User talk:LPfi Voyage Tips and guide

See also: User talk:LPfi/archive

Contents

I have no idea where that phrase came from. Thanks for removing it. Ground Zero (talk) 21:15, 9 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

It was added by an IP. I reverted it two hours before your edit. –LPfi (talk) 21:20, 9 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

got it. Thanks. Ground Zero (talk) 21:37, 9 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

)

LPfi, I am listening to what you are saying about not engaging with him in order to avoid conflict, and I do. I let some things slide. For a while after you blocked him last June he seemed to have changed, but then in November he returned to using the rollback button as a weapon. I do believe that tolerating that behaviour will encourage him to continue it, so yes, I think it is important to stand up to him, rather than just backing away. Thank you for your intervention in this matter. Ground Zero (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

But I want to address your instruction on his talk page to both of us to stop edit-warring. I have tried to engage HS in discussion, but he refuses. I had made my argument for the change on the talk page, and waited 18 days for a response. Four minutes after I made the edit, he reverted it, with no discussion on the talk page. I appealed to him on his own talk page, and got no response. Unfortunately, reverting his edits is the only thing that gets his attention. Taking the high road and waiting for responses from him that never come just rewards him for ignoring Wikivoyage policies. Ground Zero (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Ground Zero: Thank you for these notes, and sorry about not responding earlier. I thought I had to sleep on it first.

It is a pity that nobody reacted to your article talk page message. Somebody should have made the changes instead of you, or said that the wording is OK and does not need a change. If we had done that, we had avoided the argument among you two. Edit warring is still not the way to act; if we don't take our responsibility, then please post a note on the pub or the rfc page, and try to comment as little as possible yourself. I hope that will be enough to make something happen. If the community does not back you up, then you cannot get it your way, it just boils down to fighting, and at that point you both are wrong.

As to HS not responding: it seems he feels cornered. If he responds on the matter, the discussion will deteriorate, if he doesn't, you won't leave him alone. I think he made his point quit clearly in the end. In his place I would have made a short comment right away, stating that I don't want to discuss with you, to avoid an argument, but feel I am right anyway. Pressing him will not make things better. He is a valuable contributor, and working together is much better than having the arguments.

So I feel it is the rest of the community that must handle this. I hope we are up to it, but I think that the less you engage in it, the better our chances to get things run smooth. I hope you can leave things alone when the issues are minor. I for one do not like if somebody "corrects" my style to something worse. I seldom have that issue here, as I appreciate your improving my contributions, but I do have it from time to time on sv-wp, when I feel somebody just dumbs down the text, removing any elegance and precision (fortunately, the occurences are rare).

–LPfi (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

LPfi, thank you for your response. HS has used "other people" as a tactic several times. He has refused to respond to me, demanded that I get other people involved, and he remained silent. Usually, other people agree with my changes, and I implement them. I don't agree that refusing to participate in a discussion is an acceptable response, and that he should get his way because he doesn't want to discuss something. Further, it shouldn't be on me to try to get others to back me up, and other people shouldn't have to get involved every time he demands getting his way. As you know, if other people disagree with me, I work towards a compromise, or I accept the result and back down. But I always state my case in the talk page, and accept the result. If he won't participate in the discussion, there is no way of finding a compromise. HS does not accept the results of community decisions -- he just goes on doing his own thing. How much should we continue to coddle him and tolerate this behaviour?

In this case, I believed -- and Ikan Keken agreed -- that it was a matter of Wikivoyage style that was being violated. I don't think we should spend a lot of time arguing over issues that have already been decided. If someone wants to change the policy, they should start a discussion on the policy talk page, rather than kicking up a fuss when someone tries to apply the policy.

For the time-being, I will go back to raising any dispute in the pub. But I will also raise the question of whether it is a good use of the community's time. Thank you for your involvement in this matter. Regards, Ground Zero (talk) 20:23, 2 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi LPfi! Thank you so much for reinserting my Babel box with working syntax! I was struggling to do it myself! You've been very helpful. -La petite française

De rien, La petite française. I have had to look it up more than once myself, so I understand it is easy to not get it working. –LPfi (talk) 11:25, 8 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

In Norway, we refer to Danish, Swedish and Norwegian as Scandinavian languages but I guess linguistically the islands are also regarded as Scandinavian languages. --Erik den yngre (talk) 11:51, 8 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

According to the Wikipedias, the groups are "fastlandsskandinaviska" och "ö‑skandinaviska" in Swedish, and Continental Scandinavian and Insular Scandinavian in English. This implies "Scandinavian" is ambiguous, as both groups seem to be some sort of Scandinavian (although Scandinavian alone does not seem to be used in the article; "Nordic languages" is noted as a synonym to the North Germanic languages). I think using "Scandinavian languages" should be avoided in the article. –LPfi (talk) 12:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

I removed, better avoid ambiguities. --Erik den yngre (talk) 12:34, 9 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

	The Aussie Barncompass
	This Barncompass is to show appreciation for helping me maintain Tourist Drive 33. --TravelAroundOz (talk) 10:47, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

	The Wikivoyage Barncompass
	See the full message at User talk:LivelyRatification SHB2000 (talk) 12:04, 23 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

I noticed you unarchived a section on my talk page. Please don't do this; it is already dormant and it is the user's (in this case, my) responsibility to archive. AnotherEditor144 (talk) 12:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

When I see somebody doing odd things like editing out listings from a joke article, I want to see previous discussions on the talk page. Does it seem that other editors trust this user and cooperates with them or are there a lot of complaints. Is this something that has been discussed earlier? Year-old discussions are of less interest, but those from less than a week ago should certainly be kept visible.

You said you archived those discussions. Where are your archives? I didn't find any subpages to your user page (such as User:AnotherEditor144/Archive_2020). Wading through history is not the thing one should have to do. This is especially inconvenient when more or less every thread has to be looked up individually.

Archiving is the user's responsibility. But it is not up to the user to decide when a thread can be deleted.

–LPfi (talk) 17:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

My archives are at s:User:AnotherEditor144/Archives. When a thread can be deleted is also the user's responsibility, since it is going to be archived anyway.

"Wading through history is not the thing one should have to do." This is true of almost any other archive. AnotherEditor144 (talk) 15:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi LPfi, as I was just following examples of what I considered as good practice, that I had seen elsewhere in Wikivoyage, could you just clarify what you meant in this edit summary, where you say "this is Get in, and people will understand the ferries go back also - raise the issue at the pub if you think we should change our praxis". Specifically what you meant by "Get in" and "at the pub". Also is the "praxis" you refer to documented somewhere, to give me a chance to familiarise myself with any other of this type of quirk, so I don't waste any more time like this? Thanks. DeFacto (talk) 09:20, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

We have a standard section Get in, where the subsection you edited is (By train). The section is about "how to get to the destination" (see Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates/Sections#Get in). How to get in the other direction is not explicitly covered, although of course, if a train does not go the other way that should probably be mentioned and where services are sparse I sometimes include a note on getting back.

The point is that there is no need to say "between" instead of "from", and when the latter wording is less convoluted it should be used unless there are specific reasons not to. The previous version and yours:

to London from Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris

and

between London and Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris

The "between" wording introduces a second "and", making sentence parsing a little more difficult. I, for one, would use a few tenths of a second more reading it – for no good reason.

If you look at well developed articles, e.g. those that recently have been featured (see Previous Destinations of the month), you will see they mostly use the "from" wording.

I hope you could start adding content instead of trying to change details in how we describe things. When you are more accustomed to the ways over here you can return to naming and wording details – at least you'll know what is random thoughtlessness, mistakes or sloppiness, and what in fact is established practice.

The pub is Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub, which is the main place to discuss among the community, similar to the village pump on Commons and most wikipedias.

–LPfi (talk) 12:50, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Wow, thanks for all that LPfi! That's enlightened me no end. I will now, hopefully, be far less annoying to other editors here. I've never heard of "Get in" as a standalone phrase before, and it always annoys me when I see a road or railway described as running from A to B, rather than between A and B. I suppose there's an introduction somewhere that I missed, that would have told me about these conventions. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to challenge established norms in the "pub", there seems to be a very cold welcome given to newcomers to WT, if my recent experiences are anything to go by. DeFacto (talk) 17:04, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. I think there is no introduction anywhere except the ones linked from the welcome message you got; people are supposed to learn from what they see other people doing, especially from tweaks or reverts of their contributions, and the edit summaries or talk page messages in connection with them. You are welcome to challenge established norms in the "pub" – when you have got a feeling for how people think about different issues. I think the receipt for getting a cold welcome is starting with challenging norms and engaging in policy discussions before having contributed real content. There is a reason why things are like they are – sometimes just because nobody got the idea or did the work, but more often because any alternatives have their problems. Either way, strangers popping up telling people how they should do this or that is seldom appreciated. Once you have done the legwork things are different. –LPfi (talk) 18:02, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Agree with the above 100% (was going to say 1000%, but that's just silly). I for one am very happy to gain an editor who knows about Ireland, something we've been seriously lacking until recently despite failed attempts to attract Irish Wikipedians, and sincerely hope you want to contribute content for articles related to that country. And even if your main interests lie elsewhere, an extra pair of hands to do the legwork (aha!) is always welcome.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:13, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Good Morning LPfi,

Just wanted to ask if I can tell the reader to go 80km/h in a 100km/h in Tourist Drive 33? The limit here is 100, but the last 4 times I went there, people were only doing 80, and not 100 simply due to safety. So, may I write about it or would it be considered as an opinion? Even, the advisory limit is 75 km/h and bends are frequent. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 12:16, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: There is no prohibition on opinions at Wikivoyage. I'd also add some explanation, similar to what you are telling above, perhaps "Although the nominal speed limit is 100 km/h, driving at that speed is dangerous given the road conditions, and most people keep to 80 km/h, less in the bends" or "... 100 km/h, the officially recommended speed is 75 km/h, which is considerably safer". I added a similar remark to Driving in Finland: "Where minor roads default to 80 km/h, use your judgement. Often you need to be a rally driver to keep that speed, while you never know what is behind the next turn". My impression about advisory limits over here is that you'd be off the road unless you respect them (while speeding otherwise is normal practice). I don't know whether that is true for Australia. –LPfi (talk) 13:01, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Often, our speed limits are too low (especially in Western NSW - minimum 130 or 140, but I've seen people go 150) but this one is too high. Rather unusual to see 100 on this road. Most roads are 110 or 100 in NSW but this is not suitable for 100 at all. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 13:05, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

I suppose that is like our 80, the default where nothing else has been decided, which means it applies on most minor roads in the countryside, even those where it is hard to drive 30. 130+ feels very much, but I suppose the distances play a role. Up in Finnish Lapland 100 km/h is typical (despite the roads being undivided two-lane), while that's the typical limit on motorways in the southern (more densely populated) part of the country. Only a few motorways have 120 km/h, and only in summer. –LPfi (talk) 13:14, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

I was a huge fan of the NT open speed limits. I sadly never been on it but I've had family who've gone 180 or even 190. But still, there were no fatalities on that road and no speed related accidents. And the reason it was removed: change of party in the next election. And after that there were plenty of fatigue related fatalities. And 130 isn't uncommon here, considering that many places can be around 400-500km away from the next fuel stop or even town. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 13:20, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Also don't know what's the future speed limit on the future and new E39 motorway expressway on the west coast of Norway. Curious to see how the floating tunnel idea'll work on the fjords. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 13:34, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

[edit conflict] Yes, I understand. Even if the Nordic countries are sparsely inhabited by European standards, and Finland the most sparsely populated in the EU, we don't have that kind of distances. 500 km is halfway up through the country, and you can take your car on the sleeper train when going to Oulu or Rovaniemi, which otherwise would be the typical 500–1000 km drive (Nokia people would often take the train or fly Espoo–Oulu, as those had the two main Nokia facilities besides Salo, Rovaniemi is a hub for domestic winter vacations). –LPfi (talk) 13:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

I have not been following that project. According to Driving in Norway, the highest speed limit in the country is 110 km/h. I'd say crazy Norwegians, with the oil money to back up such ideas. –LPfi (talk) 13:56, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Norway has some of the longest road tunnels in the world. Oil money helps, but so does geology (Norway is largely relatively stable rocks which are easier to tunnel through than sand or geologically "busy" areas). Still, at a certain length you run into ventilation issues and I'll be curious how they'll solve them for their longest tunnels... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:19, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

I'm pretty sure the only 110 is the motorway connecting to Gardnermoen airport. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 21:10, 19 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Swept in from the pub

I noticed our country article template says:

If there are local or national safety contacts (or even standards such as "911" in the USA), note them.

