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Wikitravel Shared:Travellers' pub/Archive 2008

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Help Please

can somebody refer to here Tech:Move table of contents to right side on Hebrew version it's been a long time Orel zion 10:15, 13 January 2008 (EST)

Sidebar links - any suggestions?

Can anyone help with this: en:Wikitravel talk:Phrasebook template#Sidebar links to Wikibooks / en:MediaWiki talk:Sidebar#Sidebar link to Wikibooks for Phrasebook articles - ? ~ 203.144.143.4 00:09, 21 January 2008 (EST)

Sorry to be a pain, but just giving this a quick bump. Any help would be much appreciated. ~ 203.144.143.4 00:17, 25 January 2008 (EST)

Contributor Gallery

Could soemone set it up so that one could view a contibutors inventory of photo's as a gallery, like Gallery of new photo's. It would make for a much easier viewing and search. 2old 09:34, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Corporate interest??

Today, Cacahuate pointed out that Wikitravel, yet AGAIN, is slowing down. I concur. Sometimes, I just cannot be *ss*d to do things, because it takes ages for the pages to load, reload, etc. And that is not the only thing that makes me both angry and worried about what's going on with the world's best travel guide. I would like to ask the following questions:

  1. Has Internet Brands lost all interest in Wikitravel? If not, where are you?
  2. Why aren't you, as in IB, present and participating in the discussion here on Shared - which the only place for those things to happen?
  3. Why do we not get any news about your plans for Wikitravel?
  4. Why don't you do something about the horrible technical backlog? Have a look at the open bug reports!
  5. What's new about the possible merger of Wikitravel and World66?

I'd like to point out that if you do not do something about this, Wikitravel will lose contributors, and the first to leave will most likely be long-time users like myself. The moment the users leave, the site will die and you will lose money. We, as in your contributors, are an asset. Work with us! Riggwelter 14:50, 16 February 2008 (EST)

Agree with the above... it feels a little like nobody gives a shit anymore... Evan isn't around any longer... and while for a second there was Kevin, etc, we haven't seen any progress or updates since many of those things were talked about. Overseeing the site is perhaps a larger job than IB initially realized... Evan was taking care of a lot, and I can at least speak for myself in saying that his presence here is sorely missed. The only thing I've noticed being implemented recently is the WTP ads, which while I'm happy things are going well for WTP, I'd like to see similar attention and priority kept on our website. As mentioned above, my biggest issue right now is the speed of the site... it's been slow for ages now... and if I recall is was something that IB installed to monitor page traffic or something or other that slowed it down in the first place right? If that's the case, then get frickin rid of it!!! Until you're willing to invest the money in speeding up the site to compensate, and then some. – cacahuate talk 19:45, 17 February 2008 (EST)
PS, It took about 20 seconds to save the above comment, at least, and it often gets much worse than that. – cacahuate talk 19:46, 17 February 2008 (EST)
I have had the same complaint about uploads. And, I wonder about this:If you go to http://www.dslreports.com and do a speed test on your ISP you may find that downloads are coming in at 6,054 KBs and uploads are at 481 KBs, or at least mine does. They do not provide the same speeds for uploads as well as downloads. While this may not be the problem, I thought it worthy of mention. I'll bet many of you know more about this than me, and I would welcome comments on it. 2old 11:43, 18 February 2008 (EST)
I emailed the above text to:General manager John McGanty - User:Redondo. E-mail: john.mcganty at internetbrands.com I am sure he will respond. 2old 15:53, 18 February 2008 (EST)
Good initiative, but I seriously think it has gone way too far if we have to e-mail the site support people. Something as basic as site speed is something they should do something about without getting complaints from the users. But, if they spent about an hour a day on any Wikitravel site, participating in the discussion and the work, they would be instantly aware of any problems. We are not amused. Riggwelter 16:51, 18 February 2008 (EST)

Well, what's the deal? :en has seemed faster today, enough so where I've actually been able to do some work, but still no response? Sometimes I really wonder about IB—wondering stoked by their incommunicado ways... --Peter Talk 22:39, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Especially interesting considering that I emailed John, Kevin and Beenish on Sunday with links to the discussions, and none have replied on the site or via email. I share Riggwelter's lack of amusement – cacahuate talk 00:45, 21 February 2008 (EST)
Just tried a round of patrolling on :en, and wasn't as lucky as Peter... still slower than shit – cacahuate talk 01:23, 21 February 2008 (EST)
Well, I have emailed General manager John McGanty and left him a voicemail message at IB today. 2old 11:50, 21 February 2008 (EST)
Well done. I hope something happens really soon. Reactions like this is regrettable but fully understandable. Riggwelter 15:05, 21 February 2008 (EST)

Sorry it has taken awhile to post here. We have been working on the problem and hoped to come on once we fixed it. Our tech team did an analysis of the performance of the application and database servers, and determined that while the database server is performing fine, the application server has been maxing out. Our tech team will come on to post more detail on that.

We bought and configured a second application server and deployed it earlier this week. However, there have been some problems with that implementation which have prevented it from going live. They are working on the problem this morning. I'm optimistic this will go live shortly, but will hold off setting an exact time to avoid any false promises. The expectation is that this should fully solve the problem. If it proves to be only a partial solution, we will order a third application server to further handle the load.

Thank you for your patience on this. I know the site has been frustrating recently, and we hope to get this fixed completely this week.

Also, we have hired a person who is going to be responsible for daily involvement on Wikitravel. We have been remiss in not being more present here on Shared, and she will be remedying that. She just started and we'll introduce her later today.

