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The '''Travellers' pub''' is the place to ask questions when you're confused, lost, afraid, tired, annoyed, thoughtful, or helpful. Please check the FAQ and Help page before asking a question, though, since that may save your time and others'.

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Archives

Keeping the Pub clean is a group effort. If we have too many conversations on this page, it gets too noisy and hard to read. If you see a conversation that could or should be moved to a talk page, please do so, and note the move here.

If a conversation does not fit into any specific talk page, it should be archived to Wikitravel:Travellers' pub/Archives and removed from here 3 months after the last comment in that discussion.

Stuff that's been moved to specific talk pages:

  • GFDL and Creative Commons → Wikitravel_talk:Copyleft
  • isIn vs isPartOf → Wikitravel_talk:Breadcrumb_navigation
  • rating of traditional airlines → Wikitravel talk:External links
  • Spam filter... ouch... PLEASE HELP → Wikitravel_talk:Local_spam_blacklist/Archive_2005_-_February_2008#Spam_filter..._ouch..._PLEASE_HELP
  • Applying for a passport → Talk:United_States_of_America#Applying_for_a_passport
  • Edit Conflict / Spam Filter → Talk:Ko_Lanta Nrms 11:19, 4 November 2008 (EST)
  • Also, see the Travellers' pub archives for older archived discussions.

    Please sweep the pub

    So, the TP has been getting kinda crowded and messy. I'd really appreciate if we could all make an effort to clean up a bit by moving discussions to places more appropriate or deleting discussions that have reached their conclusions. It's a tedious job, but like most, it's easier if we do it together. --Evan 16:44, 20 Apr 2004 (EDT) :Should we sweep this out? -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 03:20, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

    ::Ugh, this place is getting messy and this is the one page I hate to attempt to organize. Anyone want to take a stab at cleaning it up? -- Sapphire ? <small>(Talk)</small> ? 18:29, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

    :How do you sweep the pub? What are the rules? Anything older than a certain date? There is stuff on here that is many, many months old. Where would be a "place more appropriate" to move the discussions to? Kire1975 01:54, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

    :::Also, I am using the Safari browser, from Apple, on my Windows Vista computer. For some reason the scroll bar on the right side of my edit screen isn't working properly, so the only way to get way down to the bottom of the screen is to grab some text and pull my cursor down to the bottom of the page. It gets really awkward. Cleaning up the pub could help me out with this problem. thanks, Kire1975 02:14, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

    One more thing, when I click 'save" on the edit page, it takes a while to processs. Kire1975 04:31, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

    How to sweep pub?

    ::That's a good question! Our archiving explanation at the top of this page has become very convoluted—I'm honestly not sure how to sweep the pub anymore. Can anyone explain the revised process? --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 00:18, 25 July 2008 (EDT)

    I nominate receveli's "request for help" below to be swept out of the pub. the problem is solved. how is it done? the shared wikitravel pages has a [http://wikitravel.org/shared/Wikitravel_Shared:Travellers%27_pub/Archives pub cellar]. Should we create something like that? Kire1975 22:19, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

    I have got the broom out today and swept out some of the older stuff. Mostly into the archive pages but, where relevant, into Talk Pages for the destination under discussion. Where I've done the latter I have marked the discussion as "''Swept in from the travellers pub''" Tarr3n 07:44, 2 September 2008 (EDT)

    Image Uploads

    Is there any easy way to move pictures uploaded here, to shared - or do you have to vfd them, download them, upload them on shared with a different name, and change the link it the article? Sertmann 06:16, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

    :You have to re-upload them to Shared, but once you do that you can speedy delete it here, noting in the edit summary that you moved to shared. There's no need to change the title either, it can remain the same – <font color="green">cacahuate</font> <sup><small><font color="blue">talk</font></small></sup> 12:13, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

    :: Hmmm, don't I need admin privileges to speedy anything? Sertmann 15:57, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

    :::Yes... so you'll be able to do yourself most likely after another week :) If there's some you want done now, leave a note on my talk page and I can do for you, or you can also just list them on VFD and an admin will do – <font color="green">cacahuate</font> <sup><small><font color="blue">talk</font></small></sup> 19:43, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

    I've been wondering... if the goal is to have all images uploaded at shared, what purpose is served by still allowing uploads to :en? The <font size=HUGE> warning is routinely ignored. - Dguillaime 14:45, 23 February 2009 (EST)

    Welcome messages

    I just noticed how much we've been slacking off with giving new users the welcome message on their talk page. I think it is important-- I remember when I started here, Andrew gave me a welcome message almost immediately after I created my account, and it showed me that, yes, there are people out there paying attention, there ''is'' a community here. I think it's a good thing that can encourage new people to contribute more, so I want to ask everyone to pitch in to keep up with that. If you click on ''Recent changes'' and you see that a new account has been created, please just take a moment to create a welcome on their talk page. It doesn't take long at all. All you have to do is put:

    <nowiki>{{subst:welcome}} -- ~~~~</nowiki>

    If all the regular users here will just get in the habit of this, then no one will have to sit and do dozens and dozens of them in a row like I just did, plus new users may see the message during their first session and be inspired to come back for more sessions later. Thanks!

    :What I usually do is let them edit a little-then I can make a comment that isnt totally uniform about their edits. Similar to my first message, thanks Jim. Keep smiling, <font color="purple">ee</font> <sup><small><font color="green">talk</font></small></sup> 22:37, 8 November 2008 (EST). ::The bigger problem is that most new users are not getting any message at all. Texugo 06:21, 9 November 2008 (EST) :::I agree that people should be welcomed more, and I also agree with User:Edmontonenthusiast that we should probably wait until they actually make an edit. When I'm looking at Recentchanges I find the red or blue talk page link helpful to determine whether someone's new or not, and welcoming people before they make an edit confuses this. You all probably know this already, but you can go to Special:Contributions/newbies to see all the newcomers who have made contributions lately. Looks like they've all been welcomed, so good work to User:Edmontonenthusiast and User:Sertmann. JYolkowski 20:30, 11 November 2008 (EST)

    ::::Whoa, I had not seen that special page before! Really useful, thanks! --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 23:12, 11 November 2008 (EST)

    :::::I meant to get in here and offer the possibility that it might not be a very good use of time to welcome ''all'' new users, for a couple of reasons. ::::::1) most newly registered users aren't actually editing, so they probably just thought they had to register to use the site; ::::::2) a semi-custom message, that at best gives advice or guidance, and at least a thank you for particular work, is ''much'' better than what looks like an automated message—that sort of community contact is really helpful in getting good new contributors to stick around; ::::::3) welcome messages to users that are violating Wikitravel policy ''without'' letting them know that they are doing something wrong is potentially harmful, as they might take that as a cue to spread their policy violations further.

    :::::So, I'd actually question whether going through the new user log to hit everyone with a welcome message at once is useful. I'd argue that it would be far more useful to make sure everyone in the Special:Contributions/newbies list gets a custom message. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 17:07, 11 December 2008 (EST) ::::::I agree, I think it makes the most sense to wait until a user minimally makes an edit and hence shows up in Special:Contributions/newbies, for both those reasons and the one I mentioned above. JYolkowski 18:01, 11 December 2008 (EST)

    :::::: I agree. 1 personalised messages to a user starting to make constructive edits is worth 100 generic welcome messages to new registrations. --Inas 18:23, 11 December 2008 (EST)

    :A Bot could be welcoming users that simply create an account and nobody would be any the wiser. I would suggest that a new user is only welcomed after they make their first edit(s) to an article or comment on a talk page, as you can then assess the quality of their work or questions they have. (Editing their own user page does not count, unless it is clear they are asking to be welcomed, or need to be stopped from doing something stupid.) You can then add a personal comment that would provide the user with additional guidance. Leaving the talk page unpopulated until the new user makes an edit means it is immediately obvious you are dealing with a new user, who may misunderstand or be ignorant of the guidelines, as the talk page link is red. I don't think it hurts to wait a while before welcoming a new user. -- Huttite 05:22, 13 January 2009 (EST)

    ::This has been nagging my hindbrain for a week, now. It seems to me that we need to formalise the welcoming process a bit more. Could this become part of an expedition? ::How about the Check-in Expedition? Just as they check your ticket or booking (and baggage) when you arrive at the check-in counter at an airport, bus, or train terminal, car hire company, or your accommodation, when you are travelling, the Wikitravel Check-in Expedition would promote the proper check-in formalities for all new users that edit their first page and all new articles. That is add a welcome message to guide the user (check the ticket/booking) and bring all new destination articles to at least an outline template status (luggage destination labels on the bags). -- Huttite 04:17, 21 January 2009 (EST)

    :::No further comments? Perhaps I put my Check-in Expedition suggestion on the back-burner for a while? - Huttite 08:13, 31 January 2009 (EST)

    All of a sudden listings pulled

    I have been updating my listings for audio walking tours and all of a sudden they are getting pulled because of external link violations. Only thing different that I did was add a link to the mobile site and the android application... Does anyone know if that possibly could be the reason? Thanks 98.210.115.180 14:58, 3 February 2009 (EST)

    : See Wikitravel talk:Where you can stick it#Audio Commentary for Walking Tours (Spam?) . -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:13, 3 February 2009 (EST)

    Because people here pull stuff that is NOT TOS violations. Sertman is a great example of this practice. He just pulls some lsitings, while leaving others. Apparently, he especially likes to pull listings for small business, many of whom who actually contribute material, while leaving listings for giant corporations. Like any CEOs from fortune 500 companies are contributing anything worthwhile. Wiki needs a better structure, too many petty people with hypocritical standards are huring the site too much. {{unsigned|ACTransport}}

    : I presume you are referring to the [http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Atlantic_City&diff=994869&oldid=993688 deletion of your limo service] (and plenty of others) from Atlantic City? This is a bit of a borderline case, but they certainly don't belong under "See". Jpatokal 00:50, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    : Try and appreciate what we are trying to do. We are trying to build a travel site that is relevant to traveler. Not to meet the needs of business owners small or large. Feel free to join the many discussions across the site about how to best accomplish that goal, and incorporate business owners listings in the most useful and relevant way. I don't see any evidence here that anyone has an axe to grind with small business owners, or hypocritical standards. Each person is trying their best to follow policy and build a guide as best they can. --Inas 00:58, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    :: Yeah, thanks for singling me out, sigh, if you'd care to elaborate and give me some specific examples of this practice, I'd be happy to go back and revise such changes. The only business owners I can recall who've actually stayed and contributed this place is User:HotelsCombined and User:WineCountryInn, if I've missed any such user I'd genuinely really like to know. And the notion that I support fortune 500 companies over small businesses is very much wrong, when I travel I always prefer sleeping or dining at small personal businesses, and hence actually prefer seeing them listed here on wikitravel so I have a better chance to find them. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 02:19, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: And a great example of what happens if we leave Wikitravel to the whims of business owners [http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Rome&oldid=981625#Sleep look here (Rome)], please tell me how a huge pile of listings with little information but links to their website, compare that to a well moderated sleep section like Copenhagen's downtown, I dare you to come up with some convincing arguments that the Rome example is more useful to travellers. Besides I fail to see how you can justify these accusations since all you ever did around here was to add a link to your business. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 03:00, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    "Help translate" tag proposal

