wikivoyage, and possibly converting some of them to contributors of Wikivoyage--at least encouraging future readers to update what I've found. Isn't this a sufficient reason for allowing to attach anchors to specific hotels? Please keep in mind that Wikivoyage is not totally isolated from other Internet tools like blogs, but rather exist in a context; understanding how Wikivoyage is used can help us to make it better.
• I mentioned in the earlier comment that Patria Panzio is a part of Senator Ház hotel. Now it's also clear from the listing itself. (WT-en) Jpatokal, do you have any suggestions on improving this aspect of Senator Haz listing?
• As the listing read, Senator Haz hotel recommends taking horseriding with Mátyus Udvar Ház horsebackriding facility (and even its site mentions it can help with arranging horseriding). But in reality we had to arrange ourselves, with no substantial help from Senator before we arrived. (WT-en) Jpatokal, any suggestions on how this idea can be expressed in this listing item for Senator Haz?
• (WT-en) Maj, does it look good overall now?

--(WT-en) DenisYurkin 15:27, 21 January 2007 (EST)

The <sleep> tag, like other listing tags, creates a span with an "id" attribute that you can use for the anchor. It's a munged-up version of the name of the establishment, with underscores for spaces. So, Montreal#Bily_Kun should work. I mostly did this so we'd have URLs to use in RDF statements, but it could work for making links if you're in a real hurry. --(WT-en) Evan 19:40, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Evan, thanks for pointing this. I just looked at the page source and found that all accented letters are removed rather than converted to their non-accented ascii counterparts--so Mátyus Udvar Ház has ID Mtyus_Udvar_Hz. Beyond link readibility, converting them so will protect from broken links when someone finds that a name recorded as non-accented (Patria Panzio) should have accents in it (Pátria Panzió)--I'd be happy if this change keep the old link working. Should I file this as a technical request? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 00:38, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Again on cutting out accented letters from names: what if we add one more field in all listings, anchor name? This way we could (a) manually convert it to browser-readable, (b) preserve them unchanged even when attraction name change, so that old links still work. What do you think? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:16, 29 January 2007 (EST)

I still don't understand why we would want to have a listing that includes what the listed business recommends.... that seems way outside of our goals. And it looks like there are other ways to achieve the anchor tag functionality you're after too, so I'd rather you reverted the listings you've done. In the future, it would be better to address the functionality you're after on the appropriate discussion page so the best technical solution can be determined, rather than starting out on your own. We're after consistency and consensus across all the guides. Thanks. (WT-en) Maj 20:29, 21 January 2007 (EST)

As for "why we would want to have a listing that includes what the listed business recommends": I can't find good arguments right now, so I changed this piece to the following:

Website says horseriding at Mátyus Udvar Ház can be arranged, but don't expect mech help from Senator--you'll need to contact them directly

Does it look better now? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:35, 22 January 2007 (EST)

I'm with Evan here. Denis, regarding your specific questions, a) travelers don't really care who owns a place to stay, so Patria Panzio and Senator Haz should have separate listings, and b) if you're going to go horse-riding, isn't the default that you have to make your bookings yourself? It might be worth a mention if, say, the pension is right next to the racing track and offers packages or whatever, but it seems non-sensical to say that they can't! (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:54, 21 January 2007 (EST)

As for a): beyond owners, Patria Panzio and Senator Haz shares the same staff, reception, breakfast area and most likely, the way business is done. It's easier to consider them as 2 buildings of the same hotel, each with its own name and yes, having some differences in construction and rooms--but sharing much the same. One of the reasons I combine them is to encourage common characteristics to be placed in common part, while building-specific to go into a respective bullet. What's wrong with using approach like this? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 00:55, 22 January 2007 (EST)

I would propose to have prefix field for items like sleep, drink and eat. As long as we typically sort listings by name, it would be better to have prefixes like Pension, Hotel, Bar, Cafe to appear non-bold, so it doesn't confuse future editors on whether the item should be placed basing on prefix, or on its proper name (even if you and me know that proper name should be used). I don't think it's that important for suffixes as they don't affect sort order, however. What do you think? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 06:09, 10 February 2007 (EST)

Actually, a better way to handle this would be to create sitewide naming policy to just use eg. "Hilton" in the Singapore article, instead of "Hotel Hilton Singapore". (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:25, 10 February 2007 (EST)

In regions with many small accomodations with similar names, it may be not enough. I can easily expect that all the following venues can exist in Istanbul, for example:

• Hotel Sultanahmet
• Pension Sultanahmet
• Hostel Sultanahmet

Even more risk for Drink: John's Pub, John's Cafe, John's Club can be all different places in the same town. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 07:35, 10 February 2007 (EST)

I have just noticed that the (templated) hCards on Birmingham (England) are marked up with <SPAN class="addr">. This should be <SPAN class="adr"> (with just a singular "d"). (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 07:14, 7 March 2007 (EST)

Got it. That's fixed, now. --(WT-en) Evan 14:18, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

Indeed it is. Thank you. (WT-en) Andy Mabbett 08:25, 26 March 2007 (EDT)

→ wts:WtTech:Form-based editing of listings

Archived from the Pub:

Is this still an experimental feature? I notice it's used in some places (in particular, the Montreal page). The thing is, the external links are unpacked, which I know is not the intent of the Project:External links policy. I can't do anything abou this as long as the link is inside the <drink> tag. Will the display change as the feature develops? --(WT-en) Dawnview 06:33, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

Yes, it's a known bug, see wts:WtTech:Url field of listings should be autonumber or word. --(WT-en) Evan 08:16, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

I personally think it looks a lot better that way. It's a lot more useful if you have to print out the guide and take it with you, too. I still don't get the policy about packed external links (that is, why it is the way it is). (WT-en) Jordanmills 10:51, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

Good point. My thinking (from somone who never prints out the Wikivoyage pages) is that if you can get to an internet cafe to visit some website, you can just as easily get to Wikivoyage and click on the link, right? That's what I always do. I should try printing out a guide article though, I'd probably miss less. Though I think the idea of the policy is that you should be able to print out a guide and never have to look stuff up on the internet. --(WT-en) Dawnview 14:41, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

The problem with assuming that people can follow the links from Wikivoyage is that there's no guarantee that the printed version will be the same as the online version, and so no guarantee that the link will be accessible without trawling through the history. --(WT-en) Paul. 13:18, 1 October 2006 (EDT)

Archived from the Pub:

I posted this on the MediaWiki_talk:Sleep page but I figured I'd post here and get more coverage. I'm running into issues where lots of hotels have both local and toll free numbers. I would guess that it's most useful to the traveler to list the toll free, but it would be better to list both. Especially since (at least in the USA) toll free number holders have the option to prevent calls from the local area to reduce charges. (WT-en) Jordanmills 14:11, 30 December 2006 (EST)

Never mind, I just found the tollfree property. (WT-en) Jordanmills 14:17, 30 December 2006 (EST)

Swept in from the pub

In <see, do, eat, etc. > tags, use an alt="" attribute to display a translation of the item name into the local language when appropriate and helpful to travelers. This will appear normal weight, italicized and within parentheses after the bold text item name. Example: see Harbin page.

Can we please include alt="" after the name="" attribute in the click-to-insert snippets of the edit page? Something like this:

* <see name="" alt="" address="" phone="" email="" fax="" hours="" price="" url=""></see> 

Maybe add a note on the edit page bellow or above the click-to-insert snippets explaining what the alt="" attribute will do and also linking to a page about the click-to-insert snippets (or whatever we call them). And what is the something-extra="" attribute for? --(WT-en) Rogerhc 19:20, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

I'm still mulling this over, but I thought I would add that it is a bad idea to render foreign names by default in italics because this can cause problems across alphabets. Cyrillic fonts, in particular, use very different characters in italics, which would make italicized Russian place names, for example, useless to anyone who doesn't speak Russian. But I definitely agree with your basic premise—that listings should give local names, especially when the local signs are in a different alphabet. --(WT-en) Peterfitzgerald ^Talk 19:28, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Actually, the alt tag is already implemented so that only Latin scripts (Unicode Ux0000-02FF, or at least that's what I asked Evan to do) are italicized and the rest are left as is. Test:

<listing name="Test" alt="Test テスト 実験 ижица 조선말"></listing>

As you can see, only the Latin word is italicized. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:36, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

There's also a directions="" tag that can go after "address"... should we consider adding "alt" and "directions" to the template? or is that getting confusing for new editors? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:15, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

Wow, there's a directions="" tag? I never knew that. That would be very usefulj I could have used it at least twice yesterday. And alt="" is a must for attractions with names not in Latin script. It definitely should be documented better. I see your point about it being confusing for new editors though. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 13:48, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

I've added the alt and directions tags to the edit tools. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:30, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

I'm loving the directions tag. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 23:52, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

I can't seem to use the {{no source}} and {{no license}] templates for images. These are pretty essential template for a wiki site. Are they called something different in Wikivoyage? (WT-en) OoishiMoe 02:07, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

Yes: {{dont know}} works for something that was uploaded without a license selected – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 00:00, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

Per a conversation started in the pub, is it agreeable to think about getting rid of the [1] type of listing of websites, and do something more visually pleasing/obvious such as [web] and [email] ?? Jani suggested this should be done in MediaWiki as opposed to any user-initiated change. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 00:00, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

copied in from the pub:

I'd like that, too. The escalating number-links are odd. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 00:25, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

Another vote for [web] from me for listings; not sure it will fit links placed in the middle of regular text, though. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 01:56, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

I would actually lean more towards using icons, if we do this. A flying envelope icon for mail is straightforward, although I admit I don't have a weblink icon in mind. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 02:04, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

I second the idea of using just an icon. What's wrong with the icon we already have that appears next to the number? (WT-en) Texugo 02:47, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

Absolutely nothing, I think that could work great. Should we move our discussion to Wikivoyage_talk:Listings#web/email_format? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:26, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

I wouldn't mind an icon either, but the current web one is sorta fugly. Surely someone can come up with something more obvious and beautiful. I think the email one is fine. I'd rather condense it to just that than spell out the entire email address as we've been doing... anyone disagree about that? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 04:01, 13 July 2007 (EDT)

I'd vote for "web" plus the icon, which is clear, reasonably pretty and doesn't take up too much space. E-mail should be the same, just "email" and the letter icon. This is also in line with how the listings show telephone numbers. (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:24, 13 July 2007 (EDT)

I'd love to change this, as keeping the escalating number links in order is a significant pain in my keester. However, I'd really love to see front-linked listings (the name of the listing is the text of the link). Let me note that it's pretty easy for me to change this format for listings that use the listings tags; just a few hours of work. --(WT-en) Evan 14:47, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

Wouldn't the [web] idea be easier for you and me? It means we have talk about changing the Manual of Style, before we use front linked listings. On top of that, we would need to fix 14,000+/15,000+ articles because then the non-coded listings articles would not conform to MoS. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 16:11, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

Arrrrrrgh! (WT-en) OldPine 16:38, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

I wouldn't be opposed to front linking, we already can do it in the body of the text, so the only MoS change is within listings. If Evan is willing to do the work to set up the tags to do that, then we don't need to spend time changing the linking style... we would just continue to do what we're already doing, which is slowly converting old style listings to the new listings tags, and the type of linking would happen automatically. So then, I think we should just discuss what we like more visually... I'd be okay with [web] or front-linking. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 19:21, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

I hate frontlinking, partly because I have spent painful hours reformatting it, and partly because the MoS led me to believe it was evil(tm) and should never be done in listings. I really feel it glorifies a lack of information by "lighting up" the name text. It also de-emphasizes nearby listings simply because they either have no web site or haven't had one contributed. May I ask how we are gradually converting listings to tagged? Before I burned out and took a break there was an auto-conversion someone wrote up. That was no go? </rant> (WT-en) OldPine 19:28, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

well, lately we've just been doing it by hand. But a bot of some sort would be fairly orgasmic – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:46, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

I'd like to revive the icon idea. I agree with OldPine that frontlinking encourages contributors to leave entries as is because it so clearly points to information off our guides. I would actually oppose the [web] idea for the same reason; moreover, I would find the extra text links obtrusive—a step in the wrong direction from the "footnote" style links. The only problem I see with just using the current external link icon is that its not obvious. My two possible solutions: 1. Don't care, we want potential editors to stay here and improve our guides rather than leave for another source; 2. Come up with a more obvious icon. But when all is said and done, this is just my preference and my issues with the other formats are trivial, if others disagree I'll be glad to go along with whichever option is most popular. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:04, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

I hate front-linking too, for exactly the reasons OldPine mentioned. For an example, I think that an Eat section where half the titles are blue and the other half are black is not only ugly, but also the restaurants which happen to have a website really get an unfairly advantageous emphasis, even though many restaurants don't have or even need a website. Also, listings which happen to have longer names tend to stand out much more than those with short names so that Billy Joe Bob's Wild West Steakhouse and Saloon looks a lot more important than a place called JB's. I'm fully in favor of the icon idea, and I don't really even care what the icon looks like. Even the icon we have would be better than repeating a bit of text 50 times in every article. (WT-en) Texugo 21:52, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

If we're using listing tags, we can have front-linked listings that don't have bright-blue text. They can have whatever color we want; they can just be bold text, and show an underline when you roll the mouse over them. Or they could have an underline all the time, or be a slightly different color from non-linked listings. They also don't have to have the little external-link image doohickey. --(WT-en) Evan 12:59, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

Had a feeling people wouldn't like that idea! What about @ and [7] (without the [12])? Or what if Todd/Ryan/Nick/someone made up some beautiful options for icons? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:42, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

If there's maybe some way to make the front-linked listings less obvious then I wouldn't mind them anymore. Howabout we make all listing names bold except the ones with URLs, so we wind up sort of pushing the ones that rely on external links into the background? -- (WT-en) Mark

Wow, I was being really dense above, and just realized my mistake... when Evan suggested front-linking I was thinking along the lines of:

• Bob's Taco Shop, 123 South St, +1 555 555 5555, bobs.com. A sweet-ass taco shop.

not:

• Bob's Taco Shop, 123 South St, +1 555 555 5555. A sweet-ass taco shop.

I get it now... I do kinda lean against front-linked listings like that then. If we do start to use them front-linked like that, I don't see a huge amount of difference between bold and non-bold. Examples:

• Bob's Taco Shop, 123 South St, +1 555 555 5555, www.bobs.com. A sweet-ass taco shop.
• Bob's Taco Shop, 123 South St, +1 555 555 5555. A sweet-ass taco shop.
• Bob's Taco Shop, 123 South St, +1 555 555 5555. A sweet-ass taco shop.

Hmmm. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 11:44, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

Let's not start beating this dead horse again -- this has been discussed ad nauseam and front-linked listings are still doubleplusungood. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:48, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

Front-linked listings are like a cut in chocolate rations. I agree with OldPine's rationale, and like [web] well enough. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 12:25, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

Strange, Jani, I thought you were in favour of front-linked listings.

Also, let's not do any conversion of old-style hand-built listings to a different format. Once we're using listing tags, if we decide to change output formats, it's a couple of hours of work for me, and all the listings are changed.

I'm not married to front-linked listings, but I thought they were kind of popular. We actually reached a consensus on them in the past, and backed it out because they looked bad when printed. If we're using listing tags, we can control how they look when printed. --(WT-en) Evan 12:54, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

---

While I might be new to wikivoyage, I have been with another wiki for a number years. I am not sure if this proposal has been decided yet, but since I had brought this subject up again, on the other page, may I offer my suggestion.

I disagree with having a web site listed, because the web site will be viewed with a click on the link itself. The least amount of words, IMHO would be the best, and this is what I had started to do, when I was notified that this conversation was going on.

Instead of using a name, I suggest that the type of food served there, should be seen. After all, when traveling, we get an appetite for a type of food first, and then search the location.

This link might work as neat, short, and helpfulTaco's It would not take that much more work, and would really be more helpful . Revealing the name of the restaurant, and not necessary, as it will show, once the type of food is decided on.

(WT-en) Flowergirl 11:25, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

Everyone, please please remember that using front-linking requires we change 15844 articles to conform with a change in our front-linking policy. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 12:38, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

I have not tried adding these tags to a page, but when I view some pages that use them, the names don't appear. I checked and they're in the source, but not in the HTML. Here's an example from Galveston:

*<see name="Moody Gardens" address="One Hope Boulevard" directions="off 81st St." phone="800-582-4673" fax="" email="" url="http://www.moodygardens.com" hours="" price="$39.95 day pass"></see>

<ul><li><span class="vcard"><span class="adr"><span class="street-address">One Hope Boulevard</span></span> (<span class="note">off 81st St.</span>), <span class="tel"><abbr class="type" title="voice">☎</abbr> <span class="value">800-582-4673</span></span>, <a class="url external autonumber" href="http://www.moodygardens.com">[3]</a>. <span class="price">$39.95 day pass</span>. </span></li></ul>

(WT-en) Humane Earth 15:28, 23 August 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, seems to be a funky bug... I fixed the Galveston page by clearing its cache, but this shouldn't be happening, so I filed a bug report – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 23:12, 23 August 2007 (EDT)

The listings tags do not work when translated into Russian (see ru:Участник:(WT-ru) Peterfitzgerald/Listings for an example). I presume that this is not a problem specific to Russian. Perhaps the translated tags do not work in non-Latin alphabets, in which case we should note that. Or perhaps they simply do not work at all in translation, in which we should replace the content of this section with a notice that the tags do not work in other language versions for the time being. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:58, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

Aren't we ready yet to remove the "still experimental" banner from this article? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:10, 20 October 2007 (EDT)

I think the elusive new form-based listings editor should hopefully be rolled out before too long, which will make them irrelevant. I think it's ok to add new listings using the tags, but I asked Evan if we should still be converted the old style ones to these and he said not to bother, if I recall. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 17:24, 20 October 2007 (EDT)

Speaking of which, I put the first version of the listing editor up on review today. There should be edit links next to all of the listings that allow you to edit via an in page form. If the links don't show, try saving the page to update the cache. It currently doesn't handle adding items (something we'd like to do), but you can add a stub listing <see name="my attraction"> and then edit that without having to mess with all of the tags. (WT-en) KevinSours 16:59, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

Looking good! Three things jump out at me at first glance:

1. Lack of a "description" box
2. It's not possible to edit listings on an "out of date" page that have since been deleted
3. Editor box can sometimes cover up important information while editing—would it be possible to make it float, and to enable a click-and-drag functionality to move it around while editing?

