Wikivoyage/Lounge

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The Zürich Airport Lounge Bar

This is the Wikivoyage Lounge on Meta where we discuss the Wikivoyage project in general and issues related to more than one language version. Old discussions are archived.

Monthly reports from each edition of Wikivoyage can be found on the Summit page.

Please click here to begin a new discussion

Travel photo of the month[edit]

In German Wikivoyage each month we select a travel destination of the month that is featured on the wiki's main page. I would like to suggest to have the Travel photo of the month in the banner of the Wikivoyage portal on Meta picked by a different language community every month. What do you think about it? (Thx to Rogerhc for bringing up the issue on my user discussion page!) --Aschmidt (talk) 23:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Support Support --Ricordisamoa 02:21, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Fine by me. PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Good idea. May be under the condition that the photo is used in one of the Wikivoyage articles.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:37, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Banners[edit]

Which projects do actually use pagebanners? I am aware about English, French, and Russian. Any others? Any plans to introduce banners in other versions?--Ymblanter (talk) 19:20, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Lang Using pagebanner Usage (pagebanners / destinations[articles?]) Notes/discussions/projects (fill out yourself)
de 0 0 Lounge - No banners planned till now
el 96 ~0.52 Περίπτερο επισκεπτών
en voy:Category:Has_banner
3,059 custom, 22,728 default, 25878 total as of 8 Aug 2013
voy:Wikivoyage:Banner_Expedition#Progress
99.7% of main space articles have banners
18.3% have custom banners as of 27 August 2013
voy:Wikivoyage:Banner_Expedition
voy:Wikivoyage talk:Banner Expedition
(...Others?...)
es 0 (?) 0 La posada, etc.
fr 767 ~0.25 Café des Voyageurs, etc.
he 0 (?) 0 he:voy:משתמש:ויקיג'אנקי/טיוטה/וושינגטון_די._סי. has banner ?
it 999 (100% custom banner - no default banner has been implemented) (9 August 2013) 999/3071 ~33% (9 August 2013) it:voy:Wikivoyage:Lounge/Archivio/2013/07#Pagebanner etc.
nl Negligible (~0) ~0 Reizigerscafé
pl 0 (?) 0  ?
pt 330 custom banners, default banner in all other articles 100% implementation, roughly 10% with custom banners pt:voy:Wikivoyage:Banners
ro 0 (?) 0  ?
ru 265 100% default banners, roughly 12% custom banners Пивная путешественников (2013), original
sv 0 (?) 0  ?
uk 352 (incl. default) ? too bored to compute Кнайпа, etc.?
vi used in all articles (per Wikivoyage/Summit#vi)  ?  ?
zh voy:zh:Category:使用横幅条目 959 total 100% implementation 72.2% with custom banners voy:zh:Wikivoyage:横幅远征队

Feel free to update/fix this, and add links to discussions and local expeditions. PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:17, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:59, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
en: is up to date. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:18, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
it: updated as well. --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:51, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
pt: updated. Texugo (talk) 19:39, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
zh: added. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 10:44, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Looking to gather a unified technical wishlist[edit]

Hi, Wikivoyagers! I am the Engineering Community Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, which means I'm a liaison for people who want to improve the technical capabilities of our projects. In the en:voy:Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub#Presentation for Wikimania thread, I asked for more details about the English Wikivoyage's technical wishlist. There are some details in en:voy:Wikivoyage:Roadmap, and en:voy:User:Peterfitzgerald provided some more, but I would very much love a unified technical wishlist for all the Wikivoyages. And that way, developers could take a look and see which are things that less technical Wikivoyagers could do (with built-in wiki administration tools, a bit of training and some "how-to" guides), and which are things that need MediaWiki or other experts to write code. For instance, you probably do not need any developers' support to set up your site to participate in the Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest -- there are readymade templates you can simply add to your site.

Ideally, for the requests that do need developers to work on them, we'd make sure that there's a bug filed for each thing that people want. I know Wikivoyagers have already done that for several requests (for example, bug 44590: GeoCrumbs doesn't handle cases where a destination on a region boundary #isIn: more than one region and bug 43977: grouped edits not patrollable).

I know 80% of the people reading this already know what's in this paragraph, but I just want to repeat it for the other 20%: "How to create a good first bug report" is a guide you can use to tell us if you see a technical problem on a Wikimedia website. It shows you how to file a defect report ("bug report") in our Bugzilla site so the engineers can see it and follow up. You can also use this method to request things. It's a good rule of thumb to file a request in Bugzilla whenever you think "oh it would be handy to have such-and-such functionality" and to mark it as an "enhancement". For instance, if you want an extension like WikiLove installed, the procedure includes filing a Bugzilla request.

And for those of you who want to know about new features you can use: Tech/News is a weekly human-readable tech newsletter that tells you about new things that are going to affect you. You can subscribe at Global message delivery/Targets/Tech ambassadors to get it delivered directly to your talk page and/or to the pub/salon/cafe on your Wikivoyage. Right now, in that delivery list, I only see one user who has it delivered to a wikivoyage.org page -- I think several of you might find it useful.

I hope this is helpful! Where can this wishlist live? Here on meta, as a subpage of Wikivoyage?

Thanks. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Sumana, this is very helpful indeed. My private opinion is that the list should be on Meta, with notification at all Wikivoyage village pumps. You may also want to look at Wikivoyage/Summit, some issues (including communication) are currently being discussed there.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:30, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
I think Wikivoyage/Wishlist would be the best place. Discussion would still need to take place on the individual language versions (so voy:Wikivoyage:Roadmap will still have a use), but it would be very helpful to have all tech requests collected in one place! --Peter Talk 20:05, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Just wanted to raise this question again. Can I have a unified wishlist to show our bug wrangler and engineers? Thanks! Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 23:32, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
(And thanks for the reminder - I've viewed the Summit discussion, and that's interesting and useful.) Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
@Sharihareswara (WMF): a rough draft at Wikivoyage/Wishlist. Everyone else should chip in their thoughts as well.
@DerFussi: perhaps send a message round to all the pubs for translation and discussion? -- torty3 (talk) 12:58, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I think it would be good to send around.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for putting this together! Did you also get input from the other pubs as well? As is, I'm sending a link to Andre Klapper (the Bug Wrangler), and the product managers for VisualEditor and MediaWiki Core, and Lydia Pintscher of Wikimedia Germany (who knows a lot about Wikidata). Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
I picked up most of it from looking around, so it definitely still needs more input (@DerFussi:?). The ideas are also not fully formed, just mostly tossed around as potential improvements by different Wikivoyagers, depending on the technical effort required and not purely consensus. I think more in-depth discussion should go on at Talk:Wikivoyage/Wishlist. -- torty3 (talk) 13:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Google PageRank issues[edit]

Three of the Wikivoyage projects - en, ro, and pl - have a Google PageRank of 0, which means they will almost never show up in Google search results. This is probably because Google considers the sites to be mirrors of Wikitravel. Anyone have any idea for how to fix this problem? Kaldari (talk) 18:53, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