I'm also meeting today with our tech team to come up with a better process for responding to bug notices and other tech requests. We need to be doing a better job on this, and we will. Redondo 12:53, 21 February 2008 (EST) copied from Tech:Site slowdown by Riggwelter 15:10, 21 February 2008 (EST)

IB has appointed two "community leaders" before, and neither of them [1] [2] ever managed to contribute much more than their own user pages. Let's hope that the third time's the charm. Jpatokal 14:19, 23 February 2008 (EST)
Ongoing information on the progress of the site slowdown may be found here. 195.7.70.30 03:10, 27 February 2008 (EST)

Spammers beware

Starting somewhere around october 2007, sv: started to get new users with mysterious and very similar user names like MonelTviel, TabocOacre, EltorLaacl, RacolOract and ChicaDomtr. It did not take that much to realise that we had some sort of warming up session for spammers going in. So, user names with this strange setup have been blocked. However, spammers now use IP addresses from the IANA namespace or open proxies to fill sv: with spam. The spam is mostly the same kind of stuff which leads us to deduce that the amount of actual spammers is probably low. This is annoying, and I recommend you to be vigilant. We revert pages and, in some cases, block the addresses for up to a year. This might be the right way to do things, or the wrong way. I believe that one way of solving this annoying issue would be to adopt the same method Wikipedia has to prevent spammers from the automatic registering of various user names, i e some sort of code that has to be entered while signing up/in. Perhaps something for our developers? No tech request added yet - it would be nice to get your view on the issue. Riggwelter 17:14, 18 February 2008 (EST)

GFDL and Attribution-Sharealike question

How is it with GFDL licence - I found a suitable picture in Wikipedia Commons that is under GFDL 1.2 or later (has Template:GFDL template on it) but when uploading file - the licenses combo box contained GFDL only inside "Multiple licenses" with Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 or Attribution-ShareAlike any version..

Is it ok to upload the file and which licence should I choose?

Touko vk 02:12, 22 February 2008 (EST)

Hi Touko, unfortunately, our licensing is not compatible with GDFL, so we only allow images that are dual licensed with a CC Attribution-ShareAlike license. Please see Wikitravel:Why Wikitravel isn't GFDL for more information. --Peter Talk 13:57, 22 February 2008 (EST)
Wikipedia, the Free Software foundation (authors of the GFDL) and Creative commons are working on a new version of the GFDL which will be compatible with CC-BY-SA and are looking to publish something real soon. If the Wikipedians agree to migrate to the new license then it should be a lot easier to share stuff with them.81.187.181.168 15:15, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Database errors galore

Is that over with? New servers? Where are we? --Peter 23:23, 22 February 2008 (EST)

Hmmmm. It now seems like most of the site is running pretty fast BUT there are some pages that won't load no matter how many times you refresh. See en:Dallas, en:Denton, en:Brisbane, etc. The error returned says "1016: Can't open file: 'text.MYI' (errno: 145) (wikidb.internetbrands.com)". Pretty irritating since Dallas and Denton have been my pet projects of the last few days. User:Texugo 23:41, 22 February 2008 (EST)
This looks like a familiar, and really obnoxious problem. Clear the cache of the page in question, and the error message will go away. To do so, type
http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Dallas&action=purge
into your site address bar and hit enter (for other pages, replace Dallas with the article title). My hunch is that we'll have this problem for a bit for every single page anyone tried to access while the DB server was down. --Peter Talk 00:15, 23 February 2008 (EST)

OpenID Question(s)

I currently login using my OpenID URL rageear.myopenid.com and WikiTravel knows me as "RageEar". I have configured my own web site www.rageear.com to be a delegate for my OpenID at rageear.myopenid.com. However, when I login using the URL www.rageear.com, WikiTravel sees me as a different user and assigned me a new user name. I was expecting that I would be logged in as my username "RageEar", which is associated with the OpenID rageear.myopenid.com.

Am I running into expected behavior or is something not working properly? RageEar 10:47, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Tech Requests

Are ignored.

Last week I filed another two, feeling pretty confident that no one would so much as comment on them (to let me know whether someone will fix them, or if there is something I could do to help make them happen, etc.), and lo, they've sat completely unanswered. One of them was created with the edit summary, "new open bug, that would take only 5 min. to fix!" And it really should only take 5 minutes, it's just correcting a typo to which I do not have access.

The other is a feature request that should be extremely simple and quick to implement, and I believe would be very useful. If it's not easy to implement, the very least I would expect is that someone from the IB team would respond, saying, "actually that wouldn't be feasible because of X."

The only explanation I can come up with for why these requests go ignored is that IB has decided not to address them—that, basically, no one cares until the point of open revolt (e.g., the site slowdown wasn't even commented on (or even noticed?) until a "janitorial strike" emerged). That's bad.

My patience has run out, and I'm voting no confidence in the technical support framework. Can we extend root access to nominated Wikitravel users, so that people who actually care about the site can process tech requests? --Peter Talk 13:37, 12 March 2008 (EDT)


We hear you.
I am sorry for the frustration. I will pass along your feedback to the tech team here. We have not decided not to address requests. Our team is backed up with other technical issues, but I'm gong to get some information and will check back in. I truly thank you for your patience and dedication to this community.JuCo 14:13, 12 March 2008 (EDT)
I will be watching Open Bugs and Feature Requests much more carefully and getting issues into the pipeline. Thanks again for your patience.JuCo 20:17, 12 March 2008 (EDT)


