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I made a proposal here to introduce a template for sections of longer routes, in order to better organise these sections, collect (and use) structured data, as well as introduce new functionality, such as a direct link to a text section from dynamic maps, or the other way around.

I would love to get some feedback on it! Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 21:04, 5 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

As an update to this, I made a template here Module:SectionInfo/sandbox as well as here Module:RouteSection/sandbox.

Usage examples:

A section of trail from here to there
21.9 km	6:30 hr	1010 m

A section of trail from here to there

21.9 km

6:30 hr

1010 m

Let me know if you have some feedback to share!

Edit, updated the old template as well to show a few options.Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 15:59, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't like it. It takes up too much space, and there's nothing better about the template vs just typing it by hand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm in the same boat as WhatamIdoing. This adds some slight ease of information, but other than that I don't see a lot of benefit to introducing this. Especially not considering how space-inefficient this template is as it sits. Were it significantly smaller, I would be more likely to be in favour. Also: Does all this need to be done through Wikidata and OSM when most websites and promotional material for hiking routes provide this same information already? Can't it just be copied over from that and thereby simplify this template significantly?

LF Zuiderzeeroute
Amsterdam → Hoorn

↔ 53 km (33 mi)

⏲ 3:30

↕ 10 m (11 yd)

I do generally welcome efforts to make information more easy to find at a glimpse, and this template could potentially help, were it smaller. Based on LF Zuiderzeeroute (admittedly a cycling route), I've made a little mock-up of how I think a template with this information should be: As little text as possible, conveyed as intuitively and as non-invasive as possible. Something this size could be aligned above or below a dynamic map (which I understand from the discussion you linked, it should interact with to some extent?), whilst not taking the attention away from the article itself.
― Wauteurz (talk) 20:26, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I like Wauteurz's suggestion – it's not very intrusive and presents important information needed without taking up excessive space. //shb (t | c | m) 22:52, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's really cool! I would even use that bottom stats line for simple listings of trails. Gerode (talk) 23:11, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hey! Thanks so much to both of you for the feedback.

You're absolutely right, the current version is far too bulky. And thank you for creating that mock-up!

> Also: Does all this need to be done through Wikidata and OSM when most websites and promotional material for hiking routes provide this same information already?

My thought process was this:

I first noticed that hiking itineraries were formatted inconsistently. A template seemed like a good way to standardise part of the itineraries themselves, as well as the section stats. While working on that, I learned that to display hiking trails on dynamic maps using the mapshapes template, the trail sections (from OpenStreetMap) need to be linked to Wikidata items.

That got me thinking. Could we get some additional benefits from structuring the information? Creating these sections in Wikidata provides a way to link geodata with section stats. We could compute section stats from the geodata, or use the linking to create clickable trail sections.

The alternative, as you mentioned, would be to copy the information from official websites. I could create GPX files, manually split them into sections, and write out the stats, but this wouldn't give me a direct way of linking a section on a map to a section in text. The geodata and section stats would be separate. This runs somewhat counter to the Wikimedia model of using centralised, structured data. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 23:12, 16 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Right, I get the reasoning. My main worry is that we're a quite small lot of editors on this project, and only few have the capability to maintain a template that calls and calculates data from elsewhere, let alone do the configuration to make this template work for the trail (section) they want to write about. The last thing I would want is that a template gets abandoned because no-one can maintain it. If there isn't one yet, a manual overwrite might be a useful addition, so that the template can also be used by manually inserting the data it displays.
― Wauteurz (talk) 10:52, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

That’s a very valid point about maintainability. I should have mentioned this earlier, but the template already supports manual data entry to address that exact issue.

You can see a demonstration here: User:Bluecoordinationfine/SectionInfo test. This way, any editor can use it without needing to use Wikidata from the get go, similarly to Markers/Listings. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 11:32, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Very nice! One last little gripe: I see you can switch between whether metric or imperial units are used. Would it be possible to add a conversion between the two so that you can see distances and such in both notations? No metric trail is safe from people used to thinking in imperial measurements and vice versa, after all. Either via mouseover text or in parentheses like {{convert}} should work fine for that.
― Wauteurz (talk) 14:19, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the reply!

I've made a few changes, which can be found here in Module:RouteSection/sandbox, I've added the tests in User:Bluecoordinationfine/RouteSection test. The changes are:

1. I've renamed it to RouteSection. This name is more versatile since the module can be used for any type of route (hiking, cycling, etc.).

2. Parameters are now passed through directly, so you can use templates {{m|123}} for values such as distance.

3. I've added a |convert=yes/no switch. This controls whether data pulled from Wikidata is automatically formatted with the {{convert}} template.

4. Data entered into the template takes precedence over data from Wikidata, similar to Markers and Listings.

5. I've changed the presentation to be a single line as the output.

I'll look into tables next to see if I can make the output similar to the mockup. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 15:15, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Instead of a |convert=yes switch (I decide for all readers whether they see both), you might consider a [convert] button (each reader decides whether to click the button and see the other option). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the suggestion! My main concern is that a clickable button would be problematic for people using screen readers, as it hides information by default.

The current approach, where the editor decides to show both values, is also more consistent with established wiki practice. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 18:19, 17 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've added a small test here: Lapplandsleden Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 18:14, 19 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think it's safe to say there's sufficient consensus for using this template? //shb (t | c | m) 12:04, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

btw I still have a slight preference for Wauteurz's design since I find it less intrusive and more modern, but it would still regardless be a great step in our slow process to slowly modernise our site. //shb (t | c | m) 12:19, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Same preference here. Especially the use of headings in the module's output I find undesirable, but that's personal preference.

One actual issue I see, is that this is now a module doing the work of both a module and a template. Based on how other templates and modules function, there should still be a {{Trail}} or {{TrailSection}}, that can manage manual overrides without needing to invoke the module, and present the data in an appealing manner. That also gives the advantage of not needing to meddle with the module code when trying to modernise or facelift the way this data gets presented, making long-term maintenance more accessible.

@Bluecoordinationfine, if you want me to, I'll happily make the template side based on my earlier mock-up, including actual iconography. That will require some adjustment from the module to interface nicely though, and I don't possess the skills to handle that side. I've got all the time in the world to work on it this week and should be able to get it done in a day - just let me know.
― Wauteurz (talk) 12:42, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hey! That's a good comment, I haven't looked into the difference between modules and templates. And thanks a bunch for the offer! Here's my main findings from experimentation:

Headings

The problem with the headings is that that's how the majority of hiking guides are now structured, using headings for trail sections. Using a table also makes using headings impossible it seems, based on my experimentation.

We could change this of course (maybe we could make an overall table of the trail, including all stages as well, to make it easy to navigate?).

From/to

The other thing is the "from" and "to". This template takes the name from wikidata, and ignores the from and to wikidata values. There's a reason for this. Sometimes the section of trail actually has a name, i.e. a smaller named trail is part of a larger trail. In the vast majority of cases, neither the "from" nor the "to" value will have page links. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 16:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

So, the issue with this inserting headings is, that we automatically put 'edit'-buttons behind most headings. I fear that having templates insert headings will clash with that in some way. Furthermore, I am of the belief that templates/modules should add to an article in the way that images do: They add to the usefulness of articles, but do not add essential elements of article structures (such as headings).

