User talk:WhatamIdoing Voyage Tips and guide

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To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page. If you need help, check out Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub. If you are familiar with Wikipedia, take a look over some of the differences here.--ϒpsilon (talk) 06:22, 31 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi WhatamIdoing. following your insightful reply in the Travellers' pub about this topic, I decided to change the template that we use on the Hebrew Wikivoyage, which now looks like this...

Are you familiar with this destination? If so, please help improve this article by adding information about the most successful attractions, restaurants, and hotels in this destination (clicking the "Add listing" will enable you to do that), and/or by expanding the article with translated content from the corresponding English Wikivoyage article.

I am hoping that this approach would make it more clear that anyone can take part in improving the articles they come across. what do you think? any additional ideas on how to improve this template would be more than welcome. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 20:22, 7 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

I think that directly addressing the reader might be helpful. This should reduce the risk of someone thinking that it's a message to somebody else. (Are you familiar with w:en:Somebody else's problem?) This could be simple: "Hello" or "Hello, visitor!"

Sometimes the "best" thing to do is culture-specific. For example, when you're dealing with Japanese people, then a cute icon increases the click-through rate. In some places, it might be best to be friendly and informal ("Hey, have you ever been here?") and some times it might be better to be formal and respectful.  I don't know what's most likely with your group, but you might be able to come up with a couple of guesses.

You could run your own w:A/B test with these messages. I'd rate this message as being fairly formal, so you could create a chatty or funny message as an alternative. Run them at different times (if you want to do this up in style, then we can talk to the CentralNotice admins at Meta, but you could just do it manually), and see whether one gets better responses than the other. If you find something that works for you, then please share your advice with the other Wikivoyages. :-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for all the tips. From my experience it seems that most Hebrew speakers aren't interested in spending their time on creating new content for Wiki articles (although the success of the Hebrew Wikipedia proves probably, in my opinion, that they are more willing to do so if there is a relatively high readership to their work). From my experience usually the average Hebrew speaking editor is more likely to improve content than add new content... and the Hebrew Wikivoyage mostly needs new content (we, the few active editors of Hebvoy... have tried to translate a lot of content through the years from engvoy, but it takes a long time for the few active editors, and currently Hebvoy mostly consists of outline articles without much content which we gradually expand (and we are counting very much on the public to help expand the majority of the content so that hebvoy would significantly grow still within the next couple of years).

I am very interested in the marketing aspect of this experiment of ours... there definitely are many ways we could try to rephrase the message in that template above, yet, if it was completely up to you .... (I have a feeling you have a good hunch about how to phrase it in a good way) how would you rephrase it to increase the chances of having the people whom stumble across the website help expand it ? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 22:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

It's not really a question of having a good hunch; it's a question of trying different things. User:Mooeypoo, what do you think? Can you write me a happy-funny version of the above message (in Hebrew, because funny things don't translate well)? You can change anything you want, including the image. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 7 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Following your Japanese example, I have just changed it to look like this.....

Are you familiar with this destination? If so, please help improve this page by adding information about the most successful attractions, restaurants, and hotels in this destination (clicking the "Add listing" will enable you to do that), and/or by expanding the article with translated content from the corresponding English Wikivoyage article.

(See example on the top of this page)

It would be interesting to see if this change would have any affect. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 01:47, 8 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

It looks like the Hebrew Wikivoyage got about 20 edits by anons during the last seven days, and 248 edits by registered users. I see 21 edits by 5 new registered editors (one truly new and the other four from other wikis). So I suppose that is the baseline activity (unless you have better numbers).

Now to create another option that you could try. I'll go for an informal version:

Hello, friend! Have you been to this destination before? The gnome is trying to find a good restaurant here. Do you know one? Just find the "Add listing" button, click it, and fill in the blue form to tell the gnome about your favorite. We'd really appreciate your help. Thanks!

What do you think? Could we compare these two, and see if it helps? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:36, 8 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the suggestion. unfortunately it doesn't translate well to Hebrew + it doesn't encourage people to translate content (the main thing we must encourage people to do). I will compare the impact of the gnome version with a non-gnome version.

about the recent edits from various users and anonymous users .... they are all people I located on the Hebrew Wikipedia as being experts in various languages, whom I invited (with the help of "send user e-mail" feature) to finish the work on the different phrasebooks in the Hebrew Wikivoyage. They usually help a bit just on the specific phrasebook they came to edit, but after that they usually never edit any other article. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 05:15, 8 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Why do you want people to translate articles, rather than adding their own information? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 9 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