I'd prefer there to be a note anyway. That way reading the country guide is enough for knowing at what level you should search for the numbers, and whether you have to update for every new city (or neighbourhood?). For editors it is good to know, as those numbers would be essential lower down in the hierarchy if there is no country-wide standard – and you'd know to note if they are missing at the relevant level. –LPfi (talk) 17:16, 12 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

I don't fully understand what change you want to make. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 12 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

I'd like any country page to have a mention about whether there are standard emergency numbers in the country, and if not, point to the Stay safe sections at whatever level they should be mentioned at. And any article at that level should either have the numbers or some kind of pointer. –LPfi (talk) 12:43, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Would you like for me to run the nom process at m:SRGP. Happy to do so. Billinghurst (talk) 08:38, 18 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Billinghurst: I suppose it would be sensible for me to apply, and your doing it for me would be nice. I just haven't got around doing it, thinking I should read up on matters first, which probably isn't that important. –LPfi (talk) 09:56, 18 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Trust and need are the important things here. There is nothing to read. Billinghurst (talk) 10:54, 18 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

:-)

I think my being admin on three projects, including on sv-wp since 2010, should talk some for the first. –LPfi (talk) 11:04, 18 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I would think so, and they were mentioned. You should have got a ping for the nom => m:SRGP#abusefilter-helper for LPfi. Probably worth a moment to accept or decline the nom, or comment otherwise. It is a while since I have done a nom, such a quaint thing of wikitime past. :-) Billinghurst (talk) 11:08, 18 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

And thank you again. I was approved (I supposed the one closing the request would ping me, so forgot to check on it). –LPfi (talk) 12:59, 2 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi, could I have patroller here? The only reason is to gain access to the rollback tool, since TwinkleGlobal is not as good as the native rollback tool. Leaderboard (talk) 08:26, 19 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Leaderboard: I am not doing much patrolling, so I haven't been following your edits. I believe you are doing a good job, but I don't want to base my judgement on a feeling, and I don't want to make a study. You'd better ask some of those who have been reverting/blocking along with you, and thus should have a good picture of your work. –LPfi (talk) 09:09, 19 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi OK. I don't do any patrolling (only reverting LTA edits here), so it's not a big thing. Thanks in advance. Leaderboard (talk) 09:13, 19 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I've actually wanted to put a message on the pub to give you autopatrolled status. Sadly didn't have the guts to. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 09:24, 19 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I checked the histories of a few articles where you had been reverting, and it seemed there nearly always had been some admins also reverting alongside you, often also protecting the page (didn't check the timespan, but no useful edits in between). –LPfi (talk) 10:32, 19 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

	The European Barncompass
	This Barncompass is to show appreciation for your great work on Swedish and Finnish articles on Wikivoyage. Hälsningar, --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 13:15, 24 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

:-) –LPfi (talk) 13:39, 24 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Just had a look at your babel language scale, and I have to say, you certainly know a lot of languages. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 02:54, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Not extraordinary over here. Most of my classmates that continued to university studied four languages in addition to our mother tongue, like me, in school or at the university. Most people not aiming for a vocational career choose to study three in school (Finnish and English are mostly compulsory). The German is extra: I stayed some time in a family where I had to speak the language, sort of, mostly gestures; we had no common language. I had caught some of the language from films etc. (we use subtitles, not dubbing – and Low German has influenced Swedish quite a bit). There are public sector sponsored courses available for anybody for an assortment of languages, if you are so inclined, and knowing e.g. Estonian or Russian would certainly be useful. –LPfi (talk) 06:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Interesting! I do know a little bit of some indigenous Australian languages, but I've always wondered how many people in Europe can speak multiple languages. I guess this explains everything. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 06:32, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

My choir leader said languages are easy after the sixth :-)

We are much more exposed to foreign languages over here than what you are. In my generation everyone went on Interrail as teenagers, so you really got to use any language you dared speak. It is also quite common to go as au pair or exchange student abroad, and there are quite a few foreign students in Turku that you can mingle with if you want. Also professionally languages are useful, as much export is to Germany and Russia, in addition to Nordic or English-speaking countries, and French and German are important in the European Union. In the choir the repertoire included pieces in seventeen European languages (off the top of my head).

In the Nordic countries we don't dub films and television programmes, and people who want to see non-mainstream films usually go to see Spanish and French ones. In television English dominates (beside the domestic and Nordic supply), but there are regularly German crime films and the odd film in other languages (a series on Spain during Franco has been going on for years, and there was an Italian one not long ago).

And in Finland we have Finnish as bonus. I grew up in a bilingual family, so never had to struggle with the "other domestic" as it is called.

But I think it is nice that you have learnt indigenous languages. Is that common among non-indigenous Australians? I try to listen to Ođđasat in Sámi when I happen to be by the radio at the right time, but I only know a few words. It is not too close to Finnish, but there are some common words and loan words that one can recognise. I hope I'll get a better grasp by time.

–LPfi (talk) 07:12, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

The user does not appear to be editing in good faith, as his CentralAuth indicates spamming on Wikipedia. You may wish to block him temporarily. Edit: it is hard to say whether his Wikipedia edits are deliberate spamming, but you may want to keep a watch on him. Leaderboard (talk) 12:34, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Leaderboard: Thanks. Yes. I got that vibe here, but as long as he does not edit at more than that one place, and is discussing, I think we should give him some leeway. Let's see how it develops. –LPfi (talk) 12:39, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I feel like it was him who created the harassment account against both of us. But only GRP thinks I'm an Antandrus sock. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 12:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Could this user have also been paid editing. I noticed the discussion at w:User_talk:Bonadea#dnata. Might also explain their continued edit-warring. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 13:03, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

And this edit looks like vandalism at best to me. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 13:05, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

We welcome paid editors, sa long as they play by our rules, and the linked edit was probably a try at defending his position. People not too used to Mediawiki do odd edits. –LPfi (talk) 13:22, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi there, I just wanted to ask you if I could have my talk page protected for another month. GRP's not aware of my IP talk page, and the day the protection expired, it got vandalised. Even if, the situation could be resolved if 82 creates an account, but I'll leave it like that for now. Thanks, SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 09:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I was too late, it seems, I just extended the protection seeing your edit comment. –LPfi (talk) 09:33, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 09:36, 29 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi there, congratulations your 20000th edit on the 19th of June (Sunday) on the article Karasjok. You've done a lot of great work on this site, and also, do you contribute to the Svenscka Wikivoyage? The message is a little late, but I only realised today. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 11:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. I haven't looked at the statistics. I have done very little at sv-wp [oops: sv-wv]. Last I looked there seemed to be too little of a community for me to see it worthwhile, especially as I think the templates/the layout should be changed, i.e. much should be reworked later. I would like the pages on Finland to be good there (big possible "market"), and perhaps I will put an effort in it at some point – but that should be an effort big enough to bring Finland to usable. –LPfi (talk) 12:12, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

No worries. I should say that while I'm more than happy to be a sysop on certain projects, sv.wv seems more in between. I don't mind being a sysop on the two tiny terrible Nauruan wikis since I'm running it alone (or at least, that's what it feels like) but when it has a bit more people, I'm not too big of a fan, but if it had a lot more people (like en.voy), it seems to me a more worthwhile and once too big like en.wp, I'm not willing to do much there. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 12:17, 21 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

	The Ashmore and Cartier Islands Barncompass
	For spending the whole arvo yesterday making Ashmore and Cartier Islands which initially sounded like a joke article, to more a proper, serious article that actually summarises all the information needed. Well deserved. Something that was needed for months, but you finally did the job :) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 11:29, 23 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

:-) –LPfi (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

(: SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 12:55, 23 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

From Joensuu, I quote:

“

Taxis run on fixed routes according to schedule, but will deviate from its route slightly if needed.

”

Do taxis really run on fixed routes? Or is it a translation issue with the website that Vkem straight off copied off. Here's the original text:

Demand responsive taxes operate in Kiihtelysvaara, Tuupovaara, Eno and Uimaharju. Taxes run on fixed routes according to schedule, but will deviate from its route slightly if needed. Call the taxi at least one day before by calling the driver directly, indicate your destination and agree the schedule with the driver. You can pay your journey only in cash.

I've tried to copyedit it, but I want to know how the demand responsive taxis work in Finland. Do they run on fixed routes? Taxis are meant to be flexible, after all they're one's cabbie driver that will take them wherever one requests and within a reasonable distance. Why do taxis have schedules? I thought taxi drivers just go when a customer asks them. The description differs a lot from what I know as a taxi.

If you could clarify what that means, that would be awesome.

(p.s. if you haven't noticed already on User talk:Ikan Kekek#Vkem, would you think taking the autopatroller flag off him be a good idea?)

Thanks! --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:04, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: The quote is from the By bus section, isn't it? I don't know the terminology in English and systems vary from municipality to municipality, but I suppose the system is like the "call taxis" or "line taxis" in Pargas, the taxiline buses in Ingå, the flexible bus lines in Naantali and the airport shuttles for some ski resorts.

They are called taxis in the Joensuu article (and elsewhere) because the transport is arranged by taxi entrepreneurs in cooperation with the municipality, using their ordinary vehicles. Many taxi companies, especially in the countryside, have transport of school children and disabled people as a central part of their business, some also have a charter business, so they have minivans and minibuses in their fleet, suitable for this use when a normal car would be insufficient.

The original text you quoted makes full sense for me. Does it for you after reading my explanation? I suppose we might want to add a section on these kinds of systems to Finland#By bus, as it seems some context is needed for people to trust they understand what they read. You might also want to read what I wrote about them in Bus travel: "Where there is a need for public transport, but no economically viable market, ..."

–LPfi (talk) 10:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the response. Now it makes sense to me. It also makes sense why it's in the By bus section. :) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:37, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

Swept in from the pub

I'd like a discussion on how much we should write in understand, in this case in Talk, where Roovinn has been cutting down extensively. The last example is Finland, where the section on the Swedish speaking population was cut down to

Swedish is the mother tongue of 5.6 % of Finns. [--- section on Finnish ---] Swedish speakers can be found in areas close to the Swedish border, Närpes, Korsnäs, Larsmo, Vaasa, Porvoo and the Åland Islands.

There are no Swedish speaking Finns for two hundred (?) kilometres from the Swedish border that I know, and the mentioned localities cover perhaps 1/4 of the Swedish-speaking population. I'd request some more carefulness, but that's not what to discuss here.

Points removed include:

• [Swedish is] closely related to Norwegian and Danish
• The Swedish speakers are concentrated along most of the coast, with smaller communities in some cities elsewhere.

and

• In Åland and the Swedish parts of Ostrobothina, people typically speak little or no Finnish. In traditionally Swedish-majority towns like Vaasa (Vasa) and Porvoo (Borgå) nearly half the population is Swedish-speaking and service in Swedish is expected by many Swedish-speaking locals. In cities like Helsinki and Turku, on the other hand, there is a lively Swedish cultural scene and most people know enough Swedish to deal with simple conversations you engage in as a tourist and often at least somewhat beyond, but living would be quite tough without knowledge of Finnish.

was condensed into "In cities like Helsinki and Turku, most people know enough of Swedish to deal with simple conservations."

Don't we want the removed information? Was this excessively wordy?

Swedish is of course a minority language, so a traveller could get along just speaking English and ignoring the language relations – in fact, many Swedes do just that. On the other hand, Swedish is one of the two "national languages" and understanding the subtleties around this subject could help avoid being an elephant in the porcelain shop.

–LPfi (talk) 06:45, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

And then there is the issue about style and including context. For Rovaniemi:

Because of its central location and status as a provincial capital, Rovaniemi has become a center of education in Finnish Lapland. [...], as many as one out of five people are university level students.

→

The city also offers plenty of educational opportunities, and has the feel of a university town. [...] have about 10,000 students in total.