I'm really looking forward to having this listings editor completed! Also, is there a better place to discuss the draft version? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 18:41, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

→ wts:WtTech:Form-based editing of listings – let's continue there so all language versions can participate... I'm glad we're moving forward on this! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 19:38, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

As far as I understand, this is definitely no longer experimental. Moreover, the listings editor will only work for listings that use the tags. I think we should encourage people to either a) convert listings to the tags, or b) create a bot that would do this without human help. Any objections to removing the disclaimerbox & the exhortation to not convert to listings tags? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:12, 11 April 2008 (EDT)

Agreed, no longer experimental, OK to convert. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 00:15, 12 April 2008 (EDT)

When article contains both listing item and a section with the same name, section anchor is overridden by the listing--see London#Eat. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 07:16, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Swept in from the pub:

Huh? It's gone? Instead of the familiar old telephone icon, today I only see a question mark. But I'm using the same browser (Firefox 2), same computer, same glasses, etc. It's not happening in Internet Explorer, though. Anyone else experiencing this? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:14, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

Yep, but in my case it was after I migrated to Mac (Using Firefox, which worked when I was on a Win/XP OS). Safari still has it, though. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 18:35, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

Swept in from the pub:

I have seen several conflicting formatting choices for the "See", "Do", and other sections of articles and I am curious to know which is correct. This is in reference to Nashville. Thanks for the help! --(WT-en) Matt ^Talk 12:06, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

Formatted using the <do> tag like this:

* <do name = "Bluebird Cafe" address = "4104 Hillsboro Pike" directions = "" phone = "615-383-1461" email= "" fax = "" url = "http://www.bluebirdcafe.com/" hours = "" price="">With its unlikely location in a strip mall in Green Hills, has long been the destination of choice for local and national songwriters, fans of songwriters, and label scouts. Expect schmoozing, sets in-the-round, and lines around the block. Keep in mind, though, that quiet is requested at all times during a performance. </do>

• <do name = "Bluebird Cafe" address = "4104 Hillsboro Pike" directions = "" phone = "615-383-1461" email= "" fax = "" url = "http://www.bluebirdcafe.com/" hours = "" price="">With its unlikely location in a strip mall in Green Hills, has long been the destination of choice for local and national songwriters, fans of songwriters, and label scouts. Expect schmoozing, sets in-the-round, and lines around the block. Keep in mind, though, that quiet is requested at all times during a performance. </do>

Or formatted using general wikivoyage formatting, like this:

* '''Belle Meade Plantation''', 5025 Harding Road, ''+1 615'' 356 0501 (''group sales: 1-800-270-3991''), [http://www.bellemeadeplantation.com/]. Tours by costumed guides available M-Sa 9:30AM-4PM, Su 11:30AM-4PM. Featuring the mansion built in 1853 and restored restored, as well as the carriage house from 1890 and one of the oldest log cabins in Tennessee, built in 1790. There is a great deal of history associated with the plantation starting from before the American Civil War. Adult $11, Seniors $10, Children 6-12 $5, Children under 6, Free.

• Belle Meade Plantation, 5025 Harding Road, +1 615 356 0501 (group sales: 1-800-270-3991), [8]. Tours by costumed guides available M-Sa 9:30AM-4PM, Su 11:30AM-4PM. Featuring the mansion built in 1853 and restored restored, as well as the carriage house from 1890 and one of the oldest log cabins in Tennessee, built in 1790. There is a great deal of history associated with the plantation starting from before the American Civil War. Adult $11, Seniors $10, Children 6-12 $5, Children under 6, Free.

You should use the do tag format. See Project:Listings for details. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:14, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

Even despite "This feature is still experimental..."? --(WT-en) Matt ^Talk 14:21, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

We should remove that disclaimer—it's no longer experimental; it's standard. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:48, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

Got it. Thanks guys. I removed the disclaimer from Project:Listings--(WT-en) Matt ^Talk 15:54, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

It may be standard, but it still has problems. I'm not sure why we use an XML-style tag instead of a MediaWiki template; the latter seems more flexible and wiki-like, though I suppose there may be some performance problems. I've also had problems formatting the data in the Listings tags -- primarily, I can't get the country code and area code to be italicized in the phone number field. (WT-en) LtPowers 19:19, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

I agree with (WT-en) LtPowers, not long ago i reported on shared about this impossibilities. -- (WT-en) Sergey kudryavtsev 02:17, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

Is it me or is there something a bit off with the "price" section when using the tag listings format? I just noticed recently that when using this format for listings, it doesn't automatically put a space in between the description of the listing and its price info right at the end. It seems to put a space in between all the other bits like "phone" "email" "hours" etc. It kind of makes the end of the listing look cramped...especially if you do not end it with a period but a tall character like ! or ?. example:

• <eat name="Solstice Restaurant and Lounge" alt="" address="2801 California St" directions="at Divisadero St" phone="+1 415 359-1222" email "[email protected]" fax="+1 415 359-1242" url="http://www.solsticelounge.com/" hours="5PM-midnight daily" price="$8-$17">Modern well decorated restaurant and lounge that serves up tasty, yet affordable treats, like "gorgonzola mac-n-cheese" and "tempura battered fish tacos." It gets very packed in the evenings...a good sign!</eat>

(WT-en) Asterix 16:54, 31 August 2008 (EDT)

That's definitely happening, and I don't think it was that way before. I let the tech team know. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:53, 31 August 2008 (EDT)

Archived from the Pub:

Hi, would it be possible to implement the ability to have wiki links inside of listing tags in any of the fields? This would really help to make a proper listing out of a location when the location has an own article and one just wants to outline it's there and why the travellers should go see it. --(WT-en) FreakRob 05:29, 8 December 2008 (EST)

Uhh, that's not what listings are for, really. Can you give an example? Why not just use a plain old paragraph? (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:49, 8 December 2008 (EST)

I'm guessing he's looking for something like: <see name="[[Walt Disney World Resort]]"></see>. The other fields in the see tag could be useful and would allow the listing for WDW to look the same as the listings for the other attractions in the list. (WT-en) LtPowers 10:29, 8 December 2008 (EST)

I am interested in implementing almost exactly the same thing on a gardening wiki ( http://www.plants.am ) so that I can add listings of species onto a genus page, with growing zones, watering needs, etc. Can someone please point out a resource to help me figure out how to get it onto there with the nice little "add listing" link and form?? Thanks! (WT-en) Raffikojian 13:04, 24 November 2008 (EST)

Kevin might be able to help you find this information. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:47, 24 November 2008 (EST)

I'm after the same thing. It might be useful and helpful to others if this implementation i.e. the javascript and the inputboxes was explained so others could use it on different wikis --rfahey 18:03, 13 May 2009 (EDT)

Kevin is not likely following this page. I recommend contacting him via email. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 21:31, 13 May 2009 (EDT)

Thanks a lot, I'll do that. Regards, Richard Fahey --212.167.5.6 07:40, 14 May 2009 (EDT)

Yes, thanks very much, I'll try that now as well. (WT-en) Raffikojian 09:05, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Swept from pub:

Is there a policy about inserting mailto: tags into listings? It's done fairly often, but I think the policy should be not to use them, because it 1) adds to the impression that Wikivoyage is primarily to be used as a web site rather than as printouts, 2) it's not in the template, 3) it looks ugly printed out, 4) such links are formatted inconsistently (e.g. sometimes you see the word "email:" used with the tag, sometimes not), and 5) most people who want to email are going to go to the hotel's web site anyway, where they usually will find a mailto: tag or contact box. Simply having a policy not to use the tags would simplify everything. (WT-en) Sailsetter 19:22, 8 January 2009 (EST)

E-mail addresses appear to be made into mailto: links automatically by the listings tags, as in below:

• <listing name="Sample" email="[email protected]" />

Seems like a useful feature to me that doesn't take up that much room. -- (WT-en) LtPowers 20:08, 8 January 2009 (EST)

(WT-en) Sailsetter, You make a big assumption that everyone can be contacted via a contact page using their website. What if their web page contact page is not working, or they don't have one? Sure the big hotels have one, but what about the little bed and breakfast places who have a single web page/advert or those strange businesses that have an e-mail address but no website, yet? Also, in many places you can send an internet e-mail for free, but website access costs money. Having the e-mail address is a definite plus. While not using the e-mail tags would siplify things for the editors, it would make things harder for the traveller. A prime directive of Wikivoyage is The traveller comes first. Therefore, e-mail addresses should be listed, where they are available to be used. The need is to develop a policy that makes the presentation consistent. The above suggestion by (WT-en) LtPowers seems like a good way to do things to me. -- (WT-en) Huttite 03:02, 17 January 2009 (EST)

Just to be clear, it's not a suggestion; it's the way Wikivoyage works right now if you use the "email" field for listings. (WT-en) LtPowers 10:18, 17 January 2009 (EST)

I think two issues are being confused here: whether we ought to give email addresses, and how we should present them. I certainly wasn't suggesting not including email addresses; I was questioning the presentation of email addresses in mailto: format, for the reasons I indicated. Another reason I could mention is that the mailto: function is widely detested on the internet, since if you don't use Outlook Express some other PC-based email system, but instead do all your emailing on a web site mailer like gmail, then it's irritating that whenever you click on a mailto: link, your system freezes while it chugs along bringing up Outlook Express, which you then have to close before you can do anything else. (This often happens because the mailto: tag is hidden behind some link like Contact Us.) It's surprisingly difficult to get your system not to do this, especially with Firefox, and when I say it's widely detested I'm not just claiming that: do a Google search on something like Firefox default email to see how many people are irritated by this and how complicated the suggested solutions are -- and so far I haven't been able to get any of them to work! Anyway, if people are going to use mailto: in Wikivoyage, I think they should at least do it right. Put mailto: in the Wikivoyage search box to see how ugly it can get. (WT-en) Sailsetter 10:51, 17 January 2009 (EST)

I guess I don't understand your complaint, then. The links are not hidden but are clearly e-mail addresses; anyone clicking on one should know what's going to happen. They should be formatted consistently as long as the listing tags are used correctly. And I have no idea what you mean by "It's not in the template". (WT-en) LtPowers 16:29, 17 January 2009 (EST)

It's not my complaint that the addresses are hidden, and in fact I don't see anything in my above remarks that implies that. My complaint about the appearance is that the addresses often appear on the screen like this:

        email: mailto:[email protected] 

This is obviously wrong: the email address in question is not mailto:[email protected], it is [email protected]. What I mean by it's not in the template is that for instance the listing template for hotels (maybe template is the wrong Wikivoyage jargon for this, but that's what it really is)has an email input area reading

       email=""  

There's no indication that your email address is going to be turned into a mailto: tag, which I think as one contributor is confusing. (WT-en) Sailsetter 12:01, 18 January 2009 (EST)

Well, there's no indication that the data entered into the URL field will be turned into a link, either, but I guess I don't see that as a problem. We, as Wikivoyage, want to show e-mail addresses if they're relevant, and there's no reason not to make them into a link if we're going to show them. As for the "email: mailto:" thing, can you show me an example? (WT-en) LtPowers 16:53, 18 January 2009 (EST)

I gave what I thought were several good reasons not to make them into a mailto: link, most especially that if I click on a URL link, I go to that link, everything ok, but if I click on a mailto: link and I don't want to use Outlook Express, my system goes bonkers. And as for the formatting, I gave an example eight lines above your request for an example, which I found by typing the string mailto: into the Wikivoyage search box, as I explained a dozen lines above that. (WT-en) Sailsetter 14:58, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Sorry, by "example" I was hoping you could point to a specific article. I thought your example was just something you typed in. Doing a search, as you suggested, I see that your example comes from a page that isn't even using the listing tags. Someone hardcoded that in the wikitext markup. There's nothing we can do about that except fix it when we find it -- I'm surprised you haven't fixed it yourself, yet.

As for problems with mailto: links, I still don't see the problem. If your system doesn't handle mailto: links well, then don't click on e-mail addresses. (WT-en) LtPowers 18:27, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Before the listings tags existed, we used to type everything out manually, and it was (and technically still is) part of the MoS to build email addresses using the mailto format (though you were supposed to hide the "mail to" text). Emails are still included now in the listings tags if you use the ones in the edit tools box when editing a page... but unfortunately when the "add listings" box was created the person(s) creating it thought they would keep things to a minimum and left some fields off, email being one of them... personally I think that should be changed. I'm in favor of keeping the mailto format however, those who don't like it know how to not click on it, but those of us who do use outlook, etc, appreciate not having to copy-paste – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 19:38, 19 January 2009 (EST)

I'd say we should obviously insert mailto: tags for email addresses just as we use http: in web URLs. it is part of the defined format and browsers or smartphones know how to use it.

The problem of using the wrong application (Outlook on some systems, Thunderbird on mine) for mailto: tags is easily fixed. On my firefox, the menu sequence is edit-> preferences-> applications-> mailto. Not trivial, but hardly rocket science either. Pashley (talk) 01:22, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not entirely sure if this is the place to talk about the "add listing" button, but it seems close enough...

As anyone who keeps a close eye on a huge city article knows, often an unexperienced member will add a restaurant, hotel, or some sort of listing to the main city article instead of to the district article, where it belongs. This is nothing new; there has always been confusion surrounding district articles. But then it hit me: we have those "add listing" buttons right on every article on the site, including the ones you're not supposed to add listings to (huge city articles, major regional articles, country articles, etc)!

I'm sure a lot of complex programming went into putting that little feature in, but would it be possible to add something where someone (say, admins) could remove it from articles that shouldn't have it? It just seems silly to have a button in places where no one is actually allowed to use it.

Obviously I'm not a programmer, so if what I'm asking is totally unreasonable or would just be way more trouble than it's worth, then just forget it. It's not like we're dealing with a dire matter here or anything. It's just a thought. (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 04:16, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I've seen this issue quite frequently with Chicago as well, and am also reliant upon the efforts of other for help on the programming end. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 07:22, 12 January 2009 (EST)

It might be possible to create some sort of {{nolisting}} template, but looking at the CSS for the tags there aren't any IDs or other means that would make it easy to do. If IB could modify the code slightly so that all "add listing" links were surrounded in something like <span id="listing_do_1">...</span> then we could put something together that would suppress them from appearing. Might be a good candidate for a tech request. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 04:28, 12 January 2009 (EST)

It was mentioned briefly at wts:WtTech:"add listing" link occurence improvements, I'm noting it again there now – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 10:11, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Email is one of those fields that I wish we had left off the listings editor—so it would be used only when it's really appropriate (similar to how I feel about the directions field). It could be that I'm missing out on something, but as a traveler, I've never emailed any museum, restaurant, shop, cafe, pub, etc. The only type of listing for which I think anyone might really use the email field would be hotels, right? Even then I would just book online or call, but I've at least heard of travelers using email in this fashion (same goes for faxing).

I find emails in listings doubly unhelpful because they waste space and distract the eye from the other more important details (as we discussed above on this page). I realize that could be fixed by simply altering the listing editor to display a mail icon instead of the full email address, and that we should tailor format to content, not the other way around. But unfortunately, we don't have the tech support/access to fix these types of formatting issues.

So here's my question, when and why should we use the email field? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 14:14, 2 February 2010 (EST)

I'd almost go so far as to say that e-mail is only useful if the listing doesn't have a web site (there are a few). For listings that have web sites, contact information is readily available. The only disadvantage is that sometimes you can send an e-mail without having access to a web browser, like an SMS interface from your mobile phone. (WT-en) LtPowers 14:59, 2 February 2010 (EST)

For hotels, email should be kept at least when there is no website. Another case is a restaurant that is very popular but accepts reservations--or attraction (like Dali museum in Figueres) which allows reservation by email. And you are absolutely right that addresses should be collapsed on web, although it won't help in a printed guide. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 15:43, 2 February 2010 (EST)

Hard to disagree with any of that. As the display is so ugly, some editors have stopped including them anyway. Interestingly, if you hit the "add listing" link from within an article, there is no email field in the pop-up.. It is the template from the edit screen that is the problem.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 21:23, 2 February 2010 (EST)

1. Tried to search around for this, but didn't find an answer. What is the preferred way to list listings that has a translatable, i.e. the Drama theatre in Komsomolsk, when a "foreign" alphabet is used?

• <do name="Drama Theatre" alt="Драматический театр" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price=""></do>
• <do name="Dramaticheskij Theatre" alt="Драматический театр" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price=""></do>
• <do name="Drama Theatre" alt="Драматический театр, Dramaticheskij Theatre" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price=""></do>

The first one might seem like the most obvious, but if you don't have 1337 Cyrillic/Kanji/Arabic skills, it might not be obvious how to ask for directions. The 2nd one has the disadvantage of loosing clarity (maybe not in this example, but definitively in others), and the third one can get really long as evidenced by this other listing in Komsomolsk

• <see name="City Museum" alt="Museum of Local lore) Городской краеведческий музей города Комсомольск-на-Амуре, Gorodskoj kraevedcheskij muzej goroda Komsomol'sk-na-Amure" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price="">bla bla bla</see>

Comments or pointers to previous discussions? --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 17:53, 3 February 2010 (EST)

Another question I've had popping up while doing work with Russian cities, is the correct approach to a street name, should a listing on Lenina Street be listed as Ulica Lenina 7, Ul Lenina 7, Lenina St 7 or Lenina St (Улица Ленина) 7? again the last and most useful onem has the potential to make some quite long and potentially confusing pages

• <see name="City Museum" alt="Museum of Local lore) Городской краеведческий музей города Комсомольск-на-Амуре, Gorodskoj kraevedcheskij muzej goroda Komsomol'sk-na-Amure" address="Komsomolskaya Prospekt (Комсомольский проспект) 7" directions="" phone="Phone number is 3 lines down on my PC" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price=""></see>

Comments or pointers to previous discussions? --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 17:53, 3 February 2010 (EST)

In general, and this applies to both questions: Words that aren't proper nouns should be in English, except where no English translation exists (e.g., "teppanyaki" or "gamelan"). Proper nouns should be in English if there is a common English version of the name; otherwise, the native name should be Romanized. But that's just my opinion; I'm not sure if there is an established consensus one way or another. (WT-en) LtPowers 19:58, 3 February 2010 (EST)

I've been using just the Russian for addresses, but that's probably improper. For Yakutsk#Eat, I figure someone using the guide would either know how to read the Cyrillic, or would be better off just printing this and showing the address to their taxi driver.