Is there not a way to check whether the linked Wikidata item contains a 'to' and 'from' value, and only display the "A → B" when those values are defined for the item, replacing them with the section name if they aren't? I believe I've seen checks like that used in other modules.

I'll see if I can draft a little template draft using the module, and I'll ping you on its talk page with what it'd need from the module.
― Wauteurz (talk) 22:01, 17 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Since this discussion died again, any final objections to making this final (without putting it in headers)? I think we can figure out the fine-grained issues later, such as Wikidata. //shb (t | c | m) 03:07, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hey! I didn't get any notifications from this one. I won't have a lot of time in the upcoming months to work on this I'm afraid.

The thing is, without the headings or wikidata link, there's not much sense in doing it.

I also get Wauteurz' point that headings are not optimal here, so I'm a bit stuck on what a good approach would be. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 08:01, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

So, I did start working on adapting the mock-up from earlier into a template as I mentioned above. I ended up having some hassle with {{convert}} and left it at that at that stage. At this point it also doesn't interface with the module since that would require the raw values to be individually printable by the module. Still, it is a purely HTML-based version of the table, which maybe could be adapted into the module instead? A dummy template (without any core functionality) can then be used so that editors don't have to mess about with invoking the module.
― Wauteurz (talk) 10:39, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The icons look amazing! I lost some layout in the process, but I made these now following your recommendations.

Template:RouteSection/sandbox

Module:RouteSection/sandbox

They're used here for testing purposes:

Lapplandsleden Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 14:39, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Did some layout fixes, it's now identical to the one you've shown linked. I'm not sure I like it, it doesn't seem to fit very well in the Lapplandsleden article. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 11:53, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree. You are using your template like a subsection header, but the current iteration (matching Wauterz's prototype) with center alignment doesn't look like a header. Play with the alignments - left align the title, and maybe remove one of the linebreaks to give the header line more heft. I think something like this would work well on your demonstration page:

Lappland Trail: Hemavan - Atoklimpen

40.7 km 11 hr 573 m

The trail begins in the small village...Gerode (talk) 17:18, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ It's looking pretty great, Blue! I would agree that they look off in this context though, but that's probably down to the mock-up I made originally. I imagined it being used in larger articles with more padding. It's not a hiking article, but take Belgian coast by tram as an example of what I pictured before me. The template's size would be less of an issue there, and having it stuck to the right side of the article would allow the key content to flow around it better. I would argue that an inline variant would be more suited for Lapplandsleden (and probably a lot of other articles). Seen as how hiking articles are usually already subdivided into sections (A-to-B-headings), doing away with the overarching trail's name would already make the template a decent bit less bulky. More padded articles like John Muir Way really only need the Length/Duration/Ascent information added, so maybe slimming the template down to that could be a viable solution? It'd definitely take some fiddling and input from more people to really work out how to integrate the template into itineraries properly.
― Wauteurz (talk) 18:10, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks a bunch to you and User:Gerode! I've made some changes. Let me know if you have any input. Feel free to make some changes as well! The "convert" problem is solved by passing through converts that are given as input, though I haven't tested that in a while. I'm also not sure if this is the best way of getting information from a module, there may be some improvements there.

I see the point about the Belgian coast by tram article, which is why I would have liked to have the section names as headings. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 19:45, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'll have a look, but I can't guarantee that I have the time to contribute anything meaningful. I get the appeal of using headings, but it's very much not-done to insert structural elements through templates. Templates generally are optional elements, and having them insert essential elements like headings both creates a dependency on a template working correctly, and makes the template itself less flexible. There are, after all, quite a few articles that work great but don't necessarily follow the MoS step for step, either because they were created before the MoS covered them, or because their topic doesn't lend itself well to the MoS.
― Wauteurz (talk) 11:03, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Fair enough, I understand the problem now. The goal was for this to become somewhat similar to listings. I'll keep the optionality in mind. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 21:33, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

If we’re not planning to add any structural elements through templates, this is probably the best approach for now. You can check the Lapplandsleden page for reference. One possible visual improvement might be a left-aligned infobox. In any case, it would be great to hear from others who have more experience with this kind of layout. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 20:15, 27 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The alternative option is used here: Skye Trail. It can now be used without a name as well. Optionally, from/to parameters could also be added. Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 21:22, 27 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Quick comment on the Belgian coast by tram article. Shouldn't it have a "Go" heading, and have the sections as subheadings (according to the template)? Bluecoordinationfine (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

When do I get to translate articles?

[edit]

Latest comment: 1 month ago14 comments6 people in discussion

It’s been a week (maybe 2) and I still don’t have the ability to translate English articles to Esperanto. When do I get it. HtialilwW (talk) 02:43, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Did someone tell you that you'd get that ability in a couple of weeks? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:49, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

No. I just assumed, but when do I actually get it? HtialilwW (talk) 02:51, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you want to translate articles, you have to do it yourself. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:07, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Although it would be nice if we did, we don't have an official translation tool the same way Wikipedia does. Special:Translate won't work for anyone on this site. //shb (t | c | m) 03:53, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

But when I click ‘languages’ in the top right it has some languages. How do you connect your article? HtialilwW (talk) 04:28, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's done on Wikidata. //shb (t | c | m) 04:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

How? HtialilwW (talk) 04:31, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

1. Start an article on Project X (e.g. footwear was recently started here).
2. Go to the relevant Wikidata item if it exists (in this case, d:Q161928)
3. Edit the relevant site links typically along the right hand side of the page (in this case, Wikivoyage)
4. Choose the appropriate language code (in this case, en and in the case of anything written in Esperanto, eo)
5. Once you add the name of the newly-written article, it will be saved at Wikidata and show up across all relevant Wikimedia Foundation projects.

—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:51, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. HtialilwW (talk) 05:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Amire80, has your team looked into enabling content translation for Wikioyages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 23 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

Kind of looked a bit, but never prioritized. It's theoretically possible, but requires work. It's better to ask about it at mw:Talk:Content translation. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:10, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Everyone, what do we think about this idea? Do we want the translation tools enabled between the Wikivoyages? (NB that enabling machine translation, such as Google Translate, is a separate question. My question is about the software to translate a {{sleep}} template into the matching template for a different language.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

To be clear, the point is to have machine translations of blank templates? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:01, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Temporary accounts will be rolled out soon

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Latest comment: 1 month ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Hello, we are the Wikimedia Foundation Product Safety and Integrity team. We would like to announce that we plan to enable temporary accounts for this wiki in the week of September 1.

Temporary accounts are successfully live on 30 wikis, including many large ones like German, Japanese, and French. The change they bring is especially relevant to logged-out editors, who this feature is designed to protect. But it is also relevant to community members like mentors, patrollers, and admins – anyone who reverts edits, blocks users, or otherwise interacts with logged-out editors as part of keeping the wikis safe and accurate.