Also here details were removed, such as

Being not to big a town (the radius is about a kilometre), the best way to get around [is by foot]

→

Being not too big of a town, the best way to get around [is by foot]

–LPfi (talk) 07:02, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

In my opinion, I don't think cutting down extensively is a good idea. This just leads to confusion, and sometimes, detail is needed. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 07:24, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

It's great to be pithy when no essential or really useful information is removed. However, we should remove useful information with great caution. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:58, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

On the 3 points that were removed, the first one is probably the least useful (Swedish is related to Norwegian and Danish) and may have a reasonable case to be removed. The other two points however would be relevant for the traveller (where Swedish is predominant as opposed to Finnish). If you're planning a trip to Finland and it includes a few days in Åland, it's important to know that brushing up on your Finnish won't be of much help there. Gizza ^(roam) 09:57, 23 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

This isn't something about Wikivoyage, but I might just let you know about this since you're quite active on numerous Swedish WMF projects, being an admin on two. But sv.wikiversity is closing, and I thought you may want to also propose whether it should stay or be closed. Here's the link: m:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Swedish Wikiversity. Cheers, SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:28, 19 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I have not participated in wikiversities, but I put the page on my watchlist. Vätte seems to suggest there will be activity on the project. –LPfi (talk) 11:37, 19 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

Without revealing too much info to the public, the spam blacklist log is different to the abuse log. You can see the spamming here. Cheers, --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:46, 22 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: Thank you. I see four attempts to add the URL to one article, but I cannot see the attempted edit itself. But the old URL is alive, so I suppose you are right. –LPfi (talk) 13:37, 22 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

I don't think you can even see the attempted edit. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 21:49, 22 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

I suppose so. Which means one should not try to infer too much from it. But the existence of the old site, with a different name for the owner, is enough that the "new domain" isn't very convincing. I don't know that the block is necessary, though. –LPfi (talk) 07:46, 23 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

I blocked them as block evasion since Ikan Kekek blocked them for a month last week. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:52, 23 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

I think such users cannot be assumed to know our procedures, and we should understand their frustration. Now that they are discussing, we should allow them to. The domains are definitely related, not a random other business trying to get rid of a competitor. –LPfi (talk) 10:57, 23 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

OK, but what I still don't get is if the user claims their business domain has changed, why are they putting the old one? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:17, 24 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

I don't know that they have been adding the old domain. I suppose they have been changing the old one to the new one, and that is what got them blocked and the new domain blacklisted. Now, I interpret the situation such that the business has been split. We don't know which domain belongs to the "true" successor, and it is even possible that we should list both – or neither. It is difficult to judge from across the globe with no neutral part to consult. –LPfi (talk) 06:25, 24 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

Just to confirm, do taxi stations in Finland have a phone number to it. I noticed this edit. A taxi station in Australia is similar to a street bus stop, except it has no timetable, and hailing a taxi often takes about an hour. But do taxi stations in Finland have phone numbers, and are they in a building, or are they just similar to the US or Australia? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:09, 10 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: There are taxi ranks (colloquially: "taxi poles"), which are like what you describe: a sign in the street and a queue of taxis (some of the queues mostly empty), and at air ports, ferry arrival etc. also a queue of customers. These are not called taxi stations.

Then we have taxi stations. These have the sign, but also rest facilities for taxi drivers. Before mobile phones this was often where you called to have a taxi. Either any driver who happened to be there would answer, or there might be a separate person answering calls and calling taxis by radio. In cities the calls were handled by more sophisticated call centres.

The answering of calls is now mostly handled by country-wide call centres, but some taxi stations remain, and some have kept a landline phone, like, it seems, the linked Kankaanpää. Probably calls will be answered by any driver who happens to be there.

–LPfi (talk) 05:24, 11 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

I see. Makes sense. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:13, 11 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

A user recently moved Gujo and Omihachiman to Gujō and Ōmihachiman respectively, but by our naming conventions (Tokyo, not Tōkyō) and using the most common names, they should be moved back. I left a comment on the person's user page, but then I remembered I can't move it back without removing attribution. Can you do this?

For some more proof of common usage being without the accents: Gujo travel sites: [1], [2], [3] Gujo Tourism Association: [4] Gujo City's website: [5]

Omihachiman in travel sites: [6], [7], [8], [9] Omihachiman Official Tourist Site: [10] Omihachiman City website: [11]

Even in a basic Google search, none of the results aside from Wikipedia use the accents, so I think they are well-established as having English names. Since you are admin, I believe you have the capabilities of reverting or moving them back without losing the edit history. (If I am mistaken and I actually can do this without admin, let me know. I don't want to bother admin if it's not necessary). Thank you. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 07:13, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Reverted I believe it doesn't need an admin, as I've done this before I became an admin. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:18, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

SHB2000 Thank you! ChubbyWimbus (talk) 07:29, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

[edit conflict] @ChubbyWimbus: A page can be moved back after a move without admin privileges. The redirect created by the original move will be deleted, but as it was automatically created and the move itself remains in the history, there is no attribution or history problem in this case. An admin is needed only in more complicated cases, or if you don't want a redirect left behind at the temporary name. Now SHB2000 suppressed the redirect as admin, but a redirect with the markings is no problem (we have one from Tōkyō), and if somebody thinks it is, it can be deleted afterwards. –LPfi (talk) 07:32, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

I didn't even leave a redirect though. Those two search terms are very unlikely. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:41, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: No, you didn't, and for that privileges were needed. I am not going to create the redirects, but you might want to consider that even if the two are unlikely as typed in search terms, they are much less unlikely as pasted in search terms. –LPfi (talk) 07:47, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

But who will paste it? For the most part, the accent has been omitted in tourist guides, and so it's unlikely. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:50, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: For the most part, which isn't enough. The person reading a web page where they are used and pastes the name from there will search by the accented name. It doesn't need to be a tourist guide. For the redirect not to be useful, there should be no such web pages at all. I don't remember our policy on this and don't want to make this any larger issue, but I very much think that such redirects do no harm and might be useful. –LPfi (talk) 08:19, 12 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

If you're not aware, more than any Polynesian country, Tuvalu is probably the most scattered with islands all over the place. It's got multiple population centres, but most notably the island of Funafuti has more people than the others, and hence why their only airport is here. In saying that Funafuti only also gets about 2 flights a week, prior to the pandemic, only coming from Fiji, which is also quite isolated.

I watched a documentary on this some time ago and getting to these smaller islands is basically not possible unless you go through a local who has a fishing boat. And moreover, there's only about 6 months where you can do that before half of Tuvalu goes underwater. Because of all these factors, I restored it, because it in its own right needs a whole subsection. It just was that no one brought it up until LTA did.

--SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:24, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: I don't know Vaitupu, but "maintaining its Western-style traditional way of life" did not convince me as description. Usually traditional lifestyle is seen as different from the Western lifestyle, and "Western" refers to the modern Western lifestyle, which is not traditional even in the West. Also, I don't understand the wording about going there "There is no harbour on Vaitupu, but also has a wharf as direct possible access for small boats from inter-ships". The sentence would at least need copy editing, which perhaps could make it comprehensible. As I neither understand nor trust what is said, I cannot support the listing. If somebody knows the facts about the island and can describe them comprehensibly, then it's another thing. –LPfi (talk) 10:40, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Basically live life in a western way and still do what you traditionally did. It's very popular in Oceania, especially with Aboriginals in Australia, or Kanaks in New Caledonia, but really, there's a lot more I could list. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:50, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Then I'd say something like "They live a Western lifestyle mixed with local traditions". Then I don't understand the "no harbour but a wharf" thing. OK, partly that might be because "wharf" is word I need to look up. "Inter-ships" is also an unknown term for me, perhaps something that should be explained in Tuvalu#Get around (or Oceania#Get around?). If there is regular ship traffic and those let you to the shore by small boats, then I don't get what is near-impossible about it. You need a flight matching the ship departure, and a transfer to that flight, but that does not sound near impossible to me. –LPfi (talk) 12:15, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

But there's no regular ship departure. It is just by chance if a local agrees to take you. It's 122km by boat, and it's highly unlikely a local would do that, especially on a small fishing boat on the rough Pacific Ocean. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:22, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

OK, so what are those inter-ships? And isn't this true of most islands in the Pacific? How many do we want to mention individually? –LPfi (talk) 12:27, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Small fishing boats. Something like this. This is true, but only to Tuvalu, the Cook Islands and Kiribati. But none are so far away from each other like Tuvalu. (for that matter, Tuvalu has a bigger EEZ than some countries in Europe and Africa.) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:42, 17 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

This edit right there. Do you think that is Vkem but logged out? Edit looks like a typical edit of his. But the main question is that in Finland, is it important to mention which country brands are from? (Just want to know since do certain countries like Germany get a better reputation than other country brands?) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:05, 25 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

I mentioned the countries in Turku and he (I suppose it's him) has copied my wording from there. (I am not too happy he does that, as duplication means more maintenance work, and he doesn't attribute the original.)

In practice, the country of origin probably makes no difference (except for privacy, where EU and USA are different). However, many travellers do like to favour local businesses, and it is a "nice to know" trivia.

–LPfi (talk) 08:16, 25 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

We do have something similar where often German, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese or American brands are often more reputable, and brands from elsewhere are not so reputable (including the UK at times) but considering how the Australian manufacturing industry is non existent, it's no surprise why often we don't have local brands. Oh and to Vkem, is it just me, or do you also find it hard to believe that they were a former sysop on the Finnish Wikipedia. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:29, 25 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

He got elected in 2003, after a discussion on the email list of the project. There were no earlier posts on his talk page. I wasn't involved at those times, especially not regarding administration of fi-wp, so have no idea about what the practices looked like. Seems he worked hard on creating articles – and I suppose that was what had to be done at the time. –LPfi (talk) 09:26, 25 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, in the early days of Wikipedia adminship was treated rather like a reward for content creation, unlike now where you'd need to do some janitorial work + article work to become an admin. Of course, it differs by project, where some still small language wikipedias would be giving adminship for content creation, but now that only stewards can give adminship on small projects, that also seems gone. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:37, 25 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Would you also consider this to be him? Typical edit of his. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

It is the same IP address block, see Special:Contributions/2001:14BB:A1:4805:88FF:D3DB:461D:4BD2/32. –LPfi (talk) 13:56, 8 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thought there'd be more edits by others in the /32 range but it seems mostly him. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 14:01, 8 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Aargh. It'd be /64, of course, and that's only this one edit. But yes, it seems like him. If it stays the only edit from that block, we'll never know. –LPfi (talk) 14:08, 8 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Per the duck test, that's obviously him. (Now, what am I doing this late at 00:22) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 14:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Quite interesting to see how much byte size they can sometimes take up... Oxley Highway was earlier in Special:ShortPages but it seems now it's in Special:LongPages. Might do E8 through Finland and Norway next, although that'll probably take at least two hours. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:58, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I reduced the json size in the riverside walk by 16 kB by truncating the values to dm resolution instead of nm (!). That's only 10 % of the article, though. One could cut at least twice as much by sacrificing the indentation. Such changes are quite easy to do with emacs (or sed, perl or the like). I had put in a comment with lower resolution coords, which messed up my first try – reverting is easy but troubleshooting less so.

I suppose E8 could be done using the wikidata-OSM coupling instead of tracing. For me it would probably take the same 2 hr, but it would be much cleaner.

What about markers? They disappeared when you added the maplinks to the riverside walk, was that intentional? There should be some way for the reader to easily summon them.

–LPfi (talk) 11:15, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I was wondering the same too. Wikivoyage:How to use dynamic maps#Adding districts and tracks isn't very helpful in giving answers on the markers. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:31, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

LPfi, I cannot believe what I'm seeing in Turku riverside walk! It worked. The markers are now back. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:50, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

[edit conflict] No. I searched there too. Can you refer to the markers by a name in the show clause? Ah! I see you got the same idea :-)

Nice!

–LPfi (talk) 11:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Now I guess I've got to re-write the tutorials. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:03, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

At least add these findings. It seems their prime target audience is those working with maps more than casually, so some of the hard-to-grasp passages may be justified, although context and language should be clarified. –LPfi (talk) 12:12, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

One thing I wonder about is how to treat alternative route sections. I have now mostly drawn the main routes and then added the alternatives individually: a-b-c-d-e + b-b'-c + d-d'-e, although you'd use either a-b-c-d-e or a-b-b'-c-d-d'-e. I don't know what grouping would be appropriate. E.g. the bridges downstream are now individual polylines, and I use only route1. –LPfi (talk) 12:22, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Me too. Considering how .json lines are something that were long forgotten until now, the only other person who might be technical enough to figure it out is K7L, I dunno. I'm still quite new to json, unlike .css or HTML. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:51, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I've made a little tutorial here, which is more designed for the non-technical people. I didn't go into all the advanced and all that, and I didn't mention anything about saving your code onto github (I do that, but it's not a must). Feel free to edit or make changes to it. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 14:10, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

OK. I'll take a look at some point. –LPfi (talk) 11:26, 15 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I just happened to finish E8. Took me 2.5 hours. Time consuming but worth the result. But I don't think I've ever added 230,378 bytes of text in a mainspace article before... SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:08, 17 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

:-)

Json is 2/3 of the Turku itinerary. I did group the routes, as I find you can choose what routes to show if you have the map in fullscreen. I think grouping like how I did works, but I'd like a way to include a section in several routes without duplicating the data. That would allow showing a specific route variant. In the Turku itinerary that would be mostly useful for bike/pram/wheelchair/other (colour coding would be an obvious alternative, but it works better for showing trail quality). For later editing labelling would be nice (scrolling up and down unannotated coordinate lists is error prone and frustrating). I have added comments ("//", "/* ... */"), but I suppose there is some more stringent way to do it.