• <eat name="Tygyn Darkhan" alt="Тыгын Дархан" address="ул. Аммосова, 9" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="8AM-10AM, noon-3PM, 6PM-11PM daily" price="~1,000 rubles">This is the best place in Yakutia (and thus likely the world) to try Yakut national cuisine. Some iconic Yakut dishes to look out for include Oiogos (Ойогос) — baked foal ribs, Salamat (Саламат) porridge, and Indigirka (Индигирка) salad — made with frozen fish.</eat>

It would probably be better, though, to also include a transliterated address. For addresses, I don't think translated proper nouns would be very helpful, aside from very famous ones, which should be included in addition to the more useful transliteration. For example:

• <eat name="Tygyn Darkhan" alt="Тыгын Дархан" address="ул. Аммосова, 9" directions="ulitsa Ammosova, 9" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="8AM-10AM, noon-3PM, 6PM-11PM daily" price="~1,000 rubles">This is the best place in Yakutia (and thus likely the world) to try Yakut national cuisine. Some iconic Yakut dishes to look out for include Oiogos (Ойогос) — baked foal ribs, Salamat (Саламат) porridge, and Indigirka (Индигирка) salad — made with frozen fish.</eat>
• <see name="Attraction X" address="თავისუფლების მოედანი (Freedom Square)" directions="tavisuplebis moedani" phone="+X XXXXX-XX" email="" fax="" url="" hours="8AM-10AM, noon-3PM, 6PM-11PM daily" price="~1,000 lari"></see>

Am I right in thinking the directions field would be best for transliterations (especially since it will be italicized)?

And I'm not aware of previous discussions on this topic. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:40, 3 February 2010 (EST)

swept from pub:

I've noticed recently quite a few listings gaining 'lat="" long="" ' attributes. Many times these are happening as an edit to a listing without any of the information being changed. Should listings now have these attributes, or are they being added randomly by someone who thinks they are helping and actually should be remvoed? (WT-en) Nrms 12:28, 22 February 2010 (EST)

The reason is because our nice little pop-up listing editor includes lat and long fields but the "click-to-insert" shortcut links that appear underneath the edit window do not. Currently, I believe that the lat and long fields are nonfunctional (but harmless), but they're there in anticipation of future functionality. (WT-en) LtPowers 16:40, 22 February 2010 (EST)

A third party user of our free data, may of course find a good use for them. --(WT-en) inas 16:59, 22 February 2010 (EST)

As far as I recall (WT-en) Rezendi's iTravelWrite iPhone app mashes them up with google maps or something like that, at least that was his intention in the early posts he did. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 17:06, 22 February 2010 (EST)

Ah. Just seemed a little strange that they sometimes end up as an addition to a listing when no other change is made to the page :) (WT-en) Nrms 08:03, 23 February 2010 (EST)

That baffled me for weeks as well, until I finally figured it out :). Strange little thing that popup editor; does this lat/long business but does not have an email address field!--(WT-en) Burmesedays 08:30, 23 February 2010 (EST)

I'm not really sure if this is the right place to start this discussion, so please feel free to move it to somewhere more relevant if necessary.

I don't know if there has ever been a discussion on this but by (some unwritten, I guess) convention we add small national flags at the beginning of embassy/consulate listings, which is alright and in fact is nice to add colour to otherwise very boring lists.

Citizens of European Union seem to entitle to consular help from consulates of European Union countries other than their nation's (I am not sure if that's always possible or when a consulate/embassy of their nation does not exist in that city or country; maybe someone with more knowledge can clarify that). So to avoid edits like this popping up at cope sections of major cities all over the world, how about adding European Union flags [9] in addition to national flags (preferably, before national flags) for consulates of member countries of European Union? The Union currently has 27 members and it's likely to expand, and not every European citizen necessarily should be aware of each of them. But then, you may ask, what makes European Union special, as, for example, Australians and New Zealanders are mutually entitled to consular help from each other's representative offices, as are Brits and Canadians (I remember reading about this somewhere I cannot recall at the moment). So I'm not outright proposing small European flags at the moment, I just want to hear thoughts on this. – (WT-en) Vidimian 15:44, 16 August 2010 (EDT)

Personally, I'm not sure we should have the flags at all. Our image use policy| requests that we keep image use to a minimum out of respect for users who are traveling and may have limited bandwidth. Putting a flag aside every consulate and embassy listing on the site seems contrary to that rule. (WT-en) LtPowers 20:28, 16 August 2010 (EDT)

It's a bit hard I think, because Switzerland also takes care of consular matters for Americans in Iran. I think this happens with many other nations as well. I am not sure on EU laws on this, but I think it's not even (yet) possible for a European citizen to use the embassy of another European nation to take care of things. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 20:41, 16 August 2010 (EDT)

Yes, there are possibly many more agreements with similar effects. And if there is no such agreement between EU countries in effect yet, then my initial suggestion is nullified.

However, like I said before, I do kind of like those small flags at the consulate listings but I also understand that they can be real culprits of slow page loads when trying to access Wikivoyage while travelling. Listings that are collapsible by default (which were discussed a bit here) can be the key, although I'm not sure whether they are automatically loaded with the rest of the page when the box is indeed collapsed (which makes no difference in regard to users with limited bandwidths, then). – (WT-en) Vidimian 08:39, 17 August 2010 (EDT)

The images would be loaded with the page even if hidden with CSS. (WT-en) LtPowers 10:04, 17 August 2010 (EDT)

I like the flags, they spice up that long boring list of consulates and it's easier to find your country with them. For the few KB they take up, I don't think they substantially add to loading times, even on slow connections. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 09:37, 17 August 2010 (EDT)

Indeed - Firefox tells me those flags takes up 700-850 bytes per flag, around 15 kb for the whole section in Copenhagen, hardly excessive use of bandwidth as far as I'm concerned. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 23:35, 17 August 2010 (EDT)

Swept in from the pub:

I posted this on Shared a few days ago, but the pub here is busier, so I thought I'd post here too:

Listing tags were partially implemented on pt: a while back with a translation of the wizard interface but without translating the actual tag names or attributes. Now I know how to translate those and I think it would be best to do so, but the problem is now that lots of those tags have been inserted in articles-- if I make the translations on the MediaWiki attribute pages, all the existing listings will immediate stop working, and there is no way to search and change the tags manually because the search engine (apparently) ignores things within brackets <>, not to mention the fact that there are a lot of them and changing them manually would be extremely tedious. If we had a substitution script to go through all the articles and change some strings like "<eat" to "<coma", "name=" to "nome=", "address=" to "endereço=", etc. it would solve this problem and I could go ahead and complete the tag translations so that everything works in Portuguese so that users would be more likely to use tags in the future. However, I know absolutely nothing about writing and running scripts. Would anyone like to work with me to create a script for us? Or, can anyone think of a different solution to this problem (i.e. a way to make the system accept tags and their attributes in both English and Portuguese)? Any help would be greatly appreciated!! (WT-en) Texugo 10:58, 21 February 2011 (EST)

Yet another reason I'm baffled as to the implementation of our listings tags. If they'd been done with MediaWiki templates, it'd be a simple matter to wrap the English template in a Portuguese wrapper. (WT-en) LtPowers 22:08, 26 February 2011 (EST)

But they do seem to be done with MediaWiki templates-- those listed at the bottom of Project:Listings. The problem is that the English template was already implemented in lots of listings there on pt:. If I translate the template now, all those existing English ones will stop working, and finding and replacing them manually would be an inordinate pain in the arse without a script.(WT-en) texugo 02:44, 27 February 2011 (EST)

No, by "MediaWiki templates", I mean the ones in the Template: namespace. Pages in the MediaWiki: namespace are interface messages. (WT-en) LtPowers 20:17, 27 February 2011 (EST)

Ah, gotcha, but you understand my problem, right? Know how to make a substitution script? (WT-en) texugo 21:28, 27 February 2011 (EST)

No, I'm afraid not. I could probably write one, but I wouldn't know how to tell you to execute it. =) (WT-en) LtPowers 16:18, 1 March 2011 (EST)

Maybe this has been discussed somewhere but I don't know where to look. How do we feel about listing multiple phone number/fax numbers? My personal feeling is that it is unnecessary (and cluttery) when someone feels the need to provide 3 complete phone number and 3 complete fax numbers. What's our feeling about this? (WT-en) texugo 00:50, 27 February 2011 (EST)

Of course there may be cases where it's necessary, but in the vast majority of cases, a single phone number should be sufficient. In places where faxes are common, a fax number is of course fine. (WT-en) LtPowers 20:12, 27 February 2011 (EST)

Is this enshrined on a policy page somewhere? If not, I think it should be. What would be a valid reason for having more than one? (WT-en) texugo 20:18, 27 February 2011 (EST)

There are fields for "phone", "fax", and "tollfree", which in my opinion is plenty. If someone wants to update policy to state that use of additional phone numbers is simply clutter then I'd be 100% in support. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:50, 27 February 2011 (EST)

Let's make it an official proposal then:

Numbers should be limited to one per field, for phone, fax, and toll-free. If there are multiple phone number for your listing, please choose only one.

• Support, to avoid cluttered listings. (WT-en) texugo 22:58, 27 February 2011 (EST)

Swept in from the pub

I have recently added a listing for the church I attend into the Golden Horseshoe page because my church is a multi-site church and I thought that any visitors to this area might be looking for a church to attend. Also, I thought it might have been helpful to put individual listings on the page for each city where there is a site for the church so visitors could easily find it if they happen to be in that area. Unfortunately, all my additions and listings got summarily deleted and each individual page got reverted back to its state prior to my last edit by one of the administrators, stating that I was proselytizing. It was by no means my intentions to force people to come to my church or tell them that my church is right and everybody else is wrong. The pages affected were: Brampton, Burlington (Ontario), Halifax (Nova Scotia), Hamilton (Ontario), Kingston (Ontario), Kitchener, London (Ontario), Oakville (Ontario), Ottawa, Parry Sound, Toronto, and Waterloo (Ontario). Now, I would like to know, how can I (if I can) add a listing for a church/place of worship/religious service without appearing to be "proselytiz-y"? I noticed that there is still a listing for religious services under "Cope" for Windsor (Ontario). Can it stay or should it be deleted as well? If it can stay, can I use that as a template? Thanks for your help. (WT-en) ElectroSpace 01:59, 17 April 2011 (EDT)

As I was one of the two people who removed many of these listings, User talk:(WT-en) ElectroSpace#Meeting House Listings has some of the reasoning. Wikivoyage isn't currently anti-religion, and as Project:Where you can stick it#C states, places of worship that aren't otherwise tourist destinations can be listed under the "Cope" section of an article, but I have concerns about listings for religious "services" being copied to more than a dozen articles. For example [10] says to "call ahead" and that "locations vary" - to me, listing a building with an address and regular services is something helpful for travelers, but listings for "services" that vary in schedule and location crosses a line and starts us down a slippery slope. If others disagree then these listings can be easily restored, but I think some discussion definitely needs to take place first. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 02:40, 17 April 2011 (EDT)

ElectroSpace, consider what this site would look like if we listed every church in every city in the world. We can't, and in fact one of our explicit non-goals is to be a directory listing of all the [restaurants/hotels/churches] in a given location. Now, people who travel often do need to know where they can find an appropriate house of worship, but for reasons of pure practicality, we have to limit such listings to a reasonable number. We may not have hit that target everywhere, but that's our goal. (WT-en) LtPowers 15:26, 17 April 2011 (EDT)

My specific reasons for eliminating your listings were 1) multiple listings, 2) description of the beliefs of the church, i.e. claims about the "real Jesus", and 3) extraneous details like the name of the pastor and the mention of where else the church can be found. Beyond that, I have a general sense that most Christians on vacation forego religious services, and those that don't are dedicated enough not to be shopping for a new denomination to try out. I feel that your listing was trying to appeal to people to come try out your church, and I think that is something that is outside our scope at Wikivoyage.

Incidentally, aside from User:(WT-en) Jonboy's question on the WYCSI talk page back in 2006 and User:(WT-en) Jpatokal's subsequent addition of it into the WYCSI list, I can't find any actual discussion of the appropriateness of listing non-tourist churches at all, and I think it is something that should be revisited, because this is something that is an inherently un-policeable slippery slope:

• Unlike other types of listings, people general tend to stick to their own chosen denomination, so any listing we have basically serves only the fraction of the population that already belongs to that denomination. Wikivoyage has no business trying to offer descriptions of beliefs or exhortations about how welcoming the service/congregation/pastor is, because people are unlikely to change to a new type of church anyway, and we are not in the business of encouraging them do so.
• We can't possibly hope to cater to even a majority of faiths without allowing a virtual phone directory of possibilities. Even within Christianity there are so many denominations: Catholic, Orthodox, Southern Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Unitarian, Anglican, Adventist, Church of God in Christ, Church of Christ, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Presbyterian, many subdivisions within these, many other less populous denominations and so-called non-denominational churches, not to mention all the many denominations of Islam, Hindu, Buddhism, and other major world religions. While it hasn't become a problem in the vast majority of articles, if we allow non-tourist churches to be listed then we must, to be fair, allow all types of worship service to be added-- how can we prune a long list of churches without someone saying "Why did you cut my church? It's not fair."
• There are quite often multiple churches for the same denomination within a city, even quite small ones. There is no way for Wikivoyage to recommend one over another-- obviously the people who go to each church are partial to their church for whatever reasons, and there is no good way for us to choose which one(s) to list, nor to police edits and additions in this regard.
• For those who speak English well enough to utilize our guides in the first place, it is easy enough in the English-speaking world to pick up a phone book and choose one from the giant list in the phone book. For those in a non-English speaking country, if their mastery of that language is good enough to appreciate a church service in that language, they are also good enough at it to use a phone book there.
• This point is rather an aside, and it would be quite difficult to come up with statistics to show it, but my gut feeling is that the majority of travellers are prepared to forego religious services during their trip anyway.

With these reasons, I would propose that non-tourist churches be disallowed, period. The only exceptions I might consider allowing are churches in non-English-speaking countries that have services in English, since that is something that would be hard for a non-speaker of the local language to track down, and since it would be fairly obvious what should or shouldn't be included and the list would likely be always short and manageable. I'd like to hear more opinions on this, and probably the discussion should be moved elsewhere, though I'm not sure where offhand. (WT-en) texugo 02:15, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

You make some good points. It does seem like listing specific churches may be a bad slippery slope (though many of the same points apply to removing listings for embassies and consulates, and I lost that argument). Certainly an overview (in the Cope section) of the types of religious services available in a destination would be appropriate, but I wouldn't mind a prohibition on individual listings. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:12, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

Support. Churches, temples etc. that fit into "see" do of course have their place here, but this isn't the Yellow Pages. And who should then decide which places should be included and which not? It will mean trouble and a lot of angry people complaining about their place of worship being removed. (WT-en) Ypsilon 10:12, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

I'd be a bit uncomfortable with a blanket ban on listing churches in the "Cope" section since many people do attend a church while on vacation, and many that I know will attend a different denomination's services if their preferred denomination isn't represented. That said, I agree that very long lists are to be avoided, so would something similar to the rule on rental car companies work, ie if there are ten or more churches in a locality that they should not be individually listed? Similarly, I'd also suggest we avoid listings for "services" where the group in question doesn't have their own, single-purpose building to avoid a plethora of non-traditional listings that most travelers would not be looking for. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:02, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

Ryan, in the US at least, even tiny towns of only 10000 people usually have ten or more churches. (WT-en) texugo 11:18, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

In my hometown of Pampa, Texas, for example, population of only between 15 and 16 thousand people, I stopped counting at 50 churches when I did a Google search. How can we ever fairly choose a helpful handful of those to recommend on our guide? (WT-en) texugo 11:27, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

I don't dispute that in most cases this policy would result in the article not listing individual churches, but for out-of-the-way places, some district articles, and smaller cities it would provide a way for places of worship to be included. Additionally, just as with car rental agencies I'd suggest that we wouldn't need to do any trimming until the list begins getting excessive, so if an article only has 5-10 out of several dozen places of worship listed there would be no need for any trimming to be done. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:54, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

Ten seems like a lot, I'd be tempted to go with five as a limit if we don't exclude it entirely. (WT-en) LtPowers 20:06, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

And Ryan, how would you answer to my point that there can be absolutely no fair criteria for trimming once it does get more than whatever limit we set? I'm afraid we are setting a trap for ourselves later. What's wrong with leaving them a phone book to find their church out of Los Angeles' literally thousands of places of worship? Who's going to choose which of their 566 Baptist churches to recommend? And on what criteria? (WT-en) texugo 21:49, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

I'm not proposing that we trim - I'm proposing that if there are more than 5-10 listings we remove all individual listings for the article. That's what we currently do with car rental agency listings (see the final bullet point under Project:External links#What not to link to). -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:54, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

With car rental agencies, most places don't have many and customers generally don't have this kind of loyalty to one company over another. We decided to not list them if there are a lot there because it should be easy enough for travellers to find one, hence the "don't link to them in places where they are common" policy you linked to. With churches, they have a much higher degree of loyalty, and the vast majority of destinations have far, far more than 5 or 10, and hence already surpass the "easy to find" and "common" thresholds. Are you just suggesting it be first-come-first-served for people to highlight their preferred church until it reaches a magic number and then we blank it? I don't think that is a very fair or comprehensive approach.(WT-en) texugo 22:20, 18 April 2011 (EDT)

I think this may be an agree-to-disagree scenario, both with respect to church listings and why the rental car policy was put in place. My opinion remains that there isn't harm in allowing a handful of churches/synagogues/mosques to be listed in articles so long as the list doesn't grow too long, but it looks like I'm in the minority on this one. I do, however, think we should avoid religious "services" that aren't in a fixed location on a fixed schedule since that starts us down a slippery slope towards some potentially questionable areas. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:05, 19 April 2011 (EDT)

