User talk:Jdlrobson Voyage Tips and guide

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To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page. If you need help, check out Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub. If you are familiar with Wikipedia, take a look over some of the differences here. Thanks for your posts and your offers to help out with mobile optimisation! We're really keen to do all we can to make this guide as useful as possible and mobile functionality is a big part of that! --Nick ^talk 22:38, 3 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

As our local mobile expert hopefully you might be able to provide some insights into what is going on at Wikivoyage talk:Banner Expedition#Banner Size on a MacBook Pro. If you read the last couple of comments in that thread, we're seeing a situation where mobile appears to be retrieving images that are larger than what is specified in article syntax (i.e. [[File:Example.jpg|thumb|220px]] is fetching the image as if we had specified "440px" instead of "220px"). Of particular note is that the full-resolution page banner seems to be getting retrieved instead of the version resized to 1800px as specified by Template:Pagebanner. Since both of these issues have significant impact on phones, which have limited bandwidth, it would be good to figure out what's going on. I'm at a loss to explain why this might be happening, so any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:53, 22 December 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the ping Ryan. I've responded there. I think https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T77925 will be of interest if you haven't seen it before. Jdlrobson (talk) 21:30, 22 December 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thanks - I was actually one of the first couple of people added to the cc: list for the discussion around that extension, so I'm definitely keeping an eye on it. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:56, 22 December 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi again - I've proposed a couple of changes to the main page at User:Wrh2/Main Page, but the mobile version is a bit wonky: http://en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/User:Wrh2/Main_Page . I'm not clear on what is going on with mobile to change the current main page since it doesn't appear to be handled via MediaWiki:Mobile.js or MediaWiki:Mobile.css as far as I can see, so any advice on where to look would be much appreciated. Thanks! -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:36, 8 January 2015 (UTC) Will take a look first thing tomorrow! Made a minor tweak just now but am on my mobile device so unable to help much more right now! Thanks for reaching out I am happy to help!! Jdlrobson (talk) 05:55, 8 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks - there's no hurry to get this resolved, I'm just confused about what behind-the-scenes magic is going on with the main page to change the content for display on mobile, so I wasn't sure how to properly fix the proposed main page changes. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:57, 8 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

So here is some feedback:

• Wrh2/Banner probably shouldn't use a table based layout. Use divs and float left/right and turn this off in the mobile version (e.g. use media queries in your css rules or simply don't copy them from Common.css to Mobile.css).
• The mf-mobile-only will only work on the main page. The main page special casing is a nightmare and best avoided mostly for this reason (it's far too "magical" - you may be interested in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T78418) I'd actually be keen to turn this off on Wikivoyage if your new design doesn't use the mf- prefix as I actually don't encourage the use of this. . If I understand correctly you are trying to replace a map with a link to a bunch of urls. Personally I think you should just hide it on mobile and start with the destination of the month. I think it's far more compelling for a user and since the search bar is so prominent if they have a place in mind they can easily search for it without needing a link. The imagemap template is in dire need across all our projects of being made to work with a suitable fallback. I have a few ideas around that if you want to raise a bug.
• Using h2s in your markup will interfere with the section collapsing. Maybe consider using a non-heading element (e.g. strong tag) to style these sort of things.

Hope this is helpful!

Jdlrobson (talk) 23:11, 9 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

ps. I created a bug for imagemaps. ^ ping Ryan Jdlrobson (talk) 23:16, 9 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Somehow I was under the impression that the main page on mobile was using something other than CSS for styling purposes and got very, very confused. Your clarifications regarding nomobile and mf-mobile-only were sufficient to resolve the problems I was seeing, and I think the proposed changes should be working fine now. Thanks again! -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

How's it going? I'm not going to revert your addition of this establishment in Miami/Little Havana, but when you have a chance, please restore the deleted fields in the "Drink" template (even those that will remain empty) and input the address and other useful information (telephone number, e.g.). Normally, I'd revert a listing that's just a name and description with absolutely no location information.