There has been significant discussion of this issue on voy:Wikivoyage:Search Expedition and the corresponding talk page. voy:User:JamesA indicated that having access to the Google Webmaster Tools would help significantly in tracking down the problem (voy:Wikivoyage talk:Search Expedition#Google Webmaster Tools) but I think James had indicated that the request to have access to those tools was denied by WMF - hopefully someone else can provide further details. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:52, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
If I remember correctly Sumana from tech at the WMF was going to look into this. I will ping her. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:48, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Don't believe all the yarns that Google spins about "no-follow".
A significant self-help move we can make tomorrow is to stop signalling to their robots that we are only an inferior derivative work every time they spider us. We should immediately junk the two free hyperlinks of relevant anchor text we give those nice, friendly folk at InternetBrands on the vast majority of our article pages (and on their associated discussion pages). We should immediately replace this kind of hyperlinked text
"This article is derived from the article Dresden on wikitravel.org/en in its revision as of 08:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
with this minimally compliant but legal attribution:
"This article is derived from the Dresden article on wikitravel.org/en in its revision as of 08:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC).
There was (and is) absolutely nothing in Wikitravel's licensing regime that mandated hyperlinking when giving attribution! --W. Franke-mailtalk 20:08, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
And since we have moved over the entire history of edits attribution is given that way as well. We probably do not need to mention WT at all. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:55, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I tend to agree, but I thought Legal was involved in the decision to put a notice at the bottom of each page. LtPowers (talk) 17:53, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
If that is indeed the case, then "Legal" need to URGENTLY re-visit their decision, paying particular attention to the significance (or not) of including actual working anchor text to produce all these SEO significant hyperlinks to our erstwhile antagonist. --W. Franke-mailtalk 18:55, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
If you download a PDF version ("Print/export": "Download as PDF" in the menu to the left), then Wikitravel isn't mentioned at all. Is this an error? If a clickable link is required, then I'm a bit troubled about voy:Wikivoyage:Offline reader Expedition as you can't include a clickable link in a paper copy of Wikivoyage. --Stefan2 (talk) 19:50, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
I also agree that losing the links would be an excellent starting point, though we will need some attribution text on the PDFs. --Nick talk 14:01, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
PageRank is not about a website, it is about a particular page. What page have a PageRank of 0? I just compared Tokyo/Roppongi: 2 for WV, and 4 for WT even though it is largely out-of-date and somewhat spammy. I agree the hyperlinks should be removed. Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:05, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
I have noticed there is a large delay in ranking. For example "new" WV page Jihlava (created in April) has no rank yet. The same for Nuclear tourism (April) and Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park (June). Good idea with removing the WT hyperlinks. --Danapit (talk) 09:33, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
For the records, this problem is also covered in bugzilla:52688. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

BUMP There are some technical tricks that our webmasters can do to mitigate our Google duplicate penalty (and I'm certainly not going to even outline them here in plain text - if anyone is interested they can phone, and those are, presumably the subject of the rather woolly bugzilla report) but there are also two things that we can do to help ourselves IMMEDIATELY and I have seen no cogent opposition to:

1) Stop signalling to search engine robots that we are only an inferior derivative work every time they spider us. We should immediately junk the two free hyperlinks of relevant anchor text we give those nice, friendly folk at InternetBrands on the vast majority of our article pages (and on their associated discussion pages). We should IMMEDIATELY replace this kind of hyperlinked text

"This article is derived from the article Dresden on wikitravel.org/en in its revision as of 08:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

with this minimally compliant but legal attribution:

"This article is derived from the Dresden article on wikitravel.org/en in its revision as of 08:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC).

2) Delete the literally thousands of "outline" articles that consist of only an opening "lede paragraph" in the form "x is a city/region in y" and a skeleton of (empty) standard sections. (Oh, I forgot, now thanks to the bot brigade these mostly now have a fine new banner and a link to a relevant Wikipedia article). We are not a Gazetteer and getting rid of roughly 20% of our articles and starting them again (as and when there is someone to take an interest in developing them properly), without duplicate text and the WV attribution to completely non-useful content, would go a long way towards signalling that we are a different (rather than a derivative) site.