We dont list supermarkets, we dont list dentists, we dont list places of worship. We list tourist attractions, places and services that are useful to the traveller in general. The usefulness of listing places of worship is limited to those travellers who subscribe to the particular religion, if that. If a place of worship is a tourist attraction then it gets listed as such, and many are among the architectural and artistic treasures of the world. Most are not. Most are as aesthetically inspiring as your average strip mall. I am very much against starting a bandwagon of religions touting on Wikivoyage. That way lies disaster. If you think we have problems with car hire and apartment touting, we will look back on them with fondness as the good old days. A couple of religious fanatics starting a spam/flame war could trash the whole project. Next thing we have a fatwa, (and beware the Pastafarians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster). Religious neutrality is the only way to avoid this problem. This means no listings, all listings or only listings that are totally non-contoversial. That would mean listings that are completely acceptable to persons of all religious convictions. Listings on Wikivoyage are traditionally limited to a maximum of 9 per destination. In other words, as soon as anyone protests a place of worship or deletes its listing, or adds a 10th listing, it is gone forever. Extrapolating from historical precedent in religious agreement so far, this level of agreement between religions will never happen. Far easier to go with no listings at all. If people feel strongly that they or co-religionists need to know where their places of worship can be found, a travel topic could be the way to go. That way only people who have some interest in that particular religion are exposed to the list of addresses. There could be topics on pilgrimages, that would fit in with Itineraries, and could even be moderately interesting. There are some classic pilgrimages.• • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 02:35, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

I don't disagree with your point of view on listing places of worship, but I have indeed seen listings for supermarkets, such as in district articles within cities, and such listings can be very useful for travelers. I believe I've seen listings for dental clinics under "Cope," too, and consider such listings very useful, if they're limited to clinics that take people 24 hours or/and in emergencies, for example, or in places where there is only one or a few dental clinics in the area. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 03:04, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

OK you got me there. "Never mind what I say, listen to what I mean". Clearly I didn't do my homework on this one. Anyway, I think the supermarkets and dental clinics can be, as you suggest, useful to the average traveller, they were just the first examples that came into my mind of things we dont really want exhaustive lists of for every destination, and they are less likely to cause trouble too, or at least the dentists are not likely to start touting on Wikivoyage. Not so sure about supermarket chains though... • • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 05:00, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

I think we should be flexible enough to take some things on a case by case basis. I actually have seen a few instances of touting by dentists, but I don't think that's a good reason to forbid listing dental clinics in any situation, and I just specified a couple of reasonable exceptions to such a blanket ban. Similarly, while we definitely don't want lists of supermarkets hundreds of items long, a few mentions of good ones in particular neighborhoods can be useful in certain cases. So, to brainstorm, I think the way this relates to listing religious institutions is that famous ones, visited by a really large number of tourists or/and pilgrims, should be listed. And sometimes, the interest is not mainly architectural but cultural. For example, the Abyssinian Baptist Church is a venerable Harlem institution, in terms of history, advocacy for civil rights and the rights of the community, and Gospel services. It amply meets any test for inclusion in the Harlem and Upper Manhattan guide, though its architectural interest is moderate at most. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 10:17, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

Touting by dentists comes as a bit of a surprise to me, I suppose it is because in my part of the world the medical council frowns on that sort of thing. No matter, In a large enough universe many weird things will happen. The Abyssinian baptist church you refer to surely qualifies to be listed under "See", for the reasons you give. I am not against anything thet is a bona fide place or object of interest for travellers, or is of general utility to a significant proportion of travellers, but keeping religion out of destination articles is a general principle I think we should stick with as it is not so much a slippery slope as a bottomless precipice. • • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 03:27, 22 April 2011 (EDT)

We are essentially in agreement. If anything, my emphasis is slightly different, in that I'm arguing more for retaining a reasonable level of flexibility, while you're rightly pointing to the "bottomless precipice" that could suck us up. So where I come down is that a great deal of caution is needed, but that we still need to look at entries on places of worship on a case-to-case basis and resist the desire to promulgate a rule that's too rigid, but at the same time, any guideline on such listings should state that they need to be justified by cultural interest to travelers or/and historically well-established interest to pilgrims, or in cases where English-language services are unusual in a given non-English-speaking locality. Does that sound reasonable to you? (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 14:42, 22 April 2011 (EDT)

This is Wikivoyage, no rules are totally rigid. You just have to adequately justify breaking with consensus. I have no problem with listings that are of cultural interest, and pilgrimage sites would normally fall ito that category (but have no problem with them anyway, some travelling is required to make it a pilgrimage). Places where English language services are offered in non-English-speaking locality are arguable, but lets expand locality to region. • • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) ^Talk 08:45, 26 April 2011 (EDT)

Region or city is where I would come down. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 15:51, 26 April 2011 (EDT)

(Coming in late, and sorry not to respond to all topics touched on above.) Travelers do often need info on availability of religious services, but listing all churches, synagogues, mosques, and what have you would just bog down our site. My experience is that travelers have one of three questions on this topic:

1. Where is the closest X of my denomination?
2. Where is the most famous X of my denomination?
3. Where the heck can I find anyone to worship with from my denomination?

The first, I think, we should define as out-of-scope—much as we do with barbershops, for instance—simply because we cannot reasonably do so without overwhelming our other content. The second and third questions, however, are within our capabilities. The one example that comes immediately to mind is Chicago#Religious services. That section succinctly takes care of the two travel needs that I think we can reasonably cover, and cover reasonably succinctly! This type of section would by no means be desirable for every article, but it fit well in that huge city guide. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:53, 2 June 2011 (EDT)

I ran into this. Any comments? (WT-en) Ypsilon 02:26, 3 June 2011 (EDT)

Considering the size of the place that's not bad: something for everyone, yet short and succinct with just the key info. The only thing missing might be a contact no. The only quirk is the title "Cope", which is bizarre; even "Refresh" might be better! A priority here, of course, should be English language services in non-English speaking countries; there won't be many, but they're an oasis for English-speaking holidaymakers. This article shows that a sensible balance can be struck for larger articles. In smaller articles if the one or two churches are a point of interest mentioned elsewhere, we could just add times of services and contact no, rather than repeat info in a separate paragraph. --(WT-en) SaxonWarrior 07:47, 23 June 2011 (EDT)

Churches, barbershops, rental bikes, it is the same issue. Wikivoyage is a guide to assist travellers, not a yellowpages. When the something is so common in a city, whether it be laundrette, rental bikes, churches, or convenience stores, then we step back, because the traveller doesn't need a guide anymore. If a town of 10,000 has 50 churches, then we need to carefully consider whether we need to list any. --(WT-en) inas 06:00, 8 November 2011 (EST)

SWEPT IN FROM THE PUB

Hi, everyone. I'd like you to weigh in on this. My understanding has been that we don't allow listings of individuals, such as individual language tutors, trekkers, guides, translators, or drivers. But I'd like to refer you to a discussion taking place in Talk:La Paz and another that I just started at Talk:Banaue. I think we need to have a clear and well-thought-through policy on these matters. (WT-en) Ikan Kekek 06:20, 28 January 2012 (EST)

I think we these things we're guided by the number of potential listings, and the difficulty the traveller has in finding them. If there is only one elephant driver in a town, and that's the only way to get from the station to the camp site apart from walking, then we list them. Doesn't matter if they are an individual, or a franchise of Mega-Elephant. If there are a few elephants, but the traveller needs to be able to contact them, and the method for doing so is not apparent, then may need to maintain a compact list of choices. Style of listings, capacity of the organisation, traveller recommendations, etc, guide us in choosing who to list, but we'd rather list individuals than Elephant-Back-Travel booking office. However, if there are many elephants such that they are ubiquitous, then we don't need to list. A line of prose saying the elephants are outside the station, or some such suffices.

The bottom line is the traveller comes first. We don't need to accept a business owners rationale. --(WT-en) Inas 23:59, 28 January 2012 (EST)

The issue has also turned up at Talk:Yangshuo#Tour_Guides. (WT-en) Pashley 10:10, 29 January 2012 (EST)

Hi there. I'm only a new 'WikiTraveler', but am a seasoned Wiki-editor with many years experience. I am hoping to make some big contributions to this site, but something has been bugging me lately. I find that the See and Do listings on some articles can get very messy and disorganised. I think if we were to organise this information into a template/table, this would be much better for viewers to decipher information from, and also improve the quality of our articles.

This has been proposed many years ago at Wikivoyage_talk:Attraction_listings, but with little discussion or progress. It seems many other language WikiTravels do it. See here for a Japanese example. I understand we use WikiCode tags, and it could take a long time to convert every article to a template format. One option is to keep the WikiCode we use, but change how the system organises the info within the tags; from a jumbled text wall, to an organised table format. This would allow for a total revamp across the board, yet with minimal effort.

Any other thoughts, ideas or comments? Thanks, (WT-en) JamesA 08:56, 11 May 2012 (EDT)

One of the reasons the wikicode tags were used was to add the "edit" links to make it easier for non-technical contributors to add and edit listings. As far as I'm aware there would be no way to achieve similar functionality using templates. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:30, 11 May 2012 (EDT)

Maybe this is just me... I feel like the Japanese presentation is a bit over the top, but I'd be quite happy just to add a bit more formatting to the current presentation. Just a bit of italics here and there, that kind of stuff. Most English-language print guidebooks do this, and I think it aids readability and makes it easy to spot when a listing is missing a piece of info. --(WT-en) BigPeteB 14:18, 11 May 2012 (EDT)

Our listings already use bold and italics. (WT-en) LtPowers 18:50, 11 May 2012 (EDT)

We do have a great system for adding listings. This system can easily be kept. What would be changed is where that information goes. There has to be a page somewhere (probably a MediaWiki: page) that organises the listing into the format it currently is, with the bold font, italics, etc. From a glance at this page, it seems User:(WT-en) IBobi handles the wiki's technical stuff, so maybe he would know how to change it.

The Japanese format does take it a step overboard with all the colours and pictures. We could always have a much more toned down version. I just feel the way it is now is really messy. Look at the opening times on the first listing here; it's all over the place. A possibility could be just to add more bold/italics/underlines, or even put some information on separate lines or dot points. Does anyone want to have a go at fixing it up? (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 04:28, 12 May 2012 (EDT)

Yes, I know they already use some bold and italics... I was saying I think they could use a little more. --(WT-en) BigPeteB 10:15, 18 May 2012 (EDT)

Well, to be honest, I wouldn't know how to change them. But a good start would be creating a mockup. Project:Listings would be a good place to discuss the mockup once you create one. (WT-en) LtPowers 19:26, 18 May 2012 (EDT)

I certainly wouldn't want to see the listings become as colorful and complex as the ones on the Japanese site and I like the tag system we have now, but I think some minor tweaking couldn't hurt - putting the opening hours and the price info in italics, to further distinguish them from the description of the place, would really tidy up the presentation (whether this can actually be done I don't know, but I'm just throwing that out there). I really wouldn't want to see any more bolded text in the listings - as of now only the name of the place is bolded, and I like that because it highlights it and makes it easier on the eye when you're scanning an article looking for a specific listing. (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 10:31, 19 May 2012 (EDT)

We could make the phone number blink! (WT-en) LtPowers 13:35, 19 May 2012 (EDT)

Moving the hours to a separate line could be really useful. I think we could make them more readable:

Current version:

• <see name="International Spy Museum" alt="" address="800 F St NW" directions="" phone="+1 202 393-7798" url="http://spymuseum.org/index.php" hours="9AM-5PM or 9AM-6PM daily, last admission one hour before close" price="Adults: $20, seniors: $15, children (5-11): $15, 4 & under: Free" lat="" long="" email="" fax="">D.C.'s newest hot attraction's principal claim to fame among locals is the extraordinarily long line that usually winds out the doors (not to mention the high price tag). Its popularity, while a bit disproportionate given all the other great free museums in town, is not unwarranted—its exhibits are interesting to anyone even marginally interested in espionage and Cold War history, and it also has a great exhibit tailored specifically to kids.</see>

Another idea:

• International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, ☎ +1 202 393-7798, 1.

9AM-5PM or 9AM-6PM daily, last admission one hour before close.

D.C.'s newest hot attraction's principal claim to fame among locals is the extraordinarily long line that usually winds out the doors (not to mention the high price tag). Its popularity, while a bit disproportionate given all the other great free museums in town, is not unwarranted—its exhibits are interesting to anyone even marginally interested in espionage and Cold War history, and it also has a great exhibit tailored specifically to kids.

Price: Adults: $20, seniors: $15, children (5-11): $15, 4 & under: Free.

Good idea to take a fresh look at this. We'll have to wait until we have functional tech support, or the ability to do our own tech support, before we can implement this, but it's good to figure out what we want in the meantime. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:55, 19 May 2012 (EDT)

That's great, Peter! The separate lines makes it much easier to read the information, instead of it being a jumbled mess. Most travel guides do organise the info how we do it now, (all in one long spiel, rather than spaced out) but that's just because they need to fit all the info into a specific number of pages. We have much more room than books, so it makes sense that we make use of it and make the info easier to read for viewers. I'll do some perusing and see if I can find out how to edit the backend stuff. (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 07:05, 21 May 2012 (EDT)

Excellent suggestion! (WT-en) Atsirlin 07:15, 21 May 2012 (EDT)

If anyone wants to have a go searching for how to modify the backend code that configures the layout, here may be a good start. That's a list of all the technical MediaWiki pages that can be tweaked. Some pages have the prefix "listing", which might be somehow relevant. But don't take my word for it; the page we need might not be there. (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 09:02, 21 May 2012 (EDT)

Keep in mind that, despite the prevalence of mobile options in the modern era, making guides that can be easily and cheaply printed out is still one of our explicit goals. (WT-en) LtPowers 20:17, 21 May 2012 (EDT)

It is entirely possible to change the format for a printed guide, much like we do now for URL formatting. --(WT-en) Inas 20:27, 21 May 2012 (EDT)

Is that feature custom to Wikivoyage, or a feature of MediaWiki? (WT-en) LtPowers 13:35, 23 May 2012 (EDT)

The alternate formatting for printable version is a MediaWiki feature. All it does is use a different (css) stylesheet for formatting. I'm pretty sure MediaWiki allows more of these stylesheets to be configured as preferences too. So in my understanding you could easily have a different style for printing than you have for online display, so we shouldn't let the printing bit constrain our thinking too much. After all, our online display currently has no URLs, so is inherently unsuited for printing. --(WT-en) Inas 19:29, 23 May 2012 (EDT)

There's been a week of inactivity, so is everyone content with just implementing Peter's version for the time being? There's no colour or pictures, simply a few extra lines and spaces, and it should be possible to keep the Printable version as-is. After implementation, we can re-discuss if there's any issues. I did a little search around to find the code we need to edit, but it's very complicated. It looks like Ajax and CSS were used, which is only editable by site admins/IB. The Listing Editor's code is here. The formatting of the listing is here. Original discussion here. While we're at it, we should add the 'email' option to the editor, which has been long missing. I guess we should file a tech-request then? (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 23:21, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

Given the complexity of the change and the expansiveness of its effect, I'd prefer to see more discussion before we go making major changes. (WT-en) LtPowers 13:35, 30 May 2012 (EDT)

I would also like to see some more discussion on this before making a change. Listings have a variety of completeness and length of information, so depending on what is there, the above proposal could easily produce a very lopsided-looking listing like this:

• International Butt Museum, 800 F St NW, ☎ +1 202 393-7798, [email protected], 1.

9AM-5PM.

Super awesome museum about butts. Great for people who have butts or would like to find out more about butts.

Price: Free.

(WT-en) texugo 15:16, 3 June 2012 (EDT)

Is there a code that we could use that would only implement the multiple-line layout when a certain character/word count is reached? Sounds complicated to implement, though. (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 05:42, 4 June 2012 (EDT)

That would result in an ugly (I think) situation with listings appearing in a random combination of the two formats. I think we would have to either go whole-hog, as ja: has done, or just leave it alone.(WT-en) texugo 12:53, 26 June 2012 (EDT)

Looking at it more, aside from the thematic content, the butt museum example doesn't bother me aesthetically. I think it too is more digestible in that format. --Peter ^Talk 19:35, 29 September 2012 (CEST)

I dunno, I'd be concerned about how this would look with a whole series of similar listings in a row. Right now, we have a lot of articles with just-the-facts listings that only take up one line each; this would expand them significantly. And there's still the printing issue to deal with. LtPowers (talk) 00:40, 30 September 2012 (CEST)

I by myself think that the listings extensions are a deprecated feature. So, the current extension is mainly for backward compatibility. The main reasons are that all tag attributes and styles are hard-wired, and we must raise time and personal resources to code all that. I have no idea if we would be able to do this in future and if we would have access to the servers to change the extension. At least, the community has no chance to do it by itself. Therefore, I propose the use of templates instead of the see, do, eat etc. listing tags. We do it at the German branch with the vCard template since more then 5 years.

If we use templates we have all opportunities to change the layout like multiline or tabled ones. With if and switch statements several layouts could be made available.

Of course, because of the lack of editor features of the Mediawiki software we cannot offer now similar features easily to handle. In the interim we use a JavaScript-based interim solution at the German Wikivoyage to edit the template data in a form, see Editing templates with forms (in German). In future, a Visual editor would be available, and I hope it would be support entering data for templates.

We should discuss all this separately to get general consensus. --Unger (talk) 12:43, 7 October 2012 (CEST)

Swept from the pub:

Three separate discussions about allowing Facebook links, web/email format, and redesigning our templated listings format have got me thinking how we can update or modernize the way we present our information, and I've come up with a tentative proposal. It's really less a proposal and more just me throwing some ideas around, so I'm open to debate on any of the multiple points this will introduce, but I think the general idea is worth considering. Before I lay out the proposed changes though, I'd like to make some points and detail some reasoning behind the proposal.