I second Peter's concerns, and I really hope you guys will pay more attention. I hesitantly returned to the site since you fixed the speed, but that was hardly my only concern. The seeming loss of interest lately in the site by IB is worrisome. You really shouldn't wait until the long term users are ready to bolt before taking action and paying attention. What happened to a few months ago when the Kevin's were around and working on new ideas for the site and responding to some tech requests? Are they both still on staff? Are they just busy with other IB sites? What gives? – cacahuate talk 01:01, 13 March 2008 (EDT)
Understood. You guys have been very patient as we work everything out. Thank you and I'm sorry that you have felt neglected. The tech team and I are working hard to make sure you don't feel that way anymore! And yes, that means I'm working with the Kevins.JuCo 12:14, 13 March 2008 (EDT)
I am into the Open Bug Reports and working every week with tech to facilitate the flow of info between you and them and vice-versa. I am open to ideas for how to better track these Open Bug reports...maybe a discussion on the Open Bug Reports page? JuCo 21:31, 18 March 2008 (EDT)
What you've been doing last couple of days is great... if you guys just keep an eye on special:recentchanges to watch for new things popping up, and get a grasp on Category:Open bug reports and Category:Open feature requests then I think we'll be in a good place... once we wade thru the backlog on those last two pages ideally we'll only have a small handful of things on them at any given time and it will be easier to stay on top of new ones and manage those 2 pages. I'm glad that the "top bugs" page is useful too, but it's only really relevant right now because there's so many open bug reports and feature requests that we developed a separate place to draw attention to a few... but really we should just get thru the backlog and make the actual pages only consist of a few  :) we're making progress though, keep up the good work – cacahuate talk 22:41, 19 March 2008 (EDT)
Thanks for the kind words, perhaps posted right before a downage we experienced this morning! Fortunately, tech jumped on it quickly and had it resolved in less than an hour. That's all a testament to the ongoing struggle with site performance that the tech team here is wrangling with. But yes, we're trying to get a better handle on bug reports and requests and really figure out the level of need in order to be able to prioritize. I'm starting a discussion over on Category:Open bug reports so we can shake this out together.JuCo 14:17, 20 March 2008 (EDT)

Related changes feature

This new feature is really useful! --Peter Talk 14:06, 21 March 2008 (EDT)

Advertising

I posted regarding adding AdSense to the site on this page, in case anyone wants to add to this conversation: http://wikitravel.org/shared/Talk:Advertising_policy Redondo 22:27, 25 March 2008 (EDT)

Photo credits

I have noticed it seems frowned upon to add the photo credit under a photo on Wikipedia and here as well. I am not sure why, but in any case, as a contributor of photographs, I expect my name to at LEAST appear when a photo is clicked upon. That was not the case with the following photo (http://wikitravel.org/en/Image:Shushi_tank_memorial.jpg), which was moved here from wikipedia. Can't you ensure that they don't have to click yet again on a tiny link in order to figure out who took the picture?? Shouldn't the file information appear every time they click on the photo? Seems like that's the true spirit of Creative Commons licenses requiring attribution. --Raffikojian 00:36, 31 March 2008 (EDT)

I started a feature request herecacahuate talk 03:29, 31 March 2008 (EDT)

This seems as Tech:Copy image descriptions from shared. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 04:13, 31 March 2008 (EDT)

Logos

Is prohbited by copyright issues a text-based logos uploading to Wikitravel Shared? -- Sergey kudryavtsev 17:00, 1 April 2008 (EDT)

In general, yes. Jpatokal 02:18, 2 April 2008 (EDT)
In the wikimedia projects a logo using interpreted as a fair use of copyrighted graphics. But a text-based logos is not copyrighted by US law (see Template:PD-textlogo at Wikimedia Commons) and interpreted as a public domain. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 03:55, 2 April 2008 (EDT)
Wikitravel does not allow fair use. Can I ask what logo you want to use and why? There is generally no need to use logos of other companies on Wikitravel. Jpatokal 07:27, 2 April 2008 (EDT)
Of course you can. ;-) This is Saint Petersburg Metro logo -- a slightly rounded letter "M" (see here). A other metro systems have a similar logos (e.g. Berlin U-Bahn have a thick letter "U"). Also McDonalds have a "M" and so forth... This symbols need for nonresidents to find easy entry in metro, cafe etc. at the real world. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 16:51, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

Google

OK, who else here thinks that the google advertising placed on this site SUCKS ? 56.0.103.25 09:11, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

Yeah, it is a little irritating. I've suggested this: Tech:Disable AdWords for logged-in users. Jpatokal 10:38, 2 April 2008 (EDT)
Don't get too excite by ads. Life is not a free ride and this is a great canvas for work by all contributors. 2old 11:56, 3 April 2008 (EDT)
Yes, Internet Brands supports Tech:Disable AdWords for logged-in users and will be working toward offering it. JuCo 14:21, 3 April 2008 (EDT)
I don't mind the ads as such. But I do mind the fact that the page sometimes gets messed up because it doesn't fit between the ads to the right and the menu to the left. That is very annoying... 83.252.21.41 00:57, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
I agree with 83.252.21.41, see e.g. messed up photos at section "Достопримечательности" of my ru:Санкт-Петербург/Центр. Before advertising turning on it seems fine. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 03:39, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
Problem reported by Texugo here. Riggwelter 04:06, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
Wow! I was looking at the Ohio page on WT today and found [3] in the Google ad. I must say, I have never seen that site before, but it does add a new opportunity for adventure in Ohio that I had not considered for Wikitravelers. 2old 11:32, 26 April 2008 (EDT)
That site is blocked by the filter here in Saudi Arabia, but odds are it's prohibited by Google's content policy as well. Jpatokal 03:16, 27 April 2008 (EDT)

What Google advertising? I use Firefox ;-)

I visited our Swedish site today and this is what I found (translated to English): "Travel guides: Download our travel guides for Swedish towns from Eurotourism, free of charge! www.eurotourism.com". This was in the Google adds.

On Swedish wikitravel we work really hard to explain to our contributors that we are the travel guide and that they should not link to other guides. This add doesn't really help, I think. Akteacher 01:15, 14 August 2008 (EDT)

Interwiki bot

There are many Wikitravel language versions by now. Is a bot for a maintence of interwiki links functionated at Wikitravel? -- Sergey kudryavtsev 03:33, 11 April 2008 (EDT)

Yes, see en:User:DorganBot. It's not very automatic though, I think User:Dorgan has to start it manually... Jpatokal 04:01, 11 April 2008 (EDT)
Ok. I will add ru-links in only en-articles and vice versa. And i will expect that en:User:DorganBot make all remained work instead of me. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 04:23, 11 April 2008 (EDT)


Congratulations!