–LPfi (talk) 14:41, 17 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi LPfi, just wondering on whether you've considered on becoming a docent for Turku, given your local knowledge and we can never be too short of docents? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:51, 16 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: Thank you for asking. I have thought about it, but I am not really comfortable with the idea, mainly because having my name on the page gives a feeling of responsibility that I don't like. I am happy to help, but I don't like I'd be supposed to help. I know, it's kind of silly, as docents cannot be assumed to be available all the time. Partly the feeling is due to real life concerns, related or not. Perhaps later. –LPfi (talk) 12:51, 16 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Yeah that's fine. Although I signed up for about 11 pages, most, if not all of them are low visibility towns or places that I just go frequently, and those are nothing in size compared to Turku. And yet it seems I've still to this date had zero questions asked. But Turku is much bigger than all of those that I've signed up so understandable.

But I do still wonder, was the docents thing a failed project? I haven't seen any questions asked on anyone's talk on those who've signed up. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:57, 16 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I don't know. I think it is mostly about us having quite small a reader base, and many of those reading might not be planning real travel, at least not to all places they are reading about. Even when on their way, not everybody asks questions, and few ask as the first one in a certain forum. I know the feeling from other forums: yes, anybody is allowed to write, but am I in this group of anybodies? –LPfi (talk) 13:12, 16 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

You mentioned here a while ago on userboxes "We might approve some that we think are important, foremost the babel, but there are others I think add significant value, such as the admin, sister projects, and perhaps technical user ones". Given that our userbox for commons which is currently {{sister}} which doesn't work well with alignment, does this box work well?

<div style="float:right; border:solid #808080 1px; margin: 1px;">
{| cellspacing="0" style="width:238px;background:#eee;"
| style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: #ddd; text-align: center;" | [[Image:Commons-logo.svg|36px|link=]]
| style="font-size: 8pt; padding: 4pt; line-height: 1.25em; color: black;" | This user has [[:c:User:{{{1|{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}}|a page]] on [[:c:Main Page|Wikimedia Commons]]. 
|}</div>

which produces

Any feedback welcome as I don't know how it'll look on other devices (works well on my mac, but don't know about others)

--SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:24, 23 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: Could you please explain the alignment problem? I see that Sister is narrower than Babel. Is that the problem? I think solving general problems individually is problematic (perhaps you recognise that thinking if you have been into programming). Sister uses {{side box}}, and if the problem is with that template, it should be fixed there, and if the problem is with Sister, it should be fixed in Sister, perhaps with an additional parameter not to break uses that depend on a certain behaviour.

For how the template looks, I see no problems on my laptop, but I don't know what to look for. Side box has class="metadata mbox-small{{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{position|}}}}}|left|-left}} {{{class|}}}" and class="mbox-text" style="{{{textstyle|}}}", which might do something important about printing, screenreaders, mobile devices and user css. I'd like to know what they do before leaving them out in a template intended to be widely used.

The old babel template (before lua) had class="userboxes" width: 248px;. Side box says width: 238px. Both define borders.

–LPfi (talk) 08:06, 23 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I'll upload a screenshot of the alignment problem. See if that explains it. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:22, 23 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

This is how it looks on my screen. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:27, 23 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Yes. The sister boxes are narrower than the babel boxes, perhaps with the 10px that differ between the old babel template and the side box. I assume we shouldn't be tampering with Babel, so the side box should be adjusted instead. We could change "width: 238px;" to width: {{{{{width}}}|238px}}; or somesuch (I didn't check the syntax, and might remember it wrongly) and put a "|width=248px" into the side box call in sister. Perhaps we could even change the default in side box, but before doing that we should check uses and ask in the Pub. –LPfi (talk) 08:48, 23 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Probably as you mentioned, best to ask in the pub. Well, first thing tomorrow. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:57, 23 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

As you might have noticed on my talk page, there's a vandal going around putting sexually explicit images on all my talk pages (has gone to about 60 so far). Although not many have been rev deled, can you rev del the one on the Swedish Wikipedia? Thanks! SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:53, 26 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Of course, but I cannot find it. There is just one version, which is not vandalism, and I don't find anything in the log. –LPfi (talk) 11:00, 26 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Oh wait, no sorry about that. I'm getting confused having just been on numerous wikis. Seems they weren't on my talk page on sv. Anyway, I'll write an note for you at EF37, so can you have a look at it. Thanks. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:17, 26 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ On another note, can you rev del the one and only edit on sv.wb by b:sv:Special:Contributions/45.128.36.210? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: Done. –LPfi (talk) 12:36, 29 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks :-) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:37, 29 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Nothing to do with Wikivoyage, but since you and Ypsilon are the only two users here that know Finnish (that I know of), but would this revert be a reasonable revert of a personal attack? I did a google translate for it, and it seemed like a personal attack, but I wanted to double check with you since you once mentioned that machine translation from fi to en may not always be correct (and also why Vkem's edits are sometimes hard to understand). Thanks! SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 14:05, 27 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Yes, right to revert. I don't know the context, but it seems like a frustrated outburst with less prudent language. No real content. Too general to really be taken personally, –LPfi (talk) 17:21, 27 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Wasn't against me, but it seemed like a random IP edit to another IP talk page. Just found it as part of my usual cross wiki monitoring. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 22:55, 27 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but I know nothing about the interaction between the users, i.e. whether this was connected to an edit or edits of either. But never mind, that kind of language can be reverted regardless. In the right context the line could perhaps even have been said between friends, but we want to keep the language civil. –LPfi (talk) 05:00, 28 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Okay, thanks for the clarification. Just wanted to double check since I don't usually revert personal attacks in a language apart from en and fr for a peace of mind. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:11, 28 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

It was an insult, basically calling the someone a "f*cking ape" imitating a monkey sounding to boot, and it seems to me to be OK to revert it. Ypsilon (talk) 13:48, 28 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Funny to see that Brendan/Telstra listed a village that is not remote at all, and is used by most wanting to head out west of Sydney (it's also served by a national highway as well). Thanks for picking that up though. (I did not realise that's him until you reverted that edit) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:52, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

:-)

–LPfi (talk) 08:55, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

I need some help plsRn 001 project travel (talk)

Then please tell what it's about. –LPfi (talk) 17:03, 3 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

I got banned from most wikis for extremely small reasonsRn 001 project travel (talk) 17:08, 3 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

If you got banned here, then I suppose you have to stay away, at least for a year or so. If you are the one recently mentioned, then I might have been more harsh than necessary, but I still don't have the strength to do anything about it now.

Most of our sister projects have some procedures for appeal or return, which you could research. Wikipedia in Swedish is the only project where I feel I could do anything about it personally.

–LPfi (talk) 17:29, 3 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

And if you are the user under discussion: we cannot have a user here who thinks on the lines expressed in some of their edits, or makes such edits for other reasons. I was somewhat unhappy I didn't accept the half-apology, thinking that might have been the best they could offer explicitly. But forgiving requires repentance, and as they haven't shown that, I will not help them in this or regret not helping. I hope they can change their mind, but it is too late for this site. –LPfi (talk) 09:35, 4 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I just remember this standup comedy from by an Icelandic comedian at a Nordic event, so I though you might be interested, if you haven't already seen it: [12].

Speaking of which, I've seen YouTube videos of Danish bands like Toy-Box and Aqua performing in Sweden, and I heard them addressing the crowd in English instead of Danish. Is that normal? A Norwegian friend told me that she will just speak Norwegian when she travels to Denmark and Sweden. The dog2 (talk) 00:44, 5 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. Yes, that is typical. Danish pronunciation is generally thought to be the most difficult to understand for Swedish speakers. Norwegians are the ones who have the least difficulties with variants of Nordic languages, as they themselves don't have a standard for spoken Norwegian, but speak their own dialects, and Danish or Swedish is just one more dialect to them. I suppose Ostrobothnians would have the same advantage at a smaller scale. Swedish speakers would need some time (days) to get to decode the Danish pronunciation, especially if the speaker is not good at adjusting. Nordic people who often meet people from the other countries, such as those engaged in Nordic cooperation, soon learn to cope, but the general public has problems. Also, many in the general public (varying between countries and subcultures) don't see the point in trying to communicate in their Nordic languages.

I think this is analogous to an English-speaker only used to the local speak meeting somebody with a strong accent from another part of the world. Those "strong accents" in Nordic context are regarded separate languages, such as Danish.

–LPfi (talk) 10:03, 5 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Is this a good user page??? User:96.18.219.55 96.18.219.55 17:50, 6 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

You should register a user name to get a user page. Somebody else might get your IP address, and what you want on your user page probably doesn't fit that other user. –LPfi (talk) 18:23, 6 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

An opinion of this would be nice.96.18.219.55 20:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

I have the VFD page on my watchlist. I am no specialist on USA, so I don't know why my comment specifically would be valuable. –LPfi (talk) 21:51, 6 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

I came across you as I see we have similar interests. I'm new here and thought I'd introduce myself. If you have any tips or advice, please feel free to let me know. I may make the odd rookie mistake. I'm so excited to be a part of this community! Dayton Kingery (talk) 14:27, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Dayton Kingery: Hi! Nice to have you here, and thanks for the message. Feel free to ask if there is anything you wonder.

If you want to give a hand, please take a look at Hiking in the Nordic countries and Nordkalottleden; I'd like someone from a different hiking culture to check whether there is something that might need explaining. I assume there is a lot that is different from across the pond, but one needs somebody from the outside to notice what could cause confusion. Both are quite long (I suppose the former should be trimmed down a little), so don't feel obliged to do anything about them, but I hope they might be nice reading when you feel like. Any comments welcome.

–LPfi (talk) 15:18, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks I will and thanks for the assignment! I'm excited to have one! Dayton Kingery (talk) 16:48, 19 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

:-) –LPfi (talk) 16:50, 19 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I just started and you weren't wrong - it's wonderful reading! Makes me want to come over and starting hiking there! Just like hiking I'm going to do a little bit every day and not over exert myself ;) Dayton Kingery (talk) 09:11, 20 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. And no hurry, do just as much as you feel like. –LPfi (talk) 10:03, 20 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I notice there are many places where my not being a native speaker shows. Don't feel bad if I am changing your wording. It often means there is something I just don't know how to say well, and you cannot read my mind. Some fiddling back and forth might allow us to convey the right nuances in a comprehensible way. –LPfi (talk) 10:18, 20 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I get it and that's fine. No problem at all! I'm just thrilled to be a part of this project! Dayton Kingery (talk) 15:07, 20 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

for the copyediting on Underground Works.

Do you know if there are any traveller significant 'underground spaces of relevance in Helsinki or Finland generally?

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:04, 20 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

I don't know Helsinki that well. There are of course many underground spaces, including the metro, service tunnels and emergency shelters (not primarily for air raids any more). I've understood underground Helsinki is quite hollowed, but visiting Helsinki I have mostly stayed above ground.

The underground spaces I have visited in Finland hardly rank among the global top-500, except probably the Tytyri mine, listed in Mining tourism, but I haven't been searching them out. Some former coastal forts may be open to the public and worth visiting, but I don't know which ones allow underground visits.

Sorry not being able to help. You need to find somebody who has been more active with this field.