All the best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:14, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hi Ikan Kekek

I am travelling at moment, primary way to edit is mobile phone. I was actually in this bar at time but couldn't find the address.. I have since wrote it down on a piece of paper afterwards in my journal. I wanted to track this place and was hoping at the end of my trip to improve things with location etc. As feedback it concerns me that edits like this would normally be reverted rather than improved. This is concerning for me as I was planning to contribute good stuff as i found it and update things like address later when I've finished enjoying my travels... If they are going to be reverted now i wonder if i should even bother? Also the templates made editing on mobile trickier than necessary. I'd highly recommend building some kind of gadget for making that as easy as possible. (E.g. form with input fields) Jdlrobson (talk)

I restored the template. I don't know how to program, but since the template is apparently problematic for editing from some mobile phones, indeed someone should work on that. I have a rather dumb phone and find it nearly impossible to edit from it, but I don't think much about that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:49, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

I've started the topic at Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub#Are listing templates a problem on mobile phones? Please participate, because people may want to know what kind of platform you're using on what kind of phone, and what kinds of problems you're having. In the meantime, let me assure you that I won't revert edits of listings you're working on that have deleted fields, since you've explained the problems you're having.

I have to say, you're the first user I've encountered who's removed listing fields for a valid reason, instead of just because they felt like - or, at any rate, who told me so. Lots of users remove or change the order of listing fields completely arbitrarily, and others add extra fields that don't show outside of editing mode. Trust me on that. But you're obviously not in that category, so please continue contributing, and enjoy your travels! Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:57, 2 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hi, Jdlrobson. The pagebanner you inserted into that article is nice, but it seems to be too small, as it ends about 2 1/2 inches shy of the right margin on my browser. Does it span the entire width of your screen? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:01, 20 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hey :) Take a look at https://en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers%27_pub#Update and hopefully everything will be clear for my motivations. I agree it needs further tweaking :) Jdlrobson (talk) 05:41, 20 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Well, it'll be great if it works. Right now, it doesn't seem to be working on enough browsers. For the record, I'm using Firefox on a Lenovo laptop that's running Windows 8.1. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:06, 20 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Looking closely at the image it's maximum resolution seems to be 1,024 × 488 pixels - so it's fine for anyone viewing on screens up to that resolution. Is there an advised minimum width resolution for these banners? Which screen resolutions does the site optimise for? I have a few photos from Caye Caulker of my own that are 1920 × 1080 but they are not as good as this particular image... :-/ Jdlrobson (talk) 15:57, 20 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

According to Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition:

Banners need to be at least 1800 pixels wide to accommodate wide screens (images do not scale up to fit the size of the screen). The recommended dimensions are 2100 x 300 pixels.

Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:03, 20 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Could you add documentation for the "origin" parameter to Template:Pagebanner/doc? I'm not clear on what it's doing - I thought it was cropping banners, but San Francisco looks the same to me with or without the param. Thanks! -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:38, 28 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hello, French Wikivoyage use banners on help and wikivoyage namespace but the page banner extention we use now doesn't display them on those pages. Do you know the reasons? Shoud I report a bug on Phabricator? --Adehertogh (talk) 10:35, 5 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

By default it is only enabled on the main namespace. Please do open a phabricator task and clarify which namespaces you would like this enabled on! (Be as specific as possible - do you want all namespaces or only certain ones?). Jdlrobson (talk) 18:45, 5 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks for answer.--Adehertogh (talk) 13:36, 6 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

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Jon Katz
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Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 13:26, 14 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

	The Wikivoyage Barncompass
	Thanks for all of your working in fixing phabricator:T121135. Hopefully I'm not jinxing things by writing this, but I haven't seen an in-article TOC on a page with a pagebanner since your changes went live, so something that was obviously a very obscure thing to try and track down now seems to be resolved. Very much appreciated! -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:56, 13 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! As a keen traveller I'm just happy to see Wikivoyage grow and be so forward thinking! Keep innovating guys and I'll do the best I can to support you! Jdlrobson (talk) 19:22, 13 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi.