I just wanted to send out a big thank you and congratulations to the Wikitravel community. As you may have seen on the Main Page, Wikitravel has been nominated for a 2008 Webby Award! The site is up for a Webby in the Travel category as well as the "People's Voice" category. This is a testament to all the hard work you do and the strong spirit of collaboration you foster here on Wikitravel. So, congratulations! And don't forget to vote! JuCo 20:12, 14 April 2008 (EDT)

Great news! I have updated the site notice. Riggwelter 04:33, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Editing disruption 4/17/08

The site will be undergoing a little work at 7AM PST on 4/17/08. Cached pages won't be affected, but editing will be. It's anticipated that the work wil last 1 hour. Thank you for your patience! JuCo 21:38, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

The maintenance may end up taking a little longer than previously planned. We will be serving from cache in the meantime so any non cached pages (or pages not in cache) will be unavailable. KevinSours 10:15, 17 April 2008 (EDT)
We're done. The site is now on Mediawiki 1.11.2. We don't anticipate any problems as a result of this, but if you notice anything, please point it out. KevinSours 11:16, 17 April 2008 (EDT)
I'm getting spurious table of contents boxes on various pages that shouldn't have them, eg. the notice after reverting an edit...? Jpatokal 12:30, 17 April 2008 (EDT)
I'm not personally seeing this. As a guess, I cleared the memcache cache. If that doesn't fix it can you provide detailed steps to reproduce? 207.212.173.2 13:29, 17 April 2008 (EDT)
It seems to happen every single time I revert any edit on any language version. I can't give you a reproducible link though, because you can only revert any given edit once... Jpatokal 23:48, 17 April 2008 (EDT)
Can you give me the list of steps you took to produce the error? An example of what I mean is.
I'm not clear, at this point, on exactly what it is you are doing. 207.212.173.2 17:31, 18 April 2008 (EDT)
Revert, the admin function. Not undo. This isn't really a high-priority bug, as this is visible only to us admins.
Also, it happens only when I revert content pages (not talk pages). I presume that Mediawiki somehow assumes/remembers that the page is an article that should have a table of contents, and thus renders it. Jpatokal 13:10, 19 April 2008 (EDT)
Are you referring to the link on the history page labeled "rollback"? It really is helpful if you include at the very least the page you starting from and the link you clicked on to get the process started. It's really easy to waste a lot of time looking at the wrong thing because there are lots of similar features and confusing terminology (note that the mediawiki docs on "revert" at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reverting_a_page_to_an_earlier_version describe something very similar to what I list as the example above). KevinSours 12:27, 21 April 2008 (EDT)
Yes, the rollback function, accessible from edit differences & history pages. --Peter Talk 18:05, 21 April 2008 (EDT)
I see this too – cacahuate talk 00:50, 20 April 2008 (EDT)

Vandalism on fr

Hi, fr has a very persistent vandal at the moment, 7-8 pages that are being edited every few minutes. Is there any way for one of the other-language WT admins to block anonymous edits to the affected pages? Julien would normally do so, but he doesn't seem to be logged in at the moment and my poor attempts to manually revert changes can't keep up. Thanks, WTDuck2 (also not currently able to log in to shared using Open ID - just not my day!)

I see what you mean -- unfortunately only the users listed here have admin rights on fr. Jpatokal 22:19, 17 April 2008 (EDT)
I tried to add some URLs to fr:Wikitravel:Local spam blacklist, but it didn't seem to be working. I guess it will work if admin of fr: creates fr:MediaWiki:Spamblacklist. -- Tatata 12:51, 18 April 2008 (EDT)

Tech:Interwiki links to shared

This issue seems as completed. Can i close it? -- Sergey kudryavtsev 10:29, 18 April 2008 (EDT)

Not quite done, see issue KevinSours 19:00, 14 August 2008 (EDT)

Google AdSense sensitivity... or not?

Our ad policy clearly states that the ads should only be travel-related. This works fine, most of the time, but sometimes it gets just silly, probably because of Google's filter settings. Today, sv: has had ads for language classes of little or no use to a swede, ads from companies offering to restore your hard drive, how to give away a brunch as a gift, and, perhaps the most ridiculous of them all: ads linking to an online directory with search criteria for stock brokers! This needs to be looked into ASAP, because it is a breach of our own policy and is completely counterproductive. Welcome here to discuss the issue. Riggwelter 10:31, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Let's discuss in one place: Talk:Advertising_policy#Google_AdSense_sensitivity..._or_not.3Fcacahuate talk 18:59, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Esperanto version in trouble

Anybody take a look at the :eo version recently? It's a disaster. The multilingual stats showing 1094 edits this week caught my attention, and lo, there's nothing there but ongoing wild spambot havoc. Cleanup looks extremely difficult, as this appears to have been going on for a long time unmonitored. IB should definitely disable all anon editing for the :eo version, and should consider taking it offline if we can't figure a way to get it back in shape. --Peter Talk 00:56, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

I've notified Evan, who's the only admin on eo, but evidently he has better things to do. So yes, I'd support either disabling anonymous edits or locking it completely. Jpatokal 03:49, 23 May 2008 (EDT)
Thanks for the heads up. The tech team will be disabling anon editing on :eo. Thanks. JuCo 19:49, 23 May 2008 (EDT)
It's still suffering from terrible spam. --Episteme 15:15, 1 June 2008 (EDT)
Spam blacklist does not seem to be working on eo:, because of missing eo:MediaWiki:Spamblacklist. JuCo, can you create the MediaWiki page on eo: same as shared? And please protect the blacklist from anon edit. [4]
Of course, above is not needed after disabling anon edit. But it will be needed for enabling anon edit in the future. -- Tatata 04:05, 2 June 2008 (EDT)
We've disabled anon edit and will be creating the Mediawiki page to enable edit in the future. Thanks! JuCo 21:16, 2 June 2008 (EDT)