Why we are building temporary accounts

Our wikis should be safer to edit by default for logged-out editors. Temporary accounts allow people to continue editing the wikis without creating an account, while avoiding publicly tying their edits to their IP address. We believe this is in the best interest of our logged-out editors, who make valuable contributions to the wikis and who may later create accounts and grow our community of editors, admins, and other roles. Even though the wikis do warn logged-out editors that their IP address will be associated with their edit, many people may not understand what an IP address is, or that it could be used to connect them to other information about them in ways they might not expect.

Additionally, our moderation software and tools rely too heavily on network origin (IP addresses) to identify users and patterns of activity, especially as IP addresses themselves are becoming less stable as identifiers. Temporary accounts allow for more precise interactions with logged-out editors, including more precise blocks, and can help limit how often we unintentionally end up blocking good-faith users who use the same IP addresses as bad-faith users.

How temporary accounts work

Any time a logged-out user publishes an edit on this wiki, a cookie will be set in this user's browser, and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created. This account's name will follow the pattern: ~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, current year, a number). On pages like Recent Changes or page history, this name will be displayed. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser. A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. However, only some logged-in users will be able to see it.

What does this mean for different groups of users?

For logged-out editors

• This increases privacy: currently, if you do not use a registered account to edit, then everybody can see the IP address for the edits you made, even after 90 days. That will no longer be possible on this wiki.
• If you use a temporary account to edit from different locations in the last 90 days (for example at home and at a coffee shop), the edit history and the IP addresses for all those locations will now be recorded together, for the same temporary account. Users who meet the relevant requirements will be able to view this data. If this creates any personal security concerns for you, please contact talktohumanrights at wikimedia.org for advice.

For community members interacting with logged-out editors

• A temporary account is uniquely linked to a device. In comparison, an IP address can be shared with different devices and people (for example, different people at school or at work might have the same IP address).
• Compared to the current situation, it will be safer to assume that a temporary user's talk page belongs to only one person, and messages left there will be read by them. As you can see in the screenshot, temporary account users will receive notifications. It will also be possible to thank them for their edits, ping them in discussions, and invite them to get more involved in the community.

For users who use IP address data to moderate and maintain the wiki

• For patrollers who track persistent abusers, investigate violations of policies, etc.: Users who meet the requirements will be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range (Special:IPContributions). They will also have access to useful information about the IP addresses thanks to the IP Info feature. Many other pieces of software have been built or adjusted to work with temporary accounts, including AbuseFilter, global blocks, Global User Contributions, and more. (For information for volunteer developers on how to update the code of your tools – see the last part of the message.)
• For admins blocking logged-out editors:
  • It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
  • It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
• Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this.

Our requests for you, and next steps

• If you know of any tools, bots, gadgets etc. using data about IP addresses or being available for logged-out users, you may want to test if they work on testwiki or test2wiki. If you are a volunteer developer, read our documentation for developers, and in particular, the section on how your code might need to be updated.
• If you want to test the temporary account experience, for example just to check what it feels like, go to testwiki or test2wiki and edit without logging in.
• Tell us if you know of any difficulties that need to be addressed. We will try to help, and if we are not able, we will consider the available options.
• Look at our previous message about requirements for users without extended rights who may need access to IP addresses.

To learn more about the project, check out our FAQ – you will find many useful answers there. You may also look at the updates (we have just posted one) and subscribe to our new newsletter. If you'd like to talk to me (Szymon) off-wiki, you will find me on Discord and Telegram. Thank you!

NKohli (WMF), SGrabarczuk (WMF) 21:37, 26 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

...and it's been deployed. //shb (t | c | m) 13:56, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

And I posted my first touting warning on the talk page of such an account. Are they mainly going to protect touters and vandals? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:39, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

My experience with dealing with temp accounts on other smaller wikis like srwiki is they prevent vandals from IP hopping since this is supposedly tied to the device and not the IP – but it makes dealing with such abuse much harder, especially when it comes to things like range blocks or for those who don't meet the criteria for viewing temporary accounts (6 months and 500 edits; though supposedly I think I can bypass this restriction now since I was given global temporary account IP viewer?). //shb (t | c | m) 23:24, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's what I was worried about, too. But I see advantages for the wiki communities:

"The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser."

"It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option."

Further, "Users who meet the requirements will be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range (Special:IPContributions)." That means gorgeous you, you will still have the sane access as now. Ground Zero (talk) 15:59, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I guess we'll have to get used to how to autoblock very soon... Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:04, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've taken my first attempt at blocking a Telstar long-term abuser IP identified through temporary account. Please take a look if everything is done properly. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:33, 8 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Easily finding 'top destinations' in cities

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Latest comment: 1 month ago47 comments6 people in discussion

Foreword: I get it, every traveller has different priorities. That aside, surely most cities have the major attractions, and then 'side-quests', for common travellers.

For example, take Esztergom. If you are there for a week, you can probably inspect it all. But for 1-2 days, most people will only consider e.g. the Basilica, 1-2 museums, castle and aquapark. Could we add some field 'top-pick' for listings, and have e.g. limit 10 per article and type (see/do)? Perhaps such listings could have just more vivid markers or whatever.

I'm asking for the same reason as usual. Another vacation/roadtrip came by, and I tried reeeeeeally hard to use WV to plan it, but it just can't be done. I had to use google maps to search sights, read reviews, put together road-plan somewhere else (my usual go-to page), and then consult WV to maybe some final hints. I am thinking about putting together some JS tool for WV, that could gather listings for such trips - but unless one can at least roughly evaluate where the main sights of given area are, it's useless to even start.

OTOH, if I could e.g. open page of Hungary, and get on a map combined top-10 sights of all articles, that could at least give me a rough idea, what are the most interesting regions...

Am I alone having this problem? -- andree 18:42, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

In cases in which there's a strong consensus about what the top sights are, we can organize "See" something like Siena#See. Otherwise a summary at the beginning of the see section would do it. No need for any fancy changes in the colors or format of the listings templates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:50, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Good, let's say we're visiting Tuscany for a week or two. How would you put together the travel plan using WV? Summary text is nice, but it helps only if you get dropped off in a particular city and need some introduction (like via some organized tour) - it doesn't help at all for major/self-organized planning. E.g. Montepulciano looks quite trivial regarding sights, and would hardly be worth visiting during a roadtrip (no major sights). Of course if you are in the area for a few days, it's a different story. But with the current structure of WV, how do you figure this out? By reading all articles? I can open tripadvisor/google/wanderlog/... and be 100x more effective. -- andree 18:55, 2 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are so many great ways to spend a week or two in Tuscany that there's no reasonable way to give our readers a one-size-fits all "One week in Tuscany" guide, and all we can reasonably do is mention some highlights in the Tuscany#See and Tuscany#Do sections and leave them to their own devices in choosing what to prioritize on a first visit (and then a second, third, fourth if they can take one...). Of course, they can instead choose to take a precooked guided tour, but we aren't here to guide them on that. All that said, if you think any of the sections of the Tuscany article are missing important information that should be summarized, there, go ahead and add it! And if you think any of it might be controversial, make a proposal at Talk:Tuscany. Also, I don't have time to look at the Tripadvisor link right now, but what makes it superior to Wikivoyage, and how might we best address that? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:40, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hence the very first sentence... :) Also, Tuscany was an example. I could be an American soldier with 5 days to spend around Rammstein, salesman on a trip from NYC to Jacksonville, someone who wants to spend a month in central America, whatever... You say you don't want to do 'one-size-fits-all' things (and I agree), but then you suggest to do it in overviews of regions. These can always only cover a particular area, and likely won't inform about top-notch stuff right behind the border.