• Social networking as contact information - Since WT started, social networking has grown drastically in importance as a means of communication, in some cases being now more important than phone numbers or emails, and surely in all cases more relevant than telegram fax.
  • Facebook - As the Facebook discussion points out, many establishments have only Facebook as their web presence, and consensus seems to be leaning towards allowing them in such cases. Even for those who have also a normal website, Facebook may provide a more convenient way of contact for travellers, since a huge portion of our users also have Facebook accounts.
  • Twitter - Hasn't been discussed, but since Wikivoyage has started, Twitter has taken over the web, and many many establishments have a twitter account, many users are bound to have accounts, and Twitter makes a more convenient avenue of communication for some than phone calls, full emails, etc. Twitter is especially popular with smaller accommodation owners, local restaurants, bars, music venues, and recreational activity providers, and even many mainstream attractions such as museums and festivals have an account.
  • Skype - Many smaller restaurants and accommodations (e.g. hostels) have Skype accounts which would provide travellers with a free international phone call or text consultation. I know that I, for one, would be far more likely to call via Skype to book a room at a foreign destination than I would to call international long-distance via landline.
• Grouping all contact information - Within a listing, contact information should all be grouped together. As an aside, I will throw in the bold assumption that fax info can be eliminated as a now-outdated mode of communication unlikely to be used by travellers. For the purposes of this proposal, then, contact information will be taken to mean:
  • Address, including directions, if any
  • Phone number
  • Official website
  • Email
  • Facebook business page
  • Twitter
  • Skype

Accepting the above definitions as reasonable and assuming we can set up the templates to do what we want, the tentative proposition is simply this:

• We separate all the contact information, either into a separate column on the right or on a fresh line under the rest, leaving the lead to go directly from the name into the description, followed by hours and price.
• In the contact info part, the address and phone number are written out. Everything else gets just a small linked icon unless you print the page.

Template fiddling, spacing, which icon to use, how images are incorporated into such sections, etc. can all be worked out later, but I made mock-ups of a couple of layout ideas. I tried to include examples with an assortment of information quantities to approximate how it would look with the completeness of an average article. Anyway, I'd like to call for your general comments and opinions, so... what if the future looked like this? :

• Mock layout 1
• Mock layout 2
• Mock layout 3

(WT-en) texugo 17:39, 4 July 2012 (EDT)

I don't know how to artificially display our standard bullet points and cannot make functioning icon links, so please use your imagination. Also, if you know how, feel free to mess around with the messily-coded mock-ups and/or make new ones, but please do so on a different page so these will be here for others to look at.(WT-en) texugo 17:54, 4 July 2012 (EDT)

I think these are some good ideas. I'd support the removal of 'fax', but I notice you've also removed 'alt' phone. A lot of Asian/African countries have multiple phone numbers, due to unpredictable landline connections. Some smaller businesses also give the option of mobile or landline; whichever is cheaper, or working. Therefore, I think that should stay. Facebook, Twitter and Skype accounts are a good idea, but we'd need to be careful about linking to "official" accounts, and not someone's fanpage. I'm leaning towards something along the lines of Mock layout 1, as it separates the information into where it belongs, whereas the others shove things like trading hours, price and descriptions. Mock layout 3 could be good if the left column was widened. One option could be automatic column width, so that if the left column gets a lot of text from things like directions, it would be wide, whereas if all it had was titles, it'd be narrow. But very nice work overall. (WT-en) JamesA ^>talk 06:45, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

FWIW, I didn't intentionally leave out alt phone numbers. I just didn't think of them because they're are very rare in the vast majority of articles.(WT-en) texugo 08:42, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I made a similar proposal at Wikivoyage/de at our lounge. Of course we implemented do, see and eat tags, but we use mainly a template named vCard. A template is more flexible and could easily be changed without programming. We use a template master to make the data entry simple but I hope that new Mediawiki versions will have its own graphical tool. By the way I prefer the first variant. --(WT-en) Unger 01:41, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I agree with your assessment of the third mock up and have widened the left column somewhat. I also think that one would look slightly better if both the telephone number and the icons were on the same line but with the number left-aligned and the icons right-aligned (but still in the first column), instead of taking up two separate lines. (WT-en) texugo 11:39, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I cannot speak to the prevalence of fax as means of communication in certain areas; it seems like it might still be used in some places, but I can't say for sure. Is there any harm in leaving it? Phoneextra is also useful for TDD/TTY numbers, though those are also going by the wayside. (WT-en) LtPowers 12:26, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

The only harm it does is to work against economy of space. I just have a hard time imagining that more than the rarest of travellers would even consider sending a fax to make a dinner reservation or inquire about hotel vacancies these days, especially to/in a foreign country. Even in Asian countries where they are still more common, I think they are mostly used for inter-business purposes.(WT-en) texugo 13:13, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I work in many countries. Fax really has died over the last 5 years, so I do not think it is a problem to drop it completely. If absolutely necessary somewhere, it could be put in as part of the text. I like mock up 3! However, I am not convinced of the value of adding Twitter. There is a risk of too many icons littering a page.(WT-en) Davidbstanley 11:27, 6 July 2012 (EDT)

[de-indenting]
For fax (along with alt, checkin/checkout, and several other tags), I think we should just nix it from the listings editor, but keep it available if someone in the know wants to add it, for the relatively rare exceptions that would see them as useful.

I think adding facebook/twitter information is the right way to go, as businesses put out a lot of really useful information through both. Hopefully we could create something more generic, though, to include other microblogs and personal social networking page sites. (Evan [11] hasn't yet dethroned Twitter, but I'm bullish on destroying Facebook [12].) I can't comment on skype—haven't yet worked it into my travel bag of tricks.

Texugo, I really like your first mockup—awesome stuff! It would be good to make the hours stand out even more, though, as they are arguably the most important reference information we include. Maybe italics? Or color?

Unger, does your template work with the listings editor? Keeping the listings editor will be crucial if we ever do launch into the yesteryear age of online editing... --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:04, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I'm poking around clker.com (PD icons), and found some that either would be great looking imported as is, or which I could edit a bit. For urls, [13] is pretty nice. I could fix up one of these to make it look a little tweetier [14] [15], and could try to fix one of these for social networking profiles [16] [17]. Our email icon is fine, but these are a bit snappier [18] [19]. Adding an hours icon (basically any clock) could be another good way to highlight the ever-important hours field. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:20, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I'm also partial to mock-up 1, and I totally agree about italicizing the hours. I've gone ahead and done that on the mock-up, and it works well to set that info apart from the description. As to icons, I'll get back to you on that, but I was basically just shooting to find ones that have the same background shape (couldn't find one for Skype). I'm leaning toward making the icons for facebook, twitter, and skype clearly indicate what they are though and wouldn't really like to use a generic that doesn't at least indicate something similar to their own icon. I like the idea for a clock icon, and I considered using one to replace our little phone symbol. It would be nice to mock up some stylistically matching sets of all the necessary icons since they'd always be sitting next to each other in random combinations. Anyway, choosing specific icons would be its own discussion if consensus gets behind this idea.(WT-en) texugo 16:53, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

One thing I'm noticing is that the price info can get a little lost at the end of the hours line (which can vary wildly in length). Perhaps move it back to the end of the description, and bold it? Or we could have the price range follow a more eye-catching dollar icon? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:49, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I like the layouts, Mock Layout 3 makes the address easy to find in a list of places, which is good in larger cities where maybe I am looking for somewhere to eat in the North side of the city. However I am not so sure about generally adding Facebook and Twitter links. If a business uses Facebook as its main internet presence then this can just go in place of a web address. I would not expect to look at Twitter as my first contact with a business, more as a way of staying in touch with somewhere that I already use. There may be the odd exception like an airport that tweets departure information, but then I think that we should take the trouble to say what is being tweeted. Unless devices are common that can only look at Facebook / Twitter and not web pages, then I think that the traveller should be directed to whatever is the best first point of contact and can then find other links from there (which helps to avoid getting fan pages added).(WT-en) AlasdairW 18:54, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

Here's a bored half hour's worth of icon work from someone who probably isn't too good at this kind of thing... Anyway, they are of even width & height, and conform in a very loose way to our usual color scheme!

Like 'em? FTS? Suggestions? Anyone want an SVG of this? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:13, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I appreciate the effort, Peter, but I gotta admit the icons don't mean anything to me. A couple I can figure out with some concentration, but icons like these need to be immediately recognizable to be useful. (WT-en) LtPowers 22:24, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I'd disagree with that sentiment, if not the criticism of the icons, since you can always just hover your mouse over an icon to see what it's about. In any rate, our current footnote looking things aren't immediately recognizable! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:22, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

Case in point! [20] --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:56, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

• Facebook I am concerned about the concept of Facebook linking. To include Facebook potentially opens a quite large can of worms in regard to patrolling. We have had plenty enough problems with @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com and @gmail.com email addresses. Especially in the 3rd world many providers use common domain email addresses, or use them as a back up secondary email address.
  In some regions (especially the Indian sub-continent) every time someone changes one of these addresses they need to be checked to ensure it is not a hijack attempt. This phenomena is particularly common in the Indian articles but appears elsewhere as well. It has occasionally been suggested we should eliminate these common domain email addresses from the articles. This is not practical as many quite legitimate and substantial providers use them. It would be unfair to a large body of providers and disadvantageous to travellers to eliminate them. Unless the provider is well known to the patrolling editor, or the common domain email address is published on the providers website or another authoritative source then it is often difficult and time consuming to determine legitimacy. Sometimes an extensive examination of edit histories is required to determine the bona-fides of the editor changing or adding the common domain contact.

☯To add Facebook listings to this mix seems to be asking for more trouble. Though it is of course understood that many traders do use Facebook accounts I have noted many Facebook accounts appear to be name holders, similar in a way to registering a common domain name email address, or a domain name similar to that of a trader or product, and then sitting on it either to block use of it or to gain some advantage by selling it or using it to divert business to someone other than the principal business.

☯Perhaps we need to consider if FB is really even accepted as a formal communication vehicle, or is it more one of tagging and maintaining existing customer connection through often vacuous self promotion. I have also noticed that for many small operators a common domain email address and a Facebook account is their only web presence. Anecdotally it appears that Facebook does not work well for many third world tourism providers. Many small operators tell me they do not believe it provides them any tangible business opportunity and it is email, SMS, Telephone, Skype and positive Tripadvisor recommendations and referral that are far more important to their activities

☯The previous discussions concerning FB seem to have hovered over the idea of 'business' Facebook accounts being linked. For those who might use a Facebook account in replacement of a business website we must consider if they are really likely to use a revenue account with FB, it seems unlikely, therefore we are setting ourselves a near impossible task of assessing the 'commercial' relevance of individual FB accounts that may be associated with a business operator. There is also the issue of inactive FB accounts. Some people tire of the medium and neglect it, so if we link to an account such as this we are potentially adding a dead end contact.

☯Perhaps our endeavours would be better applied to ensuring the existing contact methods are accurate rather having our efforts diverted into an added burden of further account verification demands arising from FB and Twitter accounts and the questionable virtues of supporting a commercial opportunity for either IB, Facebook or Twitter arising from providing such links in the articles and then patrolling them for consistency and legitimacy.

☯I am unconvinced of the benefit to the project and not at all keen to commit my own time toward refining a potential revenue stream derived from FB clicks or the data mining and correlation models operated by FB and Twitter.

☯I am raising this here as I note the Project:External links guideline on this has been modified recently. Perhaps this requires a little more scrutiny, especially in regard to the potential outcomes in regions with a history of contact hijacking and also in regard to our own participation in developing the Facebook and Twitter commercial models by facilitating WT linking.

• Twitter seems to be reliant upon an always-on connectivity, this is irrelevant to much of the world, I think we should be wary of viewing the world through a lens narrowed by the hype of always-on connectivity. Also I wonder why we are allowing these 3rd party commercial links into the body of the article, we should not forget the core function of enterprises such as FB, it is to collect, collate, control and commercially disseminate data for commercial gain, it is not a benign vehicle of communication.
• Skype linking is a different thing, I thoroughly support that and it would be good to see a listing field added to the standard format asap. As for adding an icon for that, great idea. Skype is a service commonly used and very popular with travellers.
• Alt phone this should stay as it is essential to list more than one phone contact in some regions and PABX systems are rare in many 3rd world environments, I don't think it requires an icon though.
• Fax is difficult, some still use it for payment authorities and many banks and insurance companies will insist on faxing documents and will not accept email communications, having the number readily at hand in a WT article may assist the traveller in circumstances such as these so maybe it should remain as listing text detail, but not have an icon. --(WT-en) felix 23:41, 6 July 2012 (EDT)

I certainly agree with negative sentiments regarding Facebook. But, small businesses—even those that have a real webpage—often update their personal facebook page with important information more frequently. In my endless search for details belonging in listings, I often cannot find hours information for small boutique restaurants, or current event listings for nightclubs or rock venues without looking into their Facebook page. Microblogs, such as those on Twitter, are a similar deal for finding current events. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 12:36, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

We have to get rid of all these ugly front-links generated by the listings code post-import! If we're anticipating a flood of new contributors in the quite near future, we can't have a blatant de-facto policy violation leading them to believe that such aesthetic abominations are acceptable in our distinguished community! --Peter ^Talk 04:45, 28 September 2012 (CEST)

I was wondering how that happened! Yes, I don't like it at all, and we should go about reverting it immediately. However, it seems none of us know how to edit the way listings are displayed. JamesA ^>talk 05:01, 28 September 2012 (CEST)

Someone somewhere in the wiki world must know how to change this. Nurg (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The listings are currently generated by mw:extension:listings and their format is defined by the open-source PHP code of that extension. We can't edit this directly, but do have a few possible options:

• Have a robot script replace all these tags with {{listing}} templates and the issue goes away. The template has a few advantages; it replaces the front-link with a globe icon for the URL, it handles (lat,long) co-ordinates properly, it supports the hCard microformat (so that Operator can extract contact info and map locations) and it's editable instead of being hard-coded as extension code so we can extend it as needed.
• Report the front-linking as a bug on bugzilla: and hope someone else (who has access to deploy code) gets around to fixing mw:extension:listings (either to change the listing format or to have the extension simply invoke a {{listing}} template - if it exists - for everything instead of forcing listings into a hard-coded format).
• Install the extension and a few Wikvoyage pages on a MediaWiki test server, change the code, then post the fix to bugzilla: on the assumption this will get fixed more quickly if we post solutions and not mere questions.

Having a 'bot replace every listing tag would avoid having to request intervention from Wikimedia but would have the disadvantage of the script needing to edit every page to remove the old tags.

The current extension looks for the name of a template to handle (lat, long) and drops that template into a fixed position in the individual listing. There's no reason why the same approach couldn't be used to look for {{tl:listing}} and blindly pass the tag type (eat/drink, come/see/do/conquer) and every one of the parameters directly to a template which in future could be edited as needed.

If I go to the test {{listing}}s on Brockville#Nearby with the Firefox "operator" extension installed, menus appear for "contacts" and "locations" which invite me to download all the co-ordinates as a .kml file, view one of the locations on google/mapquest/yahoo or grab the contact info for my bookmarks or address book. Evidently, it only finds the templated listings and not the extension tags - but ultimately a hard-coded extension to do the job of a simple template is an inflexible and ugly solution. K7L (talk) 23:09, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You guys have a very strange idea as to what's ugly!

I doubt it's really the case, but in your public announcements it's as if you don't seem to understand that the world wide web
a) likes links
b) likes those links to be clearly signalled.

You really prefer the ugly system of having a numbered symbol in blue when newbies (especially if they find us from Wikipedia) waste their time searching for the (non-existent) key to the consecutively numbered links?

I would prefer to return to the old format where those listings with a primary url displayed the listing title in blue as a clear signal that the title itself is a hyperlink.

Now that the new Template:Listing has been implemented, businesses have a perverse incentive not to use XML listings, since that way they get to retain an obviously clickable blue symbol and the (baffling) incremental number (rather than get the puzzling and non intuitive grey globe). The old method of display is both shorter and more intuitive. -- Alice^✉ 04:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Swept in from the pub

Should we be using the templates at the bottom of the page for Attractions, Activities, Shops, Restaurants, Bars and clubs, Hotels and Other listings? Is that for new items only, should older formatting be changed? I am not sure what the policy is for this, Thanks. Xltel (talk) 18:40, 16 September 2012 (CEST)

Yes, those should be used for all listings. --Globe-trotter (talk) 18:47, 16 September 2012 (CEST)

Speaking of listings, the format has changed for links: right now they're all showing up as front-linked using the full the name of the listing, which isn't our old postlinked format. I assume this wasn't deliberate (it would mean updating a LOT of pages style-wise!), can this be changed to the previous markup? — D. Guillaume (talk) 03:33, 19 September 2012 (CEST)

Yes, I already raised this at the migration bugs section of the tech sub-site. The German and Italian Wikivoyage language versions have seemingly been doing it like this all along. I hope to see this changed, as using the full name as a link looks spammy. Also, the [add listings] button should return, but that probably requires a lot of work... --Globe-trotter (talk) 04:00, 19 September 2012 (CEST)

Is anyone working on this? Who can work on this? What do we need to do to get this done before we leave Beta (in about a month!)? --Peter ^Talk 02:35, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a bug open on this, you might want to ask there? K7L (talk) 04:03, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it was filed and completed today? Time to experiment with a template now. Should we just import :wv/de's? --Peter ^Talk

vorlage:vCard still has the front-link, so is no better. Pigsonthewing already created a {{listing}} which is almost exactly what's needed. There are some example entries on Brockville#Nearby where I'd tested this on a few real listings. K7L (talk) 23:05, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Per the bug report update it looks like the next Mediawiki update will give the ability to specify a template to override the hard-coded listings format:

When the patch is initially applied, the extension continues to operate as it always has... until Mediawiki:listings-template is created and set to the name of a template (ie: "listing" for Template:listing, which would work well with this code were the leading "* " removed from the template).

Once the listings template is defined, listingsTag() generates {{ listings-template | type= (eat, drink, sleep) | name=...and any other parameters, passed through as-is| listing $input text... }}, feeds it to the parser to expand the template to output text and then exits without doing much of anything else - effectively shutting down the hard-coded output formatting built into the extension.