Now the spammer has moved to it:, ca:, pt: etc. --Episteme 09:12, 13 June 2008 (EDT)

Our tech team has temporarily disabled anon edits there to combat this. Thanks for the heads up!JuCo 19:07, 13 June 2008 (EDT)
I'd encourage you to re-enable anon editing for :pt — there are three engaged administrators there who should be able to handle spammers. --Peter Talk 00:21, 14 June 2008 (EDT)
& btw this might be useful: → Janitorial audit, June 2008. --Peter Talk 18:53, 16 June 2008 (EDT)
Anon edits don't seem to have been disabled in it:, which is still exposed to continuous spamming. --Episteme 05:51, 15 June 2008 (EDT)
Please help, we have a big spammer on it: Thanks --87.181.218.175 16:56, 22 June 2008 (EDT)

Software upgrade/ MediaWiki suggestions idea

I have the files for the newest release of MediaWiki should you people want them, and I also suggest we get the CheckUser extension installed, plus Makesysop, for safety and security reasons. It's a good idea. Feedback is welcomed. --Sunstar 14:55, 2 June 2008 (EDT)

Admin needed on ES

Please see: http://wikitravel.org/wiki/es/index.php?title=Beijing&action=history for massive, ancient repository of linkspam. Didn't have the chance to look around at what is going on with that wiki, but this doesn't augur well. 24.147.148.237 07:45, 21 July 2008 (EDT)

That's been unchecked since July 4, but I don't see any evidence that it was more widespread than just that one page. I've updated the local blacklist with a catchall pattern and will keep an eye on the site, since it seems like all :es admins (myself included) have been delinquent this month. --Peter Talk 23:23, 21 July 2008 (EDT)

Expanding Templates

I see that some users have been discussing the need for a few new templates to fit the articles they're interested in writing....specifically along the lines of Major Airports and roadways. The topics they would open up sound great, have gotten positive feedback and could make for some valuable content. I’d like to hear your thoughts about this. Thanks! JuCo 15:35, 31 July 2008 (EDT)

Newimages

Anyone mind if I replace "random category" with "Special:Newimages" on the left sidebar? I think it's a much more useful and cool function, and it would be nice to have a quick link to it (especially for people who don't know about it). --Peter Talk 20:46, 2 August 2008 (EDT)

Sounds like a good idea, all those random category surfers will just have to find something new to fill their time with – cacahuate talk 21:25, 2 August 2008 (EDT)

Admin needed on fr too

fr is getting out of control. Obstinate copyvio edits [5] [6] [7], inappropriate articles [8] [9] etc. Any fr admin out there? --Episteme 06:20, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

Nope. None of the fr admins have edited since June—even then there was very little administrative work going on. Do you think it's worth disabling anon edits? --Peter Talk 23:43, 4 August 2008 (EDT)
I'm reluctant as many anon users are well contributing. Semiprotection and/or block would be more effective. --Episteme 10:14, 10 August 2008 (EDT)
Would you be up to being an administrator :fr? (And maybe :it too?) That way you could take care of needed page protections & ip blocks while there aren't any fr/it admins around. That goes a bit against individual language version policy, since you are supposed to be nominated there, but perhaps we should go around that since these two versions have more or less been abandoned by their administrators. --Peter Talk 23:48, 10 August 2008 (EDT)
I humbly accept if any authoritative person(s) allow me to be. --Episteme 17:00, 13 August 2008 (EDT)
I could help out on fr: if I get the administrative rights. Also, let me know if the fr: admins seem to have left the project altogether, because then they should not have any admin rights on shared: Riggwelter 07:23, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

UN maps

Wikimedia seems to have decided UN maps are kosher for derivative works. Here's there blurb:

This image is a mapping derived from products of the United Nations Cartographic Section. Modified versions of UNCS maps may be used provided that the UN name and reference number does not appear on any modified version and a link to the original map is provided.

The UN maps is an open source material. You can use them to make your own maps. You do not need our permission for that. Please be advised that the UN name and reference number should not appear on any modified map. The UN map is a UN document and cannot be modified. You can say something like "Based on UN map number..." -- Vladimir Bessarabov (UNCS Cartographer), 13 April 05

Do we buy it? I made my map of Latvia partially with a UN base, and it was really useful. I'm not sure we should use a PD-creator template for those though. Maybe a "UN maps-derived" template would be better? --Peter Talk 19:39, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

I'll buy it, it's at least as free as CC Attribution (once the name/ref are removed). But yeah, a custom template would be nice. Jpatokal 13:10, 25 August 2008 (EDT)
Sounds good, I'll whip one up. --Peter Talk 22:20, 25 August 2008 (EDT)
Done. And I'm intending to leave it off the pulldown menu, unless demand for it grows. --Peter Talk 00:45, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

Special:Contributions failure

Today i see a strange radio button text on this page. I see a folowing html code (before both standard "Show contributions of new accounts only" and "<Ipadressorusername>"):

<script type='text/javascript'> <!--// messages= new cListingMessages({'tag-eat':'eat', 'tag-drink':'drink', 'tag-see':'see', 'tag-do':'do', 'tag-sleep':'sleep', 'tag-buy':'buy', 'tag-listing':'listing', 'attr-name':'name', 'attr-alt':'alt', 'attr-address':'address', 'attr-directions':'directions', 'attr-phone':'phone', 'attr-phoneextra':'phoneextra', 'attr-email':'email', 'attr-fax':'fax', 'attr-tollfree':'toll free', 'attr-url':'url', 'attr-hours':'hours', 'attr-checkin':'checkin', 'attr-checkout':'checkout', 'attr-hoursextra':'hoursextra', 'attr-price':'price', 'attr-priceextra':'priceextra', 'attr-geo':'geo', 'attr-lat':'lat', 'attr-long':'long', 'attr-tags':'tags', 'attr-description':'description', 'msg-save':'save', 'msg-saving':'Saving', 'msg-cancel':'cancel', 'msg-editor-title':'Add New Listing'}); //--> </script>