–LPfi (talk) 18:27, 20 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes there are a great deal of excavated spaces below Helsinki but I wouldn't say they're tourist attractions and probably most of them aren't accessible to the public. There's the metro with fairly deep stations, the central service tunnel below downtown used by delivery and service vehicles with loading bays etc., underground parking (some connected to the former), the Kamppi bus terminal is sort of underground, and there are emergency shelters, tunnels for public utility lines and then some other emergency tunnels used by the authorities. --Ypsilon (talk) 20:22, 20 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

If you look at the previous version and have the "ErrorHighlighter" gadget installed, those two phone numbers will show a formatting error. You're right that they look normal but for some reason they are not clickable links. I typed the phone numbers again to fix the errors and the other cleanup in the edit was automatic. Gizza ^(roam) 07:50, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

@DaGizza: OK. Probably there was some invisible character in there. I think Special:Diff should have some mechanism to show invisible characters (such as "[E0FF]" or "\xE0FF" in a different colour), but it seemingly hasn't. Pasting into od gives 0xe2808b at the end of the number (in UTF8, I presume), which seems to be Ux200b Zero-width space. Makes sense, but it shouldn't be there; the template can handle word breaks without it (and cannot handle such odd chars in creating the link, it seems), and in text one can use <wbr/> (or, in HTML4, &x200b;) instead. –LPfi (talk) 08:58, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Is there some straight-forward way to see what UTF8 characters really are, without specialised software? I used

echo ' 2674075 ' | iconv --from=utf8 --to=UTF32 | od --endian=little -ax

(where I pasted the string in between the quotes) to get the code point. Then I looked up the code in w:General Punctuation, found via w:Unicode and w:Plane (Unicode). A bit convoluted :-(

–LPfi (talk) 09:06, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

While this is of course a generalisation, I suggest you listen to this talk by John Mearsheimer, today the pre-eminent geopolitical scholar in the United States, for a more complete understanding of the situation in Ukraine: [13]. He goes data from the most recent election before the Euromaidan revolution, and you will see a very clear trend of polarisation, where western Ukraine around Lviv (where most people are ethnic Ukrainians Catholics) is very pro-NATO and pro-EU, while the Donbass in eastern Ukraine (where most people are ethnic Russians) is very pro-Russia. And central Ukraine, around Kyiv, where most people are ethnic Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox, leans pro-NATO/EU but not as much as in Lviv. Of course, given that the West is backing the ethnic Ukrainians, you're only going to get the perspective of the ethnic Ukrainians in the Western media, but most of the ethnic Russian minority in Ukraine support Putin and Russia (and Putin's domestic approval rating in Russia currently stands at about 70%). Of course, ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians are not monolithic groups, and you will have a diversity of political opinions within those groups, but that is the general trend. The dog2 (talk) 19:11, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Also, the Donbass has been fighting a war with the Ukrainian military for the past 8 years, and 12,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbass have been killed by Ukrainian military shelling, so I won't be surprised if those ethnic Russians see Putin as a liberator (And by the way, I'm personally opposed to the invasion so I'm not defending Putin here, but I'm also trying to see things from all sides). The dog2 (talk) 19:21, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

The invasion turned everything top down. I don't know about Western media in general, but I personally know one of the journalists reporting from Ukraine, and I have been following two others closely. I have no reason to believe their reports would be biased, or that they wouldn't seek up or call also ethnic Russians for their interviews.

From where do you have the impression that most of the ethnic Russian minority in Ukraine would support Putin and Russia?

The "independent" republics in Donbass are of course a separate issue, but we don't include them as part of Ukraine any more (although they are mentioned on the page). We shouldn't be talking about them in Respect, at least not without explicitly saying so. The rest of Donbass is now partly what is hit the hardest. Do you think the ethnic Russians in Kharkiv and Mariupol think Putin is liberating them?

–LPfi (talk) 19:42, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Mariupol is the main base of the Azov Battalion, and there are also videos of ethnic Russians from Mariupol cursing the Azov Battalion for not allowing them to leave through the "humanitarian corridor" and using them as human shields. Those could of course be Russian propaganda, so I don't know how trustworthy they are, but presumably such people do exist. And Mariupol was actual part of the Donetsk People's Republic, which the Azov Battalion fought a bitter war with to reclaim it for the Ukrainian government. The dog2 (talk) 19:53, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

People wanting to flee a city that Putin may plan to transform into gravel is not too hard to believe, and those who were pro-Russian before the invasion are probably not as patriotically Ukrainian as many ethnic Ukrainians. I'd assume also many ethnic Ukrainians would prefer to live in Russia over being killed in Mariupol. I still don't think they – neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians – praise Putin for "liberating" them in this way. –LPfi (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

By the way, the Azov Battalion is a far-right Ukrainian nationalist unit of the Ukrainian National Guard (in other words, their members desire an ethnically pure Ukrainian state where only Ukrainian is spoken). It's not a Russian military unit. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they had been described as neo-Nazi by Time magazine and Al-Jazeera, and Wikipedia still calls them a neo-Nazi unit. The dog2 (talk) 20:31, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I have heard about them, although I don't know enough to judge the accounts. –LPfi (talk) 20:42, 23 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi, LPfi. Why is it good to remove information like this? Is your point that the generally-applicable information about scooters and bikes is covered in Finland#By bicycle? If so, that would be fine. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:07, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek: Yes. User:Vkem copied the wordings from Turku to a lot of towns. When I saw that beginning, I copied it to Finland#By motorised scooter instead, with a slight rewrite. I haven't removed it from everywhere, but it seems he now is doing it himself on updating pages (I assume it's him).

As it was copied verbatim, we have the same problem as in Nigeria's mobile phone coverage: some of it might not be true everywhere, but as it is in the individual city article, the reader is led to believe it is for the city they are reading about (in addition to it being redundant and hard to maintain). Vkem seems to check part of the information, but with his scarce communication, I cannot trust that everything is checked.

–LPfi (talk) 16:21, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I see. Sorry for misunderstanding the situation. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:41, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

No problem. Seems I should have been more careful with the edit comment. –LPfi (talk) 16:46, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi LPfi, The reason I am contacting you is that you say on your user page that your mother-tongue is Swedish and that you also speak good Finish. I hope you don't mind me contacting you on a topic that may seem unrelated to travel.

I have an interest in COVID statistics, which I have been following up on another wmf-wiki and noticed there seems to be a surge in COVID cases reported in Finland. I am trying to determine how much the official global reports can be trusted, but in a small country like Finland things may be less political?

Do you happen to know anything about it? Thanks very much in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 12:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ottawahitech: You are welcome.

I trust the authorities – Finland being listed in the top ten of least corruption is probably right in this context – and thereby the statistics, but what they tell is a different story. I haven't seen any efforts to collect statistics where biases can be compensated for. When the omicron variant got widespread and it was noticed that it more seldom caused a severe illness (especially as most elderly people are triple vaccinated), the authorities more or less gave up on restrictions and testing.

Now official tests (which end up in the statistics) are recommended only in certain situations. Thus the number of cases can be expected to have been very much higher than the number of confirmed cases, especially as many cases are asymptomatic. On the other hand, as the virus is ubiquitous, many people who die will have it, regardless of factual cause of death, which skews the statistics on COVID-19 mortality (which hit record heights in early spring). Hospitalisation due to COVID-19 (or patients with COVID-19?) has remained high, while need of intensive care (the threshold of which is high in Finland, as some advanced treatment can be given at normal departments) has dropped significantly. The latter was the figure I kept track of, but as people die or recover from omicron faster than from the earlier variants, its usability in comparisons has diminished.

I haven't been following developments closely the last months, since I haven't taken the time to figure out how to get a reliable picture, and most info on the pandemic now feels irrelevant for me. I am not an epidemiologist (although I have some background in statistics), so I am hoping the media finds somebody who is and has figured this out. Unfortunately, media has had reason to concentrate on other issues.

–LPfi (talk) 16:43, 15 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks so much for your response.

I used to trust statistics provided by the Americans under President Biden, until I saw in recent news reports that 58% of Americans have already had COVID. But official statistics from ECDC only report 81,863,725 cases in total, which for a country of 332 million people is much less (even without my calculator :-) Ottawahitech (talk) 15:12, 16 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ottawahitech: Is that the difference between all cases and confirmed cases? You know: "lie, damned lie, statistics" :-)

For countries like North Korea and Russia, there may be actual lies, but I believe that for most Western democracies, it is hard to avoid bureaucrats reporting actual figures (even in Russia it is hard, so they have a problem). You have to skew the reporting procedures (such as removing resources for testing certain groups, or redefining how to report cause of death), and those procedures are open for scientists to study, although in a hurry they may take the statistics at face value.

Creating statistics that are comparable across jurisdictions is very hard, even without political will to mess with the figures, as the devil is in the details of the procedures. Most of what one gets to read at the moment is more or less raw data – and different sources report different data. To make them comparable, one needs to study the differences in procedures and conditions, which is daunting, and I suppose most researchers in the field have their hands full.

Journalists need to make the judgments on the fly, which academic research spends months on, so problems with news reports are to be expected. There is also a problem with figures that may be the most relevant for a specific context in which they were originally told, while totally wrong when used as a general measure. Also when journalists get it right, the reader might not (and politicians may use a relevant measure, or one that supports their message). When some odd figure is quoted, one needs to either more or less ignore it or check what it is about.

–LPfi (talk) 15:53, 16 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

More later, but in the meantime: One country I trust (I think) is [[Singapore]] because:

• it is a small country
• it has done very well covid-wise so it has nothing to hide (very large cas load while very small number of deaths)
• they have advanced technology, I think?
• They have lots of money, I think? (can afford lots of testing)

Ottawahitech (talk) 18:54, 18 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi again. I know I promised more later, but I am completely swamped, mainly because of, I think(?), unnecessary online hassles. For example, poor internet connection. I'm not sure how much this is to others who seem to have no such trouble. I wonder if my poor connection has something to do with:

• I don't use the latest technology
• Large cities, at least in North America, seem to have better connections than smaller jurisdictions
• I m just very impatient by nature
• Anything else I am overlooking?

Cheers, Ottawahitech (talk) 22:14, 27 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi!

I don't know much about Singapore, but you could be right.

And I don't know that much about USA either. Internet connections may be week for local reasons, and then it isn't that much about how new technology you use, but whether your provider keeps the connection working. Some private households in the countryside had 10 Mbps connections already in the 1990s, and that's plenty for anything but video, gaming, large downloads or busy servers.

Unreliable or shaky connections are mostly about too much load on a shared connection, or marginal reach for a wireless connection (such as mobile), which is affected by terrain and weather. It could be in your end, of course: damaged cable, too long distance to your Wi-Fi hotspot, malfunctioning modem, or something else.

I'd first check the things you have control over (with a knowledgable friend if needed). Does the connection between your own devices work? What about a friend who has no problems with their similar connection using yours? Do you have a spare device (or could you borrow one) for the connection to your provider (modem, whatever) – does it work better? Next I'd contact the provider and ask whether the flakiness is to be expected or whether there could be a problem on their side. If they cannot fix it, are there alternative providers?

–LPfi (talk) 08:39, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Back to COVID and the USA. I have seen reports of a drastic increase in mortality in the USA with a corresponding reduction of life expectancy. It is a trend that started, I believe, before COVID, but has been accelerating since.

Just my periodic visit to wikivoyage. Cheers, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:44, 25 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Foolhardy me seemed to have scrolled down to "K" without checking the top few parks. Thanks for picking that error up :-). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:00, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

User interface problem. Without your note I wouldn't have found the district. –LPfi (talk) 05:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi, LPfi. Why did you revert a proper edit by Ibaman without discussing it with him first? You think this edit could have been OK? Why didn't you look at https://indiathrills.com/ first to understand that it is a tour agency and therefore that any listing that had their email address in it was not likely to be OK? Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:59, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek: OK, sorry for that. I was probably confused by the fact that the link Ibaman inserted (instead of that of the other user) was incorrect. This error (explained in an edit summary) was repeated by the reverts. I checked that the user was correct, read the activity description (the touting of which I didn't find severe), and assumed Ibaman had made a mistake. I did ping him in an edit summary. The checking of the locations took my focus from the edits themselves, otherwise I hope I had been more careful. –LPfi (talk) 14:17, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Understood. I've sometimes disagreed with decisions Ibaman made regarding what appeared to him to be touting, but I tend to bring them up with him before acting. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:22, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

If that is common practice I should probably do the same. However, I think an experienced editor being reverted does little harm, especially if there is a sensible edit summary – the issues can be cleared later – while a newcomer seeing their edits were not welcomed (or just disappeared) might not show up again, so the reinstating (or a talk page comment) must come as quickly as possible. –LPfi (talk) 14:36, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

I'm not worried about tour agency touters not feeling welcome. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:53, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Neither am I. But we want business owners – and those who enjoyed the services of a business – to feel welcome, those who want to play by the rules. It is often hard (at least to me) to tell them apart. –LPfi (talk) 17:01, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

It isn't when they post links to their tour agency. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:07, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Which I would probably have understood if I had tried to check who they are. Now I saw that the place Ibaman linked was nowhere near, which was my primary concern. Their name (as stated in the name parameter) didn't ring any bells. OK, I was careless, but I still used more time on that edit (checking the maps) than I really want to use on any simple edit. If a tout takes the time to write (non-automated) edit summaries and answer on their talk page, then I think we can do more than simply hit rollback (such as reading their edit summary). Now, I am more concerned about how much touting there is in their later edits, and I don't trust my judgement on those. –LPfi (talk) 17:34, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Regarding the comment you left at Talk:Seogwipo. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_guide/Fixing_cut-and-paste_moves - should work here too, I think? Piotrus (talk) 07:09, 24 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Actually LPfi already handled this in the best possible way according to that material, please see the '2.2.4 A troublesome case' section. Twsabin (talk) 07:52, 24 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes. The alternative had been to leave some of the overlapping versions deleted. It would have worked in this case (as nothing was added at the "old" page after the merge process was started), but there had been a risk that somebody had restored also that part of the history at some point, causing the confusing history that I tried to avoid. Such left-deleted versions look odd for anybody looking at them. –LPfi (talk) 14:08, 24 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Happy holidays, LPfi! Hello LPfi, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! It has been a pleasure to have you as a fellow Wikivoyager this year. Wherever you are, enjoy the festive season and stay warm (if you're north of the Tropic of Cancer)! Your help in maintaining, improving and expanding Wikivoyage will always be appreciated. Greetings from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. --SHB2000 on 11:49, 24 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

Kindly delete these two (1, 2) revisions. Thank you, and may you have a great 2023! Alalch E. (talk) 16:57, 29 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Alalch E.: Done SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:32, 29 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

LPFI I appreciate your help with editing the Bogota article. But I would kindly like to suggest that for a city as large as Bogota, an introduction of at least this size is needed. Which is why I would argue that the previous user's edits, are just right. Especially since they contain some helpful information for tourists, that should truly be in the lead section and hooks them to read more of the article. I understand your point of view as well as the one from the user, but I think the introduction should contain some vital information, needed for new visitors to the city. Please send me a message if you have any questions! Thank you for your help and contributions to Wikivoyage! With the utmost sincerity, Mriobomorales. Mriobomorales (talk) 04:37, 13 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Mriobomorales: I don't mind the length of the lead, but there were other problems. With everything in one paragraph, it was (and again is) a wall of text that doesn't invite to reading. I am sceptic to some of the facts presented, such as "one of the most influential cities in the world" – is Bogotá really on pair with London, New York and Tokyo? Same with "visit Michelin starred restaurants ranging from traditional and innovative Colombian dishes, to cuisines from all corners of the globe" – how many Michelin starred restaurants are there in Bogotá?

