Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub

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

Experienced users: Please sweep the pub Keeping the pub clean is a group effort. If we have too many conversations on this page, it gets too noisy and hard to read. If you see an old conversation (i.e. a month dormant) that could be moved to a talk page, please do so, and add "{{swept}}" there, to note that it has been swept in from the pub. Try to place it on the discussion page roughly in chronological order. A question regarding a destination article should be swept to the article discussion page. A discussion regarding a policy or the subject of an expedition can be swept to the policy or expedition discussion page. A simple question asked by a user can be swept to that user's talk page, but consider if the documentation needs a quick update to make it clearer for the next user with the same question. A pointer to a discussion going on elsewhere, such as a notice of a star nomination or a request to comment on another talk page, can be removed when it is old. Any discussion that occurred in the pub can be swept to where the main discussion took place. Any discussions that do not fall into any of these categories, and are not of any special importance for posterity, should be archived to Project:Travellers' pub/Archives and removed from here. If you are not sure where to put a discussion, let it be—better to spend your efforts on those that you do know where to place.

Wts: pages

Special:WantedPages shows pages for which links exist but the target page does not. Currently quite a few of them have names starting with "Wts", a reference to Wikitravel Shared, a namespace which has never existed on WV. For us, these are just clutter.

I'd like to create a page, probably at Wikivoyage:Wts, put a short explanation there with links to Wikivoyage and Wikitravel, & to Commons & Meta which (among other things) do here what Wts did there. Then redirect all the "wanted" pages there, removing the clutter.

What do others think of this notion? Pashley (talk) 00:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Sounds fine with me. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Think it would be better to put a "nowiki" around the source of the red redlink, removing the wanted pages. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Or maybe a little smarter with the removing of the link:

Wts:How to start a new language version

by wrapping in template. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:21, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

123 page with links to wts: pages and 271 pages with links to :wts: pages. Would removing any of these links be a problem? --Traveler100 (talk) 14:08, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Also should add your support to having source filter on the page. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:41, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm inclined to skip the template. If there's a relevant link now, it could be re-pointed to the relevant page. Otherwise, I think it should just be made into a non-link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Lat/long precision

Wikivoyage:Listings says that using more than four digits after the decimal point in the lat/long coordinates is unnecessary. I'd read that before but didn't necessarily retain it, and exactly how unnecessary it is wasn't clear to me. But https://xkcd.com/2170/ has cleared it up: 12.1234 is a room, 12.12345 is a person in the room, 12.123456 is a piece of paper that the person is holding, 12.1234567 is a small drawing on that paper. I think that four digits is going to be plenty for our purposes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

You can see in this edit to the Porirua article that coordinates are strongly preferred to be four digits. It's a good standard that avoids our coordinates from getting too long, but I wouldn't spend time worrying about it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:36, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I would go a step further than SelfieCity and say this. It may be that 12.123456 doesn't look any different on a dynamic map than 12.1234, but neither does excessive coordinate precision do any harm to our content or the project as a whole. Where no harm is done, policy should remain silent. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:44, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Lat/longs are mainly used on this site to put markers on a map, not as numbers displayed for readers. If I right click on a dynamic map at zoom 18, I get 5 decimal places, and it is unnecessary extra work to trim this to 4 decimal places when pasting it into an article. 10 decimal places is excessive, but there is no harm if the odd listing gives 6 or 7 decimal places. (And the precision of longitude varies with latitude - when you get close to the poles 12.1 is a person.) AlasdairW (talk) 22:19, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

@AlasdairW: Right, because the regions between the lines get "wider" on a rectangular map. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:44, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

• I'm actually having trouble finding the place in policy that says four decimal places are required. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:33, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I should have looked at the first link in the discussion thread. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:35, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

---

Do we want to start a discussion on removed the four-decimal requirement from policy? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:37, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

There is no requirement, and there never has been. There was only a factual statement, which until a couple of hours ago simply said "more than four decimal places is excessive unless precision of 1 m or less is necessary". This statement is objectively true, whether it's on the page or not. More precision provides no benefit.

I agree with AlasdairW: We should not be enforcing the One True™ Amount of Precision For All Listings. It's not important, and there are the occasional exceptions. If, like me, you had trouble remembering what's useful, the answer for almost all destinations is four numbers after the last digit, and now you've got a fun way to look it up. Please do not interpret my comment as a request to create a bunch of pointless make-work or to create yet another rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Now, this is not to bully anyone, but if Wikivoyage:Listings was just a statement, then why was this edit to the Porirua article explained as "numerous formatting errors"? Perhaps Nurg can explain. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:50, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

The formatting errors were incorrect hyphenation of phone numbers and use of the wrong dashes in hours. Given that I made no mention of coords in the edit summary and left the Top Taste coords at 6 decimal places (only bothering to shorten the Curry Village ones), you're wrong to conclude from that edit that coordinates are strongly preferred to be four digits. I agree with WhatamIdoing that the bit about coords is just a statement. If anything about it is directive, it's that the lat and long should have the same number of decimal places. I wonder why that is important. Nurg (talk) 10:38, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

The entire page is not "a statement". The exact sentence about precision was "a statement". Notice, e.g., that it does not say "You must always use exactly four digits after the decimal point". It does not even say "You should use no more than four". That type of phrasing would fall into the category of "rules". But that's not how that sentence is formed. "This is more than you need" is not a "rule". It is a factual statement, which is meant to inform contributors, who can then make their own decisions about what to do, e.g., about whether it's worth the trouble of removing an extra digit. Hopefully, if people are more aware of this, then they won't worry when they can "only" find this level of precision. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Nurg: Thanks for being clear about this. I understand. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:59, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

If I may... it's not entirely accurate to say "there is no harm" from excessive precision. The precision of a coordinate is part of the coordinate data, and it says something about that coordinate. Sure, maybe now all it's used for is putting a pin on a map, but in the future, these coordinate pairs could be used differently. The precision then becomes an important part of the data. It's best to encourage discipline when it comes to selecting a precision so as to future-proof our data. As a copyleft site, we simply don't know how our data will be used. Powers ^(talk) 23:07, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikivoyage's Alexa's global ranking has surpassed Wikitravel during 2018... in my opinion, the goal now should be to surpass all other travel sites for each language

I am sure this has been mentioned here before, but I only found out in the recent months that Wikivoyage has surpassed Wikitravel in the Alexa global ranking:

• As Of July 5th 2019 Wikivoyage Alexa global rank is 15,780
• As Of July 5th 2019 Wikitravel Alexa global rank is 17,064

Congratualations to everyone whom contributed to this.

In my opnion, now that this goal has been met, each Wikivoyage edition should aim to surpass all the travel sites in Alexa's ranking for it's language (for example, the German Wikivoyage should have a page with a similar comparison between it's Alexa global ranking and the global ranking of all the major German travel websites, the Italian Wikivoyage should have a page with a similar comparison between it's Alexa global ranking and the global ranking of all the major Italian travel websites, and the English Wikivoyage should have a page with a similar comparison between it's Alexa global ranking and the global ranking of all the major English travel websites).

If you support this idea, I suggest that we should create a new page slightly similar to Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage_and_Wikitravel with the full comparison of the English Wikivoyage and the rest of the prominent English travel websites along with each website's Alexa's global ranking. (and hopefully the rest of the Wikivoyage editions would be inspired as a result to do the same in their websites). What do you think? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 13:19, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

It’s fine to keep tabs and celebrate milestones, but I think the most important thing is to stay focused on our core mission of providing the highest quality and most up-to-date information for travellers. If we do that, the rest will fall into place - and if we never become the biggest and most popular, that’s okay too. Not to mention the fact that, with a few exceptions, most of the other language versions of Wikivoyage have much more pressing needs to attend to, content-wise, before they need to start worrying about things like Alexa rank. — AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

In order to improve our Alexa rank much further, we need to have a much better cellphone interface. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:11, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with both sides here. Another page would be useful for comparison, but at the same time we should focus on improvement and new contributors as the priority. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:20, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

At the Hebrew Wikivoyage such a comparison is very needed (and I will probably end up creating it by myself for Hebvoy if no one at Engvoy will create one before me here), simply so that all the editors would know where we stand in comparison to our "competitors" and how much we improved the quality of the site in the opinion of the public over time. Such a comparison lets the editors also know for example at which periods of time certain mass implementations/changes have made a considerable contribution to the site (in order to know what actually works and what doesn't).

People whom experts in Alexa ranking... how do I check the Alexa ranking only for the Hebrew Wikivoyage? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 17:06, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

The Alexa ranking has some shortcomings, but it is still an indicator of success. Wikitravel still has stronger Alexa ranking for the United States (and implicitly for English-speaking users), so it is still a competitor. Wikivoyage was punished in the beginning, since the material was copied from Wikitravel. Over the years, the Wikivoyage material has however diverged enough from Wikitravel to be read by search engines as original. A conclusion might be that it has been a viable strategy to edit Wikivoyage just to diverge from Wikitravel. That might be a less meaningful goal now. /Yvwv (talk) 13:53, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

I am trying to do a comparison of the difference in Alexa rankings between all Hebrew travel sites, but unfortunately it seems that you must be a paying member to get that info. Does anyone here have access to Wikivoyage's Alexa Israel rank? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 14:15, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikivoyage is most popular in Germany and Italy because the German and Italian versions of WV were the first to fork. Because they forked much earlier than the other WV sites, they have had more time to diverge from WT and there was not that much duplicate material that was carried over into WV in the first place. This isn't the case with other languages and countries. I still notice that for the majority of articles on English Wikivoyage, WT outperforms WV in search. A challenging but realistic long term goal would be to get Wikivoyage's Alexa ranking in all major countries around the globe to a ranking similar to what it is in Italy. You can no longer see its ranking with Alexa's new style, but it was just in the top 3000 websites in Italy. That should be our goal worldwide. Gizza ^(roam) 00:45, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Just for some comparison: Lonely Planet's Alexa rank is 3,296 and Tripadvisor's is 240. That's obviously a long way to go for us, but hopefully they will help us in our aim to reach the next level of online travel guides. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:06, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

And I just noticed that WV surpassed WT in the USA ranking for the first time July 14, and has widened its lead since then. It still amazes me that Americans are still being led to WT by search engines more than to us when there is so little guide-building activity going on. Thanks to User: SelfieCity for keeping this updated. Ground Zero (talk) 01:27, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I am surprised about the search engines. I just tried DuckDuckGo for "united states travel guide" and after a little while Wikitravel came up. I didn't see Wikivoyage.