In the past 10-15 years I did various few weeks/3000km roadtrips, and WV didn't help me create even a rough plan most of the time. The city guides themselves are usually nice (even if missing bits here and there, but that's fine with me, I'm always trying to fill the gaps after trips), but I'd expect a digital travel guide would also help with the bigger picture...

Or is the idea still to only compete with traditional printed travel guides? -- andree 06:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

"Go next" (or sometimes, "Nearby") is for places outside the area covered by a guide, and there will always be something not covered by any guide. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:13, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that the lead and ==Understand== sections are also useful for this purpose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:16, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't be opposed to creating some kind of icon to signify what are the "must-sees" for a first time visitor and what are some additional places you can go and visit if you have extra time – it's a subtle change but with lots of potential. While I know summary text can work well, from my experience only having that doesn't quite compare to other travel guides that I use (mostly expedia or Google). //shb (t | c | m) 06:00, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

The summary text is nice, once you are in the respective city. My problem is that it's impossible to read 200 such articles, even if they all had to-notch overviews... I'd much rather use google maps on an area, search for 'attractions' and pick the ones with a 100+ reviews, for example. But IMO WV could do that easily, if we had at such 'must-see' tags. -- andree 06:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I made a bit of a mockup at {{mustsee}} and implemented it at Canberra/South Canberra, Kiama and Budderoo National Park – thoughts on this? //shb (t | c | m) 06:12, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

In principle yes, but for my usecase it would only be useful if the listing template would have such parameter (e.g. { {see|mustsee|name=xyz}}). That would allow creating a dynamic map that could show the listings from an arbitrary area with such stuff.

OTOH, adding this is quite a bit of effort, and perhaps source of community friction...

We could do a similar thing, if we misuse wikipedia search, and e.g. order the listings according to number of wikipedia search results (poor man's google pigeon rank alternative; because I'd get banned by google quickly, if I wanted to use their numbers - also it's probably in violation with their T&C :) ). E.g. for Esztergom, it "Esztergom Basilica" gives 51 results, "Christian Museum" -> 13, "Bottyan Bridge" -> 2, "Jesuits parish-church" -> 1...... I guess this could work, and we wouldn't need any external stuff, not even wikidata (but we need markers :) ). -- andree 06:35, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe this works for Esztergom, but what would the results be for cities like New York, Berlin, Paris, Rome or Washington, D.C., where there would be considerable disagreement about the "best" things to see and do, depending on the preferences and interests of the traveler? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:45, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, from what I can concur, we're all on the same page about such a pin working for small cities, parks, smaller rural areas – or really, anything that is not a huge city, where the best things to see/do is more subjective. shb (t | c | m) 06:49, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, generally, it's a lot easier when there are a few obviously great sights in a relatively small city that does not have a tremendous number of activities to offer to visitors who might be uninterested in them. But why doesn't the Siena#See model work for them? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, that's also one way to do it, but many of our See sections are already categorised by other means. Maybe this is the way to do it for larger cities. //shb (t | c | m) 07:00, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

For larger cities? I doubt it. Refer to my comments about cities like Berlin, Rome, New York, etc. elsewhere in the thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:06, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sure does, once you already decide to go to Siena, I'd say it's a perfect guide (on the first look), I'd perhaps just use google to search for food and perhaps missing new venues. But it's not the point of this topic....... -- andree 07:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree that at least in the U.S., Google Maps is usually most useful in finding places to eat. I miss the days when I could get more reliable information by checking food forum sites like Chowhound. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:17, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but that wasn't about Esztergom itself. But if you go on a trip Esztergom -> Nagykanizsa, knowing not much about the country, IMO it would be nice if you would gather the respective articles we have, take the listings and show top-10% of them, according to this (or other) ranking. Then you'll know it makes sense to have a stop in Székesfehérvár, but probably not necessarily to Várpalota... -- andree 06:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

That sounds like something to address in a region guide or to some extent in "Go next" sections. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:57, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

(ec) I thought of having a special category that would list them on a dynamic map, but I know that's going to receive a lot of community opposition – hence why I proposed a small pinpoint which is both easy to implement for most cities and far more uncontroversial while getting most of the similar benefits. //shb (t | c | m) 06:45, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Attractions should be bolded as appropriate in summaries. Look at Chicago#See for an example. I oppose using a special template for supposed "must-sees". That ignores the step of agreeing on what they are, and I don't know if we really want to spend time about arguing about that on the talk pages of every article, but neither is it reasonable for people to just unilaterally decide they will dictate the answers. We've had many discussions about this topic before, and while there's a clear consensus in certain places, there is none in many others. To take one example, if you consider New York City, many people who haven't visited think Times Square is a must-see, and New Yorkers would grudgingly admit that it makes sense to see it once, but does that make it a top-5 attraction? The Metropolitan Museum is a "must-go-to" if visiting art museums (though it also has great musical instruments and fashion wings) is a priority and not if it isn't. The Brooklyn Bridge might be one most people would agree with, but even in that case, some people would object to the number of pedestrians on the bridge or simply lack the fitness to walk 1.1 miles. Most New Yorkers and many visitors would say taking the Staten Island Ferry is a must-do, but a tour guide who has a YouTube channel claimed it was a bad deal even though it's free, and you could do better by paying a lot of money to drink champagne while taking a tour in a smaller boat and seeing more of the Statue of Liberty (I think she's dead wrong, but those expensive tours do have customers), but more seriously, some people prefer not to spend the time to do a round trip across New York Bay and would rather walk a lot, go to clubs and bars or what have you. Etc., etc. Paris is a similar case: The Eiffel Tower is iconic, but it doesn't have to be visited to be seen; the Louvre is incredible but could pall on someone who doesn't really care about art; but there's so much to see and do in Paris that it's a great place for most people to visit. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:25, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I mean, these are all issues that Google, Tripadvisor, Expedia, Lonely Planet and all the other major travel guides, all have to deal with as well, but they do so just fine. I recognize the main difference here is those sites don't operate as wikis, but they do somehow manage to do with it fine, and there's no reason why we can't either (might require some discussion for major cities, but that's it, really). Having a pinpoint or some special listing doesn't necessarily mean that readers lack critical thinking – they could, of course, just decide for themselves if that's not their thing. It should be treated more as a new feature that readers can use at their own will, but it doesn't replace everything else.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm somewhat worried Wikivoyage will lose relevance if we don't have some kind of distinguishing feature and stick to only using article summaries because, nobody my age is willing to read through long swathes of text and fluff (it might also explain why I couldn't really care less about lively travel writing as much as most people do on this site), and something visual is what is needed if we want to actively maintain relevance. //shb (t | c | m) 06:42, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you want to try to have arguments about the top 5 or 10 attractions in every city, region, state/province, etc., even district, you'd better get started, because it will take a long time. Those other sites are commercial and want to feature whatever helps them sell most. The history of this wiki is that it does not focus on the most typical travelers who would be satisfied with precooked tours that tell them where to go. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:47, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