The WMF support guys rock. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:21, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gotcha. So we just need to wait it out with the frontlinks until the next MW upgrade. --Peter ^Talk 19:33, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I may have mis-read the bug initially - a patch was submitted, but it looks like it may still be pending review. It may help to speed up the review process if people could go to bugzilla:43220 and click on the "vote" link next to "importance" in order to ensure that this patch is reviewed as soon as possible. Once it has been applied my understanding is that the change would become available on this site fairly quickly as WMF does bi-weekly software updates. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:25, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swept from the pub:

Unless if I've gone insane, we've lost the [add listing] button that used to sit next to our imperative headers on destination articles. That means the listing editor is also inaccessible. I never used it, but I know it's a useful tool for new users and businesses to make use of our site. Any idea how or why this happened? JamesA ^>talk 03:27, 3 October 2012 (CEST)

I think it is custom code that is too much work for the Wikivoyage admins to work on. I think this will have to be dealt with after the migration to Wikimedia (just like the front linked headers). --Globe-trotter (talk) 04:02, 3 October 2012 (CEST)

See Templated See and Do listings above. --Unger (talk) 12:14, 7 October 2012 (CEST)

When I tried to use some pages here, it was difficult to find the information as I wanted, because they were not grouped. I did not put the tables because of the style (alias, they are ugly), but to facilitate consultations. Moreover, it requires some organization, placing the data in the same order, and shows clearly the missing data of the object. And look at the type of table that I put, it is not any kind. (Florianopolis). Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 17:15, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think having sortable listings is a great idea. Ideally, we wouldn't do it with tables, though, because that would make it difficult for inexperienced users to edit listings. --Peter ^Talk 18:36, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know that, so I started a template, which I think makes editing easier. And we can put as default for city/neighbourhoods articles. So when a newbie edit/create something he will see:

==Eat==  <!--  Don't remove -->{{Eat-xy}}  <!-- substitute the spaces below by information of the place you want to describe. -- >    {{E-xy|Name|Location|Contacts|Lunch|Dinner|About|Type}}  {{E-xy|Name|Location|Contacts|Lunch|Dinner|About|Type}}  {{E-xy|Name|Location|Contacts|Lunch|Dinner|About|Type}}  ...   <!--  Don't remove -->|} 

Something like that. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 20:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it is a very bad idea:

• Our intention was to make listings more flexible and add extra fields like skype, facebook, etc. Now everything goes back to only 7 columns, and we lose any flexibility.
• Narrow columns look ugly. They probably look fine on a wide screen, but on the laptop they look ugly
• Different tables have different column width. This is terrible-(
• What is the advantage of tables over normal listings? Sorting option? But which criterion should we use? Not the phone number, not the street address. The only meaningful field will be the "type", but this type is vague. Maybe it works in Brazil, but in all European countries that I am familiar with, the "type" makes little sense. For example, in Germany we may have Italian or Greek places, but most of them are nothing but "cafe" or "restaurant" with essentially no difference between those two. In Russia, it is nowadays very typical to have sushi in a pizza place, so what "type" of place is it?
• Honestly, I do not understand why we need this sorting option at all. The very idea of a travel guide is to provide a reasonable, but not an excessive choice of places to eat. We never have more than 10-15 places in every price category, and I think that it is fairly easy to look through the descriptions and make one's choice. In fact, the listings format stimulates people to read and experiment. Even if you want pizza, you may want to go to some other place because it has a fancy description on Wikivoyage. That's what travel is about. We write a travel guide, not a guide to restaurants.

--Alexander (talk) 21:32, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Peter Fitzgerald that sortable data would be useful, but also with his comment that tables would probably not be the best way to do it. I also agree with most of Alexander's comments about the appearance and inflexibility. Is there another alternative that can give the appearance and flexibility which are of great importance, along with a sortability improvement?

Speaking from personal experience, I find that editing tables is much more difficult to get right than a simple templated listing, and I have actually created and edited quite a number of tables on WP. For a newbie/occasional editor they are a nightmare.

Editors who struggle with or cant be bothered with formatting are more likely to produce a reasonably acceptable listing manually in a listed format, and this is easily cleaned up to a templated list by regulars. A table is more likely to end up in a mess.

Having said all that, I accept that I am not an expert on tables, and there may be a way of doing it that works. If so I would like to see it.

Maybe it is possible to produce a record input tool like in a database, which has spaces for each field, and then automatically formats the input to a readable, attractively formatted presentation in the article, but remains usefully sortable, after all, the whole wiki is on a database. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 22:12, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why do we need to sort anything? The listings should already either be in alphabetical or geographic order. LtPowers (talk) 03:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm starting to think that you never used the WikiVoyage, otherwise, you do not doubt the usefulness of the sort, alias, is very flexible, I made a beta version, you can put more columns, if you want. Alias​​, I made the template for countries, you just adapt to each situation.

Alexander, if you do not know the difference of a vegetarian restaurant to a steakhouse, that's not my fault, and we're not discussing about the content, but about the use of the table. And there are two sections with tables in the article...

Peter, thesis's not a simple table, this is a template, so is more simple to use, and I do not know how we could do without tables... How to organize things without tables? Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 14:09, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are missing the main question, I think. Why do we need this sorting option? Most columns of your tables are not a good sorting criterion because sorting by address or phone number makes no sense. The "type" field, which is the one you want to introduce, is vague... just vague. Try to use it for Staraya Russa, for example.

Once again, we are not writing a guide to restaurants. We do not try to mention hundreds of restaurants that will indeed require additional sorting options. We only need 10-15 eateries, preferably with different profile, and we want people to read through their descriptions. --Alexander (talk) 05:00, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Look the "adress", alias, sort by "adress" and you will understand... And when I want to read, I want to be able to choose the restaurant, or the place that I go to sleep. You divide by values, I'm just giving the reader the option to select for what he wants. You are not omniscient, you do not know what all readers want. And the description is still there, as the biggest highlight. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 16:16, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Useless. Sort by address would take the street number from the address and alphabetise it without looking at the street name, the town or district, the country or anything meaningful. A list with "1 Main Street", "10 Fifth Concession Road", "3 Main Street" would sort into that order alphabetically by number (anything with a leading 1 in the number first) without recognising that 1 and 3 Main are adjacent businesses (and both in the city centre) while the concession road is miles/km away in farm country. The same is likely true of telephone numbers, where a leading +1-212- isn't necessarily anywhere geographically near +1-213- just because they only differ by one digit. Splitting listings by district or by price range makes sense, but an alpha-sort on leading digits of an address or phone number is often pointless. K7L (talk) 17:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Of course it is useless sort by phone, but you want to remove this? You are talking nonsense... And it not written "address" click here to see. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 04:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not written "address"? That could be awkward, as the information usually comes from sources that do use the street address format "139 da Silveira Street" and not district-first "Lagoa da Conceição - Rua Rita Lourenço da Silveira, 139". The information will likely be cut-and-paste from a page like hotel.example.com/contact.html and won't be "District, street name, number" unless someone manually does this to every entry. In many cases, the district isn't provided; hotels are terrible for claiming to be near every landmark in the city and a few in the next town instead of being precise. K7L (talk) 04:26, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The way I see it, there are only two fields one might reasonably want to sort on: name and price. Name is already our default sort order, and price is why we divide them up into "Budget", "Mid-range", and "Splurge". Anything else is a red herring. LtPowers (talk) 15:01, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We might also want to split them by subtype, "hotel"/"motel"/"gated resort"/"B&B"/"campground" or "café"/"pizzaria"/"Chinese buffet"/"French restaurant" or "blaring disco"/"old-style British pub"/"winery". Then again, maybe that split should be being done first, before the price comparisons. K7L (talk) 16:33, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. We basically give editors some freedom to decide which subtypes are appropriate (if any). Personally, I think that only one of the splittings should be applied: we either provide 10-15 places for each price category, or 3-5 places for each subtype, without any price categories. This gives 30-45 places in total, which is close to the upper limit of a comprehensible listing. --Alexander (talk) 17:23, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As you pointed out earlier, though, "subtypes" are ambiguous and hard to apply consistently. LtPowers (talk) 17:52, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and I still think so. In my opinion, the listings in only ~10% of our destinations may be reasonably split according to their type, although it does not mean that these 10% really deserve this type of the splitting. --Alexander (talk) 20:46, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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I've traveled a little, but I really know differentiate, local food, Italian food, steakhouse, fastfood, vegan restaurant, vegetarian ... But again, one more time, we are not discussing content, but using tables. And I already said that the templates are divided by countries, and is a beta, if they want to put by district, neighborhood, love, doesn't matter, you can modify later.
The good points: is easier to read (is sortable), optimizes data organization, and makes clear the items that are missing, negative points is that it is ugly and you do not like. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 21:52, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You claim it's easier to read, but I dispute that. Tables are good for numerical and concise data; they are absolutely horrible for long passages of multiple sentences, and for variable-length data. LtPowers (talk) 02:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion (down until the page break) has been imported from Wikivoyage-old.org/gerneral. User names do not necessarily correspond to Wikivoyage users, although most are now active on WV with the same username. A full list of contributors for this content can be found here.

Existing policy: Links to Wikipedia#Different subject| Different subject Links from Wikitravel articles to Wikipedia articles which have a different subject conflict with the Wikitravel:External links guidelines. They are generally considered "secondary sources" and therefore should be avoided.

The traveller may not be on-line when they read a Wikitravel article, so a link to Wikipedia (or anywhere else) won't be of much use to them. Wikitravel articles should be as complete as possible in and of themselves. Essential information about a topic should be included in the Wikitravel article.

To make a link to a Wikipedia article that will appear in-line, put a colon in front of the "WikiPedia", like this: WikiPedia:Article title on Wikipedia. Note that this type of link is not permitted in the Main namespace.

Proposal

To change the policy on External links to different subjects to allow Wikimedia Foundation project links (probably mostly to Wikipedia, but possibly also to others):

1. To allow the use of {{further}} or {{see also}} type links to WMF articles which are larger than would be appropriate in the travel guide, provided that a suitable summary is included in the travel guide article.
2. To allow the use of in-line links to WMF articles or sections where inclusion of encyclopaedic information which is relevant to the travel guide article is inappropriate for direct inclusion.
3. To develop a policy and guidelines for the scope of WMF links appropriate in the travel guide. This may vary for the different article types.

Motivation

1. We are constrained to write articles on travel topics within a fairly narrow band which specifically excludes "attractions". Some attractions are sufficiently complex to justify a major encyclopaedic article on WP, but still do not qualify for a travel guide article. It is a disservice to the traveller not to link to the encyclopaedic article if we can not provide the information in the travel guide. It would not make sense to me to basically rewrite several Wikipedia articles inside a single destination article, or fail to provide the information on a technicality. Links to matters of interest for a destination such as the local ecology/wildlife and geology could be added for the eco-travellers amongst us - something that is missing at present. There are a large variety of attractions that are better described in detail in an encyclopaedia.
2. This will allow information on living people to be referred to without the need for inline citations.
3. We are not in competition with Wikipedia, Some material of value to the traveller is best presented in an encyclopaedic format, and this does not belong in the travel guide. Similarly there are articles on Wikipedia which is constantly being challenged for original research, which is travel related and should logically be transferred to the new travel site. A greater freedom to link between the projects will be useful to the traveller, helpful to the travel guide writer, and foster a spirit of co-operation between the projects. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:22, 2 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Examples

London Westminster travel guide attractions:

• Westminster Abbey
• Buckingham Palace
• Houses of Parliament
• Tate Britain

London Bloomsbury travel guide attractions:

• British Museum
• British Library

Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay local geology:

• Marine geology of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay
• Marine ecology of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay

Scuba diving Stay healthy:

• List of diving hazards and precautions
• Decompression (diving)

Discussion

I think that links to Wikipedia articles are a good idea, but they should generally go to the left column. It has a lot of space and clearly distinguishes between the core travel content and auxiliary information. For example, we could place "See also" under all other toolbars, so that it does not conceal more important stuff.

It is tempting, though, to allow in-line Wikipedia links in the Understand section, where less known historical characters or geographical terms may be used. Personally, I would suggest to try this and enforce the policy in case excessive links to Wikipedia render our texts incomprehensible. Atsirlin 15:55, 2 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're all in agreement about the left-column links to Wikipedia. The problem Peter is trying to solve, though, is what to do with valuable links to Wikipedia topics that are relevant only to a small section of one of our pages. Our left-column links apply to entire articles. LtPowers 13:15, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Peter has a good idea. The example he gives of Westminster Abbey is good - the Westminster travel guide has a single paragraph on the Abbey, the Wikipedia article has several pages of history - the sort of stuff that would be good to read before visiting. In this case the Abbey's website also gives the history, but with many attractions this is not the case. I think that links to Wikipedia should be allowed for places in See and Do, but should come after the link to the primary website. However we do risk the danger of too many links being added - I don't want to see every hotel entry linking to the Wikipedia entry for the hotel chain. So Wikipedia articles should only be linked to when they are specific to the place in the travel guide. We may also want to restrict the links to Wikipedia articles that are more than a couple of paragraphs long and are more than 3 months old, to stop Wikipedia articles being created just to be linked to.AlasdairW 22:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was originally thinking that no links to about businesses should be allowed, but in some cases they might be useful to the traveller. Almost always not, but there should be a policy which describes what we want rather than shading around it by describing what we don't want. That way it is easier to understand, and less likely to lead to strife. Usefulness to the traveller must be the touchstone. Usefulness to an industry or business does not even reach the starting blocks. Starting from that, how do we word a policy?

For a start, the linked article (or section) must have

a) reliable, relevant information related to the subject where the link is

b) clearly useful to the traveller

c) too much to put in the travel guide.

d) The information does not have to be NPOV, but must be fair and must not be business POV.

e) Where the link is to a section, the rest of the article must not be or include a significant amount of material that can be construed to be POV of a business which is likely to profit by the exposure. (this one needs work) • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:56, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[unindent] Hold it, I don't get this: "I was originally thinking that no links to businesses should be allowed." Links to business sites are fine when they're primary links, such as a link to a hotel's website in a "Sleep" listing for that hotel. Where else are you contemplating a business link? Ikan Kekek 02:41, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Ikan Kekek, I am referring to WP links here. No conflict with primary link policy as exists. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 20:18, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't call links to Wikipedia "links to businesses." Ikan Kekek 02:40, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are quite correct. I should have written "links about businesses", which is what I meant. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I get it now, and we are in full agreement. Wikipedia links or other inter-wiki links should be about "See" or "Do" attractions for which primary links are insufficient, for instance, and some aspects of history that could be mentioned in "Understand." Wikipedia links about "Sleep," "Eat," and "Drink" links that are not also important attractions per se (such as the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec and the Raffles in Singapore), or indeed such links to "Do" listings that are mainly commercial (e.g., tours) should be expressly prohibited. The only tricky (though doable) part would be phrasing. Ikan Kekek 11:09, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good idea. The policy should probably also include information on when a link is appropriate -- e.g., attractions and Understand sections, but like AlasdairW said above, I don't want to see links to hotel chains.

One question too -- are we only considering links to Wikipedia for this policy? I'm not sure since points a) - e) seem very general. - Shaund 15:34, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of any appropriate Wikimedia Foundation project in general, but Wikipedia in specific, as I can't think of any examples for other WMF projects offhand. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 21:14, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I still see a lot more harm than good to in-article links to WP. I love WP and hope that people do look for information there about subjects that they want to research, but I'm also pretty confident that they don't need much more help to find it! On the other hand, I find that non-tech-savvy folks have a tremendous amount of difficulty differentiating our project from Wikipedia, both when I show them the site, and when I try to explain in words what it is. (It shouldn't be too hard: "what Wikipedia is to encyclopedias, Wikivoyage is to travel guides," but somehow that needs repeating a dozen times.) Linking to WP articles just like we link to our own would further muddle things for people who are discovering what we are about.

My second worry is just that linking topics can encourage laziness. To really provide a value added service to mankind, we can't ride on the coattails of our bigger, older cousin—that's why we also disallow copy-pasting any significant amount of text from WP, despite it being OK per the copyleft—we need to encourage people to write. And to write for our purposes, which drive us to a significantly different format. --Peter ^Talk 18:22, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We will be part of the WMF. It seems churlish to shun them.

There are things we can do on WP which we can't do on the free travel guide and vice versa that are complimentary. If we link directly following an agreed policy, the user gets directly to the place the travel guide writer identifies as appropriate. If we can make the link an open in new tab/window, then the user gets back to the travel guide where they left without losing their place. Overall a more user friendly system to my mind. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 20:18, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Who's shunning anyone? Even on WT, we gave a prominent left-column link to Wikipedia. Like Peter, I'm not clear on why this is needed. I guess I'd like to see a mockup of what an article would look like with these links to Wikipedia. LtPowers 20:33, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think there needs to be a special policy topic (read:separate page from external links policy) related to in-line links to other Wikimedia projects. I don't have much to add other than to say that links to WP are very useful in cases like Westminster Abbey above. An example of linking to a WM project other than Wikipedia would be linking to appropriate books (per our read/books policy & old enough to not be under copyright) on Wikisource. Examples I could think of would be The Travels of Marco Polo for China & Asia pages [21], Heart of Darkness for the DRC [22]. Additionally, there may be a few books on wikibooks that could be useful to an article, mainly history and languages (for phrasebook pages). I'm not sure of the advantages of linking to history books on wikibooks (only European, NZ, & US history books are complete) vs. articles on wikipedia, but both Wikibooks and Wikisource content can be downloaded as a PDF to take on a Kindle, iPad, or other e-reader (just expand the print/export options in the left colummn)!! Very useful for travelers who use those devices. In fact I think that would be a good feature for Wikivoyage to add! I'm not 100% sure about this, but a link to Commons (in left column, not in-line) would be useful to browse photos/media for a destination. This wouldn't for for all destinations (like "United States"), but for off-the-beaten-path ones this could be useful. It would be like heading over to Flickr and searching for "Cape Town" or "Kakadu National Park" and doing some armchair traveling/fantasizing (:D). AHeneen 21:01, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with AHeneen. It makes much more sense to me to interlink different Wikimedia sites as appropriate, rather than discouraging links, and it's collegial toward what will be our sister sites. It's of course true that there are places where there is no WiFi and no cell phone signal, where links won't be accessible, and therefore, making all articles worth printing verbatim remains an important goal for the travel guide. However, in many, many places, and increasingly, websites will be accessible to travelers, and well-chosen links do not have to be mere signs of laziness, but instead, excellent citations/places to read more. I believe online referencing and links are the wave of the future, and that the move to Wikimedia should provide an impetus for an intelligent overhaul of our links policy. Ikan Kekek 02:40, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If I'm not mistaken, the other WMF projects also do not have in-article links to articles on other WMF projects too—links are kept at the bottom external links section. I'm pretty sure the reason for that is simply that it's confusing. Readers are used to navigating a single wiki via wikilinks, and are not expecting to be bounced around to other sites. --Peter ^Talk 15:02, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Occasionally, interwiki links to Wiktionary are found in Wikipedia mainspace prose, but I believe WP prefers to avoid them where possible. Commons very frequently links to en:wikipedia in image descriptions. But you're right that interwiki links are rare outside of the external links section and talk pages. LtPowers 15:18, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let me then suggest a clarifying solution: Footnotes. Inter-wiki links should be footnotes, rather than inline links. But the fact that other wikis aren't using very many inter-wiki links within articles (whether inline or as footnotes) doesn't mean we shouldn't. We can be the pioneers. After all, aren't we the travel wiki? :-) Ikan Kekek 22:25, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, links to Wiktionary are entirely acceptable and not discouraged in MP main space, as there are large numbers of words used which need definition but are not appropriate for a full article. A new WP policy for linking to the travel guide will have to be developed when the site is up, and it would be helpful to have our side in order.