I maked sure that MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-newbies and MediaWiki:Ipadressorusername is not altered. What's happened? -- Sergey kudryavtsev 02:18, 28 August 2008 (EDT)

I get this too, see eg. [10].
I'm also getting weirdness on the edit page, with unnecessary linebreaks/white space before "This is a minor edit", "Watch this page" and "Cancel". There's also spurious whitespace at the top of the Recent changes listings. (Firefox 3 on Vista.) Jpatokal 09:40, 28 August 2008 (EDT)
This is a problem resulting from the localization of the listing editor. Turns out that the parser (and the associated hooks) get used internally more often than I realized, so the javascript block that passes the translated strings to the listing editor gets inserted in some awkward places. I'm working on a fix now KevinSours 11:11, 28 August 2008 (EDT)
Should be fixed now KevinSours 12:28, 28 August 2008 (EDT)
Now it's ok -- Sergey kudryavtsev 16:23, 28 August 2008 (EDT)

New fault

Today on every page seen (at :en, :ru, :shared) occurred a error message (sometimes once, sometimes twice) : "cListingMessages" - definition missing (this is my translation from Russian, a English message may slightly differ). NB: I use IE 6.0 SP1. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 02:55, 29 August 2008 (EDT)

I don't see this this morning. I may have to do with caching. If you don't have the new javascript (which is aggressively cached) then the cListingMessages class won't be defined. I checked and the javascript currently being served is correct. I did notice a different IE problem with the editor and fixed that. I changed the html so that the it will avoid loading the cached copy that doesn't have this mornings changes, but the html is cached as well so some pages may not pick up that fix for a couple of hours. If you run into problems please purge cache KevinSours 12:13, 29 August 2008 (EDT)

Uploading down?

Is anyone else having trouble uploading to shared? i haven't been able to upload anything all day Sertmann 13:10, 2 September 2008 (EDT)

That's odd, I had no problems. What happened when you tried to upload files? --Peter Talk 22:24, 2 September 2008 (EDT)

Is there a way to see a hit count?

I am not certain that that is the correct term. Can a user see how namy times an article has been visited? If so, does it show the count over any particular time period? Stephen sommerhalter 16:10, 18 September 2008 (EDT)

Even if mediawiki provides one its not going to be accurate because the cache system means that mediawiki doesn't actually see every hit KevinSours 17:36, 18 September 2008 (EDT)
thanks. The motive for my question is that, as a newbe to Wikitravel, I am wondering if there is a way to learn whether anyone is reading the articles that I'd like to contribute to.

New Server Setup on Review

The tech team has moved a copy of the site to new servers and it can be seen/experienced and tested over on the Review site [11]. This is a much-anticipated upgrade that should improve performance and help make Wikitravel a more stable and more scalable environment. This is an exciting and important step in the right direction for the site going forward. Like any upgrade, we anticipate some bugs so please do report them here so that the tech team can tackle issues before the site goes live on the new servers. JuCo 17:49, 18 September 2008 (EDT)

The correct url is (http://test.wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page) this is actually a full up copy of the environment as of a couple of weeks ago and all language version should be represented and working. Ironically review is probably not working on the test environment. KevinSours 19:27, 18 September 2008 (EDT)
I have posted a new bug report. I do not know if it is related to the aforementioned work. Riggwelter 07:09, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

New Server Transition Begins, September 24th

The tech team will begin the transition to the new server setup today. This will create some disruption in service to the site. Beginning immediately, the Search function will be switched to a back-up version that, some may notice, is less robust. Many of you may not notice a difference at all. This is a temporary switch. Full search will be restored after the transition to the new servers. Once the work on search is completed, which should be a matter of hours, the transfer of the site will begin. At that point, Wikitravel will become "read-only", meaning you won't be able to make edits. A message will appear on edit pages. This "read only" period will last for about three hours. When the site comes up on the new servers, the message will disappear and you will be able to edit again. JuCo 16:56, 24 September 2008 (EDT)

Justine, thanks for your info. This is the way it should be - us getting to know in advance what is about to happen. There is a new bug report which I have posted today, regarding another site slowdown. Has the server transition affected the site speed? Please take a look at the bug report and get back to us. Riggwelter 07:08, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
The bug you mention talks about that last 3 or 4 days. The new hardware has been live for less than 12 hours at this point. We'll need some time to assess before we can say anything intelligent about how things are going to go. I obviously hope we'll show some improvement (my testing leads me to believe so, but the reality is always has its own ideas) KevinSours 10:16, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

New unannounced file size limit?

I got an error message upon trying to upload a 2.3MB file today, saying that the file exceeded the size limit. That definitely should not be happening. If I remember correctly, the upload size limit was supposed to be 8MB, which is too small for a site that relies on complex SVG files. My Image:DC map.svg file is 6+MB and growing, and should be allowed on site so that others can use it. But a limit of 2MB would be outrageously low—many of our basic images are bigger than that. What's the deal? --Peter Talk 18:34, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

Probably missed something copying the config to the new boxes. Give me a second to take a look KevinSours 19:36, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
That appears to be it. Should be fixed KevinSours 19:40, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
Out of curiousity, what is the new file size limit? – cacahuate talk 21:57, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
I set it 8M which was what was in the previous config. KevinSours 22:32, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

Admin on Arabic Wikitravel

I have been doing some work on the Arabic Wikitravel, which is only starting out with a small number of pages, such as: ar:أفريقيا. It would help if I could delete pages and do other such maintenance tasks, so I am requesting admin tools. For example, there is some spam to delete: [12] I have been an admin for a while on English Wikipedia, so know what I'm doing. On English Wikitravel, I'm editing pages about Egypt. Aude 23:32, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

I think that would be helpful, I commented on Arabic Wikitravel Expedition, JuCo, can you make this happen, and then re-enable anon edits for AR since someone will keep an eye on it now? thanks! – cacahuate talk 12:33, 26 September 2008 (EDT)
Aude is ready to go. We moved servers today and weren't able to re-enable the anon edits but will do that in the coming days. Thank you! JuCo 20:29, 26 September 2008 (EDT)
Thank you for setting my user rights. I got rid of the spam and will keep monitoring changes. Aude 20:48, 26 September 2008 (EDT)

We've re-enabled anon edits on AR. Thank you, Aude! JuCo 12:52, 29 September 2008 (EDT)


Thumbnail shows up as gray box

Conversation moved to Tech:New server bugs

Burocrat on wt:nl?

Is there an active bureaucrat on the Dutch Wikitravel? --Rein N. 01:31, 8 October 2008 (EDT)

No, you might want to ask User:KevinSours to take care of whatever needs taking care of. If someone on :nl has been selected to be a bureaucrat, he can take care of that for you too. --Peter Talk 16:48, 9 October 2008 (EDT)
Actually if you can address issues to User:JuCo or User:Khoerling it would be better. My time is being taken up with other projects right now and I may not see things addressed to me on the site promptly. KevinSours 18:11, 9 October 2008 (EDT)
I've nominated you for the task Rein, please see Wikitravel Shared:Administrator nominationscacahuate talk 00:14, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Logged in status acting up

Conversation moved to Tech:New server bugs

New Developer Online

Hello worldly travelers! I'm here to help. Cheers, Keith Khoerling 12:24, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

Hola, can you have a look at #Thumbnail shows up as gray box above Tech:New server bugs, and let us know what can be done... this still hasn't been resolved, it's quite an important issue... thanks! – cacahuate talk 12:34, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Spam in ca: and eo:

Catalan and Esperanto Wikitravel are suffering from continuous spam [13] [14]. Please disable anonymous edits. --Episteme 16:33, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

Taken care of! --khoerling

US Maps

I just ran across this Public Domain source of US Maps: http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/fedlands.html Specifically, Federal lands (parks and military bases) divided by states. Small images available in GIF format, larger ones in PDF format. Help yourselves. Gamweb 17:33, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Thanks for that. I used that source for my Colorado map and then forgot about the source! --Peter Talk 14:32, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

bugs and feature requests

Can everyone who cares take a moment and glance through the open bugs and feature requests, some are quite old and, while shamefully neglected by those who have the power to fix them, may well have fixed themselves in the last year or two. Let's all help to keep the list as short and tight as possible, making it even easier and more alluring for IB to fix the real issues. I also propose re-merging the "backburner" ones into the regular category, or they'll never get fixed – cacahuate talk 04:38, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Ok, I remerged the backburner bugs and closed a bunch more, any help with sorting out the feature requests would be much appreciated – cacahuate talk 02:52, 26 October 2008 (EDT)

Help with Image

Could some experienced users take a look at this image [15] and help make it work? maybe move it to Norrebrogade.jpg instead or something, as the issue might be with the "ø"?

It does seem to me like it's the ø causing problems, although I don't know why that would be. We do not have a tool for moving images; I would recommend that you reupload the file to Norrebrogade.jpg. --Peter Talk 21:28, 18 October 2008 (EDT)
The char '&' is also unusable in an image name. See 'Image:State&Main.jpg" for example. Opening this file results in opening opening "Image:State". --Rein N. 03:49, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

Feature request

I just wanted to moot this before i made a tech request. How would people feel about adding a link to English Wikitravel in the navigation box - I know it may be a bit ethnocentric, but I can say this with clean consience, since i'm not a native speaker :) The overwhealming majority of traffic seem to be stemming from the English version, so I really think it can be justified, as long as the link is not just called Wikitravel, but Wikitravel:en or something. Sertmann 22:15, 22 October 2008 (EDT)

Well, we already have links in the "other languages" box on this page for example, and in recentchanges there's links to all language versions. I feel like we have enough links already in the navigation box, and even though English is the largest version, I think it's biased to only add that one – cacahuate talk 01:56, 23 October 2008 (EDT)
How about adding a link to http://wikitravel.org/ ? It's the same way as "Wikitravel Main Page" link in the Extra's navigation box. I can back to ja: by that link.
If you feel there are many links in the current navigation box, I'd like to make a help box and move "Help"/"Tech requests"/"Contact Internet Brands" into it. -- Tatata 08:05, 23 October 2008 (EDT)
I'm with Cacahuate on this—we already have a handy link to :en via the "in other languages" box. If anything, I'd like to remove a few items from the nav box, since it is long. --Peter Talk 11:24, 23 October 2008 (EDT)
Well it's no big deal, it just bugs the hell out of me that i need to press first main page, and then the other languages link to get back to wikitravel when I've uploaded an image - guess i'm just lazy Sertmann 23:26, 8 November 2008 (EST)

Searching Images

I have tried searching for images on the image search prompt and have never been able to find it that way. I would always have to resort to pressing recent changes. Is there some reason why this is the case?Paula 23:44, 4 November 2008 (EST)

The latest photo's are found by using the "Gallery of new files" in the navigation menu on the top left corner. If you want to know if there are any photo's of a place, yes, use image search, type in the place name plus check the square before image and Category, if they aren't checked automatically. --Rein N. 07:29, 5 November 2008 (EST)
Thanks that works. And no, you do have to check the boxes manually.Paula 19:58, 26 November 2008 (EST)
At the right top of all pages in the personal Preferences menu, tab search, you can preset those boxes if you want. --Rein N. 23:40, 26 November 2008 (EST)

Autotravel.org.ru images

There are a ton of images of Russia (like this one) that are owned by autotravel.org.ru, but for which the site has given permission to freely redistribute and to make derivative works, provided proper attribution (which seems to be simply a link back to their site). Would it make sense to create a template for copyrighted images requiring attribution, or should I just make a template for images from this particular site? --Peter Talk 17:55, 8 November 2008 (EST)

Tech Request: Print version

Before i file a request, has the google adds on the print version of articles been up for discussion before? Sertmann 23:27, 8 November 2008 (EST)

Thanks...we've removed ads from the print versions of the pages. JuCo 14:48, 11 November 2008 (EST)

Panama page needs help

There is a large white space on the Panama page that is in an area that i cannot edit--or know how to. If someone with the security clearance can tighten up the page it would be easier to read. thanks

Or tell me how to do it.