It's quite simple.... there simply aren't that many Hebrew speakers in the world for this to run itself at this point (the majority of Hebrew speakers world wide live in Israel or have lived in Israel the majority of their lives). The amount of English speakers is tremendous in comparison, and English speakers live anywhere (that, in my opinion, is the main reason English wiki websites work best). What this means is that there is a much higher likelihood that local English speakers would have a lot to contribute about the destinations they are well familiar with... while the small amount of Hebrew-speaking-wiki-culture-enthusiasts (we're not a very big club) would have to, at the very least, first create the "foundation" of the Hebrew Wikivoyage by writing mostly about destinations we have never been to, with the help of translations, with the hopes that sooner or later other Hebrew speakers would be inspired to expand our work with original content. I should mention though that once in a long while we do get participation from expert Hebrew speaking travelers whom expand specific articles with original content in Hebrew, but they are very rare. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 02:25, 11 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

But adding your own things might be more fun than translating someone else's. So there's another thing we could test: add your own versus translate someone else's work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 11 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

@ויקיג'אנקי:/@WhatamIdoing: I hope you don't mind me butting in. I have an idea how to help the Hebrew wikivoyage gain more contributors. It might be very far-fetched, but it may be a start of something, who knows.

I have been trying to find a French language class or any other language class for that matter, on Wikiversity, I posted a query to three different wikiversities and to my amazement it appears no one wants to offer language classes. All I got so far are referals to commercial organizations.

A long time ago I started taking a Spanish language class in real life. One of the very novel ideas the teacher had was hooking up the class with new immigrants who were trying to learn English. Unfortunately I had to drop the class before the immigrant sessions started, but I believe this idea had a lot of promise.

So I guess I am wondering if you are game for a cross-wiki experiment with Wikiversity, where I am sure one can find people who want to learn Hebrew who can help hebrew-speaking participants learn other languages. As you probably know I have tried to contribute COVID-related content to the Hebrew-wikivoyage, but my progress has been very slow with google translate. I would be comfortable using google to translate from English to Hebrew if I could get help "polishing" the final product. Am I making sense at all? Ottawahitech (talk) 02:02, 29 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

This link you posted is very informative. Looking back at our reactions to the 'departure', we (myself included) can probably all learn something from reading it.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:49, 27 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'm glad you liked it. It's an old favorite of mine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 29 August 2018 (UTC)Reply

Swept in from the pub

I got a couple of people I work with to try out editing Wikivoyage today, and you all have been awesome – fixing little problems, making additional edits, doing what we do best. I keep telling people that they should be contributing here because this is the nicest, most collaborative community and the most fun work. Thanks. You're the best. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 23 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

What a lovely message =) Thanks for saying such nice things, not only to us, but to others who may be interested in joining the fun. BTW, that should be "We're the best"; you're part of this team too. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:02, 23 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hey, wonderful to hear! And a warm welcome to all new Voyagers. ϒψιλον (talk) 19:43, 23 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Yayyy! Definitely my favourite community here :) Jdlrobson (talk) 03:30, 24 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

Are you going to open the ticket on Phab. or do you want me to do? --Andyrom75 (talk) 19:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hello, Andyrom75, I think we should wait until next week (to give people some time to disagree, if they want to), and then I'd be happy to have you file the Phab ticket. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 21 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Ok, just give me a ping when you think is the right moment. --Andyrom75 (talk) 10:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Andyrom75, I think we've waited plenty long enough for this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Please perform this change that will allow to personalize better the namespace where the listing is used. I've done this because in it:voy we need also NS:104 and I've preferred to use in the code a customized array. PS Sorry to ask you this all the time :-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 21:10, 6 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Andyrom75, I have no advanced user rights, so I can't edit the gadget. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 8 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hi WhatamIdoing. In the back of my mind I feel like I've read that abuse filters can be configured to automatically block a user who attempts a certain edit, but looking at the options at Special:AbuseFilter I can't find it. Is that a setting that would need to be configured on this wiki? (I'd like to propose this to the community as a way to deal with one or two long-term abusers, but I want to check if it's technically possible first.) Do you know, or could you direct me to the right person to ask? —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:14, 18 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

mw:Extension:AbuseFilter says that blocking is technically possible, but I believe that options is disabled at all WMF-hosted wikis. If it's possible to get that changed, then I'd expect one of the m:Stewards to know. (The process for getting it changed would be merely filing a Phab: ticket to request the necessary config change, but there's no point in requesting it if they'll absolutely refuse it.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:22, 19 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, that makes sense. —Granger (talk · contribs) 08:14, 20 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hi WhatamIdoing Just saw you post to the pub so hope I catch you here. I just posted this User_talk:SelfieCity#Partial_bans? , but after checking the user contributions page I realize they arenot very active right now. Not sure what to do next? Ottawahitech (talk) 18:16, 27 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Ottawahitech, I think that the English Wikivoyage is a much less bureaucratic place than, say, Meta-Wiki or the English Wikipedia. We don't bother with official mentorships, partial bans, mediation, arbitration, or other things. If someone can be trusted to follow whatever advice they're given, then they are forgiven for their past mistakes and encouraged to continue. If they can't, then we're not going to give them a dozen extra-super-final-last-chance-this-time-we-really-mean-it opportunities until everyone is mad enough to ban the user. Contributing to Wikivoyage is not a fundamental human right, and we are not desperate enough for mere numbers to spend time trying to turn a spammer into an impartial contributor, or to turn a jerk into a decent human.