    I have been doing some serious work on Ouro Preto and Mariana and other Brazilian locations, and I noticed that, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of destinations for which the English site has but a skeleton, while the Portuguese version is pretty fleshed out. I'm sure this is the case for many other locations in various other languages as well. In order to promote better cooperation between language versions, I'd like to propose a tag or set of tags for these cases, to be placed at the bottom of such an article or possibly even at the top, indicating that a more complete article exists in x language, and compelling users that speak that language to help translate the information here on en:. What do you guys think? Texugo 11:49, 4 February 2009 (EST) :I think that is a great idea. Additionally, it may be helpful to place a smaller tag at the bottom of the superior articles, compelling multilingual users to contribute to the language articles with less information. Jtesla16 15:18, 4 February 2009 (EST) ::I think putting a tag in the superior articles would have us with a tag in almost every article we have, since there is bound to be at least one language version without much of an article. The number of articles which have a good article elsewhere but not here are bound to be more manageable I think. Any other thoughts? Texugo 23:17, 11 February 2009 (EST) :::That's true. Your original idea is probably best then. How do we go about creating such a tag? Do we need permission? Jtesla16 08:44, 12 February 2009 (EST) ::::We don't need permission and I can create it if we decide on the text of the message, but I'd like to hear from a few more people and get a little broader consensus before we start.Texugo 09:58, 12 February 2009 (EST) :::::I think this idea is quite worthwhile, and it would be nice to also create a Wikitravel:Article translation page, on which we'd add a link to each page that has the Template:Translate template. To increase the visibility of the translation page, we could insert links into the Babel templates (e.g., <nowiki>espanol</nowiki>). Language on Template:Translate could be something like "This article exists on the <nowiki>XX language version</nowiki> in superior form. Please help us with translation!" --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 11:59, 12 February 2009 (EST)

    I like the way this is solved at Wikipedia (or Wiktionary?): they "star" the most high-quality language article (in the list which is already under the Toolbox), thus encouraging to improve other language versions from that starred one. --DenisYurkin 18:03, 14 February 2009 (EST)

    : Did someone end up creating a template for this? I think it's a great idea. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 20:50, 11 April 2009 (EDT)

    What's the Deal?

    Ok. I've already tried reaching one of the Systems Operator about this but apparently he is not active. I am having an issue with the admins, one in particular. It's a looong story. But the summary is I try to keep editing pages with incorrect info and it keeps being reverted by the original author who happens in these cases to be a bureaucrat. I've asked for a little counselling from Evan but apparently he isn't around anymore. My fear is the admins are finding it difficult to regulate themselves or abiding by their own rules. Perhaps it is I who am not clear about it but the message I'm getting is stating facts about a place are not important to the traveller.

    If you want to read more about this I will post the letter I sent to Evan up on my talk page. If anyone's got some constructive advice and isn't worried about towing the company line then please share. I warn you though it's a bit of a bookPaula 01:00, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    :Can you elaborate on your problem? Where? AHeneen 01:09, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    ::I do believe Paula has a problem with me, and she's referring to the utterly bizarre saga of Talk:Yeongjong Island (plus possibly a few previous headbuttings on Talk:Dokdo). I've said all I have to say about this, so now I'll shut up and let y'all have your turn. Jpatokal 03:58, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    '''Jani: We do not know each other. I am not taking this personally. I believe you are this way with everyone. I have a problem with your lack of compromise and your tone. When you are "helping" me, it reads like you are scolding me for f.....g up and your way is the only way. I and I'm thinking most have no agenda when contributing to articles. I at least am doing this simply to share accurate and helpful information on an area I am very familiar with. I simply like the idea of Wikitravel. Therefore I don't appreciate being spoken to like a wayward child or an incompetent employee when we are all doing this basically for the fun of it. Understandable?'''

    : I think a number of admins have been observing this particular incident from afar. I personally know nothing about the island in question and haven't gotten involved, but one suggestion I might offer is to refrain from questioning motives and character of other editors as it clouds the issue. Asking for someone who "isn't worried about towing the company line" and accusing admins of "finding it difficult to regulate themselves or abiding by their own rules" is neither relevant nor helpful to resolving any issues you might have with the content of an article. In addition, please understand that the goal is consensus, which means that all sides need to make a good faith effort to at least consider the point of view of those who disagree with them. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:14, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    '''Ryan: Excuse me, but I could not disagree more with the first point. When there are principles stated and people given special privileges/responsibilities to uphold them then there is an expectation they will. When a little power is involved among a smaller group of people, there is always a risk of abuse and "fat-head syndrome." I understand it is not helpful to criticise motives when something happens once in a while. But when it is a similar situation that occurs consistently over a lengthy period of time then it is never wrong to question why everyone who belongs to that group happen to have the exact same perspective.'''

    '''The whole point of this site is so many people from all over can contribute to it. Not one or a few. If that was the goal then this site would be one of many already out there. Therefore with more voices cum more perspectives. Yes, consensus is good. I agree. But how do we reach consensus? By bullying? By having everyone think the same way? No. It's by using reason, doing some research on the facts and compromising.'''

    :: Evan is not active here for the foreseeable future, besides Evan and Jptokal have been working together pretty closely for a number of years, so I doubt you would find much sympathy on that front, in any case, the way this place works, is if you think an admin is crossing a line, you take it up with one of the other active admins. (you can see a list here). Also, while I know Jptokal's direct style can often leave quite a bit to be desired, you often come across as overly aggressive yourself, which isn't exactly helping things, least of all if you are crying out for backup. Also in this case, reverting to an "edit war" is just about the worst thing you can do in these circumstances.

    :: Now regarding the issue at hand, I think you might have misinterpreted the motives behind the edits, which I suspect would be 1) The traveller comes first 2) We want as simple a structure as possible. Now I've never been north of Gyeongju, and hence not an expert on anything Seoul, but it seems like the only ones that would really be hurt and sad we would call this amalgamated island Yeongjong, would be locals on Yongyu, and they hardly need a travel guide. most maps I could find, identify it as one island anyway (lest one from where the airport was still under construction): [2], [3], [4], [5]. Which leads be to point 2, the amount of content in the guide hardly merits a split. If this is really something you'd loose sleep over, i would suggest either that you fill in so much useful content for Yeongyu, that it make sense to split the article, or that we discuss a rename the whole shabang to "Yeongjong-Yeongyu island", but from my light research on the subject, it does seem pointless as most places refer to the airport as being on Yeongjong, wikipedia even writes "The previously separate Yongyu, Sammok, and Sinbul Islands have been joined to Yeongjong Island by an area of reclaimed land". --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 03:13, 23 January 2009 (EST)

    ::: Ha, Ha. You'd be laughing too if you saw my letter to Evan. What you have written is exactly what I had assumed and predicted the problems are with Wikitravel. You have confirmed to me that the "Old Boys Club" mentality is as pervasive as I feared it was. At least you freely admit the obvious bias that exists within the admins and which you demonstrate yourself. So, you will forgive me if I don't consider your criticism of what you perceive to be my "overly aggressive" ways as credible. Paula 00:42, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: It is not a "cry...for backup" as you put it that I am looking for, it is the observance to the original ideals, objectivity, fairness and the freedom to make legitamite edits, of the site that I was demanding. And when I did not receive that from the people I thought most committed to those principles I was taken aback and responded concurrently.Paula 00:42, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: By the way, I was not the one who had asked for the page to be blocked. I am always willing to compromise and have in the past. And if Evan is not active why has he not been removed on the active list?Paula 00:42, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: No.1: If the traveller comes first shouldn't we be giving them accurate information? Does that not count as being necessary? It's not about, "my pony is prettier than your pony." It's about do these things exist or not. Is this information necessary or not? I don't know about you. I REALLY don't know about you but that's what I understand as the "traveller coming first" to mean. If the facts are not important and you refuse to see them and what you're really interested in is creating your own terms for places and inventing things because it's easier or follows some arbitrary guideline beknownst only to you and your band of bureacrats then PLEASE, PLEASE tell me now. I will be happy to let you have your way so you can play with yourselves. But if you genuinely are interested in accepting accurate information that is helpful to anyone visiting these places then believe you me, my "aggression" will subside.

    ::: No.2: Have you actually seen my edits? You would be hard pressed to see a simpler structure in some of them. I would be hurt. Every Korean local I have explained this bizarre argument I'm having with y'all would be hurt. And most importantly, anyone trying to get to the beaches and markets on Yongyu Island would be hurt. The official Incheon tourist map lists it as an island [6], Wikipedia describes the map as Yeongjong Island and Yongyu Island [7], the description on the link YOU listed also describes it as Yeongjong and Yongyu Island [8], the airport PR Centre confirms that distinction as well. I mean WTF? Even information you and Jani have listed say exactly what I'm saying. I mean which part is difficult to understand? Every official body acknowledges this. There are 2 islands and the airport is on reclaimed land between them. That's it. Paula 00:42, 5 February 2009 (EST)Paula 00:48, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    :::: Hmmm maybe we have a clash of cultures here, but I was actually trying to mediate, because I feel that if we could reconcile our differences, and come to a mutual understanding, you have the potential to become a good contributor, and hence I was not trying to "gang up", and being active around here for less than year, I hardly think I'd count among any "Old Boys club". Jani suggested that most travellers consider this one island, and I provided some links to maps and wikipedia suggesting he was not alone with this view - when you're trying to work out a compromise, the first thing you should do is trying to appreciate the reverse view. Next I suggested a possible compromise renaming the article to "Yeongjong-Yeongyu islands", this seem reasonable to me, as it is indisputably now one island physically, and travellers arrive smack in the middle of the joint entity, hence I suspect anyone not familiar with Korea, would search information about the "island" he has landed on, unaware that this used to be two islands. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 02:41, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    '''Sertmann: Clash of cultures. How so? I appreciate you trying to explain your message. I believe I have addressed our correspondence in the message above. However, I should point this out for future reference when someone is complaining of being "ganging uped on" it is unnecessary to state that opinion as also being your own.'''

    '''For the latter point, I also think it is reasonable to use both names for the article. I have never disputed it is physically one island. What is being disputed is whether that physically one island should rightfully be referred to as Yeonjongdo. It should be noted that Coney Island and Long Island in New York are also physically one big island. They too were formerly separate islands that were then stuck together by reclaimed land. And although they are part of New York they are by no means one big Coney Island. I knew watching that Britney Murphy movie would come in handy one of these days.'''

    :::::There is no "old boys' club" here-- most of us have never met each other, and we certainly do not always agree with each other. I don't know much about this particular case but it seems to me that 1) they are now physically one island, regardless of whether part of it is artificial or not, and therefore 2) even if locals still refer to them as separate islands, what is really meant is that they are still distinct, even though have become districts of what is now the same island, and 3) there is not enough information present to warrant splitting this into two articles. I might suggest making it clear in the intro that there are two basic districts here, and I wouldn't mind if the listings told which part they were in as part of the address/directions. Certainly no one is trying to quash listings on the Yongyu side. Sertmann's suggestion may have some merit, although I might suggest leaving "islands" out of the title and just call it "Yeongjong-Yeongyu" to avoid misrepresentation. Even if kept at simply "Yeongjong", I think the "island" part should probably be dropped from the title, since it includes things not on the Yeongjong side-- it's one thing to redirect a neighboring district, admitting that we have done so, but quite another to say that Yeongjong is now the name of the whole she-bang when that may not be quite true. Texugo 06:58, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    '''Tuxego: "There is no 'old boys' club' here." Says you, old boy;) Latter part sounds reasonable except for the leaving out the island part.'''