I saw you use the term "notability" in the edit summary of this edit. In general, notability is not a criterium we use. We tend to focus on the question of whether a place has accommodation and for travel topics on their relevance to travel. There is overlap with notability, for sure, but those are not the same thing. At any rate, I cannot make a judgment call as to your addition or the removal thereof, but I thought I'd let you know. Best wishes. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:23, 22 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for this clarification. Yes this place is definitely not somewhere you'd sleep. It's a small Mayan site that you'd probably day trip to. I started writing an article for it and then concluded I would be hard pressed to write anything more than a get in section and a description. Thanks for alerting me to that page. I will cite that in future rather than notability :) thanks for helping me get familiar with this project! Jdlrobson (talk) 02:52, 22 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Seeing that you have been to several places in Central America, could you have a look at that article as well as the Nicaragua article and do some edits on them? I have tried to get them up to par, but still find them somewhat lacking and I hope you can give a bit of additional insight; plus your English is probably better than mine. Thanks. Hobbitschuster (talk) 03:13, 23 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your edits to Nicaragua and associated articles. Please also have a look at the bottommost discussion in Talk:Nicaragua, I would like to hear your input. Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:34, 24 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hello, Jdlrobson, and thanks so much for adding content to a slew of articles and updating things!

I've come across a couple of format and style issues in some of your edits. First, please make sure the "Go next" section is before the codes at the end of every article, and that there's only one per article (see this edit). Second, inline Wikipedia links aren't used in this guide (see WV:Links to Wikipedia).

All the best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:48, 23 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thank you User:Ikan Kekek. With respect to the Wikipedia link... if a page doesn't exist in wikivoyage (but should do because it is a good place to visit and WP:Sleep here applies is it better to leave a red link, start a placeholder page for that redlink (might be as simple as "X is a town in country y") or leave no link at all?

I tend to edit mostly on mobile and I'm keen to start a lot of pages when I have more time. The problem with red links or leaving no links is I forget about them altogether... but some kind of stub would put it on my watchlist allowing me to come back to it. What's advised here?

Jdlrobson (talk) 22:18, 23 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

It's really a case-by-case question. If you think there's likely to be enough content for a worthwhile Wikivoyage article, by all means start one. If it turns out that the content should be merged into another article, that's no disaster. Other times, it might be best to eliminate the red link and just bold the name. The test at Wikivoyage:What is an article is not a bright line, so use your own judgment and don't worry too much about whether you're right at the margins. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:46, 23 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Do keep in mind that "we do not delete real places" and hence the only thing that will ever happen to an article you create but that does not have sufficient content will be its redirection. Even if said redirect is or might be rather pointless, such as Central Germany Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:56, 23 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Pinging you as the resident mobile expert... I'm on the road and pulled up my phone to look something up about a town I was in and realized that the mobile view of Wikivoyage does not include a "What's nearby?" link in a prominent location - it's hidden in the left nav, rather than shown under the "Search Wikivoyage" input where it would be more obvious (see [1]). Do you know if that's something that can be changed via the MediaWiki: namespace, or is it hard-coded into a PHP template or something like that? I checked the online documentation but didn't immediately see a way to change it. Thanks for any insights! -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:37, 28 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

It's intentionally in the main menu as it's a problem of space and confusing the UI (disclaimer: not a designer, so can't truly speak to the reasons for that) but consider a user viewing Paris - would a "What's nearby link" at the top of the page be interpreted as what's near Paris or near the owner of the device? It's also one of our lesser used features - it gets the least clicks in the menu, so moving this into a more prominent position would open up questions such as "why is the watchlist hidden in the menu?"

A third issue is with the feature itself - https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Nearby#/page/San Francisco - it returns districts and the scope of the search is limited so in some American cities you can get very few/zero results.

You can of course play around with adding it to your own experience by editing User:Wrh2/mobile.css.