I recommend spending a while helping out with Special:RecentChanges. It's an easy and productive way to figure out what's typical for this community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

...looking much better than my red link farm, despite still being in your sandbox. Hadn't known about these historic parks so might be on my to go list when I'm up there next time :) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:13, 18 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, @SHB2000. I had fun writing the descriptions. I thought it would be fun to make an itinerary that uses the (fairly inexpensive) historic park pass, but it didn't hang together as an itinerary. I ended up putting most of the northern California parks into individual articles, and only three made it to the itinerary, which is now at Olompali–Petaluma–Sonoma historic parks. The Southern California parks may end up with a similar scattered fate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 18 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for organizing the Unconference session. I have transferred some of the notes I've taken from the Etherpad onto the Wikimania page. Feel free to add any that I missed. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:54, 19 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

I like those notes, except that Suomi Wikimatkat (Finnish Wikivoyage) is much more a failed project than pt.voy, with their most active editor having done the crime of copyvios (Luchy04). I wish I could've joined, but it was 01:30 in my time (UTC+10) zone when it happened. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 03:19, 19 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, @OhanaUnited.

I just tried to add a few things to pt.voy. The listings editor is out of date. The toolbar buttons don't insert a parameter for Wikidata, although the templates seem to support it. The templates don't have the little gray "edit" link at the end. It looks like @Edu! tried to update the templates, but some more work might be beneficial. I didn't see anything that looked broken in an article, just lots of missing content and missing features. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 19 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I saw you thanked my post on the Travelers pub page. I added an example of the sync issue on Wikidata and the corresponding WikiVoyage edit in case you were reporting the issue. I'd look at the source myself, but the interface doesn't indicate or provide a link of where to find the source for that component of the site. Wolfgang8741 (talk) 16:30, 30 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Prompted by your comment at Talk:Sex segregation#Not based on appearance in the West?, I wrote the section Finland#Nudity. Do you think this is helpful to visiting Americans? –LPfi (talk) 09:47, 28 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, @LPfi. I think that will be very helpful to visitors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Happy holidays, WhatamIdoing! Hello WhatamIdoing, 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 11:54, 24 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

I tried to respond to your email and then it like weirdly disappeared from my inbox. My reply was:

Hey thanks for your email and you can have my email address and honestly email anytime.

You said "cussing" so I'm going to assume you're American? I lived in the U.S. for a long time.

Honest question – does it offend you personally? Are you offended? Sincerely curious. Not sure it will change my behavior but...

You can email me whenever: brycedhughesprotonmail.com Brycehughes (talk) 17:23, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Oh also brycehughes isn't my real name, my real name is Luke. So you can call me that if you want. Brycehughes (talk) 17:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I'm not offended. (Also, I think that word gets overused, to cover anything from "slightly bothered" to "outraged" – and far too often for "disapprove but not actually personally feeling any emotions about it".)

I do have general concerns about what newcomers think if the first thing they see is something that seems unpleasant to them, whether that be an fight between two editors or rough language. I'd like to have more editors, and I think that the overall tone is important for that process (not the most important thing, but probably in the top five). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

That's a fair point. I think (I think?) I only swear when I'm in a discussion with editors I "know" or who I think "know" me. I try to be exceedingly polite with new editors. I'll try to tone it down a bit. Maybe we shouldn't call it the "pub" though, haha. Brycehughes (talk) 01:24, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

That's a very interesting insight. I'd never thought of the page name as indicating the style of conversation.

I have been amused by some of your recent comments. Thanks for giving me something to smile about.