They might be commercial, but if even if someone like me, who defends this site as being a viable travel site in many ways, ends up often resorting to Google/Lonely Planet because they highlight key points of interests way better than we do, that is something they do better than us and something we should strive towards fixing. I don't deny that the implementation of this for large cities will be an issue, but I want this site to actually be read by people, and there is no reason we shouldn't for smaller cities and parks. //shb (t | c | m) 06:55, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

btw most of my comments here are anecdotal, both from my own experience and many others IRL (many of whom are roughly my age) who travel frequently. Take that as you will. //shb (t | c | m) 06:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I look at Tripadvisor and Wikivoyage when looking for things to see and do in a city. My biggest complaint about Tripadvisor is that they show things to see and do far outside a given city that are not reasonable to actually see or do unless you have a car, and you have to spend time looking at their results to see that there is actually nothing they think you can see or do in a city itself. The biggest problem I have with Wikivoyage is that many places lack any coverage or the coverage is insufficient, but that depends on the place in question. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:00, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I do think the rankings on Tripadvisor can be helpful, although I don't always agree with them, but I see those as complementary to Wikivoyage and don't have a problem with Wikivoyage being different. I will concede that if it helps more readers if we can try to do more top-10ish lists, we could do them, but for a city like New York, it would amount to top art museums, top viewpoints, top scenic walks (which would often be neighborhoods, rather than exact itineraries), top parks (we could do more with that one), etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:03, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah I don't love Tripadvisor for that reason – I do have a car and can drive, but I do travel to regional areas for site visits quite a fair bit on public transit to save up on money and sometimes check out the city. Normally I don't mind walking 12–15 km solo (and sometimes even next to 110 km/h highways with no protection), but Tripadvisor takes that to a whole different level. //shb (t | c | m) 07:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

+1 ... I just want to make the effort we (the whole community) put into this guide to show, and get used by people. As shb wrote above, mostly noone likes to read walls of text, before they even decide they want to go there. -- andree 07:02, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

You think bolding is of no help? Could you do a mockup of what you want to see? If you want something that's even clearer than bolding, wouldn't it be a list? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:05, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with you on all points, but my problem is elsewhere. I went Budapest->Croatia, and wanted to spend a few days learning about history, natural sights if there are some etc., on the path. I could do 50km detour if needed, within schengen, so even to a different country.

Globetrotter19 (talk · contribs), City-busz (talk · contribs) and other guys really are doing great job describing everything in Hungary. But you know, I don't want to see every (+- the same) Baroque church in every 5000-people town...... :) I'd like to visit e.g. some summer palace of the Habsburgs, unique architecture I can't find elsewhere, some natural sights, perhaps some playgrounds for kids. That kind of itinerary.... Ultimately I succeeded, but not thanks to WV, which is IMO a shame, because most of the pieces (sans some kind of "priorities" and a map) are there... -- andree 06:48, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think any itinerary based on "must-sees" is going to recommend playgrounds, though some are pretty interesting (for example, I thought one in Vondelpark in Amsterdam was, and I thought I added a description of it in the Vondelpark listing in Amsterdam/Zuid, but I don't see it, so maybe I didn't). Unique architecture and amazing natural sights should be highlighted in any good guidebook, though, and that obviously should include Wikivoyage. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:54, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm thinking more about this: What you're really asking for is the kinds of maps Michelin used to have in their paper Green Guides and allow access to online for free, which showed which cities were 3 stars (worth a trip), 2 stars (worth a detour) and 1 star (interesting), or non-starred, and likewise with attractions within and sometimes outside of cities. That was very useful, partly because although Michelin has certain biases in what they find interesting, I find their judgments pretty reliable in that what they think is worthwhile usually is. So yes, I very much see the use in that kind of map. It would be a hell of a lot of work for us to create our own, though, and would require a lot of debate (relying on some calculation based on searches for Wikipedia articles or anything else is not something we are going to want to substitute for our own judgments, or what is the point in a crowd-based guide?). Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:14, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm willing to take part in such discussions if that's what people want to do. Start a thread in Talk:New York and so on if you want to. We've tried before, but we can try again... Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:19, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

That kind of rank sounds quite useful, it would help to somehow categorize/sort our articles... Wikipedia-search-based-ranking is just a possibility that's better than keeping doing nothing (I'd say) :) -- andree 07:28, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

That would be interesting to see. //shb (t | c | m) 08:37, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

One thing we would have to decide is whether to have some attempt at an absolute global measure of star rankings like the one Michelin had (and presumably still has in its paper green guides) or to do rankings per area, and also whether we will make decisions about which cities (etc.) deserve 3 stars, 2 stars, 1 star or no stars, or what other distinctions we would want to use. Something to consider is that as I recall from the 1990s, when I still used paper guides, Michelin had a number of 3-star and 2-star attractions in Rome, but there were dozens of 1-starred churches, because for example even fairly minor churches in Rome may have good art by known artists and be pretty buildings, such that they would easily be top attractions in much smaller Italian cities. I would seriously doubt the neo-Gothic St. Mary's Church in Hudson, New York would get any stars from Michelin, because while it's a very pretty building to run into while visiting that picturesque little city and has good stained glass windows, it just doesn't compare to a Roman church like Sant'Andrea della Valle, a parish church I enjoyed visiting when I was staying in a hotel on via Arenula nearby. However, I think it's an important sight in Hudson, even though it surprisingly gets no mention in any guide I've seen other than Wikivoyage - because I listed it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:56, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well that's the whole point. If I'm in NYC, I will probably not travel 2x2h to see that one church - but maybe if I travelled NYC-Albany and could have a short stop there, it would make sense. OTOH, the question is now, if the proposed ranking would help here. I suppose the whole road would be littered with 1-star cities, so you'd resort back to clicking on each of them and reading through... -- andree 09:39, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think if we are to replicate the global measure of star rankings, it should ideally be relative to the area. A church in a metro area of 5 million might not be that interesting to most travellers (and could get zero stars), but a church in a town of 500 might be the most prominent thing to see in that town (and might get two stars). Now I'm not familiar with the one Michelin had so do take my star ratings as an example, but my main point is to avoid a one-size-fits-all criteria. //shb (t | c | m) 09:52, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

If we followed in Michelin's footsteps, there would be only a few one-star cities at most. Most would be unstarred. I wish I could find information about them online to link for everyone, other than a brief paragraph in w:Michelin Guide#Green Guides, but in some online searching for "list of Michelin starred attractions" and so forth, nothing else useful was found. It's worth looking at that paragraph, though:

The Michelin Green Guides review and rate attractions other than restaurants. There is a Green Guide for France as a whole, and a more detailed one for each of ten regions within France. Other Green Guides cover many countries, regions, and cities outside France. Many Green Guides are published in several languages. They include background information and an alphabetical section describing points of interest. Like the Red Guides, they use a three-star system for recommending sites, ranging from "worth a trip" to "worth a detour", and "interesting".