I'd do this myself tomorrow but after the better part of a decade of editing at Wikitravel and its' better successor, I don't even have autopatroller status. --W. Franke-mailtalk 18:13, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Your English WT editing history under this username dates to 2007, in which year you made a grand total of 51 edits. You then apparently disappeared until this time last year when the move to WV began. That's hardly "the better part of a decade". LtPowers (talk) 20:40, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Even if it were true that I always logged on and never used an IP address to edit (which it isn't - almost all of the various Glasgow IP edits have been mine over the years, I'd bet, and I've made more than 1000 edits in the last 30 days and more than 1000 in the 30 days before that - none of them using a bot or tool like AWB), how precisely is this relevant to improving our search engine ranking and, consequently, our readership? Try and keep your club's personal vendetta within reasonable bounds. State clearly whether the two things I propose (and others have agreed with) is a "good idea" or a "bad idea" and why, please. --W. Franke-mailtalk 23:34, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
In it:voy we have deleted long time ago all the skeleton article (the magnitudo is ~1.000), now (apart few hidden exceptions that may still exists) we have only articles with a minimum piece of information, and it's not allowed to create skeleton articles.
As written in the last summit, regarding the very small articles (but not empty), I'm rewriting them from scratch (and adding where I can more information) in order to recreate those article but putting the credit into the subject of the change/creation instead of the "clickable footnote". For the longer one, I've open a bug to turn the link into a plain text.
Now regarding the ranking I have the opposite problem, in some cases google is indexing also the page that I haven't created yet, but just mentioning (with a red link) in existing article. I've noticed that this cases are the ones where an article with that name exist in en:w but not in it:w. It could be good to develope those articles but I can't do all at once... :-( --Andyrom75 (talk) 09:33, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
I very much agree with both Frank's points. To the topic of the skeletal articles we've had a discussion, which did not lead to any actions yet. I am not sure if we've reached any consensus there... --Danapit (talk) 15:45, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
Congratulations to the Italian Wikivoyage in achieving good organic search engine results and, presumably, consequently getting lots of eyeballs to view the efforts of your editors.
It seems you are proving how bad this duplicate penalty can be by not suffering from it because you have been pro-active and not dragged your feet on simple SEO housekeeping!
Now I know I'm going to get another brickbat in my direction, but I'm very disappointed that the only response to my proposal from LtPowers seems to be to try and shoot or discredit the messenger. Why the "movers and shakers" at the English Wikivoyage seem not to understand that the number one strategic task for the English Wikivoyage is to increase the readership continues to baffle me. We've done some great work - assisted by our German Wikivoyage colleagues - with introducing dynamic maps and folks are furiously sharpening up the prose of our articles and keeping them up to date, but all this is somewhat in vain if nobody can find us in the search engines. So, LtPowers and other English language Wikivoyagers, please state clearly whether the two things I propose (and others have agreed with) is a "good idea" or a "bad idea" and why, please. --W. Franke-mailtalk 00:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Quite honestly you do not really need the "movers and shakers" to drive this change forward, and "they" don't necessarily have the power either (there are legal and technical issues here). Furthermore, there have been various fierce disagreements over dynamic maps, spelling, Wikipedia links, Wikidata and external links (yay washing dirty laundry!), so why group them as one homogenous bunch, and accept that everyone has their own viewpoints which may or may not concur with each other. Which does make for a lot of frustrating inertia but cannot be put at the feet of a singular "club". This also points to a larger problem for the entire Wikivoyage community, as it is hard enough making decisions in-house at the English Wikivoyage, let alone across 15 different languages, and it would do well for the Thematic Organisation to kind of guide the way.
I think the above discussion shows that everyone is agreeable to removing the link in the credits, but are understandably reluctant due to the legal aspects. It seems the primary way to move forward would be to directly contact legal, which has been done so in bugzilla:52688#c4, so @Philippe (WMF): has to weigh in on the issue (who/where exactly?). Secondly, the code for mw:extension:CreditsSource must be changed, and Andyrom75 has kindly filed bugzilla:53942. The necessary fixes will then have to be merged in.
As to the skeleton articles, I thought there was already a standing agreement to delete them on sight. Tag them as speedy delete? -- torty3 (talk) 02:08, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
It's not all doom and gloom and ferocious duplicate penalties by the search engines. Search for a string like "travel guide Nelson, England" and our new (WT never had one) English Wikivoyage article on that destination will probably pop up in number one position in the organic search results. (That new article doesn't tell the robots at the footer that it's a derivative work, of course).
As I wrote earlier, unless the "legal team" made a secret agreement to scatter hyperlinks to WT around our guides, I simply do not believe that there are any reasons in law why we cannot remove those hyperlinks today and still preserve legal attribution! --W. Franke-mailtalk 10:15, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
I repeat that there is a technical step involved - so it is not as easy as it appears and cannot be done immediately/today. Someone has to go and rewrite the CreditsSource.php, submit it, get it approved and finally merged into a Mediawiki update, say a week at minimum. And this extension affects all Wikivoyages or at least those with import history, hence a general consensus would be needed from en, de, it, ru, pt, es and others. With that much happy red tape, I hope you understand that any coder would probably prefer to have a straight answer from legal before doing anything, especially with trigger happy notices like [1]. A direct answer would end all doubt, and a positive one would surely lead to community support.
"travemunde travel guide" and "mitzpe ramon travel guide" search terms look to be doing well, both existing pre-import, though the aim would be for "travemunde" and "mitzpe ramon" themselves to rank. -- torty3 (talk) 11:26, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for taking the time, torty3, to explain what is causing the delay - it's much appreciated!
I know that you are well respected in the en.wv community and an ace coder. I also think you know how important it is that readers should actually be able to find us in Google. Can we nominate you as a plenipotentiary extraordinaire to liaise with other language versions and actually get these hyperlinks removed?
I think you know that 95% of searchers don't go past the first 3 results. I think you also know that the results for "travemunde travel guide" and "mitzpe ramon travel guide" search terms will vary according to your IP, time of day, google domain and server that you are using, search history and other variables. That said, although the WT articles always appeared higher up the search result page by more than 4 places when I tried some tests, they did do much better than most WV "legacy attributed and hyperlinked articles" and I think I know the reason. In both cases, they are currently wearing Star nomination templates which changes the lede substantially as far as the Google spider is concerned. This gives the clue to another thing we should think about doing: try and drop the formulaic "x is a city in y" introductions in most ledes which almost always duplicates the WT intro. --W. Franke-mailtalk 12:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
No thank you, my plate is pretty full. I just wanted to point out what I see is the quickest way to expedite the process, and that it is quite a bit work for high risk and reward, which also involves corralling someone (meaning not me) to fix the code in bugzilla:53942. I actually think the better search results come from the intensive amount of work that was put into the articles to differentiate them, rather than the lead paragraph alone, though rewriting the intros would be a good start. Shouldn't the star nom template be placed at the bottom then? -- torty3 (talk) 07:47, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
Although we must have an official legal answer, according to our Terms of Use, we (correctly and fairly) need to give credit to the source of the inserted information, but do not say explicitely how to do. So, my personal interpretation, is that a permanent link on the subject of the change it's ok, also because WT it's not the only free information source, but just for example the most famous one is wikipedia, or another are the "foreign" versions of wikivoyage. When I translate an en:voy article I credit en:voy for that change (sometimes I've missed it... sorry :-P). It would be ridiculous (IMHO) to add the full list on the footnote of the article of all the free source site through CreditsSource. The history page would exist for a reason, ot not? :-) Here some example: voy:it:Isole Fær Øer for WT+it:w and voy:it:Ghana for it:w+en:voy. --Andyrom75 (talk) 12:51, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
I've just seen another interesting way to import and credit the article from WT. See the history of voy:fr:Praha. --Andyrom75 (talk) 14:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
Like everyone above, I'd be very keen to see the WT attribution changed if the suggested version is permissible. Plainly, we want to distance ourselves from that site as much as possible.
The prospect of deleting large numbers of articles ( even if they are stubs) leaves me somewhat conflicted. I would much rather we encouraged people to improve these articles, rather than jump to deletion as a first option. However, if it can be proved that removing these stubs has a substantial impact on our search rankings, the benefits would probably outweigh the negatives.
As Frank suggested, I think moving away from the WT "X is city in Y" style of introductions would be a good place to start diversifying our articles. Not only does it separate us from other repositories but I think it also adds more room for the written 'style' and 'flair' that is so important to Wikivoyage. --Nick talk 02:02, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
The exact ranking algorithm use by google is unkown (at least to me :-P), but for sure I can say two things: 1) an empty page can't be ranked, and even if ranked it would go on the lasts result pages not the firsts 2) a huge amount of empty pages have a negative impact on the user perception, would you buy a 1.000 pages book where hundres of pages are blank?
There's an impact on ranking? I don't know it for sure. But several times in the past google has penalized site categories that have tried to leverage with "flaw" of their algorithm. For example: those sites that has a huge hidden text (same foreground color of the background, or with microscopic dimension of the font) that was put there just for increase the "hit rate". Or the web-farm (consisting in thousands...maybe more... web site) that against money they will include huge amount of links to a target site in order to escalate the ranking. Sometimes they also penalize manually some spam sites (but I don't think it's the case).
For sure it's better to add information on the existing stub, but I tend to be realistic and no one in the short term will do it, so we've deleted them all. If we want one article back we would spend less than 1 minute to recreate it. So in my opinion the first facts are more than enough, but I may understand that for others would need other element before taking a decision. --Andyrom75 (talk) 13:36, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Polite reminder to everyone: the legal team can't possibly follow every conversation going on on-wiki, though we try :) Please email legal@wikimedia.org if you want to flag our attention. The #1 reason legal hasn't weighed in here is because we didn't know about the discussion until today. On bugzilla, I personally follow bugzilla fairly religiously, but not everyone does, so unless you cc me directly bugzilla isn't a reliable way to get in touch with legal/LCA. -LVilla (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

LVilla, thank you for your feedback and great you were able to find bugzilla:53942 anyway. Looking forward to hear the legal opinion on this issue. --Danapit (talk) 05:55, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
LVilla, thanks a lot for jumping in this thread and sorry for not involving you earlier. As highlighted by Danapit, we need a legal bless for the changed requested on bugzilla:53942, so please take a look on the consideration stated in the lines above; they may help to see our interpretation of the ToU.
Generally speaking, I would share my thought on our current google ranking. WT is an older site, so it's normal that has a better ranking. I've taken a quick look on the source sites from where the visitor comes from (HTTP_REFERER). Our primary sources are linked to the big WMF-familiy network, while in WT people are coming almost from everywhere. This is also because during all these years a lot of people has written many journalistic article and/or forum post about WT.
An idea to improve our visibility is to work outside WMF not just inside where we are already the #1 site. I suggest a "judo-approach" :-D that consist on using the strength of your opponent. Search through google all the main forum (or article where we can reply) where they discuss and link WT. Add an honest post where we state the difference between the two site and, most important, add a link! As an example, look at this one. This kind of activity should be done as an "interlingual expedition". In the long term this would be highly beneficial also to the ranking improvement. --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:32, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi, everyone. Under certain rules that apply to lawyers, we are ethically obligated to represent only the Foundation. We cannot unfortunately give legal advice to the community at large, particularly in cases like this one that may be complex and where we may not know all that facts. With that in mind, we'd urge you to carefully consider any changes you make, on this issue or any other - you should avoid placing yourself in situations beyond your individual tolerance for legal risk. I have written about the responsibility of contributors to the Wikimedia projects elsewhere, which you may wish to review.

As a more general matter, I understand that some are finding the situation a bit vexing. That said, I would urge the WV community to focus their efforts on improving the content of WV rather than spending time worrying about another site and who links to it. Other techniques suggested in this thread (such as killing stub articles that are identical) as well as elsewhere (such as ensuring that appropriate Wikipedia articles link to WV) seem to us to be constructive in the short run and more likely to succeed with Google's algorithms in the long run. I apologize that I cannot be of more help here. Geoffbrigham (talk) 16:31, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Geoff just to avoid misunderstanding, this means that we won't have a legal answer on the subject of this bugzilla request? --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:34, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Correct, under legal ethics rules, I cannot give legal advice except to WMF. But, to be honest, from my personal point of view, I also feel that further focus on these sorts of details, rather than the overall quality of the product we are providing to readers, and the legitimate accessibility of that information, is not that productive. Geoffbrigham (talk) 16:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
The Great Wall of China is made by a huge amount of tiny bricks (in comparison of its dimension), so you shouldn't judge the single brick... Do you know any lawyer that has some spare time to help us? PS Because of my job I know how a lawyer is unwilling to take a legal position ;-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:47, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Global spam blacklist[edit]

I'm getting a very negative vibe on Talk:Spam blacklist#Hotel web site regarding Wikivoyage. They seem disinclined to do anything for us, be it add a site to the global blacklist due to spamming on Wikivoyage, or remove one from the blacklist so that we can link to them from our guides. We might have an image problem developing here. LtPowers (talk) 18:37, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I can technically remove it, but is it really so hard to whitelist it? The comments do not seem to be negative about Wikivoyage specifically. They might say that in other situations too. If you really want, I can see if this really should be kept on the bl. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:46, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
The hotels are maybe not the best example here, since they are individual businesses; it's just where the discussion developed. I have another request slightly farther up the page to remove the official tourism site for the city of Daugavpils, Latvia that I see as more important. "Add it to the whitelist" shouldn't be the default suggestion when dealing with non-Wikipedia projects, because we have 15 projects and editing 15 whitelists is a pain the butt compared to just removing an entry from the blacklist. However, the reason I brought it up here is because of comments like "Wikivoyage is a spam-magnet by itself" and "I think there is a bit of an unwritten code here on the blacklist that we do not blacklist unless it expands outside of wikivoyage, the rest of the spamming is 'your' problem"; these are troubling to me. LtPowers (talk) 19:20, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
I can't say that he's totally wrong, maybe rude :-) but not wrong. I think that the greatest part of the hotel that we have on voy aren't advised by traveller, but from advertiser (not necessarely spammer). The problem is that is too difficult to understand who they are, and it's a waste of time to discuss with them all the times. I always try to ask to whitelist those sites, and a couple of times I got the green light. I agree that the other wikis doesn't need them. The wrong thing that he said is that an Italian hotel is used just by it:voy, because an article of an Italian city can be included by all the voy versions. It could be useful (but I don't know if technically possible) if wikivoayge can have a project-whitelist, on top of the several standard local-whitelist. --Andyrom75 (talk) 21:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
A project (e.g., Wikivoyage or Wikipedia, not a single wiki like en:voy or en:w:) whitelist would be interesting. Nothing like that exists now. Do you think this issue about different project families having different standards for linking should be brought up somewhere, like on a RfC? PiRSquared17 (talk) 21:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that would be enough if we would discuss about it inside the voy community (in this thread, informing all the lounges through the DerFussi tool about this discussion) because is something that affect just wikivoyage. If we come out with an ok (as I suppose) I would just open an enhancement request on bugzilla. But if someone think that we need to discuss with people from other wiki we should move to an RfC discussion. --Andyrom75 (talk) 06:46, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
You're right, but it might be nice to notify the anti-spam people about this. They might want to know about a cross-Wikivoyage whitelist. PiRSquared17 (talk) 23:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Good point. If they have a community/group page we can have a brief discussion there too. On the other hand, if your was just an example of a numerous amount of different communty, well... go for RfC :-) I just would like to put into the discussion only the people affected by this proposal.--Andyrom75 (talk) 07:01, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
The issue is that the links usually get added beyond wikivoyage and to multiple wikis where they are in fact spam, though maybe less so at the wikivoyages. The expectation that 50+ WPs should blacklist a url, whereas 15 Vy should not whitelist does not seem equitable where the site is clearly a commercial site and has been spammed. [There are consequences for sites that spam and I hope that you can acknowledge that their misbehaviour should not be ignored by the Voyages.] With relation to the other comment, you misinterpret and jump to conclusions on what the other person said. We have bots that monitor links and these are interpreted by humans, so where we see the links being added to the Voyages, we often do not revert such links as we would on the other wikis. Your rules about commercial links are a lot looser and comparatively it is too hard for us to know your rules of what is in and out.

I know of no request from the Voyages to blacklist a site that has been refused, so your extrapolation I think lacks accuracy. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:43, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

  • I personally think this is a good idea, but is not currently technically feasible. PiRSquared17 (talk) 15:14, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Are you talking of the whole "project whitelist" idea o to discuss with just the voy+anti-spam communities? If just the second, let's go for the RfC as you have suggested, otherwise let's talk about it. --Andyrom75 (talk) 07:51, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
To inquire about the possibility of a project-wide whitelist, I would suggest that you raise a bugzilla: request and see what is possible. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:43, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I would welcome the development of project-wide whitelists (wikivoyage only, wikiversity only and even wikipedia-only). The different project-types do look differently at spam-issues, and what is spam in one community is not always spam in another community - however, when it develops to a mediawiki-wide situation it is a concern that can sometimes only be stopped by a global blacklist. Asking to de-list because 15 out of >800 MediaWiki projects don't think it is spam is a bit unreasonable (having 785 wikis having to blacklist it, or having to combat the editors spamming it there .. 'if my hotelsite is fine on voy:en:Paris, why is it not on w:en:Paris?' (and that is often how xwiki spam develops, moving from the smaller or a subgroup of wikis to cross-wiki, going from places where it is fine to everywhere, venturing into places where it is not fine too often). Otherwise the solution is, unfortunately, probably going to be to whitelist it over the projects that have use for it (which is cumbersome, but that is the technical limit). I do note that this is not a wikivoyage-only problem, wikiversity has similar 'issues' - self-promotion is there to a certain extend 'encouraged', and also that has sometimes 'spilled over'. Note that a MediaWiki wide whitelist would also be welcome in this regard, we now sometimes have to write difficult blacklist rules to filter out good stuff from the bad ones (the mostly redirect sites, but not always redirect sites, e.g. bit.ly and co.cc), having the whole domain blacklisted globally, and whitelist the good stuff makes it easier to handle (and what is useful on one wiki is sometimes useful on all wikis ..). --Dirk Beetstra T C (en: U, T) 09:48, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Just opened the request on bugzilla. Feel free to add comments. --Andyrom75 (talk) 17:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Wishlist: Enhance inter-project links[edit]

It is very easy to add more items for the "Related Sites" list in the sidebar (see Wikivoyage/Wishlist#Miscellany). The extension must not be changed! Only the settings (see Wikimedia Settings).

  1. Check if the item is noted at the Interwiki special page.
  2. Modify the $wmgExtraLanguageNames and $wmgRelatedSitesPrefixes.

Below I make a proposal. We should discuss it, make a small voting to get support by the community and send a bugzilla request like bugzilla:51794

The first addition is to give a language name to the abbreviation like 'de' => 'German'. This is formally but the sidebar items are handled like language specifiers.