Have you run across the "one a day" conversation approach? When others are being frustrating, sometimes it's better to slow the conversation down. You're just "coincidentally" too busy with, say, removing listings for businesses that closed during the pandemic (talk about embarrassing content...) to get back to them right away. Sometimes this results in someone else taking up the cause for you; usually, it gives people time to think. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yeah I know the one-a-day conversation approach. Once upon a time, in a country far-far away, I used to work in politics. I learned quickly that instead of starting out by taking the moderate ground (where you might well be happy ending up anyway), you should take the more extreme position and then argue it vociferously, with the expectation that you'll have to meet in the middle eventually anyway (or just be sorely defeated, which happens). Otherwise if you start with the moderate position you've already ceded half your ground and you often end up with a compromise far farther from anything you would've been happy with in the first place. I realise this contravenes a certain approach of certain wiki-denizens, whom I'd call the rationalists (I once though wikis were a refuge in that sense but noo, oh, no, although WV is much better than others). Anyway, 1) if I sound upset you can basically ignore me; and 2) yes you overall make a good point, I'll tone it down, and maybe keep it to the real pubs. I do effing hate warning boxes though ;) Brycehughes (talk) 09:53, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Well, that would explain why politics seems so screwed up, if nobody's being honest about their actual position. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:48, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Exactly, you come out of the end of it feeling like a complete piece of sh** re the process, but you actually accomplished something good and impactful in the world. I'm a software developer now; I miss that feeling. Brycehughes (talk) 05:52, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

If you're interested in making a difference in the world via software work, then you may want to look at https://developer.wikimedia.org/ and keep an eye out for the m:Community Wishlist Survey. One of the volunteer devs solved the little problem I posted to the wishlist last year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I wish honestly. The languages wm uses are pretty Greek to me. PHP, Javascript (Typescript I can handle), Lua... it's actually been a thing I've had in the back of my mind for years, but I can't even figure out templates (although somehow I have template editor rights here). Brycehughes (talk) 00:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

What's your favorite programming language(s)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:58, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

So I really like functional languages because they fit better with how my brain works (I find for loops more mind-bending than recursion). Historically I've written a lot of Scala, but that language has serious problems in terms of its expressed code complexity and (weirdly) its culture, so I'm moving away from it. I've been really enjoying Typescript recently, and I always think it's so funny that Microsoft has such cool and open tools now, they used to be so evil back in the day. Point is, I'm sort of in transition. I think Rust looks really interesting – I haven't worked on bare metal in decades and I'm really sick of unnecessary VMs since we can basically containerise everything now. Unison looks interesting but I assume it'll just be another Haskell, relegated to pet projects and small shops.

Do you have a favourite? Any recommendations? Brycehughes (talk) 07:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Oh btw, not sure if you've ever read this, but it used to give me and my propeller hat friends a good laugh 10 years ago. I don't personally have anything against PHP, people really get sh** done with it. Also I've heard it has improved a lot. Brycehughes (talk) 08:48, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

It's funny... Pashley once asked me what computer languages I liked and I replied along similar lines and I also got no reply. I think I might even be offensive in explaining what computer languages I like. In any case, I've come to a deal with myself where anytime I swear on this website I have to kick you an apology... it's workable because if I really feel the need to curse then I have to properly copy your username (thanks capitalised 'I') and perhaps I reconsider. So, compromise for now. Brycehughes (talk) 19:14, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I was going to get back to you, but I haven't finished the screed against PHP, and then I forgot about it. It's probably still open in a tab.

I'm not a coder. I know a couple of people who like Rust (and of course lots of people who do PHP specifically for MediaWiki), but I don't know anything about the other languages you named. My favorite language is "beg the dev to do it for me". ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ah, sorry, since you asked the question I assumed you were a coder (I like languages with reasonably easy dependency-management would be my short answer). Yeah a screed for sure. You could print it out, stick it on the back of your toilet. Or read it in the evening to help you get to sleep at night :) Brycehughes (talk) 19:44, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Happy holidays, WhatamIdoing! Kia ora, WhatamIdoing, 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 00:20, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

You are invaluable.

Yours, Dustfreeworld (talk),

18:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Banstars for you - Esp. [1]

Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:38, 21 February 2024 (UTC)  Reply

Thanks for putting an end to that IP's nonsense on the pub – it's a shame it got to that level. Do you think it's worth adopting a template of that kind for this wiki? (if so I'll start a discussion when I come back) --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:14, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

No, I wouldn't bother. It's rather heavy-handed for this community, and I don't expect it to be appropriate more than about once a year. For one thing, I think it would be a waste of time (we would spend two hours discussing it, so we can save three minutes a year). For another thing, if we make it easy to do this, we might find more heavy-handed responses. We don't need or want heavy-handed responses; they make this site unpleasant for the regulars – rather like a workplace when everyone gripes about customers and coworkers all the time – and they discourage new folks from joining us. The rise of "template culture" at the English Wikipedia has been reported in the academic literature as a significant reason why people stop contributing. Personal messages are usually best, and we should do everything we can to make a friendly personal message just as easy as an impersonal one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, that's my thought too. I'm not fond of "closed" discussions because they serve the same purpose as archiving. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:09, 11 April 2024 (UTC)Reply