    ::::::But they are ''not'' distinct in any meaningful sense: once you cross the bridge from the mainland, you're on one island, period, and the Korean National Tourism Organization (how much more authoritative can you get?) labels the whole island "Yeongjongdo" [http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?areaCode=2] [http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=264339]. Jpatokal 08:23, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    '''Jani: Thought you said you'd shut up.'''

    : I lied. Now, what do you have to say about the KNTO links above? Jpatokal 11:55, 6 February 2009 (EST)

    :: '''Surprise, surprise. I have this to say: [http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_6.jsp?cid=257701][http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=264520]. It's called different information from the same source. HAH!'''Paula 03:51, 9 February 2009 (EST)

    :::::::If both names are used locally, however, wouldn't it make sense to include them both? LtPowers 08:59, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    ::::::::Both names are used in the 'Understand' section (though, I'm not sure why 'real' is included). Why not just move the text in the understand section into the lead (since it includes references to both the airport as well as the beaches - useful stuff from the travelers point of view). That way, both names are included and the reader gets a succinct description of the place. --Wandering 10:53, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    :::::::::Above all, please assume good faith. When an issue starts to get you upset, it's a good idea to take a step back, and remember that the way some geographic location is described on some travel wiki is not ultimately that big of a deal. Personally, I don't think you are correct on this matter (this [http://www.geocities.com/incheon2006foto4/air/mapair.html] looks pretty clearly like one island to me), but more importantly, this dispute is simply not relevant for travelers, and I think we would all be better served by trying to add travel content (where to go, what to see, etc.) than continuing this dispute. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 14:28, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    '''Y'all: Hmmm. Maybe I should've put this here a lot sooner. Good to see reasonable differing solutions. I've taken in all that's been written, will do some editing and see what happens. Thank you much and peace.'''Paula 03:53, 6 February 2009 (EST)

    : I suggest that, instead of editing the page, you list your present concerns with the current content of the article on the Talk page, and we get a third party to change the wording. Jpatokal 11:55, 6 February 2009 (EST)

    . Jpatokal 11:55, 6 February 2009 (EST)

    :: Nice try Patakaillo. I think "my concerns" have been more than sufficiently outlined on this page, the Yeongjong do page and my own page. I offer that a third party review the edits I do and if again there is more disagreement then we cross that bridge when we get to it. Paula 03:51, 9 February 2009 (EST)

    What would y'all think if I title the article '''Incheon International Airport''' and describe its location and surroundings in the subsequent headings? I think it would make more sense to put the focus on the airport itself instead of the islands which would take care of the whole debate.Paula 00:53, 10 February 2009 (EST)

    : I think that would be misleading, because unlike (eg) Kansai or Chubu airports, there ''is'' more on the island(s) than just the airport. Jpatokal 07:53, 10 February 2009 (EST)

    :: THIRD PARTY please!Paula 03:29, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: Is there anything else of significant interest on the island than the airport? If there are points of interest then I would stick to the islands name because i would search for the island name instead of the airport. Maybe it would be good to have some add-on like if there are a golf course, spa, posh temple etc. to pass the time while on transit. This would interest me. jan 16:21, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    :::(ec) It is kind of hard for a third party to suggest something, but let me try. It seems that there is stuff to do on the island independently of the airport (ironically, the stuff to do appears to be on Yongyu Island!) suggesting that, for Koreans anyway, the island(s) may be a destination independent of the airport. If that is the case, I suggest leaving it as is, popping the reference to Yongyu and its beaches into the lead (presumably, the Koreans who visit only the beaches will distinguish between the two islands), and leaving it at that. Incheon International Airport as well as Yongyu Island can then redirect to this article. But, I don't know enough (nothing is a better word) to know if this is wise or accurate so this is just a suggestion. --Wandering 16:22, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    Sigh — Paula just went ahead and moved the article to Yeongjong Island and Yongyu Island, without any discussion. I agree with User:Wandering that including "Yongyu Island" in the lead is OK, but I see no reason to saddle the article with such a verbose name. → Talk:Yeongjong Island Jpatokal 03:16, 24 February 2009 (EST)

    Wikitravel:Collaboration of the month

    Our collaboration(s) of the week/month project has been broken for over a year now, with the collaborations getting little if any attention, and even the collaboration process going without updates on a regular basis. We've tossed around a lot of different ideas to rejuvenate the process, and I'd like to see the latest incarnation get a fighting chance.

    Please stop by the Wikitravel:Collaboration of the month page to see what's changed, take a look at the '''tasks''' we're hoping to accomplish for this month's collaboration ('''Mexico City'''), and try to make a few edits over the rest of this month to our collaboration! I'm sure everyone has the time to make some mos edits to even just one "Mid-range" section of one "Eat" section of one district article. Plunge forward! --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 18:12, 5 February 2009 (EST).

    Front Page

    Along with the Collaborations of Month, we have a few other prominent embarrassments on our front page, the news section and the discover sections...

    Wikitravel News Team

    I'd like to float the idea of starting a News Team, and while that might sound ambitious for the amount of regulars we have around here, I was merely toying with the thoughts of writing up a couple of user names on a project page somewhere, and set it as a personal goal for these users to come up with '''two''' travel related news stories per month, which really shouldn't be all that hard.

    Rotating discover

    What's the status of that bot, can anyone reprogram it? I was thinking (without knowing anything about the scripting) we could divide these into two categories - a date specific category which shows up once in the relevant time frame, and a rotating category where we add all the old (and any new) general discover items and rotate between them on a daily basis, and use these to fill up where we don't have any date specific items. We should already have so many of these items, that it would be a decent time frame between the individual items showing up. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 20:12, 5 February 2009 (EST)

    :I think having an expedition or the like for the news is a good idea and sounds interesting. I definitely agree we could do a better job with the news. I'd be curious to know what the bot's status is too. JYolkowski 21:36, 10 February 2009 (EST) ::Same here, having a "News Expedition" sounds like an excellent idea! The news section is rather pathetic as it stands now. PerryPlanet <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 14:30, 11 February 2009 (EST) :::I've created Wikitravel:News Expedition. Anyone who's interested, I'd invite you to visit that page and discuss. Thanks, JYolkowski 22:39, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    Problem with right alignment for images

    I just noticed something strange about the images on some pages. Sometimes they straddle the right margin, obscuring the advertisements in the margin. Can anyone shed some light on that subject? Jonathan 784 23:44, 7 February 2009 (EST)

    Phantom edit errors

    I have been editing the article for Hamamatsu, and I have noticed that for certain listings, when I click on the listing's edit button, I get a pop-up error message in red, reading "Listing has been changed by somebody else. Please reload the page and reedit." For an example, try "Nakatajima Sand Dunes" under the ''See'' sections, or "Toraya" under budget eat section. Nobody else is actually editing the page, and the problem still exists even after purging the page. Anyone have an idea as to what is going on? Texugo 06:23, 8 February 2009 (EST) :I encountered the same problem when editing a listing on Newfoundland and Labrador. When I tried to edit the ''Cape Race'' listing using the edit form I got a red warning message, but no form. I found that if I purged the page cache (first, I think) and edited the listing via the page edit section link then the problem went away. I could then access/edit the listing using the edit listing form again. I suspect what the message means is that the pages in the cache and the database are not synchronised, so purging the cache is needed. The link to purge the page cache is at the bottom of the edit form page. - Huttite 06:55, 8 February 2009 (EST) ::As I said, I tried purging the cache, and I did edit the Sand Dunes listing from the section link, but the individual edit link still didn't work afterward...Texugo 06:58, 8 February 2009 (EST) :::What I did do was change the URL inside the listing tag. Perhaps it is the content of the listing tag itself that needs to be edited, not just the text after the tag. Perhaps try removing the listing tag then adding it back? Brutal, but ... you never know. - Huttite 07:08, 8 February 2009 (EST) ::::The listing editor is really buggy, which is a problem, since it's purpose is to make editing easier for new/casual users. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 17:28, 8 February 2009 (EST)

    Wikitravel sucks?

    For anyone else? Page loading usually takes an incredible amount of time (~30 seconds per page?), although it occasionally works fine for about 5 minutes. I get logged out randomly, particularly when page loading is really slow. Occasionally I'll be logged in without my logged-in tabs (move, delete, etc.). These problems are occurring for me on Shared & other language versions as well. Am I wallowing alone in this server cesspool? Or is this happening to other users? --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 10:44, 9 February 2009 (EST) :I don't seem to be having any trouble here. *crosses fingers* Texugo 10:57, 9 February 2009 (EST) :: Pages are loading very slow already this morning. Now it is a bit better but still slower than normal jan 11:07, 9 February 2009 (EST) ...but the purging isse is back. I could not see the comment of Texugo before i entered my text and purged jan 11:09, 9 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: It's very sporadic for me. The site was unusable for most of the morning. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:47, 9 February 2009 (EST)

    :::: Very slow this morning. Quite a few too many connection errors. Several connection refused errors. Cached content seems okay, but recent change diffs are so slow as to be effectively unusable. Sucks. --Inas 22:05, 9 February 2009 (EST)

    ::::: Swings from good to not even loading, like Ryan described. And here I thought it was just my internet connection... PerryPlanet <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 12:02, 10 February 2009 (EST)

    ::::::For the most part, the site is simply unusable for me (for editing purposes). It might be worthwhile to try and get IB's attention, but I'll abstain—dealing with them usually dampens my Wikitravel enthusiasm. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 12:27, 10 February 2009 (EST)

    : Should be better now. KevinSours 15:37, 10 February 2009 (EST)

    I emailed IB - here is their response for anyone who is curious:

    <pre>Hello Ryan! Thank you for reporting the slowdown. We made significant updates to the page caches, et al. and the Wiki should be speedier than ever!