I think most of what I removed was redundant, such as saying Bogotá has millions of people, when it already was said to be a mega-city. "Bogotá is a global center for finance, politics, culture, shopping, media, and entertainment" is a boring list, and I think it is completely redundant with "thousands of things to do, see, and discover, from world-class museums and restaurants, to glittering skyscrapers and vast financial centers, to 500-year-old mansions, palaces, and historic churches."

It is better to elaborate on these things further down, which is why I moved some sentences down to a better context (although I didn't make any great effort to integrate it with what already was there, so the new paragraphs may have been redundant).

–LPfi (talk) 09:35, 13 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

I note that none of the districts mentioned as gourmet zones in thge main article lists any restaurant described as having a Michelin star. Bogotá/Zona Rosa says "You can find [...], as well as Michelin starred restaurants from all corners of the Globe." Still no restaurant even there is described as having a Michelin star. The three in Splurge lack any description. I think that instead of touting how splendid Bogotá is, one should add the information to back the claims up. –LPfi (talk) 09:47, 13 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

In this edit, you removed the words "Kitchen & Table" from the article Vantaa, citing "what restaurant doesn't have a kitchen and tables?" Well, the name of the restaurant happens to actually be Kitchen & Table. JIP (talk) 19:13, 27 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

If it were a restaurant listing, then the name would be in the name parameter, not in the description. I don't see it as essential to mention the name of a hotel restaurant (unless it it is famous on its own). In the description from where I removed the name, the wording was "a Kitchen & Table restaurant", which looks like a description rather than naming the restaurant. If the name is worth mentioning, instead write "the restaurant Kitchen & Table". Or is Kitchen & Table a chain? Then write "a restaurant of the chain Kitchen & Table". –LPfi (talk) 05:31, 28 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for that edit – I was initially confused what skidoos were, just until you came about and fixed the trademarked name :-). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:28, 1 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

:-) –LPfi (talk) 08:55, 1 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

re Special:Diff/4659947: I'm not sure what service centres are called in British English, but they're essentially just a small rest station with amenities alongside a freeway (at least the signs say so). Most of the time, in Australia and the US, these include a fuel station and an eatery (plus a McDonalds or KFC). For an example of one in Finland, here's one (on a map) on Highway 4. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:39, 9 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

OK, that's about what I guessed, although the term is unknown to me (the corresponding words in Finnish and Swedish give all wrong associations). I think we over here regard those as fuel stations or rest stops (whatever that term means), but I have never discussed them in English, so I don't know what to call them. –LPfi (talk) 07:13, 10 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

Fair enough – and thanks for the exit 90 fix (as someone who's used to seeing distance-numbered exits, I forgot that exit 90 is a rare occurrence, though a quick scroll through OSM shows that there does seem to be an exit 90 near the Russian border on Hwy 7) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:52, 10 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

Shit, that even confused the very same user who added confused templates at the top of both articles. Thanks for fixing something caused due to my carelessness. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:42, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

They really are confusing. I had to check a number of times (I noticed your adding the templates, just saw that the markers and descriptions didn't match). –LPfi (talk) 07:44, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

It makes me wonder how many travellers ended up going too far or didn't make it to their intended destination because of this (haven't personally been to Finnmark, nor do I know anyone who has so not exactly sure). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:53, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

:-)

I think the risk is small once you are there (other than perhaps by bus or taxi), as you pass Vadsø on your way to Vardø, but the confusion warning is indeed warranted.

I have been to Finnmark a number of times, but never to these two. Once, by hired bus, we contemplated going there, as one of us was an avid ornithologist, but we deemed it to be too far off.

–LPfi (talk) 08:10, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

There's an inner part of me that wants to visit Finnmark when I visit Rovaniemi during December 2025 (since it's further north, making it a better location to see the Northern Lights), but I've only ever driven in the snow twice (i.e. decent snow, not [14]) and am not sure if I can do so for hundreds of kilometres.

Regarding the confusion, at least it's not as bad as this. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:02, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

:-) Confusing flight destinations is bad – and more easy as they are point-to-point.

In fact, I think the northern lights are no reason to travel to Norway. Finland has a drier climate than the coast, so chances are probably better in Rovaniemi than in Vardø. Something like Inari could be ideal, although I assume differences aren't too big once you are in northern Lapland.

Snow in Lapland isn't as bad as farther south: when temperatures go below -5°C or so you don't get the slippery wet surface. You want to drive carefully and you don't want to drive in a blizzard, but otherwise you should be OK (some slid training could still be worthwhile). They say decent snow cover isn't guaranteed in December, but the times I have been there (later) in winter, there has been a good hard snow cover on the roads. If you are unlucky, there may of course be tracks, or worse: tracks hidden under new snow. (I wonder what they do in spring, when the snow is melting – I have experience of 20 cm of slush with a bike, and that was bad enough.)

LPfi (talk) 09:41, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Ooh – thanks for the useful advice :-). I never considered Inari, but it's now on my bucket list for 2025. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hi @LPfi:

You added a cautionbox to the listed airports in the Caucasus article, stating that the information "seems outdated".

I don't understand where you draw this conclusion from. Neither of the listed countries and airports under "By plane" in sanctioned or involved in the war. Furthermore, there are no destinations stated with any of the listed airports, so there is no information influenced by the war.

There might of course flights being cancelled from these airport to Ukraine or where it involved flying across Ukraine. But this is true for all airports in Europe and Asia, so unless you don't wanna add this cautionbox to all other European and Asian airports as well, I would suggest to remove this cautionbox again. This is really is a too generic statement.

Cheers Ceever (talk) 14:28, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

There is the sentence "The countries' secondary airports tend to serve mainly Russia, with also a few connections to Turkey, Ukraine and Iran." I assume no secondary airport has flights to Ukraine as of now. I drew the conclusion that the connections haven't been checked since the war started – and I have no idea how they were affected, other than that they probably were. If they are checked, the cautionbox can be removed or reworded as appropriate. –LPfi (talk) 05:07, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Ok, then I think, you might also want to add this cautionbox to the following articles that mention Ukraine by plane (or Russia in this sense):

• Minsk
• Budapest
• Plovdiv
• Serbia
• Chișinău
• Poland
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Abu Dhabi International Airport

But feel free to check the mentioned connections in these articles and omit the cautionbox. Cheers Ceever (talk) 19:29, 22 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

As far as I know, swastika display for religious reasons are explicitly allowed in some jurisdictions (cf. this Victoria legislation passed in 2022). The law could also require the prosecution to prove that the defendant intends to propagate Nazism (so religious display are not affected), and this is the case for Germany and Austria. See this Wikipedia article for more examples of these legislation and exemptions.

It's a relatively minor point, but I don't think your point that "religion is no exception" is valid everywhere. Maybe there's countries that ban religious uses altogether, but the above also shows that religious exemption exists in some others.廣九直通車 (talk) 08:39, 24 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

The edit summary was not well worded, but any appropriate use, such as religious, on Latvian folk costumes or explaining what the swastika is, is legal in any countries that I know of. My point is that religion is just one in a list of exceptions, not a unique exception. The Victoria law you linked does seem to follow that pattern. –LPfi (talk) 09:01, 24 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Noted, thanks for your explanation.廣九直通車 (talk) 03:54, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

To answer your question, back in the days of segregation, there would have been many churches that only allowed white people in their congregation. There may be some churches that still have that rule operating on the fringes of society, but mainstream churches in the U.S. welcome people of all races these days. Ikan's edit was saying that some Baptist churches separated from the main group back in the day because they wanted to be white-only congregations, but to my knowledge, most of them would have been de-segregated by now. The dog2 (talk) 22:03, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yes, so I understand, and anything else would be noteworthy. We don't tell that segregation has ended in other churches, many of which probably have had it. I guess formal segregation has become unlawful in all Western countries. If some people of colour avoid this church because we tell there was segregation in the 19th century, then so be it – it is not that important a denomination. –LPfi (talk) 22:18, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

It's often said that Sunday is the most segregated day in the U.S. Very few churches have an official policy of segregation, but quite a few in various denominations are virtually all-white or all-Black. There's a lot of variation among different individual Baptist churches, though, so no general statement on how de facto segregated they are could probably be accurate, but maybe there is a Baptist reading who could address this more knowledgeably. By the way, I don't think there's any law that prevents officially racist churches in the U.S. from practicing segregation, due to freedom of religion, but they are tiny fringe organizations like the w:Westboro Baptist Church (I'm not positive they practice segregation, but it surely wouldn't be surprising). Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:58, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks. That's something we probably should tell somewhere. My prejudice says some all-white congregations would not welcome a black stranger turning up for the service, while I assume others would. Do you think I am right? Are there issues the other way round? What about other non-whites, such as Chinese, are they treated as "whites"? –LPfi (talk) 10:40, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

(On the freedom of religion: Over here there was a case, perhaps about women or LGBT, where the court ruled that the church is free to have and follow its doctrine, but as there was no explicit statement of doctrine on the issue at hand, discrimination law applied.) LPfi (talk) 10:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it's often the case that all-white congregations wouldn't welcome a non-white worshipper. I should add, though, that I don't know this from personal experience. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

It is sad, and we should warn about it (probably in United States of America#Racism). Over here, I think the Lutheran churches of southern Finland are the places were you'd be welcomed no matter who you are; they do their best to live up to the teachings of love and care. –LPfi (talk) 11:40, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, it is sad – I'm not white, nor am I Christian, but I recently went to my friend's local church on a Sunday and they welcomed me with open arms. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I can't speak about the Deep South, but I've been to Lutheran, Catholic and Greek Orthodox services in the U.S., and all of them welcomed non-white strangers. I was just not allowed to take communion because I am not a Christian. But these were all in the big cities, so I have no idea if I would be turned away from a church service in rural Idaho for instance since for not being white. Sometimes, de facto segregation can occur because of language though. There are Catholic churches in Chicago that conduct Mass exclusively in Polish or Ukrainian, so if you do don't speak one of those languages, you're welcome to sit in but you won't understand what is going on. So as you'd expect, these congregations would be almost exclusively white.The dog2 (talk) 14:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I'd hesitate to make too many generalizations about who will or won't be welcome. If you're in doubt, you should ask people who'd be in a position to know what kind of reception you might have at a particular church. The fact of de facto segregation being common is relevant in the U.S., but it's problematic to jump to conclusions about a particular church on that basis. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I understand you can't make sweeping generalisations. I'm just pointing out one such situation. In Chicago, the Polish and Ukrainian Catholic churches would not turn away a black guy, but for obvious reasons, the vast majority of Polish and Ukrainian speakers in the U.S. are white, and you just won't be able to understand the sermon if you don't know the relevant language. If some black guy happens to know one of those languages, he's most certainly welcome to join the Mass. The dog2 (talk) 19:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Not knowing the language is of course an issue anywhere, but it is not about segregation. After the declaration of Christmas peace in Turku, there is a prayer, where everybody is welcomed in English, Finnish and Swedish. The prayer, though, is exclusively in Swedish (except that the choir may sing some pieces in Latin and perhaps Finnish or other languages). I certainly would enjoy an Orthodox service even if it is held in Ukrainian or whatever. In most of the world one doesn't know the local language, and if that happens an English speaker in the USA, it's no worse nor more of segregation than for a Tajik in Laos. –LPfi (talk) 20:14, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hey, if – I – write – like – this, any idea how to stop the breaking around the whitespace characters in " – "? I've tried "&nbsp;–&nbsp;" but that still gives me a space indent on the newline. If I wrap with the nowrap template I still get the space on the newline along with crazy word breaking. (Also, as side note prompted by me trying to type this question, what do you think about importing the code template from en-wp?) Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 12:13, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I don't know whether a dash is supposed to be a valid wrap point, but it seems to act as one also for me. The &nbsp; only prevents the space being used as one, it doesn't affect wrapping on the dash. {{nowrap}} works for me, one just has to be careful to include any trailing punctuation in the template parameter, as the end of the template seems to act as a valid wrap point. A space at the end of a line shouldn't be wrapped to the next but rather removed on wrapping, I haven't seen that problem. Do you have an &nbsp; after the template (or a leading space in the template parameter)? What crazy word-breaking do you get? –LPfi (talk) 17:25, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I'm having trouble replicating this now, although I've encountered it twice in two different articles. When I tried it on a test page, the behaviour is as I'd expect. So I'm wondering whether the strange behaviour is some sort of interaction with images, etc. (could even be browser-dependent I suppose). The crazy behaviour was that there was one of two options: 1) in it's raw form it wouldn't remove the space at the end and instead would indent the new line by one space; or 2) with {{nowrap}}, it would shift the dash plus the word after it to the new line, leaving a giant space at the end of the previous line, instead of just breaking on the dash. Anyway, since I can't replicate it, I'll just have to bring it up again if/when I notice it again. Brycehughes (talk) 00:56, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

The point with {{nowrap}} is that the phrase you put as parameter isn't broken up, not at the dashes nor elsewhere. If the phrase is long, then you get a short preceding line if the phrase doesn't fit. I don't see what's surprising about that – if that's what you observe.