190.2.224.77 19:16, 11 November 2008 (EST)carol190.2.224.77 19:16, 11 November 2008 (EST)

Wat Language version are you talking about and where in that page? See also: Tech:The Panama page has a large white space area that is not editable. Can you help get rid of all the space to make a more readable page? from the same user, same Page, same problem. On the French page we got rid of a "clear all" command. Are you logged in when you edit? --Rein N. 01:17, 12 November 2008 (EST)

HTML Code

Quick question-how do you figure out the HTML code colour on maps? Please respond! Keep smiling, Edmontonenthusiast 17:44, 12 November 2008 (EST).

Download the image, use the dropper tool, and get the hex code? Sertmann 22:30, 12 November 2008 (EST)
Hey, thanks, I did that, but thankyou! Keep smiling, Edmontonenthusiast 00:23, 13 November 2008 (EST).

PotM

I was wondering if my Picture of the moment fit the criteria of a good fun picture? I am not sure. Keep smiling, Edmontonenthusiast 21:12, 25 November 2008 (EST).

Reusing Wikitravel images on other sites

Alright I have looked for information on this and have had no results. So, I will ask. For the images I have uploaded, is it okay for me to re upload them to Flickr or Imageshack from there it could be posted on forums, and is it okay to copyright the versions on flickr or imageshack? Thanks an I amm sorry if it is here! Edmontonenthusiast 19:23, 11 December 2008 (EST).

If they are your photos you can do what you like with them, and licence them as many different times and ways as you wish you. What you do on flickr, or anywhere else is nothing at all to do with Wikitravel. You could question if there is any point in limiting their use on other sites, seeing people could simply copy the image from here if they wanted to, so this may cause you to think about what you are trying to achieve. As far as wikitravel is concerned, what you do on any other sites is your own business. Wikitravel doesn't own any of the images. --Inas 19:53, 11 December 2008 (EST)
Okay, thank you. In here, or on the talk, could you explain further on what you meant by "question if there is any point in limiting their use on other sites, seeing people could simply copy the image from here if they wanted to, so this may cause you to think about what you are trying to achieve" cause I don't really understand. Thanks. Edmontonenthusiast 20:05, 11 December 2008 (EST).
Take, an example. Consider your image Image:City-Centre.jpg. You uploaded it, and have placed it into the public domain. This means anybody can now do whatever they want with it. Anybody can copy it, use it on their own website, print it out and stick it on their wall, use it to advertise their fish and chip shop. Anything. They can sell it as a print. They can modify it and sell it as a print. You can do nothing to stop them, as you have give away all your rights, forever. So, if you now upload it to flickr, but with a more restrictive licence that prevents some form of use it won't really have any effect, as anyone can just download the image from here, and use it without restriction. So, you can use a more restrictive licence on another site if you wish, but the fact that it may have very little effect may cause you to think about what it is you are trying to achieve. Someone else could just copy the same image to flickr and place it there with no restrictions on its use. And just to complete my example, I just did it, so the picture is now on flickr with no restrictions or licence and no acknowledgement. --Inas 20:33, 11 December 2008 (EST)
Three things, 1, thank you! 2, I don't see it on flickr :S. 3, Can I implement a stricter license that says I have the rights blah, but it cannot be copied or used freely- I believe so, am I correct? Edmontonenthusiast 20:42, 11 December 2008 (EST).
No, you are not correct. All Wikitravel content can be copied and used freely (as in speech). That is what you agree to when you upload, and arguably it is the reason for the existence of the project. You can use CC-by-SA. All that says, additionally, is that you have to be acknowledged (by your pseudonym). The other conditions of the licence actually act to ensure that it can be copied, rather than placing any restrictions on copying. --Inas 20:52, 11 December 2008 (EST)
Yeah, I was reading into it, your right. I had no idea of that- now I'll be more careful of what I upload, ;). Edmontonenthusiast 21:02, 11 December 2008 (EST).
Or if it is just credit that concerns you, continue to upload pictures, but select a cc-by-sa license instead of Public Domain, which will then ensure that you are credited if someone uses it – cacahuate talk 21:07, 11 December 2008 (EST)
Yeah, I will put it on my list to change all my images licensing over the next while. Edmontonenthusiast 21:23, 11 December 2008 (EST).
The benefit to you is that everyone using it will have to give credit to some fictional psuedonym on wikitravel. A somewhat dubious benefit, I would have thought. There are possibly some other benefits to the communnity as well, however. --Inas 00:58, 12 December 2008 (EST)

Simple pagename function?

I asked this over on En:, but perhaps this is a better place, since it might turn into a feature request. Is there a function similar to {{PAGENAME}} that doesn't include parentheticals like (city) and doesn't include the hyphen or things before it? i.e. would display "Deep Ellum" instead of "Dallas/Deep Ellum", or "Vernon" instead of "Vernon (Texas)"..? I should think it would be useful if there were but have no idea how to make one. Surely something like this must exist, since the page name fed to the browser window doesn't include these. I was primarily thinking that if there were such a function or if someone could make one, we could plop it into our article templates, and it would eliminate the all-too-frequent occurences of new contributors making an article and forgetting to fill in the title blank, resulting in new pages that literally begin with, for example,

City name is a city in...
Texugo 20:09, 15 December 2008 (EST)
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