Footnotes could be an effective way of handling inter-WMF links, and possibly other links. How do you propose linking from text to the footnotes? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:54, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would propose that footnotes work the same way they do in Wikipedia: You click the footnote, it takes you to a footnote section at the bottom of the page, and then you can click the inter-wiki link from there. So it would be a section at the bottom of the page, just one linked directly from the body of the page. Ikan Kekek 18:03, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That would be acceptable to me, but I am open to other suggestions. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:44, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm open to other suggestions, too. Ikan Kekek 04:30, 11 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Footnotes might be a good idea in some cases. I think the link to the article covering the same destination on Wikipedia should be in the column at left (just like at WT). A link to the category on Wikimedia Commons could also go in the left column. One option would be to use a different color for links to other wikis. This would be hard to do as I can't really think of colors that would go well without being too colorful/flashy and go well with blue. Using different shades of blue might not be enough for readers that aren't paying much attention, don't perceive subtle differences in color well (like elderly) or when accessing WV on a device with low color contrast (like a cheap cell phone or ereader) or in bright sunlight. Another option would be to put small images (like the email envelope or phone # phone on WT listings) of the Wikipedia, etc. logos next to the link. My preferred option for

Note: I'll probably move this to a different page later (like new tech features or new styling) since the following kind of goes off on a tangent. But my preferred method is part of changes to some of the templates we use, where listing templates would add the option to link to a Wikipedia page. This would mainly apply to the see/do sections. I think the templates for see/do/eat/sleep could get a makeover to make them look sleeker (if all the info is present, this could be a couple lines of text on a computer, much worse on a smartphone) by using images and hiding some of the information from being displayed. Let me give an example before explaining. For Westminster Abbey, the listing on WT Westminster begins ([6]=website):

• Westminster Abbey, (tube: Westminster), ☎ +44 20 7654 4900 ([email protected] [email envelope], fax: +44 20 7654 4894), [6]

My idea would be for a listing that would look like this:

• Westminster Abby ([tube] Westminster, [Bus] ?, [Wikipedia], [Website], [phone], [email envelope], address [Open Street Maps])

In this format, the brackets would all be small images: Tube logo, a bus symbol, Wikipedia's "W" logo, some sort of symbol that would be used for official websites(replacing the [1] arrow only in templated listings, not elsewhere in article), the (existing) phone symbol, the e-mail envelope, & OpenStreetMap logo. The only text that would show is the mass transit stop & address. When you click the phone or email images the phone #/email address would be displayed to the right of the image. The info would also be displayed by hovering the mouse over the image (on computers). It would be really great for our site's functionality if clicking on those images when using a device like a smartphone (either through the "mobile" site or an official app) would bring up a small overlaying window with the phone number (or email) and ask "Call [ph. #]?" or "Email [email address]". The Wikipedia logo would serve as a link to the corresponding WP page...opening in a new tab on a computer. On a smartphone/tablet, this would bring up a prompt (Visit [name] on Wikipedia? "Go" "Cancel") just in case it is pressed accidentally (due to charges/limits for data service on mobile networks)and then bring it up in a new window. There would be different mass transit icons for bus, (light) rail, & metro/subway. In some locations, the icons would be changed to reflect those of the official mass transit lines...like for Westminster Abbey, in London, the Tube...but ONLY if those images are not protected by copyright or otherwise permitted to be used freely (I think this was done with some of the routebox navigation). The bracketed number followed by an arrow is rather dull and, for those who might not be used to wikis, not intuitive that this means a website. So, a new website icon could be created for use in listing templates (it wouldn't be used elsewhere on the page). Clicking this would open the website in a new window (smartphone/tablet users might be prompted "Visit [website url]?" "Go" "Cancel"...again, to prevent accidental clicks). Finally the address could be displayed a combination of description ("Corner of 1st Avenue and Main Street"), physical address (which could be hidden by an image [1234] or by "Address" and displayed by clicking or hovering over it), and coordinates (hidden under a logo...maybe use same as WP...and displayed when clicking/hovering on it, see WP WikiProject Geographical Coordinates for ideas on incorporating into WV). The address/coordinates can be used to link to a mapping service/website via an image/logo (OpenStreetMaps may be best, because of licensing, when compared to commercial services) on smartphones/tablets, clicking on the image would prompt the choice of service ("OpenStreetMaps" + what the device uses...handled on the phone OS side, like if you have two programs doing the same thing on an Android device, you click an address and a window pops up for you to choose which to use...this wouldn't be for WV to know/link to other services). If a part of information is not provided in the listing, then the icon is not displayed (eg. no phone #, no phone icon shown).

To put this in perspective, the current WT attractions listing template is:

• <see name="" alt="" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price=""></see>

A new template might look like this:

• * <see name="" alt="" bus="" metro="" lightrail="" Wikipedia="" url="" phone="" email="" address="" directions="" coordinates="" hours="" price=""></see>

For offline electronic use (which is a topic that needs to be brought up elsewhere), the information would be fully displayed except websites which can get messy when longer than http://website.com (could be "Link" underlined). Wikibooks & Wikisource allows pages to be downloaded as a PDF (to view on computer/tablet/phone or loaded on e-reader), which is something WV should get when we move to WMF, in which case websites would need to be displayed in case printed or needed to enter in an internet cafe. We could also see if WV could get an official phone/tablet app some developer could volunteer to create that could keep the same formatting as the online website, but allow downloads for offline use.

Outside of templated listings, there's only a couple other common places where inter-wiki links would be used/appropriate. Since regional/country-level pages don't use listing, but rather paragraphs of text, WP pages could be linked by adding a template after the name of an attraction/etc. So in the middle of a paragraph you would see "Westminster Abbey [W]" (where W is the Wikipedia "W" logo) which would be done by typing "Westminster Abbey {{Wikipedia:Westminster Abbey}}" a template that could be added to the toolbox you see when editing. Links to other WMF wikis could be done similarly. AHeneen 00:35, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see you have given this some thought. I like your suggestions for the see/do templates, and suggest that the tourist information "i" icon may be the one for the url to the official website.

Colours can be problematic for accessability reasons, I have been running into this problem on WP.

Links in the left column can only be generic to the whole topic. There would be no way to indicate that the link is specific to a particular detail. In-line or footnotes can do this, as there is an indication of relevance inherent in the placing of the link in the text. Ideally a plain link would be internal to the travel guide. External links outside of WMF would generally not be allowed in the body text. Links to WP are the most likely to be wanted. They could be handled as footnotes with the usual superscript number in square brackets, and information in the references section at the end of the article which is standard WP procedure and the software and templates already exist, or alternatively a ^[WP] indication that the link is to WP. This has the advantage that attempted links to external sites would be more obvious.

I also like the idea of a dialog box to check that the user wants to open a new site, and suggest that it should default to new tab or new window so you can find your way back easily, by closing the new tab/window. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:37, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I also like the ideas for the See/Do templates and added usability for mobile phones. We already have lat and long tags (which are rarely used) so maybe those could help with the coordinates? I think I'd also prefer to display the phone number along with the address and name... it still seems pretty useful to me but I might be old-fashioned in this. As long as the information prints, I'll be happy.

I'm still not convinced about footnotes or in-line citations in Understand (or similar sections) though. Both seem (to me) to be heading down the path of verifying specific facts in our articles. Could we accomplish a similar thing by having a See also: [[Wikipedia article name]] for further information at the top of the section/sub-section (similar to the way WP calls out Main articles)? -Shaund 03:36, 11 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. And I totally agree with you on phone numbers. It's very important to list them. Ikan Kekek 04:30, 11 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great proposal,AHeneenand elegantly worked out in detail. 100% support! --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 13:17, 23 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I also agree. However, I'd also like a 'pier' option besides metro, lightrail and bus (for cities like Bangkok and Venice, which have extensive inner-city boat travel). Also, addresses and phone numbers should obviously stay. --Globe-trotter 14:19, 23 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm worried that allowing in-article links to other WMF projects could lead to increased difficulty in managing the influx of brand-new WP contributors we are likely to get after moving to the WMF, and in helping them adjust to a different way of working on content. A predictable argument would be "well, if you can link the understand section to WP links, why can't you link to other external references, which might be better?" More to my main point, though, is that we are a far smaller project, and need to be able to stand on our own two feet. I think there may be ways to improve interproject navigation that doesn't entail extra in-article external links. --Peter ^Talk 18:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I think WP editors are much like WT/WV editors. Some are able to understand policies and consensus, others have to have the concept bludgeoned into their tiny brains. I think the potential gains outweigh the risk, which, though real, is much the same as touts, which we deal with all the time. The vast majority of Wikipedians are reasonable, civil, and constructive, and will not be a problem. They are able to recognise that they are expected to follow the local policies and that WP procedures dont apply everywhere. There will be some misunderstanding, a bit of quibbling, some efforts to change consensus, and a few persistant pests who will eventually be blocked. Then business as usual, (apart from the expected benifits of no IB involvement and better support). The answer to the predicted argument proposed above is simple: Wikimedia projects are all part of a single foundation, so we work together and support each other. Other external references are not. I think most Wikipedians will understand the point. I think we will have more trouble with non-WMF editors on this point, but still don't think it will be unmanageable.
• Can you explain in more detail the other ways to improve interproject navigation without in-article links? It sounds like a very nice concept, but I have no idea of how it may be done, so can't comment on whether it would do what we are looking for.
• I think you overestimate the numbers of Wikipedians flooding in. I hope I am wrong, because on average they should be more productive than the flood of touts and spammers we usually have to deal with, and which, no doubt, will follow us to WMF. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:00, 13 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think we shouldn't link to WP in-article. It just adds to confusion, as readers will expect official links to a business or sight. Having two links (both to the sight official site and to WP) would be confusing, and contributors would just dump links to WP instead of adding relevant information about sights to Wikivoyage. --Globe-trotter 14:19, 23 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

---

Note: the above discussion was imported from Wikivoyage-old.org/gerneral. User names do not necessarily correspond to Wikivoyage users, although most are now active on WV with the same username. A full list of contributors for the above content can be found here.

Swept in from the pub

The admins and programmers of the Wikimedia Foundation do not like the Listings extension because it is not necessary and can easily substituted by templates.

We told them that the see, do, eat and sleep tags are heavily used. I proposed to keep the listings to stay compatible backwards. It would be one of WV's main tasks to persuade the communities to use a template in future, because with no access to the servers we have no influence to the listing tags.

Later if you would have prepared a template we could use a bot to change the tags to templates. Please have a view to vCard at the German Wikivoyage. We told the WMF staff that a turning the listings into a template by a bot right now would cause an outcry at WV/en. --Unger (talk) 07:14, 30 October 2012 (CET)

Being "raised" in the WMF-world of Wikis, I'm actually wondering why "turning the listings into a template by a bot right now would cause an outcry"? For me templates seems like an obvious thing to use over the listings, and I would assume that doing a full conversion using a bot would be rather trivial for someone, who handles bots better than me. Is there any previous history on listings/templates that I am missing out on (and can't find)? In kind regards, Henrik/Heb (talk) 10:37, 30 October 2012 (CET)

I think the long-time users here just prefer not to have to change the processes and practices that have been used since the project's inception. Templates would probably work better, as it allows for manipulation and changes by the normal users and administrators. We were previously trying to change the way listings are displayed, but were gobsmacked as how to do so. Templates would also allow for better categorisation if we needed to. It seems like a no-brainer. JamesA ^>talk 10:55, 30 October 2012 (CET)

I also don't see any problem with introducing the template during the migration, provided that we have time to test its performance. I believe that it is much easier when heavy changes are done in one run. By the way, the vCard template looks great, and it goes along the lines of the recent discussion on introducing new fields and revising our format of listings. --Atsirlin (talk) 11:01, 30 October 2012 (CET)

AFAIK, the main reason for the listings tags was to allow inline editing using the custom form Javascript. Since that's no longer available here, I'm not aware of any obstacles to using MediaWiki templates. But we'd have to ask an old-timer like Evan to be sure. LtPowers (talk) 14:14, 30 October 2012 (CET)

Wikivoyage talk:Listings has some of the background; it looks like Evan wanted to get the listings into an hCard format and was having trouble making it work with template parameters. But it's hard to tell. He started off talking about templates but ended up with the custom tags. LtPowers (talk) 14:23, 30 October 2012 (CET)

Wikipedia does generate hCard microformat from templates, template:infobox person on biographies being the most common example. K7L (talk) 17:08, 30 October 2012 (CET)

At least with the Parser functions it is possible to write complex and fast templates. The most important functions are #if and #switch. At the beginning of Wikitravel these opportunities were not available. With #titleparts you can also explode slash separated strings. To get an idea what's possible to make with templates see for instance the Location map template. There are no performance problems, for instance see Cairo embassies all made with vCard template. It is no problem to created div or table tag based layouts or to select different layout types. To make template specification easily we use the Template Master as developed by the German Wikipedian Revvar. --Unger (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2012 (CET)

Sorry if my question about the performance was confusing. I meant the correct performance of the listings-for-template replacement. Do you think it is still feasible to implement this replacement during the migration? --Atsirlin (talk) 21:31, 30 October 2012 (CET)

I think the replacement should possible because you need only a correct regex to substitute the tags by a template. I am not sure if it can be done at the migration but this would be a good time. But it would be useful to prepare the template. --Unger (talk) 12:50, 31 October 2012 (CET)

What sort of timeframe to create the templates would be necessary to do the replacement as part of the move? I thought the move was happening today. It had been my impression that switching to templates was tentatively thought of as a post-move task, so it may be too late to figure out how we want them to work that fast. (I'd be inclined to a whole set of templates - {{Eat}}, {{Sleep}}, etc. - rather than a single monolithic {{vCard}} if only for the sake of easier replacement of existing listings, though they could also all transclude one underlying formatting template.) -- D. Guillaume (talk) 01:24, 1 November 2012 (CET)

I agree with having separate templates for each category of listing. It shouldn't be any complex issue to change the listings. Couldn't we simply use a bot, or even that replace tool that we've grown to love? JamesA ^>talk 09:46, 1 November 2012 (CET)

Using ReplaceText to change "Get Out" to "Go Next" was incredibly tedious, and it will take just as long (or possibly 5 times as long, unless I can devise a regular expression that will cover all of the listings tags) to replace the listings tags in every article. It's not something I'd be keen on repeating. LtPowers (talk) 13:29, 1 November 2012 (CET)

It makes no sense to have separate templates because all the templates are nearly the same. Within one template you can make also a categorization (giving several types) to distiguish between several types of establishments/institutions which is useful for future transfer to WikiData. With regex it is not difficult to substitute them in one run. When I speak about types I do not think only about see, sleep and do, but also about campsite, hostel, guesthouse, hotel, ...

The best would be to do substitution before migration. But we have no time, and I do not know who should do it. I by myself have no bot and database experience. The advantage to do it now would be our full access to the database. Later we can do it only with a bot because we will have no database access any longer.

Maybe you should start now to program a template. You can also take vCard and make some adaptions. --Unger (talk) 11:45, 1 November 2012 (CET)

Unger, I believe it would make the most sense to have a single underlying template to represent "a listing", with wrapper templates created around it for each type of listing. (For example, create Template:Listing and have it handle display formatting and everything, then create Template:Sleep that uses Template:Listing to generate an accommodations listing.) LtPowers (talk) 13:29, 1 November 2012 (CET)

It wouldn't even need to be a wrapper, as "sleep" adds nothing not already in "listing". Redirect template:sleep to template:listing and be done with it. We do need "listing" generically in any case, as some listings (mostly transportation providers in 'get in'/'get around' or visitor information bureaux) don't fit in the six arbitrary see/do buy/sleep eat/drink categories. K7L (talk) 16:47, 1 November 2012 (CET)

Well I'm still thinking about the details, but there are elements that the different types of tags do not have in common. Listing would have to be written to accommodate all of the possible data, but there are a couple of ways to do that. LtPowers (talk) 18:01, 1 November 2012 (CET)

Actually, they are identical - even where the extra fields are not useful they do still exist. * <eat name="Cockroach Motel" address="13 Skid Row" checkin="they check in" checkout="they don't check out"></eat> gives * <eat name="Cockroach Motel" address="13 Skid Row" checkin="they check in" checkout="they don't check out"></eat> even if the check in/out times are never actually useful for anything but lodging (eateries have hours="open/close time" instead). K7L (talk) 18:30, 1 November 2012 (CET)

I'm speaking conceptually here. LtPowers (talk) 19:14, 1 November 2012 (CET)

Is there any way in which you envision eat/drink see/do buy/sleep, each provided with the same input data, giving different results as output? (For instance, will 'sleep' drop a roof-and-bed icon onto a locator map at some co-ordinate or 'drink' display a coffee cup?) If not, these are just aliases of <listing> as the fields (even if we don't use them) do exactly the same thing in all cases. K7L (talk) 20:06, 1 November 2012 (CET)

It's certainly possible; who knows where we might go with this. Certainly they could be implemented as you suggest as a start; it'd be better than nothing and redirects are easily changed into wrapper templates. My point was mainly aimed at avoiding syntax like {{vCard|type=eat ... }} appearing in articles, which is what I thought Unger was suggesting. LtPowers (talk) 20:34, 1 November 2012 (CET)

The "icon on a map" you suggest could still be achieved with a single template. It'd just be a matter of the icon changing depending on a |type= or |section= field. JamesA ^>talk 06:15, 2 November 2012 (CET)

But that would involve some sort of #if or #switch statement within the template; it would be far easier to write a wrapper template to accomplish that -- and with the added bonus of being more readable to editors. LtPowers (talk) 13:59, 2 November 2012 (CET)

Support conversion to templates, I initiated the microformats project on Wikipedia, and Wikitravel (now see Wikivoyage:Microformats, and would be happy to assist with further deployment here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:17, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support I am a long-time user of the XML-style listings, and even wrote tools for them, but I think switching to templates would be better. At term this might even allow the Visual Editor to be deployed on Wikivoyage? Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:49, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have written Template:Listing as a start. Do what you like with it! This, that and the other (talk) 09:48, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your input! However, I think that we should postpone this until the cleanup is done, images are back, etc. We had at least two discussions on the format of the listings and the change in their content. We have to go back to these discussions and develop a strategy before putting things into the code. --Atsirlin (talk) 10:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly. I just wanted to show that it is possible, and easy to do, and very flexible. This, that and the other (talk) 10:36, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support As I was a bit annoyed by converting vcards into tags from wv:de to wv:en and back, I have written some parser for that. It also handles both directions, vcard to tag and vice versa. It eats any wiki code and looks line by line for vcards and tags in it. The parsing handles the different way of having separate phone country codes in vcards and also fixes missing http:// in links. Listing tags (eat, sleep, see, ...) are currently converted into the vcard types restaurant, hotel, ... which seemed to be common usage in wv:de, but this might need some more adjustments. E.g. it could do easily do some more educated guesses, to convert some drink tagged thingy into a cafe or bar, depending on what substrings found in thingys name. Same for sleep: guesthouse, hotel or hostel. The source code is in this github repository, and a demo for a quick try is currently online here: Wikivoyage vcard-tag converter. Automatic conversion for currency symbols (e.g. VND->dong or vice versa) could also be included easily. If there is some interest in it, I'm happy to invest more time in it. ML31415 Mail Talk 18:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Current status is that our tags are merely redirected to a vCard template, {{listing}}, using the patch in bugzilla:43220. That isn't going to guarantee that the fields in de:'s vcard template match those on en: or ru: — we also still have many destinations which were never converted from plaintext listings to tags (and therefore no templates). K7L (talk) 19:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the parser with a bunch of heuristics, so it does a quite good job now in also translating unformatted list entries into properly formatted ones. Not yet good enough for running it fully automated, but quite helpful for manual editing I guess. ML31415 Mail Talk 06:38, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work, Michael and very helpful already!