I don't think the search engines are purposely trying to promote Wikitravel. I think they see duplicate content on Wikivoyage and assume there is a copyright violation. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:34, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

On the other hand, when I search DGG for "pleasanton travel guide," Pleasanton comes up almost immediately. That's because most of that article is different from Wikitravel. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:37, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

• Going to a separate but similar note: I have started the Rewriting Expedition so we can make Wikivoyage's content more original. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:22, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Template:Frac

I tried to import Template:Frac from Wikipedia since it would be useful for us to be able to write out fractions in our article in some circumstances, but there seem to be an error. Would it be possible for someone with expertise to fix it? Thanks. The dog2 (talk) 22:47, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

It uses w:Template:Zero width space, the zwsp at the start of the template code. I would suggest removing this, as we probably don't need it, but I don't have time to try at the moment. You also need to import the documentation, and give WP attribution. AlasdairW (talk) 23:13, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I managed to fix it. The dog2 (talk) 23:35, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

What do you think about just putting the fraction in directly, like this? The most common fractions are available to all editors in the same place as the other special characters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:39, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

That's fine too. I have no preference for either one. I just don't know how to type fractions. The dog2 (talk) 22:21, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

The dog2, 1 1/10. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:31, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Questioning question - translation gadget

Hi! You've been asked that several times, I know. I couldn't find the links, sorry. Is there any translation gadget that I could use to translate some pages from en.wikivoyage to ro.wikivoyage, something like the one used at Wikipedia? I couldn't find any in the Preferences. Thanks :) AT09W^{(talk to me)} 12:04, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Was this intended to go in the pub or on someone's talk page? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:35, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

The pub, as I'm pretty sure this is not the first time someone asks about a translation tool. AT09W^{(talk to me)} 21:09, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

OK. I was confused; I saw "You've been asked that several times, I know" and assumed you were talking to a particular person. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:10, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a translation gadget as a beta tool, but we don't. The tool is still in development. Please say if you have seen it on any other language WV pages. I think that you need to use an external tool to tranlate pages. I use the translation features built into the Chrome browser on Windows, which I find reasonably effective for most languages. AlasdairW (talk) 23:38, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Napili

I created a banner from the Commons category Napili-Honokowai for our Napili article, but I'm not sure if the two places called "Napili" are the same place. Wikidata has two separate entries, Q2370737 and Q6964940. Could someone clarify that both are the same and therefore the page banner is in the right place for the Napili article? Thanks. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:02, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

The image description says "Kahana sunset", and w:Napili-Honokowai, Hawaii suggests that Kahana is adjacent to Nāpili and both are part of Napili-Honokowai. I don't know whether or not our Napili article covers Kahana. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:12, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

I did a quick search on Wikivoyage and there is no article for "Kahana" here. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:20, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Another, though more minor, concern I have is whether or not this image from Commons, which is categorized under Waikapu, is really showing that place. The reason I have concern is that I cropped the page banner for Waikapu from that image. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:22, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

As demonstrated at OpenStreetMap, Waikapu is a suburb of Wailuku which is turn a sort-of suburb of Kahului. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:26, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Chiusure

If anyone would like to take some turns at working on that article, I'd greatly appreciate it. Look at these edits for a very small taste of what in a larger sense is an edit war I've been dealing with. To their credit, User:Poggio99 has added some new content and updates to the article - but also a combination of purple prose with some touting, edit warring over points of style like not capitalizing "abbey" when not used as part of a name, and sometimes awkward English, and the user has engaged in a type of dialogue only in edit summaries, which you can get a feel for here (and you may want to look at previous pages, too). I'm a little tired of dealing with this user who's determined to do it their way, regardless of what's best English usage or more in keeping with Wikivoyage guidelines. Thanks, anyone. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:16, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm also going to leave it to someone else to make a decision about whether this behavior is indeed edit warring that should at this point result in blocks until the user engages in dialogue on their user talk page or not. I think it could be useful to have him/her around when Amant, which s/he clearly represents, actually opens, but until then, this constant insistence on doing it their way is really not Wiki-like. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:18, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the edit pattern as it stands is not productive. Have left a final warning message on the user's talk page, in the hope of receiving an answer and some co-operation. But the days when we indulge difficult, if earnest, users who don't try to change to suit us but insist we suit them for weeks on end (à la that Lima/Cuzco editor) are gone. Escalating user blocks will follow if things continue as they are.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:07, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:User ban nominations seems like an appropriate future step, if necessary. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:50, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

I've now done a more detailed examination of the edit history since this user began making edits. I don't think a user ban nomination is appropriate at this time, since the user hasn't done anything that would deserve such action. On the other hand, the user's lack of communication on the talk page is a warning sign and needs to change. Otherwise, for us, using the talk page feels like a waste of time. However, any block should be short, since the user has not been disruptive enough to deserve a longer block. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:58, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

The initial block would be for a day, no nomination necessary, with an aim to provoke a reaction, and hopefully dawning realisation, from a hitherto unresponsive person. I disagree with holding off on further action should we not get a desired result. Why do you not think that edit warring deserves action? We're all volunteers, and I'm not prepared to see my or others' time wasted on someone who isn't here to collaboratively build a travel wiki. But we'll see what happens.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:19, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

I support the block you want to do. What I see isn't outright edit warring, but it is disruptive in its way. I'm trying to see things from all sides. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:45, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

There is definitely edit warring going on, though it's not the simple linear type that involves only simple reversions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:08, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

I know this kind of situation can be frustrating, but maybe just ignore it for a day or two? It's a newbie editing on a holiday weekend. I wouldn't be surprised if the user goes back to work tomorrow morning and doesn't have time to edit for a long while afterwards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

I can ignore it, but someone has to pay attention to it, and this is not such a new user, but rather, quite a persistent one. Please look at the history of that article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:42, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, and I doubt the user was celebrating American independence in Tuscany. What may be a good idea, though, is to hold off on editing too much for the next day or two, just to give him or her the chance to reply, or otherwise make their intentions known. Perceptions of an edit war can work both ways. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Alright, I'll ignore that article for a week. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:39, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Since it's basically been a week now, I wouldn't blame you if you resumed editing the page now. It seems that the user has no interest in responding to our messages, but I hope that the next time (s)he edits the page, (s)he takes on board something of what we were trying to get across.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:59, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Sub-articles proposal

We currently have a discussion at Talk:Philippines#Bloat of the country article being somewhat too long & cluttered. It is by no means the only article with similar problems. A solution that is being implemented is to move some things to Driving in the Philippines, Shopping in the Philippines, Filipino cuisine, and maybe others. We already have Diving in the Philippines.

Would it make sense to have these as sub-articles linked to the main one, Philippines/Cuisine, Philippines/Driving, etc.? I think we could fairly easily come up with a standard set applicable to most countries, probably plus some continents & regions. The advantage of standardising a naming convention would be to make them easier to find or link to, certainly not necessary but perhaps worth discussing.

In many cases these articles would be short or absent; I do not think there is anything to say about driving in Belgium except that they drive on the right, you do not need a Carnet de Passages for your vehicle & they allow most European licenses & the International Driving permit. Pashley (talk) 14:42, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd agree with standardized names for articles that we have,but I don't agree with creating redlinks or stubs. They only make the guide look incomplete. Not every country needs a scuba diving article, a cuisine article, a driving article, etc. Ground Zero (talk) 15:47, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I've thought about the sub-page system (it's actually what Wikipedia used 'way back in the day). It might have advantages in the search box, because if you type "Philippines" in the search box, you should see things that start with "Philippines", which would include "Philippines/Driving". You won't easily find Driving in the Philippines under the current system, if you start by searching (here/not via Google Search) for something that starts with "Philippines" instead of "Driving".

I don't know if there are any disadvantages, other than the hassle of moving everything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I have no problem with standardising article names of a certain type (but do any of our driving articles currently not have the title "Driving in [place]"?) However, I would prefer articles had complete names, rather than these stiff abbreviations. What we could do is create a redirect at 'Philippines/Driving' which would appear in the search bar when readers typed "Phili", and would get them to the correct article. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:30, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

To list all the topics on a region:-

<categorytree depth=1 mode=pages hideroot=on>Topics in the Philippines</categorytree> produces:-

Bus travel in the Philippines

Christmas and New Year in the Philippines

Driving in the Philippines

Filipino cuisine

National parks and protected areas of the Philippines

Philippine Revolution

Shopping in the Philippines

What exactly is the problem trying to be solved? List all topics on the country page or find using search field? If second could always set up a page "Philippines topics". --Traveler100 (talk) 17:39, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this looks like a solution in search of a problem.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:08, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Would then have a region hierarchy under Travel Topics down to country level which would then list travel topics in the category. I think we should also consider merging the concept of Itineraries into Travel Topics, listing under type of activity e.g. hiking or driving and then also on the region page (in region category). --Traveler100 (talk) 17:46, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Technical question

Is there any easy way to generate a list of all articles on Enoy in a pagepile? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 12:25, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

This might help: monthly backups of WMF wikis. Here are the most recent backups for enwikivoyage; if you scroll down to "List of page titles in main namespace", that might be what you're looking for. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:25, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=&to=&namespace=0 includes all the redirects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Organised crime article

I was thinking if perhaps we should create an article called Organised crime. Of course, we are not going to teach people how to commit crimes, or to give people information on how to join gangs, but it is certainly true that many tourist attractions are known for their connection to organised crime. For instance, many speakeasies in the United States were run by the mafia in the years of Prohibition, and some gangsters like Al Capone are very much household names. Similarly, Australia is known for the bushrangers during the colonial era, and in Melbourne you can visit exhibits connected to Ned Kelly, perhaps the most famous of them all. So such an article can be tourism focused and provided people with information on the sites connected with famous gangsters throughout history. The dog2 (talk) 17:53, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

A bit like history of justice, only for organized crime?