I believe I got rid of my old Green Guides from the 90s a long time ago, but Michelin's high standards are shown by the fact that most villages in Tuscany got no stars even though someplace in them (probably the Duomo or some church if nothing else) got a star on its own and the great majority of them are really beautiful. I believe I remember that being the case for Asciano. Of course Florence and Siena got 3 stars, but I believe Arezzo got no more than 2 and Cortona got one because although there are a couple of great attractions there (especially its little Duomo, which got at least 2 stars as an attraction), that's all there is other than a great view, and there are great views from a lot of hill villages (and I think that's a fair rating on that basis). I'm pretty sure San Gimignano got 3 stars, because it has incredible attractions for such a small town in addition to its great location.

It would be great if anyone had Green Guides for areas of the U.S., but by that standard, if I think about places I've visited in the Hudson Valley north of Poughkeepsie, Kingston would get a star or maybe two, ditto for Hudson (probably 1 star, though Olana would get at least 2 stars as an attraction) and Troy, Saratoga would probably get 2, Cohoes would probably get 1, Albany would get 1 because it's the capital of the state and has one interesting area and probably some decent museums I didn't go to, and I think that's it. No chance for a star for Rhinebeck, though there are some churches and accompanying graveyards with interesting histories that I was never motivated enough to write up, and no stars for all the more or less pleasant and picturesque villages. New Paltz would get one star, but it's further south. Some of the suburbs along the Hudson in Westchester would probably get a single star, but not unless there is more there than just a view, so Yonkers for the Hudson River Museum and the garden there whose name I forget, and maybe Sleepy Hollow for the legend (Michelin folks love stuff like that). Not sure what else. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:19, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wonder how much of this is about highlighting the best attractions within a large destination vs saying which cities to stop in when you're already driving between X and Y. I think that an itinerary might be a better model: Go here to see this, then go there to see that, stop off here if you're interested in this... WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I used a Michelin Green Guide during a roadtrips in France in 2002 to help make spontaneous decisions about side trips off the autoroute. My brother drove and I sat next to him, looking at the Michelin maps and reading to him from guides to places not too far from exits. As a result, we visited Semur, Saumur and Le Mans in addition to the other places we had planned to visit before the trip. The Michelin stars for cities and attractions helped, but so did their descriptions.

I definitely think it would be possible to use Wikivoyage the same way (I haven't tried so far - no more family roadtrips since my father got too sick and my parents subsequently died), but the inconsistency of this site in its coverage, due to which places members of this crowd chose to write about, creates a lack of standardization that is unavoidable. Considering the built-in drawbacks of wikis, it's amazing how good they are! Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:03, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

For some cities, such as Agra, they key sites are mentioned in the article's introduction. Pashley (talk) 20:26, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

When you have metro area article with cities under it or a huge city with districts, the top-level article can mention the most important sites leaving details & lesser sites to other articles. e.g. Shanghai#See & Metro_Cebu#See This also works for things other than tourist sights, e.g. see Shanghai#Clothing. Pashley (talk) 20:34, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I find that usually region articles are much less complete than the articles for cities within them. In part this is a result of the nature of volunteer supplied content. It is much easier to add content to the city article for somewhere that has just been visited. To write about the region, ideally you would have some knowledge of most of the region which requires a much longer visit exploring the whole area, rather than a weekend in a single city - it is much harder to collate multiple editors contributions on the cities to make the region guide.

The commercial guides have an advantage here - a traditional guidebook company will pay for the author to spend a couple of weeks touring the region. The review sites have loads of data to crunch - TripAdvisor can filter based on the number of 4 star reviews it has, Google may know how many Android phones visited a location (user settings permitting etc).AlasdairW (talk) 21:06, 3 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

About suggested pages at the bottom of the page

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Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I see that in this project, at the bottom of an article, there's a suggested pages section (more details here). How does this can be achieved? Probably via an extension? I also want this in viwikivoyage. Nvdtn19 (talk) 07:45, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I believe before this was implemented you could manually add all related pages using {{Related}}, which you can still do, but I'm not sure what we did in the lead up to automatically adding related pages (might have been a phab task, but I cannot exactly remember). //shb (t | c | m) 11:53, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I believe you're talking about mw:Extension:RelatedArticles. See m:Requesting wiki configuration changes for the process to follow. It's not difficult but some of it may be new to you. The devs will want a link to a community discussion (an ordinary discussion is usually enough). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

The end of an era for Wikinews

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Latest comment: 1 month ago49 comments9 people in discussion

Some of you might remember the discussion we had about the site here – it seems they've drafted up the report at m:Proposal for Closing Wikinews which I think is worth a read. For one, I think it's a shame that the final outcome was to lock all Wikinews projects without really consulting the Wikinews community at all (with SPTF even claiming that's an apparent conflict of interest) and dismissing genuine suggestions that were brought up which gives the impression that they were more interested in an authoritarian approach because of how much backlash that proposal initially garnered (and I also get the impressions they had the result predetermined).

I don't think we on Wikivoyage have much to be concerned about, mainly for two reasons – a) information on Wikivoyage is still relevant for the most part, even in 20 or 25 years (unlike Wikinews where content becomes irrelevant after 2–3 weeks); b) Wikivoyage is still a viable travel site for large parts of the world, even though it has many gaps. That said, I don't think now's a bad time to start discussion on how we can genuinely compete with major travel sites like Google, LonelyPlanet or Expedia, even if it doesn't result in change, both so we stay relevant in the grand scheme of things, and so our content is read by travellers. Either way, RIP Wikinews and it's sad that a flawed consultation process was how it had to go. //shb (t | c | m) 11:51, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

A couple thoughts. First, and admittedly I don't know all the context here, that seems to be only a proposal. Presumably that proposal could be rejected?

One resource that would be valuable would be data on number of edits, page views, etc. by project, and while graphs from that tool are shown in the proposal, I can't find the actual web page mentioned anywhere there. In my opinion we would be wise to look at which articles are receiving the highest readership by humans and learn lessons from those articles. From what I've seen in page information tabs, travel topics perform far better than we might think, and they require less maintenance than destination articles. Perhaps we should increase our offering of travel topics and itineraries, which certainly would increase the distinction between our site and alternatives like LonelyPlanet. I also believe we should come to a consensus regarding station articles and, if we want to make that a new type of article permanently, expand our offering in that area.