'wmgExtraLanguageNames' => array(
	'default' => array(),
	'wikivoyage' => array(
		'wikipedia' => 'Wikipedia', // already set
		'WikiPedia' => 'Wikipedia', // already set
		'citizendium' => 'Citizendium', // already set
		'dmoz' => 'Open Directory', // already set
		'Radreise-Wiki' => 'Radreise-Wiki', // already set
		'rezepte' => 'Rezepte-Wiki', // already set
		'commons' => 'Wikimedia Commons', // already set
		'meta' => 'Meta-Wiki',
		'metawikipedia' => 'Meta-Wiki',
		'wikibooks' => 'Wikibooks',
		'wikidata' => 'Wikidata',
		'wikinews' => 'Wikinews',
		'wikiquote' => 'Wikiquote',
		'wikisource' => 'Wikisource',
		'wikispecies' => 'Wikispecies',
		'wikiversity' => 'Wikiversity',
		'wiktionary' => 'Wiktionary',
	),
),

The second list defines which "languages" should be placed in a separate list, the Related Sites list:

'wmgRelatedSitesPrefixes' => array(
	'default' => array(),
	'wikivoyage' => array(
		'wikipedia', // already set
		'dmoz', // already set
		'citizendium', // already set
		'commons', // already set
		'Radreise-Wiki',
		'rezepte',
		'meta',
		'metawikipedia',
		'wikibooks',
		'wikidata',
		'wikinews',
		'wikiquote',
		'wikisource',
		'wikispecies',
		'wikiversity',
		'wiktionary',
	),
),

So let's start discussing. --RolandUnger (talk) 08:14, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, we have to see what will happen with Wikidata integration, since interwiki project links may be handled through there instead. --Rschen7754 08:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
@Rschen7754 : The enhancement proposed has nothing to do with Wikidata. It is a special feature only available on Wikivoyage to show interproject links like interwiki links in the sidebar. Up to now only wikipedia, commons, dmoz, and citizendium links could be shown. As we demonstrated at WV/de source of these links could be entries from Wikidata. --RolandUnger (talk) 10:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
We never had an occasion to link to Wikiversity or Wikispecies, but I think that these links will not hurt. Good proposal. Let's try to implement it! --Alexander (talk) 10:27, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
But the question is, now that Wikidata contains links to Wikipedia and Commons, and soon other projects, why should the extension not use that information? --Rschen7754 21:35, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
I don't see an actual proposal here. What sites are you recommending be added, Roland? LtPowers (talk) 15:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
The sites to be added have no comment "already set". --RolandUnger (talk) 15:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Is Wikidata considered as present with "Data item" in the sidebar? I do think Wikipedia and Commons covers most of the WMF links, but I noticed the different setup at Italian Wikivoyage, plus the additional note at en.voy's roadmap. It should help with the phrasebooks at least. -- torty3 (talk) 13:20, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
As far as I know, Wikidata is currently being used to link just to Wikivoyage in other languages. It does not yet check for commons: or dmoz: links, nor does it look for other WMF projects in the local language (WP, Wikinews...). Our current method of linking to siblings is mw:extension:RelatedSites which is kludgy - both for the hard-coding of target site names in the server config file and for the issue of "Wikipedia" appearing as a language in WV (bugzilla:55355). It is possible that some future version of Wikidata will supplant RelatedSites, but in the meantime I disagree with the "enhancement" label on RelatedSites bugs. RelatedSites is an ugly kludge which deserves to be labelled as a bug. I have no objection to linking the other WMF projects but at some point we do need to determine if Wikidata will replace the extension and, if it does not, fix RelatedSites. Using the list of languages for a list of other projects is ugly. K7L (talk) 16:29, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Apparently there's a Wikidata bugzilla:54374 request to put interproject links in the sidebar. No idea on the status though. Thanks for the effort Roland. -- torty3 (talk) 11:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Inter-Wikivoyage front-page features[edit]

Hi, everyone. I know I haven't participated much here, because I unfortunately forget these forums exist, but I'll try to rectify that. Anyway, I'm not sure how many of those of you who don't participate at voy:en or voy:de know about the cross-wiki front-page feature of voy:en:Travemünde/voy:de:Travemünde, which will take place during the month of June, 2014. I'm wondering whether there are particular articles other Wikivoyages might want to propose for a joint feature. Any places you would you like to promote to the English-language readership, voy:it, voy:fr, voy:ru, et al.? I should add that I personally can do some work in French and Italian, though my level for the purposes of writing and editing travel articles is just middling. Quand je suis en practique, mon francais c'est pas mal./Quando sono in prattica, il mio italiano non c'e male. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the "cross-wiki front-page" that "will take place during the month of June, 2014". Can you give me/us more details? --Andyrom75 (talk) 11:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Andyrom, Travemünde is planned to be a featured front page article on both en and ge at the same time. --Danapit (talk) 12:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

dmoz property on wikidata[edit]

The dmoz property is the d:Property:P998 on wikidata. Is there a bot to collect the information on the wikivoyage article to introduce them on wikidata? --Adehertogh (talk) 08:44, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

@Adehertogh: Sorry for the late reply! I think there is one: d:Wikidata:Bot_requests#Dmoz (permalink). PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:17, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
One potential problem with moving the DMOZ links to Wikidata: DMOZ has a separate section for non-English links. We'd want each WV to link to the DMOZ section in the same language, not the English-language section of DMOZ. No idea if there's any way around this issue. K7L (talk) 20:27, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Username policy[edit]

Does Wikivoyage allow usernames that consist of a name of a travel agency? Is it fair to block users that made such a choice at their first step on Wv without any preliminary warning?

May sysops block anybody just because they assumed inappropriately promotional behaviors in wv articles? Gobbler (talk) 17:06, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

en.wikivoyage doesn't seem to have a policy against promotional usernames. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:23, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
In fact I perceived an unfair sysop' practice and one user already expressed his complaints about those serial blocks and account deletions. However the matter is not resolved and a collective action should be taken. Should Italian Wikivoyage add an Username Policy as en/wv already does in order to avoid any misunderstanding? New users that dare describe themselves as tourist agents are sentenced guilty there and banned from Wikivoyage even before editing anything. --Gobbler (talk) 02:57, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I think that's unfortunate, and I disagree with that point of view. It is a basic principle of Wikivoyage that purely promotional posts are forbidden, and we also have the policy (at least on en/wv, but I presume in every language) of restricting tour listings, but it certainly does not follow that a tour guide cannot share very useful information, if s/he so chooses. I could understand why, with Italy absolutely crawling with tour agencies, there would be much more wariness, but if things are the way you describe, I think that's going too far. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
en.Wikipedia has a username policy which forbids posting as a company or organisation, among other things. Not sure if it's helpful or only serving to hide the w:WP:COI, though. In any case, WP policy doesn't bind WV in any way. Various WV's have voy:WV:Don't tout or a variant but that's on content and not usernames. K7L (talk) 20:27, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Only a user was blocked whit this motivation, Jato Travel and he is guilty of spam, see here and user contribs (first and only edit at 12:01, 12 nov 2013, blocked at 03:11, 17 nov 2013). 5 days later... Gobbler, please, don't don't act as a victim, the italian WV's community has decided to be aganist the promotional user name, lately your contribution on it:voy is just limited to polemics and trolling, nothing that can increase the value of the project. BTW: the decision of community is here--Wim b / [ t ] 14:20, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
In all language versions of Wikivoyage that I have looked at, the listings of the URLs, phone numbers, addresses, etc of sights, activities, restaurants, hotels, etc is more prolific and explicit than in Wikipedia and it is best to work with the grain of human nature and encourage explicit and transparent user names that make clearer any conflict of interest or special knowledge. --118.93nzp (talk) 03:31, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Coordinates from wikidata[edit]

Hi, fr.voy uses the coordinates from wikidata, it worked perfectly since today and now it's not working at all. Any idea why? We haven't change nor the modul (Modul:Basic) nor the template (Template:Info carte)...--Adehertogh (talk) 09:22, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea. Pt: uses the WP link from wikidata, and that has stopped working too. Have you brought this up on WD? Texugo (talk) 19:45, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
WP links are also not working on fr.voy. I'll immediately let a message on WD ([2]).--Adehertogh (talk) 20:20, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Bug fixed. see: Wikidata:Contact the development team--Adehertogh (talk) 08:07, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Archived discussion, for the record. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Newspaper launched on the Italian Wikivoyage[edit]