    Cheers, Keith </pre>

    -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:20, 10 February 2009 (EST)

    : And so it appears --Inas 17:19, 10 February 2009 (EST) :: for an hour or so, anyway.. --Inas 22:43, 10 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: Is there still a problem? I checked the webservers this morning and everything seems to be fine KevinSours 10:36, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    :::: Nevermind, I see it KevinSours 11:04, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    :::::Speed is back almost changing between zero & ok with minutes. Worked well for one hour but now i give up for todayjan 16:08, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    April 4th

    The site was wholly unusable for more than a day—I couldn't so much as access articles. Anyone else having problems? --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 21:23, 5 April 2009 (EDT) :Not yesterday, I wasn't. Today I was but just on one of my computers. LtPowers 21:52, 5 April 2009 (EDT) :: Unusable for much of Saturday and Sunday to me. Someone ask Brent Conver, who oversees travel sites including Wikitravel at parent company Internet Brands, how this could be. Gorilla Jones 22:37, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

    Scheduled down time for maintenance

    Tonight, 2/11, the site will be down for scheduled maintenance for about 3 hours beginning at 10PM PST. Visitors who come to the site during that time will see a "Down for Maintenance" page. We apologize for the inconvenience. JuCo 16:05, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    : Is it a problem for English version to update MediaWiki:Sitenotice ? -- Tatata 20:55, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    ::I've done that. Admins, please revert my change after the maintenance work is finished. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 22:33, 11 February 2009 (EST)

    ::: Thank you for your patience during this week_fs maintenance. We upgraded the hardware, the database server got a memory upgrade and we added an additional webserver. This will address the speed and timing out issues and make the site faster and more stable. We will be monitoring the site for any issues. Thanks! JuCo 15:52, 13 February 2009 (EST)

    :::: The upgrades are much appreciated. Thanks! -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:50, 13 February 2009 (EST)

    As long as this issue appears every several months--maybe IB can establish an objective and publicly-available metrics of site performance? Percentage of pageviews that took 0-0.1s, 0.1-0.5s, 0.5-2s, 2-5s, 5-10s, 10+ seconds, shown in historical dynamics, would make much easier to understand whether particular user's problem is really a sitewide, or not. --DenisYurkin 22:02, 14 February 2009 (EST)

    Watch listing a user

    Yeongjong and Yongyu

    Argh. I need help with screw up. Trying to rename the page but for some reason it went to the mispelled one and redirected the correct page to it. Now I can't put the article under the correct heading. Can someone delete Yeongjong Island and Yongyu Island? There's nothing there. Thanx.Paula 03:16, 24 February 2009 (EST)

    When to travel?

    I was trying to find information which places of the world are good to travel around in a given period, and I cannot find the right place. First, I tried months - but May and so on are parts of the calendar of events, and tell you nothing about whether the given places are warm, cold, subject to hurricanes or such. Then I tried continents, but Europe and such are also silent on this subject :( --Piotrus 14:08, 25 February 2009 (EST) :Many articles do have sections on climate, but not all. An entire continent like Europe is too big to generalize about climate. And most locations will have things to do and see all year round; there is no one best time to go. LtPowers 10:52, 25 February 2009 (EST) ::Let me rephrase my question, just like my parents put it to me: "We want to go to somewhere '''warm''' around late May / early June. Were would that be?" I'd wager there are more people asking similar question. Thus my suggestion that wikitravel may want to have an answer to give them. Personally, I think that adding information about climates to the months articles would be the way to go, something along the way: "May is the warm season in... cold and snow can be found in... bad wheater makes ... not good but... and so on." --Piotrus 14:08, 25 February 2009 (EST)

    :::Definitely support creating a best-place-for-each-season list. I think it'll be easier to start with a single article, broken down into sections by months. --DenisYurkin 12:53, 28 February 2009 (EST)

    xkcd

    Wikitravel is mentioned in a xkcd [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xkcd] webcomic http://xkcd.com/548/! --Flip666 <sup>writeme!</sup> • 09:16, 25 February 2009 (EST)

    : Nice :) --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 18:52, 25 February 2009 (EST)

    : Of course! Wikitravel = Hitchhikers guide! 97.91.175.19 19:59, 11 March 2009 (EDT)

    Renaming Articles

    Could somebody direct me to the instructions on re-naming/ post it here. ThankyouHJ.Phillips94 16:18, 25 February 2009 (EST)

    : I've been an admin for a bit too long, but don't you have a ''move'' tab on the top of your screen? -> click it and type in the new name of the page, voila! but remember to check ''What links here'' in the box on the left side of your screen too before moving anything --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 18:51, 25 February 2009 (EST)

    Open Street Map

    For those using Open Street Map maps, or considering the use of them, the OSMF board has released the proposed new licence text. For those interesting in mapping using OSM data, would likely be aware that the licence conditions on OSM data has always been unclear, possibly requiring CC-BY-SA 2.0, and acknowledgement of every individual data producer, on every map produced by any means, and the release of any source data that is combined with the OSM data into a derived work. The proposed licence would intends to allow a category of works called ''Produced Works'' that could be released under a different licence, as long as they are not reverse engineered back to a database. This would hopefully make the licence status of wikitravel maps derived from OSM data, as well as the status of any collective work using OSM data, and allow them to be released all under the Wikitravel SA licence. See [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Use_Cases#Use_of_maps_in_Wikipedia_and_Wikitravel]. This position is not without it detractors, however, with people maintaining that this doesn't offer enough share-alike protection to a derived work. If you have been involved in the OSM project, or are a member of the OSMF, or just interested, then you may care to offer your opinion on the wiki [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org], or at Open Data Commons [http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/]. --Inas 18:10, 1 March 2009 (EST)

    Procedures for changing article status to usuable and guide

    I understand the criteria for usuable and guide status, but did not find any explanation to the procedures for changing the status. Could someone explain? --ClausHansen 21:58, 1 March 2009 (EST)

    : Have a look at Wikitravel:City_guide_status. In short, just update the tag yourself, when you feel it meets the criteria. If someone disagrees with you, then discuss and reach consensus. --Inas 22:14, 1 March 2009 (EST)

    How did someone get my email address?

    I recently got emailed by someone on Wikitravel. When I asked how he got my address, he said through the Wikitravel email form. What is that? Does that actually exist? If it does, I don't know anything about it. What's up? Paula 03:36, 2 March 2009 (EST)

    : When someone views your user page, there is a link to send you an email. It doesn't reveal your email address, just sends it to you. It explains this in your preferences, "E-mail address is optional, but it enables others to contact you through your user or user_talk page without needing to reveal your identity." --Inas 03:45, 2 March 2009 (EST)

    : Important: if you email someone via wiki, then your email address (from your settings) will be in "from:" field of the email. -- Sergey kudryavtsev 06:48, 2 March 2009 (EST)

    :: Ah. Thanx. Got a splash of paranoia for a sec there.Paula 03:40, 3 March 2009 (EST)

    ::: You know, when you emailed him back to ask how he got your email, he probably got yours in the process. Just fyi :) -99.237.234.116 00:44, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

    Help rating Rail Travel in the UK

    Would welcome some thoughts on the rating for the travel topic Rail travel in the UK. Since I contributed much of the material on the page, I've added a page rating with some trepidation (following the guide for rating travel topics as far as I can). Suggestions and challenges to that rating appreciated. Thanks Jamesbrownontheroad 12:30, 3 March 2009 (EST)

    list of airport articles

    I wonder if we have any single place where all airport articles are listed.

    What can be a right place for that -- a section in Travel topics? Or they are better grouped via :Category:Airports? --DenisYurkin 17:51, 3 March 2009 (EST)

    : Don't we only to have like 3 of those; O'Hare International Airport, Heathrow Airport and Kansai International Airport, they tend to be deleted when they pop up

    : On a similar note; Barajas, Frankfurt, Charles De Gaule, Changhi, LAX and JFK - would be useful additions, though again, we have that bloody vague "city like" policy written down somewhere. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 22:03, 10 March 2009 (EDT) ::JFK was specifically merged to New York (city) by consensus at VFD. The rule of thumb in play appears to involve the amount of information about the airport that is present in the Get In section of the city article -- if it gets to be too much, we can split it, but it's a very high bar. LtPowers 22:19, 10 March 2009 (EDT)

    ::: Well, there we have it. A single place where all the airport articles are listed. --Inas 23:35, 10 March 2009 (EDT)

    Israel Regions

    : No feedback was given, so Govrin plunged forward and I regret to say that (IMHO) the result is an even worse mess than before. I've rolled back for time being, but additional comments would be very welcome. Jpatokal 00:04, 18 March 2009 (EDT)

    Proper Namespace

    Hi, I'm new to wikitravel and there is one thing I just can't figure out. My contribution is to the Sai page. All the other pages I've seen have a Asia:East:Japan categorization. For example, Mutsu is a city close to Sai. Mutsu has the list of locations at the top under the title. When I started the page, I went to the Shimokita Peninsula area and created a link for Sai, but when I clicked on it, the page didn't have the location categorization. Does anyone know why? Thanks Marie438 21:40, 16 March 2009 (EDT) : Hi. I think you are talking about creating the right breadcrumb navigation for the article. See Wikitravel:Breadcrumb navigation for information on doing that. Let us know if it doesn't answer your question. --Inas 21:46, 16 March 2009 (EDT) ::Fixed. Your only problem was that when implementing breadcrumb navigation, you have to use underscores instead of spaces, i.e. <nowiki>{{IsPartOf|Shimokita_Peninsula}}</nowiki> instead of <nowiki>{{IsPartOf|Shimokita Peninsula}}</nowiki> - Texugo 02:12, 17 March 2009 (EDT) :::Thanks! I really appreciate the help.Marie438 02:18, 17 March 2009 (EDT) ::::Actually, if you use IsPartOf, you don't need the underscore. LtPowers 08:21, 17 March 2009 (EDT) :::::Ah, true. I forgot about that. But it was originally IsIn and I changed it. Texugo 08:49, 17 March 2009 (EDT)

    Robot.txt on userpages

    Do we disallow google crawling on our user pages, so stuff like User:Beyaz's user page, or User:HotelsCombined and his alter ego's for that matter, doesn't use our very hard work, to inflate their/other users commercial and copyrighted websites google ranking? --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 20:37, 18 March 2009 (EDT) :Just looking at [http://wikitravel.org/robots.txt robots.txt], it doesn't look like it. Personally, I'm not adverse to allowing valued contributors to help their Google rankings by having a few links on their user page. Obviously, the first example is not a good example of a valued contributor (although HotelsCombined does seem to have contributed to articles). If we think this is a problem, I would suggest we look at policing user page content more. JYolkowski 21:28, 18 March 2009 (EDT) ::Something else that just occurred to me is that, if someone doesn't contribute at all except to their userpage, there won't be any links to it unless someone inadvertently links to it on the Traveller's Pub (-: so search engines wouldn't be able to find it anyway (since they aren't allowed to read the special pages). JYolkowski 22:05, 18 March 2009 (EDT) :For reference: most pages excluded from search engines, such as all previous versions of any page, are done with tags in the page source (e.g., ''<nowiki><meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /></nowiki>'') instead of robots.txt. User pages are indeed indexed ([http://www.google.com/search?q=sertmann like so!]) ? and to my surprise, so are Talk pages, including User_talk space. In contrast, wikipedia ''does'' exclude talk. - Dguillaime 01:20, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    Querying {isIn| } tags from the top down

    I have noticed that at the top of each article's page, there is a expanded flow chart of links which shows which category the article falls under.

    For example the article on South_Coast_(New_South_Wales) has

    Oceania : Australia : New South Wales : South Coast at the top of its page.

    If i understand correctly this feature is achieved by including the tag {isIn|New_South_Wales}}.

    I was wondering if there was a way to query the MediaWiki API (or another method) to find out all the articles which fall under one of the categories.

    For example, querying the category of Europe would give (amongst others) the pages Europe : Central Europe : Switzerland : Basel (region) : Basel and so on.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks.