Strange as it sounds, we may suffer from having too many destination (and particuarly city) articles. Sparsely populated regions such as North Dakota have articles for even the smallest towns, and there aren't enough editors in these places to keep listings up to date. I'm not sure what is the best way to resolve that problem, but I think there was a wave of creation followed by deletion of empty skeleton articles in the past.

If Wikinews is indeed taken offline, the timing seems inappropriate. A time when news organizations (PBS, NPR) are being defunded is not the best time to close down the project, surely. I do think the proposal makes a convincing argument that the current state of Wikinews is insufficient, but I think that would call for changes rather than closure entirely. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:45, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Based on the way SPTF acted on the consultation page, we can be very sure they had the result predetermined (especially because they did not consult Wikinews beforehand either) and due to the lack of any positives about Wikinews mentioned in the report. It's one of the most egregious box-ticking consultations I've ever seen from a WMF charter. //shb (t | c | m) 12:59, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I realize this is totally a side point, but any figuring of how many human edits articles get has to make exceptions for repeated attempts by Brendan to edit articles like the one for Equatorial Guinea or vandalism of the Nigeria article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:30, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

To my knowledge, I don't think any human edits were excluded in the calculations for WN – I might be wrong, though. //shb (t | c | m) 14:35, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe we could exclude edits that are tagged with reverted/rollback. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 19:35, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

"Presumably that proposal could be rejected?" Yes. You can make your voice heard at m:Requests for comment/Sister Projects next steps and see other comments (now closed) at m:Talk:Public consultation about Wikinews. This will be reviewed later in the year for any decisions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:46, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

SPTF has done a great job of wilful ignorance; you can in theory, but they've demonstrated ample times that they aren't interested in hearing opposition. //shb (t | c | m) 22:18, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Unironically, that's also why m:Requests for comment/Closure of Sister Project Task Force even seems to have come about (and I do hope the WMF takes notes that SPTF isn't super popular with the community – most of the opposes are just people saying the community can't close a WMF-appointed charter). //shb (t | c | m) 22:31, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

In terms of my speculation/conjecture/take, I'd say that the various WMF projects are in tiers something like:

• Safe/successful:
  • Wikipedia
  • Wiktionary
  • Wikidata
  • Commons
  • Wikispecies
  • MediaWiki
• Safe/qualified successes:
  • Wikisource
  • Wikiquote
  • Wikivoyage
• Less safe/qualified failures:
  • Wikibooks
  • Wikiversity
• Other:
  • Wikinews (possible closure, major restructuring)
  • Wikifunctions (too new to assess, very small and narrow scope)

I don't think that anyone has the English Wikivoyage in the cross hairs as such, otherwise, it would have been brought up at the time. I've been pretty vocal in the consultation process about Wikinews generally and while I think the proposal to possibly shut down is the wrong one, I have also been disappointed by some of the vituperation aimed at those who were just doing their jobs. The fact is, Wikinews has struggled and failed. I don't think it's an inherent failure and I personally continue to contribute at the English Wikinews: I believe in it. But some users took the criticism and proposal as a kind of attack and attacked back in a way that I think was not warranted. If for no other reason than no one wants to put up with the drama, I find it unlikely that there will be any serious proposals to close any other projects and even if there were, Wikiversity and probably Wikibooks would come before Wikivoyage.

As an aside, if an admin could please address Template_talk:WikivoyageSister#Wikifunctions, that would be nice. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:54, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the post, but since I don't recognize all the abbreviations you used for wikis, I'm dead sure other readers didn't. So if you choose to explain what they all stand for, you'd be doing a good service. I'll get the process started by saying that wp=Wikipedia, wikt=Wiktionary, d is presumably Wikidata, c would be Commons, species is clear, voy=Wikivoyage, and wn=Wikinews. I don't recognize the others. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:10, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry for being so clipped. Modifying. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:14, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, appreciated. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:49, 4 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Koavf: What would you say distinguishes the three qualified successes from the successful projects, and in turn what distinguishes us from Wikibooks and Wikiversity (the qualified failures)? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 00:25, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I would say that the "successful" projects are all very active and generally pretty successful at what a person wants to get out of them. E.g. if you want to know what a word means (particularly in English) and you look it up on Wiktionary, you will probably find the answer. With those qualified successes, you may get what you want and there's a decent amount of content, but there are also some big gaps. With the semi-failure ones, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it useful. That's just generally how I think about it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:38, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Makes sense. Where would you say the holes lie on Wikivoyage? I think we've made a lot of progress regarding outline articles in recent years, but there remain many out of date articles for smaller towns and suburbs. The thing I wonder is, though, whether anyone is really looking to travel to those towns in the first place. In my view that's an issue the community will need to address in the long run.

That said, Wikivoyage's ratio of useful articles to outlines has seen incredible improvement since 2012 and even since Covid. I do have high hopes that we can join the level of Commons, WikiSpecies, etc. within a few years if our progress continues. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 11:33, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

The holes are some missing locations/topics, but mostly outdated info, bloat, and a lack of multimedia. I think this project is generally successful to the extent that you could probably use it to plan a trip to many locations. I've never been to Buffalo (New York) or Boston and I think that if I just read our guides and did the things that made sense for me, I'd probably have a fine time, but I also think I would miss out on some things that we don't have covered and we don't have the kind of interactive functionality (e.g. planning a route and connecting that to a map application) that someone would ideally want. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:08, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Interesting. I think we have a policy against multimedia at the moment.

As for missing locations and topics, could you give some examples? I'd imagine we have more holes in terms of travel topics than locations.

I don't have the technical knowledge but maybe we could find a way to export the lines on itinerary routemaps to a GPS or OSM application? If could do that we could fix the other point that you mention about itineraries. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:52, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, we do have a policy to de-prioritize media in favor of print-outs, which is emphatically not how literally 99% of users would use this site. It's preposterous and probably was not how users used this site in 2003. Just imagine what the perfect travel guide would be and there's no universe where that doesn't have interactive media and the functionality to actually dynamically plan routes and connect with mapping or navigation abilities. As for topics, I occasionally provide my suggestions of what we could talk about, the most recent time I kind of threw an idea up here that was vaguely a proposal was here, where I suggested that we have more material that is just more free-form and anecdotal that encourages the kind of wandering and deliberately getting lost that can be enjoyable in travel. I also mused about bringing back the personal travel blogs that used to exist here years and years ago for that purpose. If this were a site that included more engaging and fun material as actual reading material, that would also be part of the ideal travel guide in my mind.

To ramble more, if you imagine Wiktionary, which is a dictionary, but we've also added a thesaurus, media like audio pronunciations and images to supplement the entries, appendices for more trivial information, etc. It's an attempt to make something that is as robust as possible for everything that someone would want about a reference work that is about words and terms generally speaking. If this site is just a bunch of listings of "go to place, see thing" then there is value to that, but if you think of the best thing that a travel guide could be, then we can expand our horizons about what we want to do here in principle (if not necessarily in practice, since resources are finite). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:20, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree, we need to move on from the prioritization of being able to print our guides in an era when cellular service is everywhere. Most people don't even use a printer these days.