One thing you might like to consider, Michael, is a switch for the English language Wikivoyage which forces the insertion of null tags like tollfree="" (in line with the recommendation here: "...If you don't know some information, just leave that field empty,somebody else can add those details later. Please do not delete any unused listing fields..." ). Thanks for listening. -- Alice^✉ 07:15, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for comment! If you find further issues, let me know! ML31415 Mail Talk 13:07, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! That was quick! thank you very much, Michael!

1) I see that you've now forced the addition of the tollfree, lat, long, fax, price and hours tags (and perhaps more that I haven't noticed). However, many listing types should have directions and alt tags and some types of listings conventionally have additional tags. For example, "Sleep" listings also have checkin and checkout tags. (I see that your program is smart enough to often guess correctly whether an unformatted listing is a "sleep", "eat" of "do", etc).

2) The order of display for the reader will be handled automatically, of course, but it would be very nice from the human perspective of editors if the null content (and parsed content) template variables were inserted in the conventional order of

* <listing name="" alt="" address="" directions="" phone="" tollfree="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" checkin="" checkout="" price="" lat="" long=""></listing>.

That way, it's a bit easier for us boring copy editors to spot the listings with missing data when copy editing, Michael.

3) Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the recent changes may have messed up the way your parser handles data it can not categorise so that it is lost. For example, your Birmingham Buddhist Centre example, when parsed to the tag type of output, is now losing "(#1, #35 or #50 bus)" -- Alice^✉ 20:04, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Bugs fixed. It's work in progress, so I beg for some mercy, if something is not fully working as intended yet. I also added some buttons to improve the workflow with copy&paste. Now you can also just put a single (section-)edit-url into the field, and it will fetch the data and grab the listings from it. Besides that, I'd suggest to put bugreports to the issue tracker at github. ML31415 Mail Talk 22:41, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a great tool now, Michael and I'm using it already. These will be my last bug reports here.

1) I expected it might choke on the double tadpole (quote) symbol the US and others use for inches when sizing their TV's but there seems to be something else in this example that it doesn't like:

*<eat name="Hollyette's Restaurant & Bar" alt="" address="North Poblacion Larena" directions="in the City of Larena, close to Larena Pier" phone="+63-(0)35-377-2368" url="http://www.hollyette.com" hours="From 9AM" price="" lat="" long="">International restaurant, very clean and always well stocked. Guaranteed best food on the Island of Siquijor. Imported and local drinks. Sports bar with 32" Cable TV. Alternate room reservations at local rate. Domestic flight bookings. Aberration Dive Club. Free WiFi Internet DSL-Connection. </eat>

2)This example chews up the URL for some reason:

* '''Villa Marmarine''' Near Siquijor Town on the way to Larena. It has a decked restaurant and a clean kitchen with very good food. There are grand and unique cottages of various size and cost. All have sea views. The landscaped beach is well maintained and cleaned every morning. There are lots of hammocks and a pleasant garden with soft grass. Free WI-FI. http://www.marmarine.jp/en/index.html -- Alice^✉ 04:49, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I've put these examples to the test list for the next update. ML31415 Mail Talk 01:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion has been swept in from the Travellers' pub.

I propose that we add a Wikipedia parameter to the special tags <see>...</see>, <do>...</do>, <eat>...</eat>, <drink>...</drink>, <sleep>...</sleep>, <listing>...</listing>.

For example, the "<see>" entry for Doxey Marshes on Stafford should include a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxey_Marshes Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:02, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that we first replace the listings environment with a more suitable template(s) and discuss links to sister projects on the dedicated page. --Atsirlin (talk) 23:06, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If that's going to happen, in the near future, then it would be a good idea to make the addition afterwards and not first; but we can still discuss the policy in the meantime. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:12, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see a listing format in which the name of a landmark is a link to the WP page (if it exists) and the address is a link to the Special:Mapsources co-ordinates. I do not agree with applying external link policies to interwiki WP links. Nonetheless, the listings extension will need to be fixed or replaced first, as it's currently frontlinking the name to the property's own-site URL (which is a bug) and that leaves the name unavailable to anchor the interwiki link.

Using the individual listing as the source of sibling links ensures we have the listing before we link. A printed copy of a city page remains self-contained (the basic info is here) and not merely "see Wikipedia fox X".

The sibling link to a city-level article (in WP) or category (on commons:) can stay where it is (on the sidebar) or be placed at the bottom of the page. I see no harm in the names of airports or highways interwiki linking to WP as those don't get their own articles here except in rare cases (such as Route 66 and Trans-Canada Highway, which exist at itineraries). Anything that's not a city/town, the subject of an individual see/do/eat/sleep listing or tourism infrastructure (such as airports or highways) likely should not be linked. "Good place for salmon fishing" shouldn't be a link to the biological and scientific information for every species of fish in the area, for instance, as WV is not an encyclopaedia. K7L (talk) 05:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see coordinates in listings displayed on the page, so that they can be seen, copied, printed, emitted as microformat metadata and, of course, linked to Special:Mapsources. Otherwise, all agreed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am against all external linking from within the article, except for a link to the official site of a listing. Linking to an encyclopedia does not help us reach our goals. It turns Wikivoyage into a linkdump site, discouraging users to add their own content to the articles. Articles should be self-sufficient and not rely on external sources, so all information is available when articles are printed.--Globe-trotter (talk) 13:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How so? If a place has no listing here, there's nothing from which to make the link. That would keep out entries like Coral Court Motel, which has a full page on WP but does not qualify for a WV listing in St. Louis or Route 66. As for including "all information"? That would mean a full page on one motel in this case, if we were to duplicate the level of information in WP. We don't need the name of the original owner and architect of this place here, even were it still open. We include basic info if you can sleep there... the details of the historic register listing on this place can stay in WP. K7L (talk) 14:11, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think G-t's point is, if it's important to the traveler, it should be in our travel guide; if it's not important to the traveler, why bother linking to an encyclopedia? LtPowers (talk) 14:32, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Similar to GT, I think external linking should be minimal at best. There are rarely instances where it is vital. I imagine a "topics" page on WV for links of this sort would suffice, where you can offer links to the official site, wp article, commons, etc. Because choosing what to link to has great variation, a lot could hide behind a blue link if we open it up to external linking. All external links should be clearly noted to where they are taking the reader. When a reader is using our site and clicks on a link, they expect to remain on WV, not to end up at some other site. There are ways to handle this though, through the use of external site boxes (Wikipedia has an article on XXXX) that can be made "no print."

I am totally for external site linking, it is a powerful, helpful, and community building tool that benefits both the site traffic and the reader's navigation, but using a blue link is not the best way to go. - Theornamentalist (talk) 14:45, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

These wouldn't be eternal links, they'd be links to sister projects; we are -thankfully - part of the Wikimedia family now. Not only that but linking is how the World Wide Web is supposed to work. Furthermore, such links serve our readers when I read Wikivoyage, I want to use such links: when I need background information. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:24, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing requires a blue interwiki link to look identical to an internal link. Mediawiki puts them into their own class (extiw). A link like <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Court_Motel" class="extiw" title="w:Coral Court Motel">Coral Court Motel</a> could be made to appear differently with one line of CSS:

a.extiw { background: url(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Wiki_puzzle.svg/10px-Wiki_puzzle.svg.png) center left no-repeat; padding: 0 0 0 10px; }

If this is generated by a template, the template could also be coded to format interwiki links differently.

A box is overkill. K7L (talk) 14:59, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look in the discussion above concerning linking to Special:MapSources and providing geocords that are revealed when a pointer/mouse is hovered over something like this^[maplink]. The example used here is a link to a geocord supplied Special:Mapsources page. One of the propositions in the discussion in the section above is that the geocords will display with a mouse hover, a click on the link wiil go to a geocord supplied Special:MapSources page, and if the article is printed then the geocord is revealed on the printed page, maybe looking something like this^{[8°45′26.36″S,116°16′36.03″E]} when it is actually printed (of course that long geocord string is hidden by the^[maplink] in normal page view). The example above is a locator for an airport. The provision of geocords and a maplink to a transport hub such an airport, seaport or railway station may provide an attribute of considerable usefulness to the traveller. -- Felix (talk) 15:29, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In regard to linking to WP articles, except for the couple of examples described above we don't do travel hub articles here. Interwiki linking to WP articles on transport hubs may also provide some benefit in addition to the provision of the geocords. The WP transport hub articles are normally well patrolled and have lots of useful information for the traveller that we often don't provide in a travel article, such as full airline and destination information. -- Felix (talk) 15:29, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinates should be visible on the page, not in a tooltip (not every device or browser has tooltips), not least for the reasons listed above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:43, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on WP article linking - Firstly, Wikipedia does not interwiki link in their articles to sister sites. This is mostly true of the other sister sites back to wikipedia. The consensus is that it is not good practice, in general, to link externally, even to a sister site, without a clear notice that the reader is leaving the site. Use of different colors can become futile for colorblind readers, devices which only use black and white which would render a blue or green link both grey. Secondly, how do we decide on where to send them? If we only get one fragment to link, be it Route 6X, is it the encyclopedic article, the media category with images and video, a published (public domain) travellers account, or is it to the official website of said topic?

And to echo what was said by others above, doing this may in turn relieve the writing of vital information at WV when it can just simply be linked. I assure you, I fully understand the power of linking to the sisters, I've worked in many of them for years and would love to soon add a proper "Learn more about travelling in XXXXXX at Wikivoyage" to the Wikipedia article. But in handling these links, there has to be a removal of bias towards any in particular. - Theornamentalist (talk) 17:38, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Displaying coordinates for every listing in an article would look horrendous, I'm afraid. Coords have to be hidden behind a link of some sort, at least by default. Have you ever seen a professional printed travel guide that prints geocoords next to every listing?

Separately: Links to sister projects are absolutely external links and certainly fall under our Wikivoyage:External links policy. The change in hosting does not change that fact, so if we are to change how we handle them, it is that policy that must change. I don't know why the sister-links discussion keeps getting conflated with the geocoords discussion, but they are separate issues and should be discussed at Wikivoyage talk:External links and Wikivoyage talk:Geocoding, respectively. (There's also Wikivoyage talk:Sister project links.) LtPowers (talk) 20:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the the coordinates listed at every point of interest. I wonder if a disambiguation-type page for points of interest could be an option. - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:55, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That wouldn't help anyone. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:24, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As to displayed coordinates "looking horrendous", that's a value judgement. Comparisons with printed guides are fatuous; Wikivoyage is not a printed guide. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:24, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is. LtPowers (talk) 00:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The emboldening doesn't make your assertion any less false. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:54, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Look, I don't know why you think you know this project better than I do, but I assure you that one of our explicit goals is to create travel guides that function well in printed form. We do not have a "Wikivoyage is not paper" guideline, because Wikivoyage is paper, at least in part. LtPowers (talk) 03:55, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Where dd I say I know this project better than you do? Where did I say that to create travel guides that function well in printed form is not one of our explicit goals? Where did I say that we do have a "Wikivoyage is not paper" guideline? I simply said "Wikivoyage is not a printed guide". I invite you to prove your assertion otherwise. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:43, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're not making sense. You admit that creating printed guides is a major goal of the project, then repeat your assertion that Wikivoyage is not a printed guide. That's a clear contradiction. LtPowers (talk) 02:23, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no, it isn't. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:09, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does link from articles to sister sites; it even has a number of templates to facilitate doing so. Links to Wikipedia could be identified with a Wikipedia: prefix, thus: Wikipedia:Doxey Marshes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:24, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They link, but they are not inline links. They appear in "External links," in boxes that say "See also.." and so on. Linking in that manner is acceptable in my mind, but inline linking to Wikipedia isn't. - Theornamentalist (talk) 03:08, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which doesn't scan very well as prose, does it? LtPowers (talk) 00:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me, and the same could be said of Tel: or Fax: prefixes. But if that's a concern, we could replace the prose listings with tables with cells for such things and a prose column for details. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:01, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would it make any sense to turn the Wikipedia link, external link (to the "official site") and lat/long co-ordinates into icons, ie:

• <see name="Doxey Marshes Nature Reserve" alt="" address="Creswell Farm Drive, Staffordshire" directions="" phone="+44 1889 880100" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price="">Wetland oasis and bird watching site.</see>

K7L (talk) 02:10, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No. Coordinates and link text should be readable, on screen, to humans, for reasons already given. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:43, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The link doesn't need to be readable on screen. If it did, it would be very cluttered and there's really no good reason for them to be readable. When a WV page is printed, the links become readable text & I would assume this also happens when placed in a PDF book. On a computer, just hover over a link and just about every web browser out there will display the link as text in a box either next to the mouse or in the bottom left/right corner.

Now, as for coordinates, I would like to see them displayed but also agree that coordinates on every listing would look cluttered. Again, hovering over the map will display the coordinates in most web browsers. What I'm more concerned about is how these will be displayed on touch devices (smartphones, tablets) which will likely be used by many travelers...especially a few years in the future as smartphones and touchscreen computers (like many new Windows8 laptops) become even more ubiquitous. Will a user be able to see the coordinates without going to the map when the icon is touched? While this may seem trivial, for a traveler data roaming charges or data use with pre-paid SIM card is expensive and/or can be very slow. Someone accessing WV on their phone in a foreign country may just want to see the coordinates and not be constantly led to a map. On the other hand, the majority of people accessing WV on their phone probably don't want to see all the coordinates and on a small 4-5 in screen, coordinates for every listing would look very cluttered! Of course, there could be the option for viewing preference in the preferences, but this would only be available for registered users when logged-in. Most people who will use WV guides won't be logging in. AHeneen (talk) 03:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How does a reader copy the coordinates they can see when they hover over the icon, so they can paste them into another app or web page? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:14, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I really like the icon-links and have expressed support in several places where this has come up (WT, WV general, & now here on en.WV), but this is the first time I've seen the WP icon suggested and I really like it. However, the template would look much better if the icons came after the name of the listing. In my opinion, the best order for the listing elements are: name, address, directions, external link, map/coord, Wikipedia, telephone, email, fax, hours, &prices. AHeneen (talk) 03:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• <see name="Doxey Marshes Nature Reserve " alt="w:Doxey Marshes" address="(52.816°N, 2.137°W) Creswell Farm Drive, Staffordshire" directions="" phone="+44 1889 880100" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price="">Wetland oasis and bird watching site. http://www.staffs-wildlife.org.uk/page/doxey-marshes</see>

That does look a bit more cluttered... is there a better way? Also, what of this info needs to be in a hard-copy (printed) version? K7L (talk) 00:25, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure how to handle the Wikipedia link in printed/PDF version, but otherwise all the other information should be in the print/PDF version. External links and coordinates should be turned into text/numbers to read, instead of remaining a link. AHeneen (talk) 03:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure a Wikipedia link is actually useful to someone not online. K7L (talk) 23:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

I changed some things in articles, including tables, for a simple reason, we could not find what I wanted without tables. And you put a tag that I should not use tables. I do not know where it came from this rule, but I think it's worth reassessing; I think it's not worth we wasting so much time searching for informations, if we can use a table that organizes the information in the order you want to see. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 16:51, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The {{style}} tag that was added was a way to note that your changes differ from the standard Wikivoyage:Listings format used in all other articles. It would be great if you could start a discussion at Wikivoyage talk:Listings about what you dislike about the current format and how you would suggest changing it, but in the mean time the user who flagged the Florianopolis‎‎ article was just trying to call out the fact that the format didn't conform to agreed-upon standards. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rodrigo, could you explain the advantages you see in the use of tables rather than the conventional style listings? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:50, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Listings formats is something standard across all articles. As Ryan and Peter S point towards, though, we're happy to discuss making changes to them. Here's one new idea (of several) from Texugo, for example. --Peter ^Talk 07:01, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's also {{listing}} and bugzilla:43220. That isn't a huge change (as listings remain listings, not sortable tables) but it does get rid of the pesky front-linked URL's in the current <listing> tag. I'm hesitant about changes that add whitespace to listings, as the print version does matter, but we do need to leave some room for small-scale experimentation instead of merely "we've always done it this way". K7L (talk)