    : Short answer is "I'm not sure", but see Wikitravel:Breadcrumb navigation and Wikitravel:RDF if you want to try... Jpatokal 23:22, 20 March 2009 (EDT)

    ::OK, so I have done some investigation work and I have discovered that Wikitravel:RDF is what I was looking for. However, I was wondering if there was documentation on how the interface on the Wikitravel:RDF page worked? Thanks. Sirtrebuchet 00:29, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    ::: I can't see how the isPartOf RDF relationship we establish, is going to generate any inverse relationship. And we don't define a relationship between the region and the subregions. So, I can't see how it would be possible, using RDF or other means, to get the information without accessing every article page to find the region it is contained within. Once you have done that, accessing the RDF info for each page is fairly trivial. --Inas 01:04, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    :::: After some deeper investigation into this, I guess plotting inverse relationships is going to be harder than I thought. What I was hoping to do was to start at a general page, say Europe, and categorise (i.e. make a list) all the articles which pertain (i.e. are linked in an upward manner) to Europe. I thought I could just see what was linked to Europe and then what was linked to that and so on, but now I realise that that would end up linking all to all pages and just give a web of links to the entire wiki. I was hoping to get just articles pertaining to that region.

    ::::So to accomplish what I am wanting to do, one would have to check each page for the link hierarchy back to the top (random example Paros -> Cyclades -> Greek Islands -> Greece -> Europe) and then make a list from that in reverse order to get Europe -> Greece -> Greek Islands -> Cyclades -> Paros and then extrapolate for all links making their way to Europe. The only problem here being that not every article has such linking information. Sirtrebuchet 01:40, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    :::::Virtually all articles do have isIn/isPartOf templates, only the very stubbiest of stubs don't (and omitting them is no great loss). Jpatokal 01:52, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    ::::::Using the api, is there a way to check for the isIn/isPartOf tags? I had a look but there are a lot of options to choose from. Thanks. Sirtrebuchet 02:04, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    :::::: Both the isin and ispartof templates just define a RDF ispartof relationship. So, if you look in the RDF definition for an article, just pick out the ispart reln, and there you have it. So, for example, you get the RDF XML for Australia at [http://wikitravel.org/en/Special:Rdf/Australia] You then just parse the XML to get the ispartof reln. In this case the <nowiki><dcterms:isPartOf rdf:resource="urn:x-wikitravel:en:Oceania"/></nowiki> line. --Inas 08:12, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    ::::::: Thanks for pointing that out. One could also look at the page source and seek out the line which begins with <nowiki><div id="contentSub"></nowiki> which is the html of the IsIn tag and it includes the complete IsIn hierarchy right back to the top which could be parsed. For example, a parsing of this line of html from the Australia article could give Oceania, Australia. Sirtrebuchet 17:22, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    Would it be possible to attach some RDF code to the Regionlist template? Not all region articles use it, but I think it should be a goal to have them do so (if they have subregions). LtPowers 08:32, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    : Adding the RDF relation to the regionlist template is very straightforward. Making sure a significant percentage of the destination articles would be captured within the hierarchy is more problematic. Although this is done well at a high level, I suspect we would miss many articles using this method. It may be useful for other reasons though. It could give us a nice progress indicator for developing the regional hierarchy. : On a related issue, if still is difficult to tell if an article is a destination article, as opposed to a travel topic, or itinerary from the RDF. There is no RDF reln to identify itineraries or travel topics, and there is only RDF for cities, countries, etc in newer, more specific templates. This may frustrate what Sirtrebuchet is trying to do. Are there may itineraries or travel topics that use the isin|ispartof template? --Inas 18:26, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    ::They should all use Template:Related; the breadcrumb navigation is supposed to be purely for the geographical hierarchy of destinations. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 18:42, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    April Fool's Day

    Haven't seen any proposals so far for April Fool's Day, so I'd like to throw this out there as a possibility. PerryPlanet <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 12:51, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    : Brilliant! Let's get to work. Jpatokal 22:55, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

    ::Last call on this—it goes live tomorrow. So lets everyone chip something in by the end of the day! --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 14:58, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

    Airline alliances

    So I recently took the time to start this off - mainly as a help to writing airport sections, since there is an increasing trend of colocation of the airlines alliances around worlds airports - and hence instead of listing each and every airline, you can now simply write something like:

  • '''Terminal 2''' - Handles all international flights except Star Alliance flights and the other airlines listed below.
  • '''Terminal 3''' - Handles international flights from Star Alliance member airlines as well as Estonian air, Iceland air, Skyways and some Cimber Sterling flights.
  • Which I suspect also would be the case for most airports around the world these days. But, i'm only familiar with StarAlliance, since that's where rack up my frequent flyer miles, and I think it's a rather important travel topic, so if someone could help getting some general information added, I'd be most appreciative. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 07:33, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

    Admin action on South East (China)?

    Somebody is having fun there on our expense. --Rein N. 13:39, 30 March 2009 (EDT) : blocked for a day, a little too much action going on there for my taste --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 13:44, 30 March 2009 (EDT) ::I don't have that special buttons here, so I had to ask for assistance. Thanks. --Rein N. 13:49, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

    OpenID not working?

    Right now when I try to log in with OpenID, it lets me choose what my wiki username will be, but after submitting that, I'm presented with an error that says I searched for ChooseName, which could not be found. This happens both if I choose the option where it makes a username for me based on my OpenID and if I choose the option to pick my own.

    Are we able to change this? It doesn't make sense to provide the option of logging in with OpenID and then not have that option work. I want to make edits to WT but am prevented from doing so. Is anyone else able to replicate and/or fix this? --124.168.43.211 06:23, 22 May 2009 (EDT)

    Cost of living benchmark?

    One thing I try to research before visiting somewhere is the relative cost of living, ie how much spending money I'm going to need. Has there been any discussion previously on ways of incorporating any sort of easy benchmark of this into articles or as part of the templates? I'd love to be able to see at a glance that in Riga a diet coke is going to cost me 1.5lats and a pizza for lunch 4 lats. For instance. How to do it in a way useful to all is another question. Has this cropped up before? Andyfarrell 19:04, 31 March 2009 (EDT) : He, I'd be all in for swapping either ''Government'' or ''Religion'' out of the quick boxes in favour of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index Big Mac Index], though I wouldn't know what to do with countries without McDonalds'. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 19:14, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

    :: This is already an objective. See Wikitravel:Country_article_template#Costs. How much money you will need, a cost of common items should be included in the ''Buy'' section of country articles, including how much a Big Mac costs, if you like. --Inas 19:33, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

    :::I'd like to see both government and religion leave the quickbox (since that information belongs in "understand"), but I do think adding an infobox to each country's "buy" section displaying its big mac index score would be useful. It should be year end data, so it will be simple to update without following every fluctuation. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 20:20, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

    :::Generally, the relative costs of things are found in the Buy section, although only some countries' articles mention such info. You'd need to find an appropriate index. Cost of living indexes and "most expensive for expatriates" include things like taxes, housing, etc. To further complicate things, prices can be drastically different throughout the country. Accommodation may not be uniform...for instance, a 4-5star hotel in an African capital might be comparable to that of a major European/US city, while small hotels and hostels might be drastically cheaper. It also depends on how you travel...W. Europe generally has much higher prices than the US, but for a long-distance trip, there's the Eurail and hostels everywhere...while long distance travel in the US is very expen$ive and cheap hostels are only found in some large cities. A week in Washington (in a hostel & using the subway) can be much cheaper than a week in London...but a week travelling from NYC to LA is probably much more expensive than a week going from London to Paris to Rome. I'm not against doing a price comparison...but there's LOTS of factors which may need to be spelled out to be effective. AHeneen 23:06, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

    We did have an article called "What things cost" that was deleted after a very long messy discussion. I argued for keeping it, and rewrote most of it in the process. Put it up for undeletion? Use some of its text (my rewrite was of course brilliant :-) in a new article? Pashley 01:05, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

    Could we add something like per capita GDP as a cost indicator in country articles? Could we automate getting the data? There's more than one way to calculate or estimate it, though. Wikipedia has several articles, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita one here], with links to data sources. Pashley 01:31, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

    :The main reason we didn't keep that article, though, was that we decided the information belonged firmly in country articles' buy sections (if I remember correctly). Per capita GDP's effects on PPP are very ambiguous and often marginal, especially as PPP is determined by a bunch of additional causes unrelated to per capita income. The big mac index is widely regarded as the most important and accurate measure of varying price levels across nations, so, while imperfect, I think we should limit site-wide information about country PPP to this index, while allowing ourselves greater latitude to go into details in each country's buy section. (E.g., while Japan has exceptionally high food costs that will show up in the big mac index, their high-end electronics are actually quite cheap by international standards.) --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 01:40, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

    :: Lets just make the guideline for the ''Buy'' section a little more prominent. I'm sure its not difficult to people to include the costs of a few common items in the buy section to give an idea of what things are going to cost, they probably just don't think of it. In the Australia article you will certainly find the cost of a few different styles of meals in the ''Eat'' section, what to expect to pay for accommodation in the ''Sleep'' section. Its not much good putting the costs of transport in the ''Get around'' or ''Get in'' sections because they vary so much between locations, but you will find pretty accurate costs in many of the City articles, as well as finer grained costs of accommodation. These are surely the three biggest costs travellers will encounter. I don't really see what is missing there, or what benefit there would be in putting it in a standardised table. I don't know if per capita GDP has any consistent relation to the costs of travel. The USA has a per capita GDP higher than Japan or Australia, but I would say it is cheaper to travel in. The Big Mac index is not a good judge of buying power, it is not officially available for many countries, and it smacks a bit of American cultural imperialism when applied to countries where you have to work a day to buy one. If people want to put the cost of a Big Mac into the ''Buy'' or ''Eat'' section of a country, where it is relevant to assess the costs of travel there, they are already very free to do so, and this should be encouraged where appropriate. --Inas 01:51, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

    One of the many pieces missing from this puzzle is price ranges for the Eat section (and reaching a consensus on Wikitravel talk:Restaurant listings#price ranges what exactly price given for restaurant should reflect: only main dish / average set of meals for this establishment [type] / three-course full meal or something else). Anything constructive will be highly appreciated on this. --DenisYurkin 16:43, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

    : Glad I asked. That's given me some idea of the opinions on this! Thanks particularly to Sertmann for drawing my attention to the Big Mac Index, I like it, but think it's too narrow a measure - it doesn't tell me how much spending money I need to take. It doesn't appear that there is a quick and easy solution to go in an infobox so I guess I will just spend a little time adding to the Costs sections on places I know. Andyfarrell 18:52, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

    Airport guidance

    Following a series of edits by User:DavidG, who edited several Get in by plane sections to list all the cities that can be accessed non-stop from that airport, I think we need some guidance on how to handle such cases. I'm suspicious of its usefulness, but someone else did the same thing to Albuquerque a while back and I decided to let it stay, so I'm really on the fence about this. PerryPlanet <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 11:58, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

    : My rule of thumb is that it's useful for those airports where the destinations can be counted on the palm of one hand, but beyond that it's kinda pointless. Just name the busiest routes/airlines and let the user work out the rest. Jpatokal 12:29, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::One big problem with what DavidG is doing is that he's not using disambiguated links. He's linking to New York and Buffalo instead of New York (city) and Buffalo (New York) (just for two examples). LtPowers 21:50, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

    Region Articles: Guide Status

    It seems like in practice, the "'''linked destinations'''" which have a status requirement per WT's Region Guide-Article Status are really only those 5-9 destinations which are outlined in the '''Regions''', '''Cities''', and '''Other Destinations''' sections, and ''not'' any destination which is linked in the article. If this is in fact the policy, I think we should make this more explicit in the status criteria. Calling them "linked destinations" suggest a status requirement for any internal link in an article. Jtesla16 13:24, 2 April 2009 (EDT) :That's how I always interpreted it, but if it's unclear we should certainly clarify it. LtPowers

    Wikitravel on the iPhone

    I have not been around here in quite a while, but just ran into a nice iPhone app that I thought you all might want to know about. Gohophop [http://gohophop.blogspot.com has released offline versions of some wikitravel content as iPhone apps. For once the content is correctly redistributed under CC licence and attribution is given on each page in the application.

    It was quite a surprise to see my photos on the app preview in the iStore.

    --Nick 19:21, 2 April 2009 (EDT) :That's cool. Hope to see you around more often! LtPowers 09:40, 3 April 2009 (EDT)

    Voice of America's Website of the Week

    WT is the website of the week at Voice of America: http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2009-04-03-voa17.cfm Worth putting this in the banner to replace the Time magazine plug? Jpatokal 03:27, 4 April 2009 (EDT) :I plunged forward and made the change. LtPowers 11:30, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

    Program that Scrapes content from Wikitravel and formats it for iPods

    Hello Everyone. I started working on a project a while back that takes content from wikitravel and formats it for the iPod - it uses the iPod notes format, and works on any non-touchscreen iPod.

    I got a rough, working program going using Ruby, but as I'm not a real programmer I don't think I can develop it any further. So I'm GPL'ing the source code, and putting it on Sourceforge.

    I'm looking for a person to help me do one of two things:

  • Be the lead code developer (not too difficult, very small code base)
  • Or, help me get the project on sourceforge in a format that real programmers will be able to take from there.
  • You can read about it on the Trac Wiki I've setup at sourceforge, http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/lonelyipod/

    If anyone has any suggestions about other places I should post this info, kindly add them below this. bcnstony 14:51, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

    Link to TravelBlog?

    I discovered [http://www.travelblog.org/ TravelBlog] a few weeks ago and I think it's a great resource for those less-visited countries. We have links to Wikipedia, Open Directory, & World66, what are your thoughts about adding TravelBlog? It might not be very helpful to view the thousands of blogs in the US, but I have found it very interesting to view travelers' experiences in off-the-beaten path countries like [http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Mauritania/blogs-page-1.html Mauritania], [http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Sudan/blogs-page-1.html Sudan], [http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Afghanistan/blogs-page-1.html Afghanistan], [http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Turkmenistan/blogs-page-1.html Turkmenistan], [http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Yemen/ Yemen], and many, many more. AHeneen 17:39, 9 April 2009 (EDT)

    Annotating Maps

    I have uploaded a map thumb|200px from Wikipedia, with correct licensing, of the regions of Graubunden, yet it has no labels and needs some, what is the procedure for doing so. --HJ.Phillips94 08:22, 10 April 2009 (EDT)

    :The most useful way to do so would be to use Inkscape to create an SVG map that anyone can easily revise. But ultimately I would recommend whatever program works for you—if MS Paint gets the point across, go for it. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 16:50, 10 April 2009 (EDT)

    Creating maps

    I have read the guidelines on creating maps and my understanding is that real Wikitravel maps can only be created from a computer using Linux. Is that correct? And if yes, is there a way to create temporary maps on other computers which can subsequently be upgrated to Wikitravel maps by people with Linux access? --ClausHansen 10:23, 10 April 2009 (EDT)

    :You don't need Linux access to create a WT style map, but without it, you will need to do a lot of work in Inksckape. The guide to using Inkscape for WT style maps is here. You can partially automate the process per Wikitravel:How_to_create_a_map#SVG_imports_for_users_without_Linux_access. If you are running into any hitches, please feel free to ask me any questions on my talk page. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 16:50, 10 April 2009 (EDT)

    Easier options

    I've been thinking about the TP. It's not very accessible to people not used to the world of Wiki's, or computers at all. Wouldn't a more streamlined, "message board-ish" look be better? A lot of people I've been talking to who are of the globetrotting type think that Wikitravel is a great thing (often compared to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) but with a user friendliness that's next to nothing. Making the Traveller's Pup - the place where most people look first - more accessible could generate a higher accessibility to the rest of the site. Just my $0.02. {{unsigned|81.235.146.157}}

    : Hmmm, fresh idea's is always appreciated, but since we're a wiki, to me at least, it seems pretty natural that our communal area should be wikified too. I don't think we should be trying to make a Thorn Tree here - it's too massive to compete with, and being active over there myself, I'd hate it if we tried - it's really great at what it does. But could you maybe try to specify your idea a bit? --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 20:29, 11 April 2009 (EDT)

    :: By "more accessible" do you mean easier to ''use'', or easier to ''find''? I'd agree with Sertmann that I'd prefer to see it stay a Wiki page, by if you mean it's difficult to find (which I think is a fair argument) I think something could/should be done about that. PerryPlanet <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 20:43, 11 April 2009 (EDT)

    :::We should keep in mind that the Pub is primarily for ''contributors'', not ''users'' of the site. Perhaps we need a more visible place where users can ask questions in a less-complex way. LtPowers 12:50, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

    Using API

    Hello!

    I'm interested in knowledge, how to use API? I found API manual: http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/api.php, but every example link on it does not seem to work. Do I have to log in to get just the contents of one page of a certain country? Or does anyone have an example, how to use API? Thanks in advance! Agsel 21:02, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

    Wikimedia & Creative Commons

    Wikipedia is currently holding a referendum on dual licensing content, including wikipedia, to CC-by-sa 3.0. For those of you who are also Wikipedians, I'd encourage you to head over and vote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1). This also raises some questions I believe. We could start taking a crack at this now, or wait till we have the outcome, where we most certainly will need to discuss this. I've also been looking a bit at [http://www.travellerspoint.com/guide Travellers point] who also license their content CC-by-sa 3.0. # If this goes through, can users copy 3.0 licensed content to WT, since we use 1.0? # Do we want WP content? (I can think if many cases where we do want it, but also see the pitfalls) # What about attribution? If we are to welcome WP content, how do we deal with this? Comments appreciated :) --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 00:56, 14 April 2009 (EDT)

    :#No. IB's legal team has ok'd a move to a cc-by-sa any license for all text on site, but the move never happened due to community opposition. I'd be happy if we revisited that to allow newer interested users to comment. See :shared:Tech:License upgrade. :#Sometimes. Dealing with WP dumps would be a headache, but we'd also gain a lot in being able to mishmash together ready-made history sections from their site. We'd probably have to create a new policy page to figure out how to deal with dumped text, since for the most part we still will want original, travel-oriented writing. :#We follow WP's lead, since they will need to deal with that as well. My guess is that they'll play looser with the attribution requirement than we would (by, for example, declaring the page history to provide due attribution). In that case, we could do something like use a template at the bottom of the page, linking to the history of the appropriate WP article(s).

    :This is all purely moot, however, until/if we move to an updated CC license. Our current license has terrible incompatibility issues, which owe their origins to the fact that the CC 1.0 was basically CC's first draft, and which have been corrected in all later versions. As of now, our text license pretty much restricts us from cooperating with ''any'' other sites that use the CC-by-SA license. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 01:19, 14 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::Yeah, I saw that today too. With regards to #2, I think sections like history and climate would do well copied from WP (but only sections if it's too long). It might also help for lots of travel topics and phrasebooks (namely the usage/history & phonetics sections). For #3, is it possible to mess with the wiki software for this site to include a checkbox (like "this is a minor edit" & "Watch this page") labeled "Copied from Wikipedia" which would require the editor to insert the name/address of the WP article used and automatically place a link to the history of that WP page after the edit's listing on the WT article. The license at the bottom of the WT article could then include "Parts of this page may be the original work of contirbuters to the Wikipedia articles: [en.wikipedia.org/wikitravel Wikitravel], etc."? It sounds complicated, but it's the best method I can think of right now to solve the problem of attribution. AHeneen 01:24, 14 April 2009 (EDT)

    :::The community opposition to the upgrade was quite minimal (only 2 users, though they repeated their arguments several times)... I don't think we were toooo far off from building a consensus to upgrade... it would just be nice to have a bit more legal input from someone in the know – <font color="green">cacahuate</font> <sup><small><font color="blue">talk</font></small></sup> 14:33, 14 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::::I would certainly be one of the two who opposes an upgrade. No upgrade should or could be undertaken in just a matter of weeks or a few months. It would have to be a process that would be drawn out over at least a year to cover our asses in the legal issues. World 66, which I see has been taken offline, upgraded from the GNUFDL to CC by-SA 1.0 several years ago. In the process, they supposedly allowed any user who had ever contributed to World66, or whatever its predecessor's name was to opt-out and have all their previous content removed and all other content contributed by others was re-licensed. But, as the CC ShareAlike license ensures derivative work is also open source that means that derivative content produced with the content of the contributor who opts-out could be a possible source of legal messiness.

    ::::If this can or worms is going to be re-opened, I would want Internet Brands to conference call admins and other community members to allow a Q and A, because we will be fielding questions about a change over. Not to mention, I'd want to hear that I am protected from any legal issues and that IB would be the ones held responsible if some fiasco did arise.

    ::::That aside, I really don't see much benefit from a license "upgrade." First of all, the only real content that we are missing out on as a result of the CC-by-SA 1.0 license are a few maps, some photos, and historical information from WP and the like. That's not so bad, because a contributor could send an email to someone and simply ask a photographer to dual license a photo under CC-by-SA 1.0 and whatever other license the photographer wanted to use. Secondly, our content is still open source ''even with'' the CC-by-SA 1.0 license. Maybe it's not as "open" as I would like it to be or others would like it to be, but a whole other issues can be opened up if the community says: Hey, let's change the license from CC-by-SA 1.0, to include all CC-by-SA licenses like I did for Wikimmigrant. The problem that I have with Wikimmigrant is that the content on Wikimmigrant could be used by Wikitravel and anyone else who uses a CC-by-SA license (including 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0), but with a multi-licensed site, Wikimmigrant cannot take content from other sources even if the other content is licensed as CC-by-SA 3.0, because the other content has to be licensed under CC-by-SA 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 (possibly even later versions). All in all, I just think that an upgrade is not worth the hassle. We missed out on the 2.0 license years ago and that did not cause Wikitravel to fail. Be honest, but an upgrade is not ''so'' essential to Wikitravel. If it were, we wouldn't have amassed a collection of 20K+ articles, or been awarded a Webby, or named as one of Time's 50 Best Websites. -- Sapphire ? <small>(Talk)</small> ? 23:50, 18 April 2009 (EDT)

    :::::Thanks for the legal advice, but you appear to be very confused on a number of these issues. Rather obvious among which is our ability to use images and other files with a different CC-by-SA license—we already do this. In any rate, you are commenting in the wrong place, if you wish to continue this discussion, please do so in the original thread. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 14:57, 19 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::::::I think Sapphire is right on reusing content on Wikimmigrant, but that's because Wikimmigrant is multilicensed. A site that was singly-licensed CC-by-sa-3.0 wouldn't have that problem (because any CC license after 1.0 can be freely upgraded to a later version; not so going backwards). (Also, note Sapphire said "content"; images are a special case for a couple of reasons that I won't go into here.) LtPowers 15:58, 19 April 2009 (EDT)

    __ Please continue discussion at :shared:Tech:License upgrade

    Site Down tonight, 4/15

    We will be down for scheduled maintenance Wednesday April 15th @ 10pm PST for approximately 4 hours. We thank you for your patience. JuCo 20:08, 15 April 2009 (EDT)

    Electrical plugs

    Why don't we make little plug icons for the electrical outlets so everybody knows what kind of plug they need to bring when they look at a glance at the entire article? I don't think this move is at all unreasonable. --Destron Commander 23:04, 16 April 2009 (EDT) :Currently, each country has an Info Box which lists its electrical system, and a link to the fairly extensive Electrical systems page. Are you proposing that icons should be added next to these specifications in the Info Boxes for each country, or in a more general sense for all destinations? --Jtesla16 23:30, 16 April 2009 (EDT) ::Yes, any destination we have provided info on electricity. I just think it's a good idea to give a little icon to give a heads up for prospective travellers. While there is a link to electrical systems article, some people might take too much time or not even able to figure out which plug to bring at all. --Destron Commander 22:58, 18 April 2009 (EDT)

    Star noms

    I've nominated two D.C. districts for star status, in part just to end our drought of successful nominations, but also with the end goal of getting the whole city up to star status. I mention this here per Wikitravel:Star_nominations#Nominate. Comments always appreciated! --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 16:55, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

    :And I've now nominated another, this time a new Chicago district. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 03:25, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::And now another D.C. district—comments, even casual ones, are always very welcome. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 19:18, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

    :::Last call on Anacostia & Shaw. Both are set to become stars tomorrow and the day after, respectively. Comments very welcome, even just to take a quick glance at the article and give a vote of support. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 18:56, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

    And a new nomination for Copenhagen/Amager is up as well --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 09:59, 3 May 2009 (EDT)

    GPS coordinates

    As someone who always travels with a GPS unit, I would find it extremely useful if all important points (sights, pubs, train stations...) would have a GPS coordinates listed. Even in a city, it is often much easier to find something by its coordinates than by street. Would it be possible to start adding the coordinates? There should be some standard formatting and standard coordinate system to use... Kyknos 14:28, 21 April 2009 (EDT) :Many of our listings do include latitude and longitude, but they aren't displayed in the article. Do you have any suggestions on the most useful way to display them? LtPowers 14:43, 21 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::Re: how to add coordinates, in any listing, you can add lat & long (<nowiki>* <see name="" alt="" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price="" lat="" long=""></see></nowiki>), and we also have a standard geo template: <nowiki>{{geo|lat|long}}</nowiki> (where you would replace the "lat" and "long" with actual numbers). --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 14:48, 21 April 2009 (EDT)

    :::I'd also suggest adding points of interest directly to [http://openstreetmap.org OpenStreetMap], from where they can be reasonably easily reimported into Wikitravel maps. Jpatokal 03:48, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

    Admin nomination

    I've nominated User:Dguillaime to be an administrator — please comment on the nominations page. Gorilla Jones 01:20, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

    Automated correction of impropper IsIn tags

    I have been doing some searching and some corrections on IsIn tags on articles trying to get all the articles to have proper breadcrumb navigation. One of the most common mistakes I find is an incorrectly written tag. The most common mistake is having the tag written as "isIn", missing the capital "I" on is. First, is there reason for this? Second is there a way to have a bot or another automatic way to seek these out and fix them? It is quite tiring to do one at a time. Thanks Sirtrebuchet 01:56, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

    :What is the problem with the lowercase i? Doesn't WikiMedia automatically treat the first character in such expressions the same either way? --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 01:58, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::I may have been hasty in condemning the lowercase "i". I don't know how mediawiki handles the first characters, but this glitch I am experiencing may simply have been due to the methods I am employing to detect faulty IsIn tags. So the consensuses is that mediawiki parses "isIn" exactly the same as "IsIn"? If so that would be good to know. Thanks. Sirtrebuchet 02:43, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

    :::Yes, the first character of any page name (including templates) is case-insensitive, so "isIn" and "IsIn" are treated identically. Jpatokal 02:51, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

    ::::Great, Thanks for clearing that up! Sirtrebuchet 09:45, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

    Why is this website written as if every tourist were white?

    It is. You can't deny this; take a look at Germany#Stay safe and the section about Turks/Arabs. Also, I didn't know Russians were non-white, that's news to me (and offensive).

    Not only this, my problem with this site is that none of it is sourced. Unlike Wikipedia, there seems to be no sourcing whatsoever. This is potentially critically important on a travel site where people may have printed off a document. One bit of vandalism to a route number and it could cause serious problems to people.--Clyde Cash 18:33, 1 May 2009 (EDT) :I am a complete mixture, I look kinda like Tiger Woods if I was to give an example of what I was like racially but taller, broader and more muscular; I was born to an African American-Mexican American father and a Russian-American mother and I have lived in Scotland for 8 years, and my girlfriend is British Chinese. Please don't assume things. I also have Asperger syndrome.--Clyde Cash 18:41, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::Well, since I can't deny this, I will have trouble responding to your point. But this website is actually written by some 50,000 people, so it must just be that we've succumbed to group think on a very large scale. More to the point though, if you see something that you think can be improved, plunge forward and fix it yourself!

    ::Regarding sourcing, have you ever seen a travel guide that provided footnotes? We try to keep things fair, and the "proofing" mechanism that wikis provide (anyone can correct any error) is generally a lot more foolproof than trusting some drug dealer's second hand information. [http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/04/13/lonely.planet/index.html] --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 18:57, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

    :::The Stay Safe section of the Germany article certainly could use some editing. Would you be interested in giving it a shot, Clyde? LtPowers 19:03, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::::Lest anyone be confused, Clyde is engaged in a silly bit of provocation that doesn't really warrant a response unless you're ''really'' bored — and in that event, stimulating alternatives such as alphabetizing your socks might still be preferable. Gorilla Jones 19:05, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

    Well, I can't say to speak for the whole of Germany, I've been there several times. I've also been to Romania and Bulgaria several times, and Finland as well. The problem is with sourcing. Wikipedia relies on accurate sources for every statement. This site, it has NONE of that. None whatsoever! It's bullshit if you believe people should go printing off articles and some person entering bullshit could make people change their route I mean WTF? That shit is not on.-Clyde Cash 19:40, 1 May 2009 (EDT) :We are not Wikipedia. Check out Wikitravel:Welcome, Wikipedians#Style differences, which explains how we are different. If you don't trust our travel guides without references, ''don't use them''. Plenty of other people do. LtPowers 21:45, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

    Admin action needed

    Somebody is having fun on our expense moving lots pages. please stop this vandal. --Rein N. 09:14, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

    : Blocked and reverted. Mediawiki's pretty good these days at reverting even attempted redirect loops... Jpatokal 09:24, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

    Health/handicap section?

    I'm a big wikitravel fan, but I was wondering if a section could be added for special health condition or handicap tips. Or should those just be integrated into normal discussion more? For example, my friend has a bum knee, and it's really helpful to him to know about cable cars he can take, or say, tall buildings with elevators he can take for the view rather than climbing churches. Or for my sister, who suffers from IBS (like having traveler's tummy all the time) and always wants to know if she's going to be trapped on a bus without a bathroom for hours, things like that.

    : Its a great ideal to have this information on Wikitravel. Typically, however, we don't make separate sections for particularly classes of travellers. All the information just goes into the appropriate part of the guide. Please plunge forward and add it. The where to stick it guide references some disabled information. However, if there is some precedent for itineraries and travel topics for classes of travellers, and I think a Seeing New York (city) by wheelchair would be a perfectly reasonable travel topic (or itinerary) --Inas 01:17, 3 May 2009 (EDT)

    : Cool, will do. -- Heidi

    Vandalism/sabotaging on the Lima page

    Hi,

    if you look at the [http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Lima&diff=1131896&oldid=1131804 recent] [http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Lima&diff=1108441&oldid=1102284 history] of the Lima page, one guy has been vandalising it repeatedly in an attempt to publicize his taxi company (akatori). Not only has he been adding links to it in wrong sections (like "get in by plane") but, much worse, he has been sabotaging other companies coordinates by subtly changing phone numbers and internet addresses. I wanted to nominate him for a ban, but he uses different ips every time (probably operating from peruvian internet cafes). Is it possible to semi-protect the page, and where should I ask for it? Thanks. --Nattfodd 05:16, 4 May 2009 (EDT)

    :There is a strong preference on Wikitravel that we handle this sort of problem with conventional means that anyone can use, that is, by simply watchlisting the page and reverting the unwanted edits. Thanks for keeping an eye on this particular problem; I'll add it to my watchlist too and try to chip in. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 05:49, 4 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::But if this gets totally out of control (and it's not there yet), it's possible to add his company and its phone numbers to the Wikitravel:Local spam blacklist. Jpatokal 05:50, 4 May 2009 (EDT)

    :::Ok, thanks for your replies. I will also keep it on my watchlist and try and revert stuff as soon as it happens. Let's hope the guy understands that his efforts are pointless. --Nattfodd 05:40, 5 May 2009 (EDT)

    What does Wiki Travel use to Create the add listing popup forms?

    Ive searched and searched for this and cannot find what it is that is used to make the really nice looking forms that appear when you click on an "add listing" link at the side. Is this something available as an extra for mediawiki or was it coded especially for wikitravel/Appreciate any help and im hoping that one of the admins know the answer <small>?The preceding comment was added by 200.105.167.66 (talk ? contribs) {{{2|}}}.</small>

    This was written specifically for wikitravel, primarily by me. KevinSours 17:45, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

    Is there anywhere on Wikitravel for odd useful hints?

    for example: "if you are in Japan in Golden Week and have no reservations, try a Toyoko-inn in a town which isn't in your guidebook". [Comment added by David Fremlin.] :It's case-by-case. Your example would go in Japan#Sleep. LtPowers 08:16, 5 May 2009 (EDT) :Thanks, I've done that. [DHF]

    No longer a lonely planet

    Just wanted to gloat a bit: the Wikitravel Press guide to Chicago just beat Lonely Planet Chicago on [http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/17319/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_1_6_last Amazon's sales chart]. (<s>#5</s> #3 vs #6 as I type this, may have changed by the time you read this.) Congrats Peter and Gorilla! Jpatokal 10:52, 6 May 2009 (EDT)

    : Very nice! but charging a full 25% more than LP does at the moment, might be a bit optimistic no? --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 10:59, 6 May 2009 (EDT)

    :: Doesn't seem to be hurting sales. ;) And WT Chicago is 432 pages of meaty goodness, or 54% more than LP's measly 280! Jpatokal 11:21, 6 May 2009 (EDT)

    :::Nothing but five-star reviews, either -- none of the other guides can claim that. LtPowers 13:52, 6 May 2009 (EDT)

    :Hate to say this...but it's now down to #13 vs. LP at #1. AHeneen 21:00, 8 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::Party-pooper! But actually the list is updated every hour, which means that selling (or not selling) a single copy causes vast swings in the ranking. Jpatokal 00:09, 9 May 2009 (EDT)

    Congrats - even though it's a little late. The Chicago guide is amazing. <font color="#339989">'''edmontonenthusiast [ee]'''</font> <sup><small><font color="#8848d7">'''.T.A.L.K.'''</font></small></sup> 21:25, 11 May 2009 (EDT).