Mobile is all about trade-offs really. Jdlrobson (talk) 08:46, 3 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the response. A "what's nearby" feature is generally prominently promoted on most travel-related mobile apps (Tripadvisor, Expedia, etc), so if you are ever involved in a discussion that might lead to it an option to better promote it for Wikivoyage, please let the interested parties know that Wikimedia's travel site might benefit by having the option to change things. Cheers! -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:53, 3 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Has your account been hijacked? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:25, 28 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Nope.. just wrestling with cached page issues, my own personal confusion and some bad edits... sorry about that! Jdlrobson (talk) 17:06, 28 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

OK. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:02, 29 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Swept in from the pub

I'm planning a trip to Panama City and was disappointed to find no information on climate there. However. frustratingly this information is in a table over on the Wikipedia article. I figured maybe there was an easy way to define climate tables (e.g. Wikidata) but couldn't find an easy way to do so. Is this something a bot could do? e.g. copy and paste across climate data when none is available or something a Lua Template could do? Thoughts welcomed! Jdlrobson (talk) 21:32, 29 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

I've seen articles in which the climate data are copied from Wikipedia with a citation, but the very best way to do this is to find some official climate data bureau that posts statistics and link it by way of citation for the chart. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:09, 29 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

Please take a look at wv:ds. Thanks. Ground Zero (talk) 05:04, 6 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

please assume good faith. Seems like Wales was added by VisualEditor autocompleting ":w". Why are inline links a bad idea? I'm planning a trip for Trinidad and Tobago right now and I want to learn more about these places. Links make complete sense here. Why remove them when there's no alternative? Happy to talk about this at the Traveller's pub as necessary as I think such a policy if it exists, it should be revisited. Jdlrobson (talk) 05:08, 6 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

When I saw your edits, I thought they were vandalism. But I checked your history, and saw that your are an established, constructive editor, so I figured there had to be a better reason -- maybe you were trying to be funny. I didn't count on listing editor problems. But I'm sure that you would agree that linking a zoo to Wales is problematic.

As far as the Wikipedia links go, they do violate current policy, which does exist -- I provided a link for you already. If you disagree with the policy, you can propose a change at Wikivoyage talk:Links to Wikipedia, but as I'm sure you know from Wikipedia, disputed changes are restored after a policy change is made, not before. If you do start a discussion on the talk page, you can draw attention to it in the pub or at Wikivoyage:Requests for comments. Ground Zero (talk) 06:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

RMaung (WMF) 14:32, 9 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

RMaung (WMF) 19:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

RMaung (WMF) 17:03, 4 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

See the block log. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:14, 8 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hello, Jon, after a successful RfIA, you are now an interface administrator. Congratulations!

Once again, thank you for volunteering! Your work is more than appreciated :-).

Best, --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:47, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks all! Hoping I can be helpful here! Watch this space! :) Jdlrobson (talk) 18:41, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello Jdlrobson, I've noticed a new issue with the listing editor. When adding a new listing, the type of listing (see, do, eat, etc.) used to be set automatically, I guess based on the name of the section it's being added to. (For example in this edit earlier this month the type was correctly set to "buy".) But in this recent edit where I added a listing to the "Eat" section, the type was set to "listing" instead of "eat". I was using the beta version, but it's possible that this issue affects the main version too. Could you please take a look and see if one of the recent changes to the listing editor may have affected this behavior? —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sadly I think it is more likely to relate to changes upstream in the MediaWiki parser which are live on all skins except Vector 2022 :-( Can you try Vector 2022 skin and see if you can recreate the problem there as that would help me narrow this down. Jdlrobson (talk) 01:07, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Looks like you're right, in the Vector 2022 skin I don't see this issue: [2]. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:22, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Tracked in https://github.com/jdlrobson/Gadget-Workshop/issues/7 Jdlrobson (talk) 22:52, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jdlrobson, I'm finding that in the Oakland article I can use the listing editor to edit listings in the "See", "Do", "Learn", "Buy", "Drink", "Sleep", and "Cope" sections, but not in the "Eat" section. Is it possible this is because in the "Eat" section the listings are under a level 4 heading (====Budget====) instead of level 2 or 3? Or is something else going wrong? It would be great if you could take a look. Thanks. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:00, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Tracked in https://github.com/jdlrobson/Gadget-Workshop/issues/6 Jdlrobson (talk) 22:52, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This might be fixed now. Can you try out the beta, making sure "Version 3.2.0 Report bug" shows in the bottom left and tell me if the issue persists? Thanks in advance. Jdlrobson (talk) 04:54, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seems to be fixed in beta, with the version number you mentioned. Thanks! —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:52, 27 June 2024 (UTC)Reply