For the first case, were you playing with &nbsp;? I assume those aren't removed automatically, so if one of them doesn't fit the line, it has to be moved to the next one – usually of course together with the preceding word, but if the &nbsp; came after a valid wrap point (such as a dash), then it could end up at the beginning of the next line.

–LPfi (talk) 14:02, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Re {{nowrap}}, yes true – was just using that is the counterexample. Re the second, nope, it was simply raw " – " with regular whitespace chars. I've seen it occur twice (the whitespace not being truncated and instead beginning the next line), but I don't know how to replicate it. If I notice it again I'll stop what I'm doing and ping you here. Brycehughes (talk) 14:08, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Ok, I can replicate it, but you'll need to resize your browser window: 1) go to Mogadishu; 2) scroll to the "Understand" paragraph that starts with "Italy lost its colonial hold on Somalia..."; 3) while watching the left margin of the text, shrink your browser window horizontally (you may need to play around here) until you see that clause starting with "planned suburbs" is indented by one space. (This occurs on screen sizes of non-bizarre proportions too, but you can replicate it this way.) Is this weird? I don't think I've seen this happen in all my years on the internet, but it could be that I'm just now noticing this. In any case, if it even is a problem, I guess it's probably not something we can fix here. Brycehughes (talk) 12:30, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

For me, "– planned" jumps down as a unit, leaving the blank at the preceding line. Likewise, when in a narrower (or wider) window also that blank jumps down, it does so together with "modernism". Firefox 102.15.1esr on desktop Debian GNU/Linux (amd64). LPfi (talk) 13:51, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Wow, yep, Firefox does it correctly on MacOS too. Okay so it's a Chrome/Chromium thing I guess. Well, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Next time it annoys me I'll see if anybody has complained on SO about it. Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 14:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Geographical hierarchy on wikivoyage should reflect destination management organization (DMO) hierarchy and to a degree also administrative divisions because for instance local transport and many many things are organized on this basis - and this is relevant for tourists as well. I have 23 year of work experience in development of tourism in Southern Savonia, I am a geographer and work in cooperation the regional council. I know how geographical hierarchy and brand hierarchy in tourism work. If services are organized on municipal and regional basis, it is not helpful to obscure the fact that Suomenniemi belongs to Mikkeli. I know that you are itsepäinen and won't change your mind, so I will not continue this argument with you. Have a nice day.--Periegetes (talk) 07:01, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Odd edit war: I reverted you once on Suomenniemi, and actually explained the revert at your talk page before doing it. I also, at the same time, more or less reverted your edit to South Savonia for reasons I explained in that talk page post. The fact that Suomenniemi belongs to Mikkeli was actually prominently acknowledged in the article before you changed the breadcrumb, and the sentence was reinitiated by my revert.

Whether the geographical hierarchy on Wikivoyage should reflect DMO hierarchy and administrative divisions is a question for Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy. The guideline is quite clear about that we don't think so currently.

Of course, we can argue whether the DMO hierarchy best serves the traveller for individual region and destination articles. We do use official borders when that makes sense and doesn't conflict with more important objectives.

However, when splitting up a region (such as South Savonia) we should still follow our guidelines. I think you should read up on the hierarchy guidelines (such as on what articles have subarticles) before trying to have it your way. And do, as Ikan Kekek suggested, bring your arguments to the relevant talk pages. If you want to change our general principles, argue on the guideline page, if you want to change the regional division, present arguments that apply in the actual case.

–LPfi (talk) 07:45, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

@LPfi, it seems to me, you are refuting obvious geographical and administrative facts. Suomenniemi is part of Mikkeli, that is a fact. Periegetes (talk) 17:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Pardon my intrusion, but LPfi's version clearly says that Suomenniemi is part of Mikkeli. Wikivoyage's policy, Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy, says "the regional hierarchy at Wikivoyage doesn't always follow the official breakdown". Wikivoyage groups destination articles in regions. Mikkeli is not a region, but a city, so it cannot have other articles grouped under it.

Would it make sense from a traveller's perspective to merge Suomenniemi into Mikkeli, or it is better to keep them separate? For a traveller, the municipal boundaries are not relevant.

Most importantly, we resolve differences in Wikivoyage through discussion, which best takes place on the talk page of the article in question. Ground Zero (talk) 19:56, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seeing that Suomenniemi 46 km away from Mikkeli town, it probably is not a good idea from a traveller's perspective to merge the two articles, even if they are grouped under one municipal administration. Ground Zero (talk) 20:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

What I was trying to account for is that people typically think of this as a specifically Muslim expression, but in the Arab countries, Christians and Jews use it too. I'm not sure about the Christian and Jewish minorities in non-Arab Muslim countries of the Middle East like Turkey and Iran, but in Malaysia and Indonesia, it is more or less exclusive to Muslims, and you won't hear a Christian or Buddhist using it. The dog2 (talk) 16:25, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I don't know anything about the facts, but the wording was too awkward. We don't need to cover all details; there are thousands of "widely used expressions", so what we tell are only examples anyway. It is a bit odd to tell that an Arabic word is used by Arabs of certain denominations in addition to Muslims. English is a second language for me too and I didn't find anything elegant. –LPfi (talk) 16:46, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

There seems to be the same problem with tea. Yes, I believe that some got the word from Mandarin, and now that Pashley removed the parenthesis the wording is probably OK. I just don't like having long parentheses or awkward wordings to make the explanation more complete. It is OK if you can find an elegant way of saying it, but if reading gets hard because of cumbersome sentences, that's much worse than leaving out details. I too want things to be correct, but examples don't need to be complete. If somebody says or doesn't say "Insh'allah" or "te" to a Malay, that doesn't spoil their day. –LPfi (talk) 17:54, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I think Pashley's edits are fine, and I'll settle for that. To my knowledge, the only European language that got "cha" from Cantonese is Portuguese. There is some sort of a "te/cha line" between Eastern and Western Europe, so languages in the east like Russian use "chai", which probably came from Persian, and ultimately from Mandarin. The Persians probably first got their tea overland from the Mandarin-speaking parts of China, and the Russians eventually came to dominate those overland caravan routes with the rise of European colonialism. The dog2 (talk) 18:35, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Probably so, yes. The divide is quite clear between the languages I know. –LPfi (talk) 18:40, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Happy holidays, LPfi! Kia ora, LPfi, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for all the hard work you've put in the last year to make Wikivoyage the place it is today. Enjoy the festive season from wherever you are in the globe. Greetings from Te Moeka o Tuawe, Te Tai Poutini, Aotearoa. (Fox Glacier, West Coast, New Zealand) --SHB2000 on 00:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Regarding Special:Diff/4817426, I thought level 3 was fairly unambiguous? I used it instead of H3 knowing that many users aren't well-versed in HTML. Why I added it was because we do use level 2 headings, which is also a subheading (e.g. Wikivoyage:User ban nominations). I think we ought to make it clear instead of relying on precedence. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:40, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

A H2 wouldn't be a subheading of Nominations, and thus not "added to the section". I think the clarification may be confusing, as it implies something special has to be done. I tried to find a better wording, but failed. "Level 3 heading" may be unambiguous if you think in those terms (and we use three equal signs), but it is easy to ignore the page heading when counting and thus to get confused.

Also, I think adjusting the heading level is easy enough not worth the trouble of more wordy instructions. (I assume that when a H2 is added, it is as likely to be a pure mistake – I often add "By X" as H2s). –LPfi (talk) 08:52, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

So what do you propose adding instead? I know adjusting a heading level might seem easy for us, but it might not seem that way for a user not familiar with our customs. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

As I said, I failed to find a good alternative change, but on the other hand, I think the current wording suffices. If somebody doesn't do a nomination because they cannot decide on heading level, then we might not need that nomination. And I hope the page in question is sufficiently watched by people who indeed are familiar with our customs and can adjust the heading as needed. –LPfi (talk) 09:21, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Regarding Special:Diff/4819626, strangely, the answer is no. It's one of the very few accessible places where you can see icebergs in the south Pacific. The closest other icebergs are further south of the south Pacific (in local terms). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

The removed claim was about

"terminal lakes where you can get close to the only icebergs in the south Pacific"

So it wasn't a question about accessibility, and I don't think we should use definitions according to local parlance without an appropriate clarification. I'm very surprised if there aren't icebergs in the Pacific part of the Southern Ocean (although I have no idea about how far north they drift).

On the {{usablepark}}: Wikivoyage:Park article status says

"information on fees and permits and [...] describing all of the typical ways to get there."

Very good if you can add the Fees and permits information.

I would also like clearer info on getting in. Twizel has no article and it is not clear what roads you should use for getting to the park from Queenstown or Christchurch. Is the road from Twizel (I redlinked it, no idea whether it is article-worthy, but one cannot just refer to places not described anywhere) the only realistic route by car? Is there public transport? Could a marker and link, and the airport code, be added for the airport?

There are some places mentioned in the Do, which should probably be described somewhere in the article (not only in tout text – I don't know whether they are here at all), although that isn't needed for usable.

–LPfi (talk) 10:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sure, I'll add that on my things to do this weekend (inc. creating Twizel) and perhaps later this week (time permitting). As for "icebergs in the Pacific part of the Southern Ocean", in Australia and NZ, common notion is that the Southern Ocean starts directly beneath the coasts of the respective countries (which means that the icebergs wouldn't be considered to be part of the Pacific). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:33, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

That would be nice.

OK. I still feel that we don't need to talk about their uniqueness. I wouldn't expect icebergs in Melbourne or even Tasmania.

–LPfi (talk) 10:47, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not unless you count this ;-). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:04, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for moving the article. I realized that I had incorrectly capitalized the title when I first created the page but didn't know how to edit a page name once created. Don't know why I didn't think of just moving it. Small issue, but big thanks for addressing it! Mrkstvns (talk) 17:06, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

:-) –LPfi (talk) 08:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, Admiralty Point is a national park in itself, not part of any other national parks. However, it is important to note that the park boundary does not extend to the surrounding ocean, so while you can visit the Point, you may not be able to explore the entire area as you'd like. 70.68.168.129 03:03, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

The listing needs a description and a link to the official site, unless we have some article that covers it. I understood that there is some recreational area or the like around the tiny national park itself. If so, the surrounding area should probably be described together with it. –LPfi (talk) 09:15, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've added the description and link to the official site. The surrounding area is indeed worth mentioning, as it offers some interesting options for recreation and exploration. Just keep in mind that the park boundary doesn't extend to the ocean, so some areas may be inaccessible without proper permission or equipment. I'd be happy to provide more specific recommendations based on your interests and preferences. 70.68.168.129 16:06, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. However, I am not travelling across the pond in the near future, so please add your advice to the relevant articles without considering my interests.

Regarding your edit, what is "təmtəmíxʷtə"? Is that the spelling in some indigenous language? (The official site didn't work for me; I didn't try to enable javascript from the host of external sites it used).