I've been experimenting with it:voy:Wikivoyage:Diario di viaggio for a while, and it seems to work well. Does something like that exist on other language versions? --Ricordisamoa 17:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Certainly not in Russian, but we are still at the stage when it is possible to follow edits with the recent changes.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:44, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
No, we have one. Other languages have it as well, as one can see from the interwiki links. --Alexander (talk) 16:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
this is a bit similar in french.--Adehertogh (talk) 23:14, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Need help for the automatic listing counter[edit]

If some one could help, the general listing template only display the number 1 before each listing item. Any idea? (CSS code) Thanks for help.--Adehertogh (talk) 11:25, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I've opened a random page and it seems to work now, if not, contact me on my home page. --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:14, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

wikivoyage.org language positioning[edit]

Between yesterday and today, the links on the main www.wikivoyage.org page have changed; specifically German and English have switched locations. Anyone know the reason for this? LtPowers (talk) 15:15, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

See special:diff/7358677/7731978. You could ask Mxn or discuss on Talk:Www.wikivoyage.org template. PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Ah, my mistake. For some reason I thought the Wikivoyage portal arranges wikis by the number of page views per hour, as on the Wikipedia and Wikibooks portals. But Talk:Www.wikivoyage.org template indicates otherwise. I've reverted the changes. Sorry for the confusion. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:41, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
I wasn't sure how the languages were sorted, and the only indication I found on the talk page (looking just now) was that it was indeed sorted by pageviews. (I always thought it was number of articles, in which en is still beating de by a significant margin.) The oddity here seems to be that de's pageviews spiked big time last month for some reason. If that's the way we're sorting them, then de should be first; I just didn't know the reason for the change at the time. LtPowers (talk) 18:23, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

interwiki links and Itineraries[edit]

The linkages between languages for our Itineraries is pretty convoluted. These recent edits to Wikidata exemplify the problem. It appears we have at least two different Wikidata entries for Itineraries, and I can't tell what the difference is. We have d:Q1322323 ("Itineraries") and d:Q14549023 (unlabeled). Only the former links to English Wikivoyage, but both link to German (the first to voy:de:Thema:Reiserouten and the second to voy:de:Thema:Liste der Reiserouten, and I'll be darned if I can understand what the difference is between the two). Anyone have any idea what's going on? LtPowers (talk) 13:48, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

The first page ("Itineraries") is an introductory page giving access to subregions, too. The second one only a complete listing of all routes. --RolandUnger (talk) 15:47, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm still not sure how to straighten out the Wikidata linkages, though. LtPowers (talk) 15:08, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Mobile Edits[edit]

I can't modify wikivoyage on mobile version, IMO it is broken (see [3] [4] [5]). Could someone help me? Thanks --Lkcl it (Talk) 19:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I also cannot edit in Mobile English Wikivoyage. However, I can edit in mobile version of Spanish Wikivoyage. --Zerabat (discusión) 19:50, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
the problem has been solved. Thanks --Lkcl it (talk) 16:02, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
The Milan English article is still not editable but the problem is restricted to this specific article maybe there's a __NOEDITSECTION__ used in one template. Can someone from en:voy help to understand?
However I take the chance to highlight one bug that affect the mobile listing layout of both en:voy and it:voy . The numbered square shown before each listing, is not in line with the text but above of it (see the previous Milan articles). Any idea for the fix? --Andyrom75 (talk) 09:17, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
FYI On it:voy I've patched it changing width: 12px; height: 13px; into width: 25px; height: 20px. This works with 2 digits listings. For three digits is necessary to change changing width: 12px; height: 13px; into width: 29px; height: 20px AND padding: 0px 2px 3px 1px; into padding: 0px 0px 3px 1px;.
Better & cleaner solutions are more than welcome. --Andyrom75 (talk) 22:29, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikimania Leaflets[edit]

A group of proactive Wikimedians has generously offered to design and produce leaflets for distribution at Wikimania 2014. These leaflets are to promote WikiProjects (Wikipedia interest groups) and non-Wikipedia WMF projects (like ours!). See //wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_Leaflets for details. I think it would behoove Wikivoyage to submit a request for a leaflet. Any other thoughts? LtPowers (talk) 12:41, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be a good thing to assist in promoting Wikivoyage - ps I just love the word behoove. Matroc (talk) 02:36, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
This is really a nice idea. We should use it. --RolandUnger (talk) 16:58, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Totally agree. Anything that could spread the knowledge of voy is always welcome. --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:48, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I've added an application for Wikivoyage; please feel free to edit it. LtPowers (talk) 23:56, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

multi lingual display for Destination of the month[edit]

Mates,

regular users of the German and English WV might have noticed that this month for the first time we coordinated to display Travemünde https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Travem%C3%BCnde & https://de.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Travem%C3%BCnde as a joint destination of the month/otbp respectively. It took almost a year in preparation and scheduling to get both articles to guide level and coordinate the communities. The main advantage is/was that there was a collaboration between the communities and awareness that wv is bigger than any community of every language.

The German and English communities indicated interest to take it to another level and try to see if we can collaborate as much languages on one destination for one month. To allow anyone to participate in the decision which destination and which month, this is in essence an opener to discuss how and when it is best done. I'm willing to help with coordination with languages i understand and would preferrably try to get feedback which languages of wv would be willing to participate and get ideas which destination it could be. Regards, Jc8136 (talk) 12:31, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

On French Wikivoyage, our "lumière sur" or article displayed on the main page is chosen randomly between all articles that have been voted "étoilé" (equivalent to featured articles I guess). We have a "contribution of the month" where we invite contributors to develop a specific page for the month though. Amqui (talk) 15:46, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I think that should also be great to choose a DoM linked with some important events (eg 2015's expo in Milan or Olympic games). --Lkcl it (talk) 16:53, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
@Lkcl it, on :en we did it for the summer olympics in London in 2012 but Rio 2016 is too far i assume. Miland could be an option.
@Amqui its not unusal that before lumière sur/Dotm it is featured to bring it to etoile/guide as contribution of the month. Do you have a preffered destination in mind? Would so prefer an event (expo 15 Milan?) or others? On :en Lisbon was suggested. Jc8136 (talk) 17:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I was saying that we don't have any DoM on our main page. The only thing "for the month" on our main page is "Contribution of the Month" which invites contributors to develop an article, so it cannot be an article that has guide status already. Our featured articles, for now anyway, are randomly chosen for each visit amongst all articles that have the étoilé status (one status above guide). Amqui (talk) 00:19, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
Milan could be a good choice, both for the importance of the event (Expo), and for the time that we have from now to the event (2015), but also for the fact that recently in it:voy we have worked a lot on the touristic division of the region Lombardia with all the relevant articles, and on en:voy have been created the articles for the Milan districts. So it could be good to merge these two effort through all the language versions (that will participate to the collaboration). --Andyrom75 (talk) 21:17, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Andyrom75. Lkcl it (talk) 21:41, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I fully agree with both Andyrom75 and Lkcl it. Milan could be a good DoM. It is neither too late nor too soon and we all have already a good outline on all linguistic versions. But, over and above that, I find exciting and useful to coordinate our projects. It will certainly help the whole Wikivoyage to grow. --Nastoshka (talk) 11:04, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

@Amqui, ok understood. Would there be an exeption to the randomness possible? E.g. if we would agree to present Milan in May 2015, would there be a way to display it in that month or would community consensus against such deviation from Lumiere sur? This would make the effort easier. @ Nastoshka, Andyrom75, Lkcl it: I assume the italian proposal is Milan in May 2015. Let's see what others have to say. Jc8136 (talk) 12:34, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

@ Jc8136 I think Milan could be a very good choice, since Milan Expo 2015 includes more than 140 countries as partecipants and so it may become also a symbol of our cooperation and may be of interest for million travelers from all over the world; How better than that for a project as Wikivoyage? But as you said, let's see what others have to say. --Nastoshka (talk) 13:02, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
I guess it would be possible to overrule the random rule without any problems for a specific month, but the article would need to have been voted "étoilé" by the community before being featured on the main page in my opinion. Amqui (talk) 14:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
An other solution is to create a new category on french wikivoyage , so we have «Lumière sur» (maybe we should find an other name) to show one of our best article on french version, a new DoM category that is coordinate with other wikivoyage and a collaboration of the month category (that don't show a spécific place but a zone where there a lot to do : region, big city,country) . Inkey (talk) 14:48, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
I still think DoM should only be articles that are "étoilé". No point on showing a "featured" article on the main page if it's not of high quality, just because other Wikivoyage versions are featuring it. Yes it would be nice to have the same destination displayed, but only if the article has been developed and voted by the community ahead of time. Amqui (talk) 20:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
Amqui i agree it needs to be etoile.
I posted the proposal for Milan in the German & English pub. In en Mexico City was discussed as well as Wikimania 2015 takes places their. Also Expo15 in en would rather qualify as Featured Travel Topic but lets see. At least no initial opposition. Jc8136 (talk) 06:30, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

User:Balou46, a German WV admin, indicated interest in collaborating for Milan. Lets wait a couple of days to see if other communities have ideas. Jc8136 (talk) 12:09, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I think it's great that we had an inter-lingual feature of en:voy:Travemünde and de:voy:Travemünde, and I love the idea of doing more inter-lingual features. However, en:voy:Milan will need a lot of work, because it is currently only at Usable status, and according to site rules, only articles at Guide status or above are eligible for nomination to be featured on the front page. By the way, étoilé would seemingly be equivalent to en.wikivoyage's Star rating. I'm seeing 10 articles étoilés, and there is no overlap whatsoever between them and the Starred articles in en.wikivoyage, so a good project in en.wikivoyage and any other language version would be to concentrate on translating these particular fr.wikivoyage articles. Once that is done sufficiently to bring the other language version's article up to at least Guide or whatever level is acceptable on each site, a joint feature would be possible. For everyone's reference, here is the fr.wikivoyage list of articles étoilés and here is the equivalent en.wikivoyage list. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:15, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Considering that the jointly DoM would occur far in the future there's no need to choose one star article right now, because we have a lot of time to transform it into a star one. This would also allow to not exclude any language version from the collaboration. --Andyrom75 (talk) 12:36, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
True. May 2015 is almost a year away. But front-page featured articles are usually chosen at least 2-3 months in advance on en.voy, and often 6 or more months in advance. I definitely think this can be done and is an exciting idea; I'm just pointing out that it will take a lot of work. I will propose that we on en.voy make en:voy:Milan the Collaboration of the Month within the next 5 months or so, and any language version that wants to participate in this cross-wiki feature and has a Milan article that's a level or more lower than the minimum status required to be considered for a feature might want to do the same thing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:21, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Maps loading external resources[edit]

FYI, I asked the MappeInterattive gadget be disabled by default on it.voy, after discovering that articles were loading images from mqcdn.com (MapQuest), and perhaps other resources as well (maps.wikivoyage-ev.org/w/poimap2.php and OSM were mentioned). Loading resources from non-WMF servers is forbidden under the privacy policy becuase it sends those servers private information of our visitors. Such JS/CSS rules are generally removed on sight by stewards etc. when found, but I was asked to summarise this here for Mey2008 and others because apparently other Wiivoyages are doing such a thing as well. --Nemo 18:20, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

If you can get User:Dschwen to help, you may be able to use WikiMiniAtlas.... --Rschen7754 03:51, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Map templates request images from tools.wmflabs.org that, in turn, gets them from tile servers. I don't think that any confidential information goes beyond wmflabs.org because the scripts essentially call for a part of the map at a given lat, long and zoom level. The scripts do not process any personal information. Of course, WMF is welcome to set up their own tile server, but this is not something that the Wikivoyage community can decide or implement.
The scripts on maps.wikivoyage-ev.org are the source of those on tools.wmflabs.org. They are used for maintenance and development. --Alexander (talk) 07:22, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
The WMF privacy policy considers the IP requesting the information confidential... --Rschen7754 03:45, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Could you explain why WikiMiniAtlas complies with the privacy policy, and current Wikivoyage scripts not? --Alexander (talk) 06:20, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, times are rendered on Wikimedia lands servers, and traffic to my land instance goes through an anonymizing proxy (with the purpose of housing user IPs even from tool operators on labs). --Dschwen (talk) 07:02, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Not sure that I understand. Anyway, the point is that Wikivoyage won't benefit from embedded maps themselves, but it needs maps + POIs, and the scripts are handling POIs. We don't care where the map comes from, so if we simply take it from wma.wmflabs.org and/or toolserver (just like WikiMiniAtlas does) instead of using external tile servers, would it be OK? --Alexander (talk) 10:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
How much server capacity (CPU and bandwidth) is available on wmflabs (presumably toolserver is shutting down?) and is it enough, given that the maps are on over a thousand WV articles and growing? K7L (talk) 14:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I believe that what Dschwen said was, "Only a fake IP address is sent to MapQuest, so there is no possible violation of the privacy policy". User:Dschwen can correct me if I've misunderstood. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, i think you misunderstood. The fake IP applies only to WikiMiniAtlas. --Dschwen (talk) 22:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
It is already used a lot on enwiki, so I don't think there would be server load issues. --Rschen7754 02:21, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
@Dschwen: Can I ask how to convert eg. [6] to the url of WMA's tiles? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 09:30, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Dschwen: Quote: "... traffic ... goes through to an anonymizing proxy". Who is the operator of that proxy? He knows all the IPs of the users of WikiMiniAtlas. Isn't it a big security risk too? - Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 09:30, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
The operator is the foundation. --Dschwen (talk) 11:01, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
P.S.: knowing IPs is not a security risk, it is a privacy concern. --Dschwen (talk) 11:02, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
@Zhuyifei1999:, this does not work. The WMA had a different format/projection etc. Tiles in some resolutions are rendered on the client, it had 3d buildings and so on. But there is a time server that you can use on labs in the maps project. I'll look up the details. --Dschwen (talk) 11:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
"Compiling" WMA is beyond the ability of my nonnative human js and php compiler (a.k.a. reading). It would be great if there's some way to automatically convert the url formats. Also it seems that the other tile providers used by dynamic wikivoyage maps have the same kind of zoom-level, x-axis, y-axis. I'm mot sure if adding a bunch of other code specific to WMA is efficient. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
In the next version "Dynamic maps" of Wikivoyage the Mapnik layer is by default. Tiles for this layer are then requested by wmflabs server. External servers are marked in the layers selection tool (example see development server). Thus, the problem should be solved? -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 17:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Did you succeed to get Mapnik from the wmflabs server, or you still get it from Mapnik directly? I think that we preferred Mapquest as the default layer because it has less detail, but we can also live with Mapnik if other layers are not available. --Alexander (talk) 18:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, in future I am referring Mapnik tiles directly from wmflabs tiles server. Mapquest layer would be much more appropriate. But it is unfortunately only externally. Mapquest (powered by AOL) insured in its privacy policy "We collect personal information when you make your information known, such as by registering, authenticating, making purchases, or interacting with AOL. If you do not make yourself known to AOL, your use of our content and services is generally anonymous.". I am satisfied with that and do not understand the fuss here. -- Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 18:44, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't understand it either, but we have to comply. Anyway, thank you very much for resolving this issue! Scripts on tools.wmflabs.org should be updated in about a week. Then we can check that Wikivoyage pages do not load any information from external (not trusted) sites. --Alexander (talk) 19:01, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
The script "Poimap2.php" has been changed. Mapnik tiles are now loaded from "https://tiles.wmflabs.org/osm/" (example). The gadget "Mapframe" needs to be changed. The default layer must be "M" instead of "O" in lines 15, 16 and 27 [7]. I do not have access rights. - Joachim Mey2008 (talk) 12:21, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Great, thank you.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:00, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you again! I made the changes in Russian and English Wikivoyages. Other projects have to do it on their own by changing the script in Mediawiki:***.js and by modifying relevant templates that display maps in articles. --Alexander (talk) 02:25, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
If there are no local active admins for a project, you can request assistance at SRM and someone will help. --Rschen7754 02:29, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Also done in Chinese Wikivoyage. Thanks Mey2008 --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:16, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone who pitched in to identify and fix this problem - it is really great to see everyone helping out to protect user privacy! —Luis Villa (WMF) (talk) 00:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Badges[edit]

As some of you know, from yesterday badges (in Wikipedia, stars for GA and FA) can be stored on Wikidata. Shortly, they will become visible on sidebars of the projects which enable them (I guess for Wikivoyage this will not be implemented now, but can be done relatively easily). We may want to use this mechanism for storing info on the article quality. I have already seen today that someone stored an info on Jerusalem where the Hebrew Wikivoyage has a star articles. There are three questions therefore to be discussed:

  • (a) Do we want to do it consistently across all or the majority of Wikivoyage projects;
  • (b) If yes, is it enough to adapt to the existing Wikipedia-centered systems and rate stars as FA and guides as GA;
  • (c) If (a) is yes, and (b) is no, what do we want? Three different badges for stars, guides, and outlines usables?--Ymblanter (talk) 07:08, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
I believe, you meant stars, guides and usables. --Alexander (talk) 09:17, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, now corrected, sorry for that.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
(a) yes; (b) and (c) it will be easier to introduce the third type of the badge instead of discussing what our analogs of FA and GA are. --Alexander (talk) 09:17, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
That's an excellent idea. Three types of badges would be perfect for our needs. GMM (talk) 12:04, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
What is the actual benefit for Wikivoyage to store this information in Wikidata? I can't tell what it is from the description and questions above.
Obviously Wikivoyage already has this rating concept through templates, so there is no benefit for categorisation and sorting. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:16, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
It might make it easier to spot that some other language has a featured/star article on your intended destination which might be worth translating (some Wikipedia languages do that, fr: is one). Beyond that, dunno... any of the other {{pagebanner}} info (is star, is former DotM/OtBP/FTT, is UNESCO listed, has disambig) pertains specifically to the local page and is already templated on that page.unsigned comment by K7L (talk)
At least, we will display quality articles with stars in the interwiki links. --Alexander (talk) 02:57, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
(a) No.Yes. (b) Not sure I fully understand. The symbols have to clearly stand for Wikivoyage statuses (Star, Guide, Usable). If they do, I'm satisfied with it.
I'll copy the relevant remarks from en:voy:Travellers' pub#Badge function in Wikidata here:
I added a comment on meta. I don't see any information about why this would be of benefit. Maybe the benefit is too obvious to everyone else, but I would appreciate knowing exactly what it is. Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:24, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
We already have statuses, so I don't understand what this would add. If an article is a Guide, that's a mark of quality. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:27, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
Exactly, it would just move the 'Guide' status into WikiData. It wouldn't be useful because this is not a data item that can be shared between different Wikivoyage language sites.
It 'may' be useful to know that Jerusalem is a Guide article in Hebrew if I am looking at the English article which is only 'Usable', although I doubt anyone would be that interested. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:37, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
That's the usual argument. On Wikipedia, other-language articles with exalted status are indicated with an icon next to the name of the language on the sidebar. Wikivoyage could do the same. Powers (talk) 01:39, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
That's an excellent idea. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:51, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Thinking about it some more, I have to say that I don't check out other language versions of an article because I make the assumption that they will have less content than the English one. This feature would encourage me to at least check out the other ones if there was a quick icon that would tell me there was content worth viewing. Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:48, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing this discussion here. However, if I read it it sounds to me like (a) is yes.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
To clarify: I do want other-language articles with exalted status to be indicated with an icon next to the name of the language on the sidebar, as Powers calls for. Maybe I somehow didn't fully understand the proposal. If that's the result of the proposal, yes, I am in support of it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I hope it was clarified below.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:20, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Maybe I can try?
The proposal is to A) Store Wikivoyage article ratings for all languages in WikiData. B) Display an icon of 'Guide' and 'Star' rated version of articles next to their respective language links on the side bar --Andrewssi2 (talk) 13:14, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely. And C), which seems to be the current consensus (if I am reading it correctly) is to also have a (separate) icon for 'Usable'.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:19, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
I would support that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:09, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Great. I'm assuming that actually creating the statements for Wikidata is trivial and designing a bot to move all the ratings is straightforward. The remaining aspect is how much effort is required to display the icon in the sidebar for every Wikivoyage language site? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:23, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
We can either ask Wikidata developers to do it on the basis of this discussion, or do it per project by modifyig Mediawiki (though I would not know how.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Another issue is whether we are fine with using generic badges (featured = star, good = guide, and apparently to be soon added quality==usable articles), or we want specific badges for Wikivoyage projects (star, guide, usable).--Ymblanter (talk) 12:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
It's important to avoid confusion. I don't much care what the badges look like (within reason), as long as their meaning is clear. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
I think this would work only if is standarized the rating system across the wikivoyages, i.e., all WV having FA/FTT, Usable, guide, etc. To do this, should have coordination and collaboration between language editions. By the way, Spanish WV already have this rating system. --Zerabat (discusión) 12:47, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
We don't have it "already", we have it from the earliest days of Wikivoyage. To the best of my knowledge, three ratings (usable-guide-star) are shared between most of the language versions. If some language version chooses a different system, we should probably discuss it on a case-by-case basis. --Alexander (talk) 14:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

A slightly different badge could be created to note that a district of another language's article is at star/guide status. Many large cities are divided into districts. The rating of regions & cities with districts is dependent on the status of articles lower in the geographical hierarchy>. On EN, cities with districts must have all districts at useable or better to be a guide article & all districts must be at guide level for the city to be a star. When a city article gets too large, the city is divided into districts and the rating of the city article is then dependent on the rating of the district articles. For example, voy:Charlotte is only at useable and has 12 districts (one doesn't even have an article), but the district that covers the central business district (voy:Charlotte/Uptown) is a star. I don't have time to find real examples, but a very useful & detailed city article could have 7 guide-level districts, 4 useful articles, & 2 stubs and the city would only be at useful level. This would be a problem across languages because one language might have no districts and so its article is a guide or star, while another has much more content but is only useable because it has 12 districts. For this I suggest using half of the badge that corresponds to the rating of the district with the highest rating. Doing this for regions is a lot more complicated. AHeneen (talk) 07:10, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

This is an important issue but i propose to separate things. If we agree to have such a badge, it can be added later.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:17, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Implementation[edit]

Yaroslav, can we proceed and submit a request to Wikidata? Once we have the badges activated, we can think how to adjust them. --Alexander (talk) 09:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

There is one issue on Wikidata which I need to sort out. I will try to do it tomorrow and come back here.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:17, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
Left a request on Wikidata to activate the third badge.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:36, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
Now I filed a bug, [8]. We need to wait until it gets resolved.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:10, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
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