    Travel News

    Just a reminder to everyone to please help with updating the news. You don't even have to read lots of stories, simply spending a few minutes browsing headlines...you can spot ones which might affect travelers. You should read the news to begin with...it will give you a better understanding of the world and consequently better understand where you travel. Just spend 5-10 minutes browsing some news websites and then 5-10 min. adding some stories to Travel News (copy the new items before saving, then paste them to the main page). My favorites are: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/ BBC News], [http://www.france24.com/en/ France24], & [http://www.foxnews.com/ Fox News]. A few others that you might want to check out are: [http://www.reuters.com/ Reuters], [http://edition.cnn.com/?iref=intlglobal CNN], [http://english.aljazeera.net/ Al Jazeera], & [http://en.rian.ru/ RIA Novosti]. <small>?The preceding comment was added by AHeneen (talk ? contribs) {{{2|}}}.</small>

    Do &s in titles break pages?

    I ask as I've noticed there is a merge candidate named Free wifi in Brighton & Hove but when I click on the link I get taken to "Free wifi in Brighton". I've tried a couple of things to get around this, and tried it in both Firefox and IE, but have found no way of getting to the real article. Is there a trick to this, or can an admin move the page, or does it need a more brute force method to get the page to be viewable? :Short answer is "yes", ampersands cause problems. Long answer is I remember coming across another article with the same problem but I don't remember if I was able to do anything about it. LtPowers 08:02, 11 May 2009 (EDT) ::Okay, I was able to move the page (and its talk page) to Free wifi in Brighton and Hove. I deleted the original page and its talk page. The trick is, when you go to the delete page, the URL says "<nowiki>http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?action=delete&title=Free_wifi_in_Brighton</nowiki>". I had to change that to "<nowiki>http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?action=delete&title=Free_wifi_in_Brighton_%26_Hove</nowiki>", and it worked. Similar trick with the move operation. LtPowers 08:07, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

    Smartphone apps

    Hi. My name's Jon Evans. I'm planning to write a Google Android and (subsequently) an iPhone app that would allow people to easily add to WikiTravel directly from their smartphones - but obviously I don't want to reinvent the proverbial wheel. Do such apps already exist?

    The advantages are hopefully obvious: people will be able to write about where they are, rather than relying on memory, and will very easily be able include both on-the-spot pictures and GPS coordinates. (Though it's easier to type on a computer than a smartphone, obviously, so I'm also planning to have a "remind me to write about this place later" feature.)

    I'm a software engineer turned adventure traveller turned novelist (see my web site [http://www.rezendi.com/ rezendi.com] for far more than you ever wanted to know about me) doing this partly for fun, partly to shake the rust off my software skills.

    Thanks for any advice/help.

    : A few apps along these lines have been built, but I'm sure they could use your help! See Wikitravel talk:Offline Reader Expedition. Jpatokal 23:36, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

    Editing of PD Photo

    Is it OK to crop a photo which has been added from WP and is in the public domain? AHeneen 21:25, 13 May 2009 (EDT)

    :You can legally do absolutely anything you want with a PD file. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 21:36, 13 May 2009 (EDT)

    Sleep template

    A question was asked in the nl:pub about the Sleep template.

    How can we use those templates in our wikitravel version? --Rein N. 06:14, 14 May 2009 (EDT)

    :Which template? --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 09:58, 14 May 2009 (EDT) ::The one that results in: <nowiki>* <sleep name="" alt="" address="" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" checkin="" checkout="" price=""></sleep></nowiki> and so on.--Rein N. 10:34, 14 May 2009 (EDT)

    :::You mean the clickable links at the bottom of the edit window? You can import those to :nl by copying the content from MediaWiki:Edittools to :nl:MediaWiki:Edittools. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 10:47, 14 May 2009 (EDT) ::::Thanks, --Rein N. 11:07, 14 May 2009 (EDT)

    listings: examples of de-touting and summarizing

    I just realized that to de-tout a larger percent of long and flowery listings I see in my watchlist, I would find very helpful to have a reference Wikitravel: page with a few examples for each of Eat/Sleep/Drink/Do of "before" and "after" de-touting by our gurus of de-touting and summarizing, ideally with a short explanation of why the resulting few words were decided as the best to describe the given establishment.

    Anyone else interested in creating this kind of "how-to" page for would-be detouters? --DenisYurkin 15:18, 16 May 2009 (EDT)

    :I think that Wikitravel:Don't tout does a good job of explaining what we do and don't want, and points to other useful pages too. Getting a listing to read well and accurately describe the establishment is kind of a work of art, not so much a formula – <font color="green">cacahuate</font> <sup><small><font color="blue">talk</font></small></sup> 21:39, 16 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::I think an example or two could be helpful. Business owners/promoters often really do seem clueless as to how to write a proper hotel description for a travel guide, even after reading the policy. When they do censor themselves, the descriptions wind up just as useless. I'll try to save some "good ones" next time I clean up after my friends. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 22:00, 16 May 2009 (EDT)

    :::Thanks, Peter! Overall, I initially meant a guide to de-touting janitors like myself, but now I agree, for business owners it could be helpful as well. --DenisYurkin 03:42, 17 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::::There are a bunch of "detouts" in this dif [http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Savannah&diff=1151624&oldid=1149835]. Perhaps one of them might be a good example? I'll try to look for more. --Peter <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 19:13, 24 May 2009 (EDT)

    Out-of-date Warningboxes

    Is it possible to get a list of all pages with warningboxes? It would be really helpful in keeping them up-to date. I found a couple that were several months past the time when they mattered. If not, maybe someone could create a bot to do this? AHeneen 21:15, 20 May 2009 (EDT)

    :I think you're looking for Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Warningbox. LtPowers 21:32, 20 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::Thank You! AHeneen 02:07, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    :I've gone through all of the links to edit, move, remove, or turn them into something else. The only one I didn't know what to do with was Bangkok/Khao San Road. Could someone familiar with the region please do something appropriate with the two unsightly warning boxes at the end? AHeneen 15:08, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    Sharing pictures for use on Wikitravel

    I've been making a few edits to the Wikitravel guide for Kyoto and I observed that the "Central Kyoto" section under "See" could use a few more pictures. I have some photographs that might fit the bill, but I'm a little protective of my personal travel album so I'm unwilling to release any of them in their original form under Wikitravel's prescribed licences. On the other hand, I'd be glad to release smaller, substantially resized versions (say, 800x600 or less) under the prescribed licences or even turn them loose into the public domain, provided I can keep full copyright over the original versions.

    So here's the question: if I release reduced-size versions of my photographs under a CC-BY-SA compatible licence (or into the public domain) for use on Wikitravel - and with the full understanding that anyone can do anything with them in accordance with those licences - will I retain full copyright over the originals?

    Many thanks. --Diego de Manila 02:34, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    : If you are wary of reuse, i'd encourage you NOT to release anything to the public domain, but yes to other question - you only grant permission to reuse the said image, and you can clarify under the license section that you are only granting permission to reuse the low res version. There is an example here: http://wikitravel.org/shared/Image:Nenets_reindeer_sledge.jpg#Licensing

    : And thanks for info on my Kyoto Railway map btw, I'll try to get that updated soon. --Stefan (sertmann) <small><sup>Talk</sup></small> 05:46, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    :: Thanks for the advice and the very helpful example. I'll think twice about releasing anything into the PD, but the prescribed licences now look like a viable option. --Diego de Manila 08:29, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    :::I'd still recommend you release the full-sized pictures (at least 3000x2000 or equiv), since 800x600 is too small to be used in print, and we'll just have to dike 'em out once the day comes for Wikitravel Press to create its Kyoto guide.

    :::FWIW, I used to think the same way you did, and only uploaded dinky little 800x600 versions here. Then I realized there was no reason ''not'' to share (is your pic worth more gathering dust on a hard disk, or being shared with the whole world via WT?), CC-licensed my [http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel entire photo collection] some 10+ years in the making, and am slowly and painfully upgrading my old pics here as I stumble into them. Jpatokal 09:18, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    ::::I checked out your pictures and noticed it says copyright at the bottom and clicking on the "copyright" says: ''"All text, pictures and code contained within these pages and their subsidiary servers are copyright 1996-2003 Jani Patokallio. Personal use is generally OK but credit me for it, anything else requires permission. Link freely but only to addresses under iki.fi (see the tech notes for an explanation), otherwise the links can and will be broken."'' That doesn't say/resemble CC. AHeneen 20:55, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    Spambots

    Going through the recent changes and noticing that 9 of 10 new users are spambots, could we/IB add a captcha to the process of creating a new account? AHeneen 20:26, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

    : Good idea. Should be easy to do using either of these: Jpatokal 03:22, 22 May 2009 (EDT) :: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit :: http://recaptcha.net/plugins/mediawiki/

    ::Man, those bots are out of control. I've mailed IB about this. Jpatokal 06:19, 22 May 2009 (EDT)

    Wikitravel logout

    Is it just me or does Wikitravel sometimes log you out, even right after an edit? <font color="#339989">'''edmontonenthusiast [ee]'''</font> <sup><small><font color="#8848d7">'''.T.A.L.K.'''</font></small></sup> 17:14, 22 May 2009 (EDT).

    Pointer to discussion

    I posted a question last week at Wikitravel talk:Article templates#Talk on non-region/country articles. Would appreciate any input. LtPowers 10:21, 23 May 2009 (EDT)

    Districting Edmonton problem - would love feedback

    [http://wikitravel.org/en/Talk:Edmonton#Districting_-_was_it_truly_necessary.3F]

    I was just wondering peoples opinions on the matter. <font color="#339989">'''edmontonenthusiast [ee]'''</font> <sup><small><font color="#8848d7">'''.T.A.L.K.'''</font></small></sup> 16:02, 23 May 2009 (EDT).

    Question

    I know it's going to sound really weird but I think the site is a little more complicated than it looks. I have a really important question and have been reading every page I could. Finally decied to ask, and it's probably because of my poor tech skill, but could anybody please tell me how to post a question? Not by editing another one that already exists, but creating a new topic. It says at the bottom of the page, but I cannot find it. :Your best bet is to go to the top of a discussion page and click the "+" tab, right between "edit" and "history". =) LtPowers 09:17, 26 May 2009 (EDT)

    Wikitravel maps question help

    Hi there! I'm trying to make a map similar to Pittsburgh's road map by PerryPlanet for Portland (OR) but I have come to an obstacle. Maybe it's just a silly issue but i am very new to the program. Anyways Portland has an interesting river geography, with islands and everything. So I am using the Wikitravel template and tracing from OpenStreetMaps, and using water. Well the water has a darker layer around the edges, like turquoise-teal, which is fine, but I'm going around an island, and when they meet back up they're two different things now I suppose and there is a big line in what would be the middle of the river and it looks retarded. How do I fix this? <font color="#339989">'''edmontonenthusiast [ee]'''</font> <sup><small><font color="#8848d7">'''.T.A.L.K.'''</font></small></sup> 15:17, 26 May 2009 (EDT).