It seems the two are described in Port Moody, which I linked and where additional info can be put, unless we want a separate park article. I cut down on the description in Canadian National Parks#British Columbia and moved the directions to the destination article; they should probably be tweaked to suit the new context, but I don't know the area so won't do it.

–LPfi (talk) 17:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

"Təmtəmíxʷtə" is a word in the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language, which is spoken by the Squamish Nation, one of the First Nations whose traditional territories include the area around Admiralty Point. The spelling you see is a romanization of the word; in the International Phonetic Alphabet, it would be written as [təmtəmíxʷtə]. The official site uses this spelling as a way of acknowledging and respecting the traditional names and languages of the area's Indigenous peoples. 70.68.168.129 18:26, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

OK. Thanks. –LPfi (talk) 11:13, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

You're welcome! If you have any other questions or would like to discuss more about the Canadian media landscape, please feel free to ask. 70.68.168.129 20:39, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Did you tell the Reddit moderators to delete my Reddit account? 70.68.168.129 19:56, 20 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

No. I have no reason to, that I know, and no idea what account you have there. –LPfi (talk) 09:08, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Reddit moderators also can't delete accounts, FTR. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:21, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

But did you tell Mx. Granger to delete my travel question at the tourist office? 70.68.168.129 16:01, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't see a travel question in this edit. Anyone should have deleted it, no-one had to be "told" to do so, and Mx. Granger didn't happen to be the one who deleted it. Are you trying to waste everyone's time, or are you trying to get yourself blocked? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:13, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I was talking about https://en.m.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Wikivoyage:Tourist_office&diff=prev&oldid=4831201&title=Wikivoyage%3ATourist_office&diffonly=1. 70.68.168.129 16:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

So be it. Please do something useful instead. –LPfi (talk) 07:16, 22 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't think it's controversial that Estonia was part of the Russian Empire. Estonia only gained its independence due to terms imposed by Germany as part of Russia's exit from World War I, only to be reconquered by the Soviet Union during World War II. The dog2 (talk) 23:08, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sorry for the confusion: when I wrote the edit summary I didn't remember yours.

The reason I reverted that edit (and perhaps one or two others) was that I don't think you know how they feel about Tsarist Russia, and to what degree such feelings are affected by later history, rather than the facts at the time. The Germans had a great influence and whether the German upper class or the Tsarist regime where responsible for whatever oppression is probably an intricate question. I don't think we should delve on that: the Soviet oppression is quite enough to explain today's feelings.

–LPfi (talk) 23:41, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Good to know and thank you for the revert. Does this just apply to Central Ostrobothnia or does it also apply to other divisions such as North-east Lapland? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:22, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is one of the regions where we use the official regions (Swedish: landskap). That's the case for the Ostrobothnian regions and North and South Savonia and North and South Karelia, and Central Finland. I think those are the only official cardinal-mark regions that we use. Our Lapland and Oulu regions don't use the official names (we have combined or split the official regions). In the cases where we use "capital of" phrasing, the region named should be an official one. There hopefully are such hints in the region articles, but otherwise it is hard to know without checking the Wikidata or Wikipedia page (if none is linked, then the region probably is our construction). –LPfi (talk) 06:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh, cool. I'll keep that in mind when editing articles from Ostrobothnia, Savonia and Karelia (OSM's regional structure is very helpful for subdivisions unlike neighbouring Sweden or Russia). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I just want to ask, can you buy postage stamps in one Nordic country and use it to send mail from another? I know you can't do that for the EU or the Schengen Area in general, meaning you can't use Spanish stamps to send mail from Portugal for instance. But I wonder if there's a special arrangement just for the Nordic countries given their exceptionally close relationship, so you can use a Danish stamp to send mail from Sweden for instance? The dog2 (talk) 21:50, 8 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

There could have been, yes, but there is not any such cooperation. I suppose there is no compelling reason to coordinate that much in that sector (the general international cooperation is well-developed enough). In fact, you cannot even use Finnish stamps in Åland, and I suppose the Faroe Islands have their own stamps too. Since thirty-some years the post of Finland has been a private (state-owned) company, and in the last few years, the Swedish postal company (which I assume also is privatised) has started competing on parcel delivery in Finland (alongside the well-established DHL & co, but in a way more resembling the way the Finnish post is moving to, with parcel automats in streets and supermarkets). –LPfi (talk) 05:53, 9 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Just so you know, I have actually lived in Australia before. People there do have a strong sense of Australian national identity, although the expression of national pride is not as in your face as what you may be used to from Brits and Americans. Australian exceptionalism isn't really a thing, unlike American exceptionalism which is a core value in American culture, but that doesn't mean Australians aren't proud of their country. If anything, I'd say Australian national pride is about the things that make Australia unique, rather than a pride in being better than everyone else. The dog2 (talk) 18:08, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• ever talked to a native Australian (≈abo), or a Maori Australian, or a Polynesian Australian about their views on this subject? I lived in Oz too and my experience was very different. Ibaman (talk) 18:14, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  @Ibaman: It's probably a while since you've lived here (not sure when), but do note that "abo" is considered a racist slur today (around the Australian equivalent of the n-word). --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 10:34, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  yeah, that's why I used (≈) instead of (=) to exactly signify awareness about this. It didn't work out. I'm very sorry for not being clearer and more explicit. Ibaman (talk) 11:06, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• [edit conflict] Yes, I know you have lived there. I just don't know whether you have lived with the native communities. And it seems you often over-interpret your experiences. –LPfi (talk) 18:16, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

+1. The dog2 is certainly right, and the few that do believe in Australian exceptionalism tend to be ONP voters (and the party enjoys next-to-zero support in mainstream Australian politics). --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 22:44, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's sad, but Indigenous Australians are a small minority today, and the ones in the cities are largely assimilated. You usually have to go to remote parts of the Outback or the northern part of Australia to experience indigenous culture in any meaningful way. It's a very similar situation to the indigenous peoples of the U.S. and Canada. Australia also employed the same kind of residential school system that the U.S. and Canada did, where Indigenous children were taken from their parents to try to erase their culture. I was referring more to mainstream Australian society. Of course there are exceptions, but what I mentioned is true in general. The dog2 (talk) 02:17, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Saying that "Australians" do something when the generalisation isn't true about most natives is more or less saying that the natives aren't really Australians. We should tell about the mainstream, but read the wordings from a viewpoint of the indigenous before hitting "Publish". –LPfi (talk) 06:14, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Except do First Nations Australians even hold a different viewpoint regarding national pride and exceptionalism? It's a topic that's rarely brought up and even then, few believe in Australian exceptionalism. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 10:37, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I do not know. To have the statement, somebody should. Many minorities do not share a national pride representing what might be seen as an oppressive majority. Has Australia succeeded in creating a nation that the natives see as theirs? Perhaps, but I don't think we can assume that a priori, much less say anything about the nature of their nationalism. If you or somebody else knows, then by all means tell it in the article, if not, then the wording should be very careful. –LPfi (talk) 15:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't know about the Indigenous Australians. You don't encounter many of them in Adelaide, and those that you may encounter are largely assimilated. The few that I encountered were mixed race, and I wouldn't have been able to tell that they had Aboriginal ancestry had they not told me. SHB2000 can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the situation is similar in Sydney as well. Of the places in South Australia I have been to, it was only in Ceduna that I heard Aboriginal people speaking their own language when walking past them in the street. Asian-Australians, on the other hand, by and large share the national pride in being Australian, much like how most Asian-Americans are proud of being American. The dog2 (talk) 16:53, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

You're correct indeed. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:48, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

The three of you have lived in Australia, I haven't. I assume I have expressed my worries clearly enough, please try to figure out what should be said among you. I will follow the development with interest, but I think I shouldn't say anything more. –LPfi (talk) 17:07, 9 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi, LPfi, I hope you're doing well. I've sent an email to you about a recent edit of yours (your edit isn't to be worried about – I'm being deliberately vague as possible here in public) for some more surrounding context. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 07:49, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. The interpretation you presented is kind of comforting, less worrying than what I feared. –LPfi (talk) 08:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, it can come strange without surrounding context. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 08:54, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

To answer your question, most Russian speakers in Israel moved there in the 1990s. The Soviet Union had controlled emigration really tightly, so it was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that it became easy for Russian Jews to move to Israel. At that time, the Russian economy was in freefall, and most people were suffering, while Israel was a thriving prosperous economy, so lots of Jews left Russia for a better life in Israel since all Jews are entitled to obtain Israeli citizenship so long as they don't have a serious criminal record. Another factor was that the Soviet Union had supported the Palestinians, which really pissed off its Jewish community, so most of them left for Israel soon as they had the chance. The dog2 (talk) 15:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

There was more than one wave of immigration from Russia/the USSR. The first wave was a small one, fueled by pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during Ottoman rule of Syria, a province that included what's now Israel. The second wave was during the 1970s, the age of the Refuseniks. The third wave started during Gorbachev's Glasnost in the 1980s. However, when Russians are mentioned in an Israeli context today, it's the third wave that's generally referenced, because the previous two waves identified much more as Jews and Zionists and readily integrated, and many of the third wave immigrants were not Jews at all but Orthodox Christians who for example had one Jewish grandparent, or otherwise weakly identify as Jews. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:04, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Disclaimer: I don't think either of us are experts on this, and I definitely disagree that mere USSR support for the PLO would have been sufficient to impel people to become Refuseniks, knowing that would cost them their jobs, sometimes their freedom, and likely lead to years of harassment before they might perhaps be given permission to leave. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:06, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that to what extent the Russians are "immigrants" is unimportant in Talk. The third wave described above is interesting (thanks!), but needs more explanation than just calling those "immigrants" (and mixing them up with the earlier waves), and I don't think Talk is the right place for that. There is even the section Demographics already in the article, which is a much better fit, if we want that discussion at city level. –LPfi (talk) 16:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also, I highly doubt that those descended from the earlier waves would be able to speak Russian anymore given how long they have been in Israel. In much the same way, American Jews whose ancestors fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire are mostly unable to speak Russian today. I'd bet that if you meet an Israeli who speaks Russian, (s)he is most probably a late 20th century immigrant from the former Soviet Union or the child of one. The dog2 (talk) 16:59, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Or a 21st-century immigrant. The wave of immigration that started in the 80s didn't stop in 2000. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The passage in question was:

"[…] and there is a significant number of French-speaking Jews. Smaller groups of Jews speak Dutch and Spanish. There is a large number of Russian Jewish immigrants, so it is not uncommon to see signs in Russian or hear Russian language radio."

What about the French-speaking, aren't they immigrants? When did their forefathers arrive? Why haven't they lost their language? And why would a Russian who immigrated as child in the 1970s have lost their mother tongue? Descendants of the 19th- or early 20th-century immigrants are probably too few to be relevant for Talk.

–LPfi (talk) 17:26, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't know about the French speakers, but France received lots of Jewish refugees from its North African colonies of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia after the founding of modern Israel in 1948. And there's reports of some of these French Jews immigrating to Israel in recent years because of tensions with the African and Arab Muslim communities in France. Also Morocco and Tunisia still have Jewish communities; most Morrocan and Tunisian Jews have emigrated to Israel or France, but there's still over a thousand Jews in each country that have not emigrated. I presume a Moroccan or Tunisian Jew moving to Israel today would be able to speak Arabic and French. With regard to Spanish, quite a number of Jews from the North African Arab countries and Turkey were descended from refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, so some of them would have spoken a Jewish dialect of Spanish called Ladino. I'm not sure about Dutch speakers since I've never heard of them. The dog2 (talk) 17:50, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, some of the French-speakers are from France, some from Belgium, some presumably from North Africa, and a few from Quebec. Spanish-speakers could come from Argentina, Venezuela, or various other Latin American countries. I wouldn't have thought there would have been a large number of immigrants from the Netherlands, because not that many survived the Holocaust, but I could be wrong. I agree that people who speak languages other than Hebrew, Yiddish or Arabic as first languages are likely to be 1st-generation immigrants or children of immigrants. Ladino, my friend, is a language and not a dialect, and it's not Spanish. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:59, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the message Gremista.32 msg 15:53, 14 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

You are welcome. –LPfi (talk) 16:51, 14 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I was just thinking, do you think we should have separate templates for countries that are in Schengen but not the EU, in the EU but not Schengen, and both EU and Schengen? The dog2 (talk) 16:24, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have been wondering, but I don't know what best. Non-Schengen EU countries are just Ireland, Cyprus and possible new EU members, There are a few more Non-EU Schengen members, but two of those are Nordic, with some special considerations, Switzerland is odd overall and Lichtenstein is small. A few lines of text and a link to Travelling around the Schengen area and to European Union (via {{Schengen}} for Schengen countries like now) might work well enough. –LPfi (talk) 16:40, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply