Wikivoyage:Organising events Voyage Tips and guide

This page documents a Wikivoyage guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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This page outlines the official Wikivoyage procedures for organising events. This could range from simple educational projects for high school and university students, anniversary events or WMF-funded events.

If you are planning an event which includes creating content on Wikivoyage in English, please follow this guideline. If your project is small-scale and informal, you should still read it and consider the advice given.

The below advice is relevant for anybody who is going to engage people not experienced with editing Wikivoyage, especially if there will be massive edits. Tens of newcomer edit a day wouldn't cause any issue with the community, but for hundreds of edits, some of which are misguided, we wish to be prepared and ideally having had the chance to minimise frustration among event contributors and patrollers.

If your event is formally organised, the community expects you to follow these event guidelines.

Organised events tend to be considered medium- or large-scale. Things like small collaborative sessions with a group of mates aren't considered to be events (including in-person one-on-one Wikivoyage mentoring sessions). Just plunge forward with these as you please.

Notify the community in an early phase of planning. This is especially important if you haven't been involved with the Wikivoyage community or haven't got experience in open wiki editing events. This gives the community a chance to give advice and prevent frustration among you and project participants as well as the community. We have experience of well-intended projects where failure to anticipate certain mechanisms have caused havoc.

In the notice, please include the following, if already known (if you have only vague ideas, explaining them may provide valuable feedback):

1. what your event will be about;
2. what areas of the project will be your focus (this could be anything – it can be as specific as Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, a country such as Nigeria, or a whole continent such as Asia, or a theme, such as Cycling or Sustainable tourism);
3. whom the project is for (again, this could be anything – is it for a high school class, a wiki fan club, or anyone to join)
4. how will you coordinate the project (e.g., an off-wiki chat, in-person events, or an on-wiki project page) – if there is no project page, whom (what username) should we contact for suggestions and feedback on your ideas;
5. the duration and dates of the event.
6. If you are planning prizes in money or other value, the event has commercial support, or if any WMF funds are being used, declare those.

   Your message does not need to be structured, but these are generally a nice-to-know for the community. If you organise events on a regular basis, you do not need to repeat this every time, but a notice on the travellers' pub is still nice.

Ideally, engage some of the community in the theme and report on the planning progress. In most cases, at least somebody in your team should have patroller or autopatroller status.

If you're organising an event, you need to know how to edit Wikivoyage yourself. If you aren't a seasoned Wikivoyager, you should acquaint yourself with the project before arranging events here, or at least engage somebody who is one as part of your team. Make the kind of contributions that you intend participants to make; you'll notice some issues yourself, and you might get reactions from the community, at least you could note tweaks to your additions. You could also follow discussions in the travellers' pub for a couple of months, patrol RecentChanges to see what others are reverting, watch the low-traffic arrivals lounge, etc. Knowing the project makes it much easier to teach your project members the dos and don'ts, and to concentrate efforts where they are the most valuable.

Read through Wikivoyage:About, Wikivoyage:What is an article?, Wikivoyage:Don't tout and Wikivoyage:Copyleft again. Almost all of the problematic contributions the English Wikivoyage has faced have violated one of these policies.

Newcomers to the project often overlook some differences between Wikivoyage and some other projects. In addition to the guidelines linked above, see Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians and Wikivoyage:What is an article?.

If there are any kind of prizes, other than fame through the project and user pages, these may cause some contributors to hunt for the prize rather than trying to add value to Wikivoyage. Rules on getting points or winning prizes may then be carefully considered to avoid problematic shortcuts and abuse. While participants' contributions may often be reflective of trying to obtain the prize, the traveller must come first.

If your event is for a class or similar, and you want to create accounts for the participants or they are to be created from the classroom, you may want the account creator permission, allowing you to create many accounts in a short time. Normally there is a low limit on account creation – which may kick in also when several people are creating accounts from behind a common proxy server (such as a NAT firewall). If you require account creator, ask on the talk page of any bureaucrat.

The English Wikivoyage community recognises that learning to edit a new wiki can be difficult, especially if you aren't familiar with the nature of Wikivoyage. The community is often more than willing to help – just ask at either the arrivals lounge or the travellers' pub and the community will be more than happy to give any assistance. This is for both organisers and participants.