Or do you think it would make more sense to have an itinerary for specific locations ("The mafia in New York", "Gangs in the Wild West", "Gangs you've probably never heard of in Chicago", etc.)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

In the case of Chicago, we can list places connected to famous gangsters such as the Green Mill for Al Capone, the Green Door Tavern for Dean O’Banion and the Twin Anchors Restaurant for Bugs Moran. All these places were operated by the mafia during Prohibition so you could get illegal booze. We could also list museums connected with famous gangsters such as the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Louisiana for Bonnie and Clyde. And in Australia, you can visit the Old Melbourne Gaol where Ned Kelly was hanged, and you can also see his armour in the State Library of Victoria. The dog2 (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Go for it. Depending on how far back you want to go, or how loosely you want to define organised crime, you could include sites associated with famous highwaymen from the stagecoach era.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:17, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

As a starter, it can be a section of the history of justice articles. /Yvwv (talk) 07:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I've created the article. Please help to expand on it. The dog2 (talk) 14:04, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Template for Metro Vancouver transit fares

I put together a template (User:Shaundd/Translink) to help make updating transit fares across Vancouver and its suburbs easier and more consistent. It's currently being tested on Richmond (British Columbia). The rationale is the regional transit authority increased fares on July 1 and plans on annually increasing fares for the next 2-3 years. Vancouver's transit system impacts about 15 guides so it's quite a bit of work to update each fare increase and historically, previous fare increases have been hit or miss in implementation.

Our template policy asks for a discussion before rolling a template out, so... let me know if you have any objections to this template. If there isn't, I'll move it to the Template namespace and implement it across the Metro Vancouver guides.

I don't have documentation yet, but the idea behind the template is all the various fares are stored in a switch statement in the template and the Wikivoyage guide would specify whether it's a one zone fare, two zone fare, etc. (e.g., {{User:Shaundd/Translink|1}} would display the standard one zone fare). It is less transparent if someone wants to edit the fares because they're in the template, but it will make implementing future fare increases much simpler so I think it's worth it. -Shaundd (talk) 07:05, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Looks like a great idea to me. At first it seemed odd that the template only provides the prices, and not any description, but once I looked at the demo on Richmond (British Columbia) it made sense... every destination will naturally have a unique description of how to get there, and would just use this template to show the various costs. I approve. --Bigpeteb (talk) 21:12, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I've moved it to the template namespace now as Template:Translink. -Shaundd (talk) 06:08, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

A usable guide to Canada

As of today, all 682 city- and park-level articles in Canada are at usable status or above. There are no outlines or stubs left. (The region articles are another matter.) Now, any reader looking into a destination in Canada will find an article that has useful information for them. (See Wikivoyage:Canada Expedition for more information.)

So, what are you waiting for? Start planning your trip to Canada! Ground Zero (talk) 20:28, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Fantastic job! An enormous achievement, quite literally.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:12, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Not to burden you with any more work (since you've definitely done enough), but now the city articles are done, it will make upgrading the region articles easier. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:16, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Congratulations! And your suggestion is tempting (but now how am I going to decide which place to visit?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

You gave me a thought. What if we created short pages giving people information about, based on what people want, where they want to go. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:34, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

How would those be different from country guides, region guides, etc.? Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe a collection of mini-itineraries might be fun. So "Try this if you want this side of the country", "Think about that if you're traveling with school-age kids", "LGBT folks who want something other than Montreal could consider...", "Train buffs obviously need to..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Sure, that would be fine. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:30, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

We do have topics guides to Canada, including Driving in Canada, Rail travel in Canada, and Across Canada by train. I'd encourage anyone who is interested to start a new one. I'm going to work on the region articles as they are (or should be) a way of figuring out where to go. In a country the size of Canada, travel is also a matter of geography. Ground Zero (talk) 11:00, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

How do you promote wikivoyage to let everyone know?

I found that most language version of the wikivoyage are less active, so how to do promote wikivoyage for more people to use or read? first of all, I think the Wikivoyage is a best travel website, but the problem is that it starts late, and often the editors come from a small number of Wikipedia people. It is definitely a great difficulty for Wikivoyage.

I have created the Youtube channel of the Wikivoyage, and I also tried to help anyone easily to edit any page of the Wikivoyage by teaching; I also tried to use the government's charity activities to promote us, but after all, personal ability is limited, resulting in the promotion power is really too small, so how can we let more people know about us? how?--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 03:45, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

When I write about a city in any travel forum, I usually link the city's name to the Wikivoyage article. That's a way to get visitors and improve SEO. And of course, improving the article is the best way to make sure people come again :-) But the way, nice videos! But how about talking in the video, with someone's real voice, to explain better? Syced (talk) 07:25, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Igor, did you make sure to add links to all the ZHvoy articles from their parralel articles in the ZH Wikipedia? (using Template:Sister_project_links). To my estimate, this is THE-ONE-ACTION that has helped us at HEBvoy most of all to increase the number of page views + helped increase the Google ranking of the Hebvoy articles (articles with such a link, if expanded enough, usually are in the first results in Google for the phrases when they are typed in Hebrew). Other than that, my best tip to you would be to create really useful articles at ZHvoy that contain a lot of translated content from EngVoy (as far as I remember you actually do this)... because creating "half baked" articles and waiting for the masses to expand them does not work in Wikivoyage like it does in Wikipedia. I don't know if you have that expectation, but some people in Hebvoy had that expectation, and it never worked out that way, in the way most articles at Wikipedia end up being developed. One last tip I have for you... I am starting to think that at Hebvoy the best way to get more readers and editors might be by sending direct invites to the Hebrew speaking people/organizations on the web that are considered experts in the topics/destinations which are considerd the most sought after acording to the statistics pages ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:59, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

One way is for the Wikivoyage community to be more active at YouTube, since views seem to generate more views in many cases. On a larger scale, (other forms of) social media, along with continued hard work, is helpful. Promotion generally takes time and builds momentum. If you lose the momentum, the results of the promotion may gradually go into decline. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:27, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

I've taken a look at your YouTube channel. Thanks for your work on this and I hope it helps Wikivoyage reach more people. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:33, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks to the advice and methods everyone gave me, I will think about letting the Chinese community's wikivoyager help provide on the Wikivoyage link from any Wikipedia articles. I also want to know how the Russian community has made the Wikivoyage successful.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 14:43, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Didn't they have a big project to do with taking pictures or something? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

On Facebook I routinely link to WV articles whenever it seems appropriate in some thread. Links to articles like Retiring abroad or Teaching English get more FB reaction than the destination articles. Pashley (talk) 15:21, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

That seems to work well, Pashley. Retiring abroad, according to page information, received 404 views over the last 30 days. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:59, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

But the Retiring abroad received 404 views is too less in English community, I think there is still a need to do more in the promotion. I will promote the Wikivoyage at the COSCUP of the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology on August 18th. In addition, I will adopt street lamps in the local government (they will help us to announce the "維基導遊" on the streetlights, see pitcure, the "維基導遊" is "Wikivoyage"), but Still need everyone to promote and support....--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 15:00, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Mailing list

Would it be possible to create a Wikivoyage mailing list through which we could send emails about the latest featured articles, etc? That way, we could get a loyal following. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:34, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I think that's good idea!--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 14:39, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you could start it out on a different language version and then try it on English Wikivoyage. I was looking and you have about 37,000 contributions on zh.wikivoyage, so maybe that would be a good place to start. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:16, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Umm... I don't know how to send a message to wikivoyager on zh.wikivoyage? And what kind of message is better to publish? by the way, we Chinese Wikivoyage edit is too less, I don't think own editing other language versions is a good solution.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 15:07, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

An invitation to subscribe to a mailing list would be fine; I'm on quite few lists already & would likely subscribe to one or more here, perhaps a general user list & an admins list.

However, I would seriously resent getting any message from any list I had not deliberately subscribed to! Even a "would you like to subscribe" message should be on the wiki and/or in the Facebook group for WV.

Also, we need to be sure discussions are kept open. A mailing list by nature excludes some people, so most discussions should be on the wiki & announcements probably both here & on Facebook. Pashley (talk) 16:26, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Any mailing list would have to be opt-out by default, in order to comply with European law - GDPR.

Could we have either a banner ad or a pop-up invitation to subscribe? Something not too annoying, of course.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:58, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd say any mailing list must be opt-in. Pashley (talk) 17:26, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Also as well as being opt.in you need to ensure email addresses are not made visible to others. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:07, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

If it wasn't clear, I meant people would be automatically opted out unless they stated otherwise. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:20, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

A mailing list already exists: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikivoyage-l/ WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I think that by subscribing to the user, it is a good idea to let the user come back again. At least let them know that the Wikivoyage has changed a lot.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 05:15, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

• Well, we could have a mailing list not for ourselves, but instead for people who read our articles. It could include the latest DOTMs, OTBPs, and it wouldn't exclude anyone since all that information is already present publicly on our website. The mailing list would do the same kind of thing Facebook does now. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:52, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

In the discussion of the Telegram group of Chinese Wikivoyage, we will publish DOTM and OTBP regularly in the group in the future. For the external part, we need to promote the Wikivoyage on YouTube, Blog, News and other websites or government activities. I think can improve the exposure of Wikivoyage.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 17:02, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Space

In terms of reaching existing volunteers, https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org is a new option. For example, User:Ground Zero would you post a note there about your Canadian article milestone? That's the kind of happy news that lots of people like hearing, and the results of your dedicated work are worth talking about.

The Wikimedia Space is a new project, and there are no rules against promoting Wikivoyage there (quite the opposite, really – we could even ask for a separate space for Wikivoyage if we wanted).

Everyone with accounts here should be able to use their regular accounts to login there. On the technical side, it's currently run through the Phabricator project. If you go to https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org and click the blue login button, it will take you to Phabricator. You log in to Phab by clicking the MediaWiki button. That will take you to MediaWiki.org to ask if you want to authorize the login. And that will take you back to Phab to authorize the Wikimedia Space login, and then give you a button to get out of Phabricator and back to the Wikimedia Space page to create your account. It is a little weird (and much easier to do than to explain), but it works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

OK, I got it.--✈ IGOR ／ ✉ TALK?! ^{．WIKIVOYAGER !} 11:16, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I have done so. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Ground Zero (talk) 11:29, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Please help let the Wikimedia developers know how much the Content Translation feature is needed in all the Wikivoyage editions

To my understanding the more members of the various language editions of Wikivoyage express themself about how much this tool is needed, the more likely it would be that this tool would actually be added in the near future.

So please... support Wikivoyage by letting the Wikimedia developers know how much this tool is needed right now for all the various Wikivoyage communities right here.

So far multiple people I contacted refused to take part in the translation efforts as long as this tool does not exist in the Hebrew Wikivoyage as well. Hopefully the developers would install it soon. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 20:10, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Please don't. Well, please tell them that we want this. But tell them by pinging them to this page, or by starting a new topic at mw:Talk:Content translation, not by going to Phabricator to "vote". Voting is against the etiquette for Phabricator. What you could add to phab:T105171 is information that you think a developer needs to know about how Wikivoyage's pages are different from Wikipedia's pages. That might mean things like which templates are popular at multiple Wikivoyages (we use so few, and they're the same across most Wikivoyages, which makes everything easier for the devs), or the fact that our articles tend to have only simple formatting and structures, or that we are happy to use Wikidata, or that we've cleaned up nearly all of the Special:LintErrors in the mainspace (at the English Wikivoyage, and hopefully at others, too). Phabricator isn't a good place saying how popular something would be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, thanks for explaining that. How should we move forward with this? Would you be able to add the request/s at mw:Talk:Content translation? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 10:22, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I could, but you can, too. It's really pretty easy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:33, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Links to non-English Wikipedia articles

Quick FYI: If you use the interlanguage link system to link to an article at a non-English Wikipedia (e.g., [[:de:Dingsbums]]), inside a listing template, please omit the :. It works in the listing editor's tool to make sure that you have the right link, but it produces a broken link when you save the page. The listing template automatically adds the : for you, so if you add one manually, then you get a broken link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Why would we link to a non-English article from English Wikivoyage, though? I understand that many of us (including myself) know at least some words in a foreign language, but we can't assume that other travelers will. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:23, 18 July 2019 (UTC) adjusted 20:08, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I think your use of the "nowiki" tag is not closed anywhere. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:24, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Linking to a non-English Wikipedia article is uncommon, and not ideal from the POV of someone who is reading our guide in English. It only seems to be done when no English-language Wikipedia article exists. But it might be better than nothing, e.g., a few pictures, or perhaps it's a German-language Wikipedia article, about a place in a German-speaking country, and you are planning a trip there because you speak German. I doubt that we'd add such a link at a random language Wikipedia (e.g., Wikivoyage guide in English + attraction in India + Wikipedia article in Russian = not desirable). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Right, I'm referring to the English Wikivoyage. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:07, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

If German Wikivoyage links to German Wikipedia, that's obviously appropriate. However, if German Wikivoyage linked to Wikipedia in a foreign language, even English Wikipedia, it wouldn't be right. While we expect some knowledge from travelers, we don't want to link them to an article they can't read, either. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:51, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Some of our readers will be able to read the linked articles. Most travelers are traveling within their home country (about three trips out of four, for the EU overall). So if we (the English Wikivoyage) write about a German attraction, and can't find an English-language Wikipedia article, but there is a German-language Wikipedia article about it, then a substantial number of the potential travelers to that attraction will be able to read the linked article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the statistics and information. I think, therefore, it may be better to keep these links but adjust them to make clear the link target is a foreign-language Wikipedia. For example, instead of John Doe you would do John Doe (German Wikipedia). --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:56, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a nice-looking template to indicate their (rare) links to other-language Wikipedia articles. It looks something like link [de]. See w:Template:Interlanguage link. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:10, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikivoyage tries to use the fewest number of templates, but there's nothing to prevent us from writing "(German)" or "[de]" by hand if these were in normal text. Which, however, they aren't, because they're the automatic links in the listing templates. The "link" is just the Wikipedia "W" icon (a picture, with no possibility of writing any text). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:19, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I see. You mean this kind of listing:

• Place. (updated Jul 2019)

Perhaps, in that case, the template could be adjusted to add an option for a foreign-language Wikipedia. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:49, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Problem of missing map structures solved

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T225592

In the past, structures like the island of Ios or Lago di Garda were missing on map. This problem is now solved. It seemed do be a problem of not closed polygons. Please give a hint if such failures reappear. --RolandUnger (talk) 08:01, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Hohenems

Just last week, I was in Hohenems, Voralberg, Austria, for the 2019 World Gymnaestrada in Dornbirn. I had tried to book a hotel in Dorbirn but the whole city was fully booked. So I booked a hotel in nearby Hohenems instead and travelled by train to Dornbirn.

I just noted that there isn't an article about Hohenems on WikiVoyage. Should I start one? And if so, how do I go about it? JIP (talk) 00:14, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Feel free to start one. See Wikivoyage:Plunge forward. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:46, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I created Hohenems for you. For future reference, just click on the redlink, then above the editing window you can click on the type of article (city in this case) to add the necessary headings in one click. Ypsilon (talk) 16:15, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I have also added a pagebanner. Let me know if the image in the banner does not represent Hohenems. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:20, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month for July

cotm to look and fix inconsistencies between Wikivoyage and Wikidata geo coordinates is coming along well. All city article coordinates have been fixed (was a good number in the wrong location) and most of the park article. Could do we a little more input on the region articles though. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:13, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side

This article is very close to star status in its nomination, and it would be great to get just a few more votes to put this nomination clearly in a particular direction (one or the other). Please feel free to go to Wikivoyage:Star nominations and cast your vote, either for support, oppose, or not yet. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:51, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I think I actually said somewhere that star nominations shouldn't be promoted in the pub, but I think this is an exceptional case. We are very close to getting all the discussions completed, with only two left. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:59, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Also, I have added a pagebanner. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:04, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Editing issues

Hi all, I'm trying to reply to a post on my talk page, but Wikivoyage doesn't let me and instead throws an error message: Error: This action has been automatically identified as harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: Block evasion. Is anyone else also getting this issue? 2001:630:E4:4220:F908:D1D0:2CB3:80F9 14:44, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Apologies. Try your reply again now.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:21, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

The bug is still there, whatever you did wasn't able to fix it. I still can't comment on my talk page. 2001:630:E4:4220:F908:D1D0:2CB3:80F9 11:06, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I have seen your comment. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:52, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Please help me find a better banner photo for the Japanese phrasebook at Hebvoy

At Hebvoy we decided that the phrasebook articles would mostly have banners of the people whom speak the languages, usually with their traditional clothing (in Engvoy you usually show store signs with those languages instead).

For some reason, it has been very difficult to find a good photos of Japanese women in kimonos that would make a nice panoramic banner. The best one I found so far is this.

I vaguely remember that such a banner already existed for one of the japanese articles but I could not find it.

Does anyone remember such a banner or can refer me to a good photo on Wikicommons for such a panoramic banner? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 12:38, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not very good with banners, but are any of the photos on our Purchasing a kimono guide a suitable source image?--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:44, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Our Japanese phrasebook article uses File:Osaka_banner.jpg, but it doesn't include people wearing traditional clothing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:15, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

IP block exemptions

According to meta:IP block exempt, administrators get this right, making it redundant in administrators. At least two users, including User:AndreCarrotflower, have administrator rights already and therefore do not need the IP block exemption. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:14, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

You can always see the sub-rights for this wiki specifically (different wikis can have different configurations) at Special:ListGroupRights.

My impression is that having "redundant" rights isn't really important. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Redundant rights are usually immaterial and sometimes helpful. Say Andre resigns his administratorship. Now the bureaucrat who flips off the admin bit doesn't need to remember that Andre also needs an IP block exemption. Powers ^(talk) 13:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

(AndreCarrotflower is a bureaucrat.) Probably right. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Dynamic map for Japan not working

Normally, boundaries on a dynamic map between regions should show a thick black line, but on the map of Japan, these lines are not showing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:19, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

It's because the mapshape-s there have parameter "stroke-opacity=0.1"... -- andree.sk(talk) 19:40, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe. I'll take another look. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:07, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

All I can see is, under the "Cities" section, {{Mapshapes|Q164338}}. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:08, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #1—July 2019

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon to start editing.

Edit Cards

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.

Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.

Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.

Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:

Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?

If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.

Follow these instructions and share your experience:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

Recent releases

The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:

1. Section editing
   • The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
   • The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
2. Loading overlay
   • The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.

Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.

New and active projects

This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.

• Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲 Try Edit Cards.
• Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
• Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
• Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.

Looking ahead

• Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to the team about how editing can be improved.
• Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.

Learning more

The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

18:32, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Kosovo and Albania editathon

Hi all,

This weekend (27 and 28 of July) through an editathon and all month of August we at Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group we'll be working on Kosovo and Albania Wikivoyage articles. Hope for your understanding during this time. At the same time, you're very welcome to join us in this endeavor. Thanks! --Arianit (talk) 12:12, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for making everyone aware of this. Please make sure participants are aware of the differences between WV:Wikivoyage and Wikipedia, as well as a basic familiarity with our WV:Policies. Other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing what you can achieve over the weekend! --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:34, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

An excellent endeavor! I'll also look forward to seeing the results. The participants shouldn't worry much about formatting and English usage. We welcome the content, and will tidy the edits up after the editathon. Thanks for letting us know! Ground Zero (talk) 15:49, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Does this help - Wikivoyage:Albania Expedition. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:29, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

@Traveler100: yes. Thank you! Hope we won't tire you a lot by tiding up after we finish. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

We're continuing our editathon for the second day today Sunday and we'll open it to the general public during the month of August. Hopefully more contributions will be coming that way. --Arianit (talk) 12:06, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

How would I know if changing an article name would get a lot more viewers? (SEO question)

Someone at Hebvoy recently suggested that we'll do a major change there based on an unbased theory, which they suggested might significantly increase Hebvoy's articles ranking in Google and other search engines.

Although at first I completely dismissed this theory... on second thought, I thought it would be wiser to share it with more people so that we'll be able to make a more educated decision about it.

The theory brought up is that most Hebrew speakers whom are interested in travel guides about a certain city/area would not google the name of the destination alone, but instead google "NAMEOFDESTINATION travel guide" or "NAMEOFDESTINATION for the traveler" (which in Hebrew would probably be "NAMEOFDESTINATION למטייל" or "מדריך למטייל בNAMEOFDESTINATION"). The person whom suggested this explained that by writing in Hebrew only the name of the destination one gets general information about the destination or articles in Wikipedia or other encyclopedias, but by writing it in the other way one is sent to the most relevant travel guides in Hebrew about that destination.

Let's put a side for a second the fact that it would probably be a major headache to change the names of all the articles at Hebvoy and fix all the breadcrumbs templates... is there any way to prove without any reason of a doubt that by changing the name of an article to a different name - for example "יוון למטייל" ("Greece for the traveler") instead of just "יוון" ("Greece") - this would lead to a much higher readership? any way to prove this empirically? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:07, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

This already works, in a way. The title of each page is technically "Place - Travel Guide on Wikivoyage" on English Wikivoyage. That's why searching Pleasanton travel guide brings up Wikivoyage more quickly than searching "Pleasanton." --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:33, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

SelfieCity - you seem to be on to something interesting I haven't thought of so far - while in google links to English Wikivoyage articles appear as "Greece – Travel guide at Wikivoyage" for example, links to the Hebrew Wikivoyage articles appear as "יוון – ויקימסע" ("Greece – Wikivoyage"). Does anyone know exactly where does one fix that? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 23:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You would have to see how many people are searching for "XYZ" on Google and compare it to the search results for "XYZ travel guide". I'm not skeptical of the notion that changing an article name could benefit SEO in certain circumstances, but I'm skeptical that people searching for potential travel destinations will always write "travel" or "guide" in their search. Many people would just write the destination. Especially if they just want to learn about that part of the world but haven't confirmed whether they are interested enough to go there one day. The searches for "XYZ" would be made by both people who may want to travel to XYZ or people who want to read about it for a non-travel reason. It's impossible to read the minds of the searcher. Alternatively, people will often have a more focused travel search on specific travel-related information. Like "XYZ activities", "XYZ restaurants and hotels", "XYZ things to see", "XYZ safety tips", "XYZ shopping" etc. all of which is contained in particular sections of our guides. But I found that these searches normally don't bring up WV articles which is disappointing. It may be different now with the recent articles being created such as Shopping in Japan. Let's see how popular these articles get. Gizza ^(roam) 22:33, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I have also thought that it would be a good idea to make e.g. Shopping in Portugal a redirect to the Buy section in Portugal, until a separate article is created like Japan. Some people when searching type the place plus things to see, eat, do, drink, sleep, buy, fly (using verbs) while other people type in words like restaurants, bars, sightseeing, activities, hotels, shops, airports (using nouns). Our section headings use verbs so noun searches on Google may not show WV results as high up as they should but redirects should boost SEO. Gizza ^(roam) 22:39, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

DaGizza - if it was up to you, do you think changing article names to "Greece for the traveler" for example would vastly improve the SEO? which redirects exactly would you mostly recommend creating (if the case was in English would you recommend mostly "Shopping centers in X" + "Restaurants in X" + "Hotels in X" + "Nightlife in X" + "Museums in X"  ?). Can you recommend way to test this theory without actually changing the titles? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 23:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I think to be frank, it may make things worse. From a readability perspective (not SEO), longer, complicated titles can put readers off. Simple article titles are better. And from an SEO perspective, it's mostly the actual content that matters, not the heading. The more unique, original content we have, the higher we will move up the SEO rankings. I don't personally think many people type "Greece for the traveller". They could write just "Greece recommendations", "Greece islands", "Greece nightlife", "Greece beaches", "Greece hotels" or just "Greece". There are many free tools that measure the popularity of various search terms. I don't have the time to analyse right now. And as SelfieCity said, whenever you write "travel guide" in the search, it bumps up WV's results. The full name of the Greece article is "Greece - Travel Guide on Wikivoyage". There are many safer and demonstrated ways to improve SEO. In Wikivoyage's case, diverging our content from WT as well as Wikipedia is key (since some editors here copy and paste text from Wikipedia which although allowed if attributed correctly, damages our SEO ranking again). Gizza ^(roam) 00:08, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I find that we need to beef up the "buy" section. I often use WV to research what to do in the country. WV does a good job highlighting attractions and restaurants, but a horrible job describing what kind of stuff to purchase for souvenir. For example, they don't mention maple syrup or smoked salmon in Canada (like seriously?) but talks a lot about money, currency exchange, tipping and taxes. Sure, maple syrup was covered a bit in "Eat" section and salmon was mentioned in passing. Just don't expect people to read every section beforehand and draw conclusions themselves. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:18, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Shopping at Vancouver airport

I agree that many of our articles could use more information about what kinds of souvenirs are popular and available. Also, your comment reminded me of this picture. —Granger (talk · contribs) 04:17, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Technical question

Currently the English Wikivoyage articles appear on Google as "Greece – Travel guide at Wikivoyage" (for example) while the Hebrew Wikivoyage articles only appear as "יוון – ויקימסע" ("Greece – Wikivoyage"). Does anyone know exactly where does one fix that (at Hebvoy) so that the Hebrew Wikivoyage articles would appear the same way as the ones at the English Wikivoyage? WikiJunkie (talk) 08:37, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't know sorry. But WikiJunkie, is this your second account in addition to ויקיג'אנקי (which transliterates to Wikijunkie in case anyone didn't know)? Gizza ^(roam) 09:17, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

See MediaWiki:Pagetitle -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:41, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

thanks! Yea that’s my Wikipedia account. Had to create a 2nd one for Wikivoyage back in 2013 for some technical reason (it was before the global accounts were fully implemented and if I’m not remembering wrong it wouldn’t let me use that username here or at meta (while working on the site at the incubator) back then. Oויקיג'אנקי (talk) 13:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

WOSlinker, is there any similar media wiki page I could use to add html keywords/description to all the articles for SEO purposes? I found this but I was wondering if there is a simpler way to do that. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 13:43, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

There's nothing I can think of. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:05, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Name of ecotourism article

Wikivoyage has an article about how to minimize environmental footprint when travelling. The article is currently named ecotourism. As stated on Talk:Ecotourism, the title is confusing, because the term has other meaning. Please provide your opinion about a renaming. /Yvwv (talk) 19:17, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Izmir metro

The map in the Izmir article doesn't show all metro lines, but for some reason only one... Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:54, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Copyediting articles

Does anyone know of any popular articles that have a lot of content copied from WT or WP that could do with being rewritten to help SEO? Just name an article and I'd be willing to work on it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:50, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Copyscape is a useful tool for finding articles like that, though I believe it allows a limited number of searches per month. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:08, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me about it! --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:13, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

It looks like Florida would be a good starting point. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:57, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

This would make an excellent Expedition. Can you put the list of articles on an expedition page? Maybe a collaboration of the month? Ground Zero (talk) 17:21, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, an expedition would be a great idea. You don't mind if I set one up? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:23, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I have created User:SelfieCity/Copyediting Expedition. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:26, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I would support and join it. Ground Zero (talk) 17:27, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Currency notations moving to different countries' pages?

Anyone knows why other currencies are slowly moving to their respective countries' talk pages? I thought the purpose of policy pages is to have a centralized list of best practices on a single page for reference, not scattered across a dozen or so talk pages for different countries. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:36, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I think the thinking behind that is that you don't want to set out formatting policy in two places, lest they disagree. I don't feel strongly about this, but I think it is more useful to have it on the country talk pages. @Ceever: may have comments on this issue. Ground Zero (talk) 18:47, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Avoid having 2 discussions in parallel can be achieved by leaving a message at the country's talk page pointing to the discussion taking place. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:30, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, the country talk page is where editors would look for consensuses agreed upon for that country. It might be that a centralised page was intended first, but it is not very intuitive, I believe.

Also, that page is not really necessary, because we have the country talk page for exactly such purposes. Also, this extra page has no purpose for travellers, it is overload we actually do not need.

Furthermore, a single page with all currencies standards listed serves no practical purpose, because most of the time you will stick with one country when editing, why have everything listed together when each is only relevant to that one country.

Last but not least, we now also have the spelling and time format for that country in one easily found place. Those three belong together for the purpose of informing editors which standards to use for that country. It would be harder to in addition have another page for the time formats and another page for the spelling formats, not to mention one page for all three formats of all countries.

I know this is a little confusing at the moment, because it is not clear where to look at the moment, but this will be a short transition period. Maybe we could add a links on those country's talk pages that do not yet have that format box.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 20:53, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. Wikivoyage:Currency is the correct place to document standards. Powers ^(talk) 19:11, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

For what reason? I'm sorry, but just saying you disagree with a long, multifaceted comment, without elaborating, doesn’t help us further this discussion.

Why not link the information on an article's talk page to the currency page with a clever template, a bit like the currency exchange template? That way, if one changes, so will the other. Or we just remember to change both on the very rare occasion that a format change occurs.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:45, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

It's standard on Wikimedia wikis to put style information in a central location for ease of finding it and easier comparisons (to detect inconsistencies, gaps, or overlaps). Powers ^(talk) 19:57, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Putting the notations on the talk pages on individual articles is mainly to remind potential editors what the standard template is. I believe any changed to currency notation are discussed on the Wikivoyage:Currency talk page, and all the relevant talk pages are updated if a consensus is reached. The dog2 (talk) 20:49, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Most changes to currency format have been discussed on the country talk pages over the last 2½ years, but there have been a few discussed on Wikivoyage talk:Currency. That's neither here nor there. I agree with Ceever that it is most helpful for editors to group currency, time and spelling conventions on the country talk page because editors are more like to be doing edits across a country than focussing edits just on currency formats. We can put a link on Wikivoyage talk:Currency to the country talk page, and in many cases have already done so. This is not something we should spend a lot of time on. Ground Zero (talk) 22:32, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

People of African descent

I know this is a minor issue, but I'd like to gather people's thoughts for this as a synonym for black people. While the term is most commonly understood as such, I see some potential for ambiguity for the following reasons:

1. If you go back far enough, all humans are of African descent since the human race originated in Africa.
2. Could this term potentially also refer to, say, an American whose parents are white South Africans?
3. What about people with ancestry from the Arabic-speaking North Africa, in particular the Maghreb? Many of them look more similar to Greeks and Italians than to the Bantu peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. It certainly wouldn't be wrong to say that these people are also "of African descent", and there's no reason not to consider North Africa a part of Africa.

So yeah, just let me know what everyone thinks. The dog2 (talk) 20:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

If you don't mind my asking — what does this have to do with Wikivoyage? Do we use the term "African descent" on Wikivoyage? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:07, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I've seen it occurring in some articles. And there are times when referring to somebody's appearance is appropriate. For instance, if you want to apply for a job as an English teacher in East Asia, a white people will have a much easier time than a black person. I've actually heard of cases in China where a white Russian is offered an English-teaching job while a black American is rejected (I know this makes no sense, but it happens). And let's face it here. If you understand Chinese and look at Chinese social media, you will see all kinds of derogatory comments made about black people and ethnic Indians that white people are not subject to. So is it possible that foreigners encounter different degrees of discrimination depending on their skin colour? The answer is clearly "Yes". The dog2 (talk) 21:10, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

It appears on these pages, and if I came across it, I'd assume it meant someone blessed in the melanin department.

But still, what's the relevance to Wikivoyage? Your longer reply does nothing to address this. In fact, this seems like one of those conversations you keep being asked to not bring up, and yet here we are.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:18, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not planning to get into politics here. It's just about whether or not we should just stick to the term "black people" instead of the term "people of African descent". In a previous discussion, it was determined that "people of European descent" was too ambiguous to use as a synonym for "white people" whenever there was a need to reference race. So given that, would "people of African descent" also be too ambiguous? That's all. The dog2 (talk) 21:24, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

If people of Australian descent are to be included, clearly "of African descent" is not a good wording. I suppose one should talk about apples if apples are meant, and what is meant should primarily be discussed on the talk page of the article in question. Only if there are arguments on the principles (or if the problems are too widespread to be easily fixed) we need a discussion here. Or is "black people" or "people with dark skin colour" offending wordings? If so we are perhaps searching for a non-offending one. Of the 25 pages found by the linked query, 2 seemed to refer to black or dark-skinned people, the rest to people of African descent. Additionally, in a few cases it seemed plausible that somebody had exchanged the terms without checking the context. I'd say fix the two, check the few that could be mistakes and forget about it. --LPfi (talk) 21:41, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Not everything has to be quantified or pinned down with a hard-and-fast definition. Despite hypothetical nitpicks about white-skinned South Africans and the origin of the human race in the Great Rift Valley, in terms of the actual real-life usage of the term, everyone pretty much knows who "African descent" applies to: people who 1) are dark-skinned and either 2a) live in Africa or 2b) have ancestors who emigrated from Africa recently enough that they themselves haven't yet completely assimilated to the culture of the place where they currently live. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:07, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is getting frustrated by these nit-picky, political discussions that in 99% of cases have little relevance in a travel guide. All of these debates on whether a word can cause offence or can have multiple meanings in different contexts or whether President/Prime Minister X did Y or Z. It's getting ridiculous. Gizza ^(roam) 22:21, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

You're not (the only one) --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 22:22, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Me too. Imagine telling African-Americans as a group that they are wrong to prefer that label to "black". I think it's good policy in life to call people what they ask you to call them. Ground Zero (talk) 22:37, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

IMO, this would be better described as unnecessary semantic nitpicking than as unnecessary political nitpicking. I would counsel The dog2 (and I had intended to make this point in my earlier post, but apparently never got around to it) to remember two things. Firstly, that it's not always (or ever, really) necessary to "get out in front" of issues of ambiguous phrasing. Far better to wait and see if anyone actually gets confused by the phrasing rather than "solving" a problem that might not actually be a problem at all. Which leads into my second point, namely that sometimes a certain degree of ambiguity is okay. We don't always have to circumscribe strict parameters for when a particular word or phrase is allowed to be used, and it's okay for the definition to be a bit fuzzy around the edges just as long as everyone pretty much knows what's being talked about. Do North Africans of Arab descent, or white people whose families have lived in South Africa for generations, count as being "of African descent"? Maybe in the most nitpickily technical sense, but in reality, you show me someone who sees the phrase "of African descent" and professes confusion about whether either of the two aforementioned groups are included and I'll show you someone who's not operating in good faith. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:49, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Consider Stay Safe in Lithuania : "Members of ethnic minorities, (particularly those of African descent), may experience some form of racism". Sad as it is, I think "blacks" would have been more precise and helpful ... "However non-whites might be stared at by locals" is better than non-Europeans ... "the presence of several Afro-American basketball players in the Lithuanian league does help" makes sense if American is understood as having played in "NBA" Elgaard (talk) 13:47, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

• I agree with all of those here who say this is a waste of time. As User:AndreCarrotflower says, the term "African descent" is straightforward enough in the vast majority of cases. As a travel guide, our #1 goal is travel information, not technical correctness. I don't think anyone will mind which term we use, as long as the term is appropriate and reasonably logical. Can we just decide to end this discussion there? (Not that I'm against discussion, but this one seems pointless to me beyond what has taken place so far.) --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:40, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

  I'm going to disagree. I don't think it's clear enough or accurate enough to use as a synonym for "dark-skinned" when we have perfectly acceptable alternatives (like "black" or "brown"). Powers ^(talk) 01:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I've logged in after a long break, and it is really depressing to see this type of discussion still doing the rounds. Probably pointless to mention yet again, but Wikivoyage is for travel, not to work out how we categorize people into neat racial boxes. I really question the motivation for this. Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:59, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say, but I think it is time that we more seriously considered, and perhaps implemented, a topic ban. It would need to stop this user from bringing up these kinds of discussions in high-profile discussion pages like the pub. I do not really like the idea, but I think it is necessary so we do not waste time arguing over irrelevant issues. If there is support for a topic ban here, one of us can take it to Wikivoyage:User ban nominations. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:39, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I would support continuing to monitor TheDog's edits closely, but I don't think this is the incident to hang our hats on in terms of a topic ban. I think maybe we've been approaching this problem from the wrong angle. I would refer again to the distinction I drew in my earlier comment between political nitpicking and semantic nitpicking, and I would also say that we're being perhaps too quick to assume a political motivation for TheDog's edits (though that assumption is understandable given the character of some of his edits in the past). Andrewssi2 decries the "characteriz[ation of] people into neat racial boxes", but I think the operative part of that statement is not "racial" but "neat... boxes". To me, it looks like TheDog's predilection is to try to fit everything into neat little boxes. Maybe it comes from his background in science - I can certainly see how it would be difficult to go from a realm where everything has to be precisely defined and quantified into one where a certain degree of vagueness is unavoidable - but that's just speculation. In any event, yes, it's annoying when he constantly brings up these questions in the pub that we find to be overly punctilious, but is that really something a topic ban would solve? If we forbade TheDog from talking about politics or racial issues, I suspect he'd simply find other hairs to split. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:43, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with you, actually. (Though I don't disagree with Andrew.) It's not so much political motivation to the left or right, as it is a desire to nitpick over complex issue not worth addressing in a travel guide. You can see my discussion at User talk:The dog2 and you can make out of it what you want. Personally, I see it as controversial issues that are the problem here — controversial meaning either political or non-political. If there is no consensus for a topic ban, I will not press the idea. I just want what is best for us here. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:46, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I think there is merit in a topic suspension (for a particular period of time) if a ban is seen as too harsh. Then we can see whether it is effective or not. We've lost productive editors because of this nitpicking. Doesn't matter whether you call it semantic or political (I think it's a combination of both) because ultimately editors that were contributing to Wikivoyage get dragged into this nonsense, feel like they are wasting their time, and in the worse case scenario, lose the motivation to do actual work here and improve the travel guide. There are consequences to these never ending petty discussions that create a sense of controversy over things where everyone should just use their common sense and get on with it. Gizza ^(roam) 22:19, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Another controversial discussion has started at Talk:United Kingdom#History section. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:22, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, I don't know if I would class that as "controversial". Although TheDog2 has, sensibly, asked for opinions there before proceeding, I am a bit aggravated that it seems that it's always about the Understand section, and never about the See, Do, Eat, Sleep listings, which are the vegetarian patty of this travel burger. I wonder (and I'm not serious at all about starting a discussion on this) if we wouldn't have been better off putting Understand at the end of the articles. (Too late now anyway.) If my comments in that discussion do or don't reflect the feelings of others, please weigh in. Ground Zero (talk) 20:39, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm at a loss as to what to do here. The discussion at Talk:UK has me even more convinced than before that the problem with TheDog isn't political in nature and isn't solvable by means of a topic ban, but it also has me more convinced than before that it is a problem and can't be swept under the rug anymore. One thing I found very interesting was Ground Zero's observation that TheDog prolifically adds content to just about every part of Wikivoyage except the "See", "Do", "Eat", "Sleep" etc. listings that are supposed to make up the real meat-and-potatoes of our site. That's a noteworthy element of his M.O., but I don't think it follows that we can simply require editors to contribute to those sections as a condition of remaining in good standing. Because on the other hand, editors whose contributions go no further than correcting misspellings and grammar errors, or addressing technical issues, are not only tolerated at Wikivoyage but welcomed and recognized as indispensable elements of our community. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:44, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

And I do a fair bit of wikignoming myself, in addition to adding travel content. I take your point. Ground Zero (talk) 21:00, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

This is not a recommendation, exactly, but a few communities have imposed participation requirements. I have heard that one mid-sized Wikipedia requires editors to make a minimum of 30% of their edits to the mainspace to be considered participants in good standing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

I think the "understand" section should absolutely be kept on Wikivoyage, since it is uncontroversial during the majority of the time and provides necessary background in many articles. It's worth noting here, however, that whatever problems we may have with thedog2, he is a far better contributor than W. Frank or Turbo ever were. (And you guys didn't block them first thing.) I agree that the problems are with the "Understand" section, and in my opinion, that's because it is the most controversial section of our Wikivoyage articles. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:58, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

He edited a stay safe section. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:19, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

For the record, I actually found this a reasonable question, though one of minor importance, and not IMO worth the level or passion, annoyance or engagement seen here. I also agree that "Understand" is inherently more likely to be controversial than most other sections of articles, with the sometime exception of "Cities", as 9 cities are often difficult to agree on. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:18, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Seeing that more discussion about me has been occurring, I'm going to respond to some points. First of all, I don't think it's fair to say that I hardly ever add listings in See, Do, Eat or Sleep. Unfortunately, the nature of my work means I don't get to travel that often, but whenever I do, I try to update those. I added quite a few listings to the district articles of Bangkok after I made a trip there. I also made some additions to the American cuisine article, and I added quite a number of Southeast Asian listings to the Hinduism and Islam articles. Secondly, I don't see what's the problem with wanting a good history section in our articles. Many people travel to see historical sites, and a good history section will cover the highlights of a place's history, and this will in turn help potential travellers to plan their trip if they want to visit the important historical sites. In fact, much of what I've been adding in the history sections of some African country articles is to add in information about the kingdoms that existed in those areas and the locations of their capitals, which is clearly travel related since it gives people information about historical sites they can visit. And besides, I don't see what's so controversial about what I brought up in the talk page of the UK article. I highly doubt medieval history is going to be politically charged.

And to the point about me not bringing up the other sections on talk pages, that's because I just add to them without bringing them up on talk pages. There is nothing to discuss when it comes to adding listings, and the only thing to do is plunge forward and add. A history section is, on the other hand, a little less straightforward since people can disagree on what is important enough to consider a highlight, so that is something where consensus building will be useful in getting a good section that covers the highlights but does not get too bogged down in unimportant details or events. The dog2 (talk) 00:56, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Most regular contributors are doing "armchair research" on listings, just as you're doing armchair research on history, etiquette, etc. It is easy to look up listings on review websites and add them in, and its most useful for building a travel guide. There are some articles where a re-write of the Understand section would be of real benefit. SelfieCity has started a project, Wikivoyage:Rewriting Expedition, to focus on articles that have had few edits in the last six years, which leads to us being penalized in search engine optimization. Re-writing and updating those articles would provide a big benefit to Wikivoyage. Ground Zero (talk) 04:12, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

I took a look at Talk:United_Kingdom#History_section and it was relieving to see that it wasn't that controversial. I would agree with the sentiment that adding a few pages of British history over 2000 years into the min article is not going to help the traveler and that is why we have history articles (want to create an article detailing the history and locations of important Anglo-Saxon battles between 600AD and 1066AD? Go for it).

Definitely we would SEO benefit from rewriting some articles that are similar to WT, however United States and United Kingdom are definitely not among the ones we should focus on. Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:39, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Ryanair redirect and airport thumbnails

Hi, 1) Ryanair and RyanAir as search terms lead to different pages. Is that intentional? Ryanair: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Airlines

RyanAir: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Flying_on_a_budget

2) The thumbnail for many cities (which you can see if you hover over search results, for example) often seems to be the airport for the city in question. Is that intentional too? (Examples: Dresden; Berlin)

Sorry if these topics have been discussed and agreed upon already. They just struck me as odd.

Thanks.

Griffindd (talk) 08:53, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

On the second topic, the preview being mostly airports is not intentional but a consequence of two things. First the thumbnail algorithm is that it finds the first reasonably proportioned image in a page. Second, due to the order of section the first listing with an image in it is often an airport. Now we have tried to get the mediawiki code to be changed so it uses the first actual visible image but that request was rejected a being too complex a code. Trying to put another image near the top of the page sometimes works but not always due to selection rules of the code. I did find a work-around method that worked which involved adding a hidden image and as small visible link to the top right of the page with some extra code in the geo tag and using the default image from Wikidata. But no-one voiced any support for the idea. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:48, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

@Traveler100: If I had seen that proposal, I would have supported it. If you want to repropose, either here or elsewhere, let me know.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:07, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Ryanair and RyanAir were separately created as articles long ago, and both became redirects shortly after. Airlines was created as a target for all airline redirects in 2017, and I think that RyanAir was overlooked at that time. I have changed RyanAir to redirect to Airlines. AlasdairW (talk) 21:25, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Some time ago I proposed a deletion of all airline redirects, given that some articles were created in times past before it was firmly entrenched that we don't have articles on private companies. There was some resistance because someone somewhere argued that there might have been some hypothetical "merged content" and we this couldn't delete the redirects due to "attribution issues". When we merged the former "low cost airlines in x" articles which were a hot mess to Flying on a budget, somebody insisted the Ryanair redirect which allegedly included some sort of merged content somewhere (nobody has been able to point out one bit of it) was retargeted. I reiterate my demand to delete the lot of them, but it likely won't succeed... Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the explanations. Griffindd (talk) 06:51, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Listing editor: invalisection

I just tried adding Q66048967 as the Wikidata item for Muan's aviation museum, and I get this error when saving:

Error: An unknown error has been encountered while attempting to save the listing, please try again: invalidsection

What is the problem? Thanks! :-) Syced (talk) 05:24, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I just did it with no problem using the pop-up listing editor. AlasdairW (talk) 22:56, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

"Lead" or "Lede" section of an article

What is the preferred name for the beginning of an article — lede or lead? I believe I have seen both. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:13, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Both are acceptable; it's a journalistic term: W:Lead paragraph.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:40, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I just wasn't sure whether or not one of the spellings was a typo that someone made. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:16, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Flying on a budget

Can y'all take a look at that article? I have tried to fix some of the typos, but I fear some of the wordings might still be a bit clumsy... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:16, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

I found a typo, "Finally Finally," and fixed that. Thanks for pointing your edits out like this; it's good, as it hopefully creates more of a sense of community. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:54, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

I fear the double "finally" came about due to me asking in my edit at the slightly wrong position. Now there is a sentence that starts with a lowercase letter Hobbitschuster (talk) 11:04, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month - August 2019

Some help is being requested for cotm. With over 100 guide articles with links shown as numbers it is going to take effort from a number of contributors to make these articles look more presentable. What we are talking about is this type of edit. --Traveler100 (talk) 04:10, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Traveller's clock

I know this might be a little controversial, but i decided to give it a try. How about we add a clock face depicting the timeline of each country article? Hopefully, this would help the many few who visit this site. Arep Ticous 15:59, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, no. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:15, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Arepticous, I don't understand what you mean by "timeline" here. Can you explain, or illustrate what you are proposing? Ground Zero (talk) 16:44, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

My first reaction is that it probably doesn't sound like something I'd want to see in each country article, but as per Ground Zero, until I know why you want to do this and what the clock would depict and look like, I can't really pass judgment on the proposal. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:45, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Timeline of the article? Do you mean the article history? It's just a click away in the "View history" tab. --Ypsilon (talk) 18:53, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Do you mean time zone? If so, I could see the argument for putting the time zone at the top of each country article. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:17, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

They used to be, when the quickbox was part of the le(a)d(e). But now it's in Understand. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:20, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

That works only when there's just one time zone in a given country. What would we do with Russia? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:22, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. I guess we could show a range, somehow? The idea [My interpretation of Arepticous] doesn't on the whole seem worth it, to me. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:25, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

We don't know that is the idea, until Arepticous clarifies, to be fair.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 20:27, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

I've adjusted my comment accordingly. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:28, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ A clockface is circular, since the time repeats every day, but a timeline is linear (what happened 3,000 years ago won't happen again). As said above, there isn't enough information in the proposal to truly judge its worth but on the face of it, it doesn't make sense nor would it probably add value. Gizza ^(roam) 21:55, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

True. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:00, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek , DaGizza , ThunderingTyphoons!: sorry for replying late, I am suggesting that each country article will have any sort of clock which displays the time. For example... the time in New york is 7:30 AM and in Sri Lanka it is exactly five PM. And yes... @SelfieCity: By time line i meant time zone not the one related to history (Misuse of words :-)-) Arep Ticous11:31, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Knowing what time it is belongs in the Captain Obvious department. Philaweb (talk) 12:20, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't agree it's obvious - at all. Despite being aware that east = later, and west = earlier, I don't know what time it is anywhere else in the world right now, aside from near parts of Europe. On the other hand, why does the traveller need to know what time it is right now in a destination they're reading about? I suppose it could be useful for phoning and emailing places of interest and businesses etc. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:58, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

It is quite obvious to me what the time is where I am, when I am there. I do not need to read Wikivoyage to find out what the time is. It is also obvious to me that most clocks in airports, ports and railway stations will show the local time when I arrive - I do not need Wikivoyage to tell me the obvious. Finally, most online electronics will update correct date and time when connected. Philaweb (talk) 15:37, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

And also to fix their watches to the right time. Arep Ticous 13:04, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

But users don't need to know the current time in whatever destination they're reading about. They're not there yet. Arepticous, I'm going to give you the same advice I gave you on your talk page. Focus on adding content to articles in mainspace rather than wasting your time with proposals like this that aren't going to go anywhere. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:55, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I might also add that the infoboxes in the country articles already have information about the time zones. When a country spans several time zones, there's usually even a section in Understand explaining which time zone covers which parts of the country (e.g. United States of America#Time zones). And when you actually arrive at the destination, there are clocks at the airport, railway station, bus station etc. and when you land after a flight across time zones, they often tell you "ladies and gentlemen, welcome to X, local time is XXXX..." and if I remember correctly, if it has been an overnight flight even the day and date. Ypsilon (talk) 14:30, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

If the proposal is a clock that tells the current time (i.e., the time of day when I read the article), it won't work for technological reasons. Everyone sees the same copy of the page, so the clock would only show the local time at the time that the page was last edited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:15, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Do not see a need. My smart phone displays in standby mode the local time and my home (base) time. The World Clock app on my laptop shows the current time of all the locations of people I work with during the day. The Last time I woke up in a hotel and had to go and ask the receptionist what the local time was, was a good 15 or more years ago. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:50, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: I'm sorry, but i thought that this might be helpful for readers. I was thinking of something like the {{Digital clock}} template from wikipedia [1]. I thought that this might help the user recognize the time zone he/she is in. @WhatamIdoing: Yes... it would be displaying local time of the country. Arep Ticous 17:16, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

That's fine and dandy. But listen. You got indefbanned at Wikipedia because of this kind of thing — because you kept trying to bite off more than you could chew without enough experience under your belt, and eventually it became disruptive. And I'm trying like hell to help prevent the same thing happening to you here. So please just take my advice before you get yourself into trouble, because I think you have the makings of a good contributor if you would just slow down and take your time to learn the ropes. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:30, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: I know i said this many times before screwing up... but i can assure you that this time, i have surely understood, and will keep my activities balanced and helpful for this site. Arep Ticous 17:51, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Hopefully so. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:57, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in so late, but I think we can give an overview of times zones in articles about large countries, and state the time zone for small countries that have only one time zone, which we already do in many articles. But I don't think we need a clock that tells the current time. Conference calls with people in different time zones goes beyond our scope, and every time I've been on a flight, they always announce the local time at the destination, so people aren't realistically going to refer to WV for that. The dog2 (talk) 19:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

• In future, let's help Arepticous to be a better contributor by not paying too much attention to ideas like this one. I'll do my best to keep out myself in future. Agreed? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:35, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

When I am planning a trip, I occasionally find that I have to phone the destination to make reservations, as not everything can be booked online. However these days this is rare - for my last 3 week trip I only had to book one shuttle bus by phone. A destination clock could be a small help, but implementing this would be a massive job - this is not something that we should do unless we could be 100% sure that it was always correct in every country and the WP Digital Clock template doesn't appear to be used on any articles. If I want to check the time somewhere I use world time server. AlasdairW (talk) 21:14, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: Thanks Arep Ticous 09:55, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Abuse Filter 45

I have a comment there. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:30, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: read and responded. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:00, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Adding a tour app to Wikivoyage

We are building an open source tour app that provides an easy way for users to create and take tours with a cell phone and would like to explore ways that it could help Wikivoyage. There is a working version of the app for iOS on the Apple App store and instructions at exsilio.org. The app could be a useful adjunct to Wikivoyage allowing new uses for material produced by the site. Users start a tour in the app, follow a map, and a page pops up on their phone when they reach a point of interest. The page provides an image and information (text or text to voice).

The source code is openly available on GitHub and we'd welcome a collaboration to improve it and find ways to link it to Wikivoyage content. Please let me know if you're interested. ChufiBandit (talk) 14:41, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

We have several pages on working with various other projects, e.g. Wikivoyage:Cooperating with Wikidata. Search for "Wikivoyage:Coop" will give a list. Should someone add one for Exsilio?

You can use almost any WV material with attribution; see Wikivoyage:Copyleft for details. I think all the text is under CC-by-SA 3.0, but we use stuff from other projects -- notably Wikimedia Commons & Open Streetmap -- that have their own licenses. Pashley (talk) 15:10, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Great! Arep Ticous 11:51, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers. I looked at the Coop pages but couldn't find a way to ask to be a collaborator. Issuing our code under CC-by-SA 3.0 is no problem. I'm particularly interested in finding people interested in collaborating -- building tours and suggesting improvements. One obvious need would be to build a seamless way to connect with Wikivoyage content. Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

Should we include a warning box at USA?

Per https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/06/gun-violence-america-prompts-growing-list-countries-issue-travel-warnings/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:28, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Definitely not the entire country but if there are states or cities where crime and gun violence is particularly high, or if they have an established association with antisemitism, white nationalism, etc. it may be worth a mention. It would have to be comparable to other destinations which have a warning box. Otherwise mentioning it in "Stay Safe" is sufficient. Gizza ^(roam) 22:33, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Related discussion at Talk:Avoiding_travel_through_the_United_States#Some_governments_issue_warnings. Pashley (talk) 22:56, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

No. The United States is a huge country, with many regions where crime is not rampant. High crime rates should be explained in stay safe, and IMO, should only include caution or warningboxes in extreme cases. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:53, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

To be honest, a mass shooting can happen anywhere, and there is no way to predict where it's going to happen. It's purely dependent on luck. And if you're wandering whether or not the U.S. is a war zone, at least in the areas a tourist is likely to visit, it is not. Most of the gun violence occurs in very poor areas that are of little to no interest to a tourist. So at this point, I will say a warning box is neither helpful nor warranted. The dog2 (talk) 03:22, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Mass murders are up, but overall homicides are down drastically from a couple of decades ago. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:29, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Speaking of which, although I think a warning box is overboard, I think it may be worth considering if a mention of white nationalist terrorism in the "Stay safe" section is appropriate. I don't think it is rampant, but if you believe the statistics, it seems to have gone up in the past few years, and the vast majority (98% in 2018, if I'm not mistaken) of terrorist attacks in the USA these days are committed by white nationalists. That said, as a tourist, even if you are not white, I still think that it is quite unlikely that you will be caught in one, so that brings into question how useful such a mention would be for travellers. The dog2 (talk) 03:57, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

I feel this discussion is a little hypocritical. A travel warning is a travel warning - it is not up to us to decide how to interpret it. Interestingly, we do not have travel warnings for the US and Israel but Myanmar, Karabakh, the West Bank and many others where dangers to travellers might be equally high/low.

The US is a gun country, let's face it and I reckon we are all on the non-IRA side. I think it is just fair to all travellers, especially non-English, to emphasis this and recommend caution.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 09:38, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Pretty much all of the above. USA does have 'challenges' with gun violence, but these are best addressed in 'stay safe'. Travel warnings are more appropriate for literal war zones or a recent uptake in violence. Andrewssi2 (talk) 10:14, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Andrewssi2, that's how I feel. Myanmar is a rather different case, since as I understand it, Muslims are being thrown out of the country (making it dangerous for Muslims to visit, I assume). I think, with the white nationalist issue, it seems to be an increasing problem and we'll have to watch how it goes. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:14, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘In the case of Myanmar, it's just the Rohingya people in Rakhine State. If you're a Muslim tourist visiting Yangon, that is not a problem. In fact, quite a significant minority of the Indian community in Yangon are Muslims, and there are mosques in Little India to serve them.

And with regard to crime, both South Africa and Brazil have higher violent crime rates than the US, and we do not have a warning box in those countries' articles, so no, one is not warranted in the USA article. The dog2 (talk) 13:36, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Never mind then about Myanmar. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:11, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to Ceever's point. I think it's reasonable to mention the warnings in "Stay safe", while putting them into context. Because if you think about it, there's no doubt that during the Second Intifada, there would have been a travel warning about terrorism in Israel, although the danger has always been much greater to be killed in a road accident while in Israel than to be killed in any of the wars or acts of terror. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:17, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

The United States is too big to paint with a broad brush. Crime and gun violence rates vary greatly across the country. A similar approach should be adopted for other countries where the danger is confined to a few parts of the country (if it is the case that only one state in Myanmar is dangerous). Gizza ^(roam) 02:21, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

As I said, sensational mass murders are up, while the number of homicide deaths is way down. That's part of putting things into perspective. And though the U.S. is much safer per driver/passenger hour than Israel, road accidents are a way, way more likely cause of death than a gunshot. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:27, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I think the way to do it will be to say that there has been a rise in white nationalist terrorist attacks in the past few years, and that the locations where they occur are random and impossible to predict, but as a tourist your chances of being caught in one are slim. The dog2 (talk) 02:45, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, and that deaths from homicide are also way down, in spite of the public impact of a string of high-profile mass shootings. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:19, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I unironically think all our driving articles should come with warning boxes, but I know it's not a viewpoint that'll ever get majority support. Hobbitschuster (talk) 08:30, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I actually see your point, but at the same time, I think drivers should understand the high level of risk that comes with that mode of transportation before they read our articles. We are not responsible for someone's crash of bad driving, as dangerous as it may be. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:13, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

By the way, should we move this discussion to Talk: United States of America? I think that will be a more appropriate place to continue this. The dog2 (talk) 13:27, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Tough question. I personally think that makes sense, but my decision would rely upon what others think. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:44, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't think the US article needs a warning box for this. In spite of the fun and sensational claims that they're "mostly white nationalists", most of the listed mass shootings do not seem to have any political or ideological bent at all [2] as many are described as escalating from private disputes and arguments. I think the Stay Safe intro describes the situation best "Headline-grabbing major crimes give the U.S. a reputation for crime", but perhaps a short sentence for acknowledgment purposes could be added to the "Gun" section. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:12, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

In minor cases, do we know? I agree that we don't need to go all-out on this, but the racist violence issue should be covered somewhere. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:23, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. A warning box is overboard, but facts are facts. While it's true that globally, Islamic extremism is responsible for the most terrorism-related deaths, in the U.S., it is white nationalism that is responsible for the most terrorism-related deaths. Not all mass shootings are tied to a particular ideology (therefore, those are not classified as "terrorism"), but among those that are, these are the facts. The dog2 (talk) 16:41, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

How long has that been the case? It seems that "white nationalism," as it is called, has grown over the last couple years. Probably since the Charlotte incident. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:43, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘My understanding is that statement was true as of 2017 and I think 2018. Of course, the statistics for 2019 are not out yet since the year isn't over. Speaking of which, while there has been no official statement on this, there are indications that the Dayton, Ohio mass shooting may be a left-wing terrorist attack, since the shooter's social media posts indicated sympathies for violence in the name of left-wing causes. Of course, even if true, that's just an isolated incident, and if you look at the bigger trend, there have been far more white nationalist incidents. The dog2 (talk) 17:43, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Is the proposal then to add a brief statement about domestic terrorism, gun violence, or both? The two are related but by no means the same. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 09:34, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Admins, your attention

@SelfieCity, Ikan Kekek, ThunderingTyphoons!, Ground Zero, Andrewssi2: please take a look at the latest note in Special:AbuseFilter/45, where some important information has been shared. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:38, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Also @Mx. Granger, Traveler100: because Template:Ping can only handle five usernames at a time. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:38, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

also Gizza. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:43, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for the heads-up. Ground Zero (talk) 03:49, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Right. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:30, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• I've seen it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:36, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion continues, at least on my part. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:14, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Noted. Gizza ^(roam) 22:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• @SelfieCity: new info. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:46, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I’ll take a look. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 04:23, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

• I would like admins to take a look at abuse filter for consent. (Scroll down to the bottom upon going to the abuse filter page.) --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:06, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

"Save your changes" popup appears again after clicking "Publish changes"

I edited Tokyo/Roppongi (the whole page, because I had to move a listing from a section to another), then pressed "Publish changes...", added a comment and pressed the "Publish changes" button of the popup, like I often do on other Wikimedia sites.

Strangely, the popup appeared again, without my comment. I pressed the "Publish changes" button again.

Thanks to the history tab I know that my change has been registered. Strange bug though. I am on Firefox 68.0.1 on Linux.

Cheers! Syced (talk) 04:08, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

It does not always happen: I was able to post this message normally. Syced (talk) 04:09, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Request for help removing all dead links from the Hebrew Wikivoyage

As of now we currently have many articles on Hebvoy that contain listings imported through the years from the English Wikivoyage without being fully checked and fixed, and therefore many of them contain dead links (mostly because the businesses have closed, different websites, etc).

I was wondering, even though it is a different wiki... since I do not have the technical skills to acomplish something like this completely by myself (I assume one needs to use a bot to do so).... would any experts here by any chance be willing to help us out at Hebvoy by getting your bot to run on the entire content of Hebvoy so that all the dead links would be removed? (instead of having them just be tagged with the template template:dead link) ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 12:22, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

My understanding is that we don't remove dead links by bot. Instead human editors review them to try to figure out if (a) the establishment has closed, (b) they've changed their website, (c) they still exist but no longer have a website, or (d) some other problem. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:23, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I can confirm what Granger says is correct. Our bot flags dead links, and then we have to use our brains and hands :) Whether it is technically possible for a bottle to do all you're proposing I don't know.

How easy would it be for non-Hebrew-speaking Wikivoyagers to find flagged listings in a sea of Hebrew text? Because you might need people to chip in rather than bots.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:02, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Ok... so which user is capable of running the bot which flags dead links? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 21:10, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

User:Wrh2, I believe. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:15, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Price notation

There's been a long-running dispute, across a number of articles, regarding how to denote prices that start with a base figure, e.g. 'from $100' or '$100+'. Another editor insists on the first method. However I have found nothing in the manual of style that states the second alternative cannot be used, and indeed it is a commonly-used format not only in print but online. It seems to me that this would be a matter of personal preference – are there any other opinions on this matter? StellarD (talk) 12:52, 9 August 2019 (UTC)