One of the challenges of our site right now is that we have so few people who write based on where they've just visited. You're right that if we could have engaging itineraries written by travelers, it would improve site quality. Such articles, being more subjective and with less time related info, would also require less maintenance to stay relevant.

An article I'd love to see would be Intracoastal Waterway, but by someone who's actually done a good stretch of it on their own vessel. I think that could be a terrific itinerary, even if it covered the route through just one state. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:57, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

So, I agree with everyone that we don't want to prioritize printed pages, but it's still a factor that there are places with little if any cellphone signal, and they are not even all extremely remote. Can someone tell us whether there is still no cellphone signal for something like 70 miles of the Pacific Coast Highway? My feeling is that while printed guides should not be the main priority on this site, we should still make sure there's enough printable content to be useful to people who are venturing out of cellphone connectivity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:04, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed in principle and also agreed that we need to make the most accommodations for the most important issues: e.g. accessibility for those with visual impairments or the capacity for serving pages to those who have spotty connections, etc. Print is certainly a consideration and could be an important one for a minority of users, but it is far more common that someone is accessing this material live on the Web, many times using a portable device that has mapping and navigation capabilities. For us to have literally no integration with those basic functions is a lacuna to say the least. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:54, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it's insane! Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:17, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed – that said, from what I can infer, we have come quite some way especially given that we're a bit neglected by the WMF. Static maps are no longer favoured in most of our articles and the lack of contributors who can make static maps has somewhat done a service. We've moved towards better integration with OSM, especially when it comes to mapshapes. Plenty of progress, but still a lot more to go. //shb (t | c | m) 00:12, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek, SelfieCity: I used to be someone who would print out things when going remote or somewhere with no signal (which I do quite regularly), but nowadays I would just save an offline PDF copy on my phone. Phone storage is much less of a concern with most modern phones today so I do think it's worth revising our policies to be a bit more lax. //shb (t | c | m) 00:03, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

As a Wikibooks admin myself, it's probably the sheer volume of incomplete or abandoned books, coupled with low participation. Unlike, say, Wikipedia, Wikivoyage or Wikisource, you need to know the topic reasonably well before writing a book on Wikibooks (and thus there isn't a whole heap of collaboration on the same article). There's a long process to clean up many of the old/abandoned books but it's been a work in progress for at least 2 years. //shb (t | c | m) 00:39, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. And the nice thing about a textbook is that you can come back to it and complete it. That's not true of news: if news isn't completed or written, it ceases to be news at all. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:40, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah that's why I think the entire premise of Wikinews was always a bit problematic from the get-go (and why I was in support of closing many of the smaller Wikinews projects even before the SPTF consultation came to fruition). //shb (t | c | m) 00:50, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, but I disagree that the response to the criticism was unwarranted. The most appropriate course of action for a committee when reviewing the project is to actually address the project directly and work with them on how to improve the project going forward. SPTF, however, didn't do that – they notified Wikinews at the same time when all other projects were notified (see my message earlier for the link). You could argue that this might have been a genuine error, but when this was brought up multiple times, SPTF was either virtually unresponsive to all criticism on the lack of communication or Victoria doubled down by saying that being involved in a consultation that involving your home project is a supposed conflict of interest. When you consult a community so poorly without even trying to hide that, it is a perfectly normal human reaction to react in such a way. //shb (t | c | m) 00:33, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Over the past decade, the English Wikivoyage has received about 2.5 times the number of pageviews as English Wikinews. Of course there are other languages but English is usually the biggest wiki for all Wikimedian wikis so it's easiest to compare. Also if you look carefully at the stats, the gap between Wikivoyage and Wikinews has grown in recent years. So I think we are pretty safe in the short term. As far how we can grow, there is so much to unpack but I still believe that in addition to the legacy W-travel content which has remained unchanged, many editors are not sufficiently paraphrasing content brought in from Wikipedia. There are sentences added verbatim which 1. isn't appropriate when the tone of our articles are meant to much more casual and fun than bland and technical Wikipedia and 2. The duplicated content continues to penalise us in the SEO rankings. There are e.g. plenty of articles which go into Köppen climate classifications. The climate and weather sections of a city should be written as if you're talking to a friend who wants to travel to a place where you've recently been. Most of our articles should be written like that. I'm mindful that internet users aren't clicking on search links as much as they used to because they often just read the AI summaries up the top (funnily enough AI often uses wikis as a major source for their summaries) but serious travellers planning a trip will still want detail and click further.

Another big hole is the absence of an online app. Wikivoyage readers will continue to be skewed to desktop and laptop users instead of tablets and phones (where younger generations spend more of their time on) if we continue to only rely on a website URL. Addressing this is unfortunately out of our hands though as developing an app for Wikivoyage is not high priority for the WMF. Gizza ^(roam) 01:10, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's the thing that's most likely to kill Wikivoyage in the next few years, I think. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:14, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh absolutely – this will be the downfall of basically every Wikimedia project that is not Wikipedia (atp Commons only has an Android app). //shb (t | c | m) 01:35, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Even the web wrappers of mobile-optimized websites are better than nothing IMO, and I often like to download various mobile-optimized websites as progressive web apps as a young adult user, especially when there are no native versions of them in Play Store (or App Store if you're in iOS). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:24, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps tangentially, I nominated Nairobi for DotM a while before Wikimania took place there, expecting that some of the participants would read and use the article, notice the nomination banner, and edit/update the article or just even add something little. Aside of two Brendan edits, the article history shows zero edits from that time. Unfortunately Wikivoyage does not seem interesting or attractive to editors of other wikis even during and after their travels :( . --Ypsilon (talk) 04:37, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think there is a travel guide app that uses Wikivoyage's content, but it's unofficial and gets updated only every once in a while. More users coming from other projects (and particularly Wikipedia) would be a great help even though our policies are not the same. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 11:40, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

(But I can't find it now, so perhaps it doesn't exist anymore. Regardless, the creation of an app for Wikivoyage and other projects should be a priority for WMF — it's where the future is and surely wouldn't be hard to create.) --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 11:41, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Are you talking about Wikivoyage:Kiwix? Yeah that is nice but it's a shame everything is offline. //shb (t | c | m) 12:08, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe, I think there was another, though, specifically for Wikivoyage. I'm not sure as the last time I checked was several years ago.

We definitely need an official app. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:11, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000 doesn't want offline app (exactly the only reasonable use of an app), and you want basically a browser wrapper so that the users don't need to enter wikivoyage.org into a browser... strange times :-D -- andree 15:48, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I should clarify that by offline app, I don't want to have to download the entire wiki on my phone periodically every few years or so (like how Kiwix works), rather than an online app that has the ability to save pages offline (huge benefit for park articles). //shb (t | c | m) 22:38, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

"does not seem interesting or attractive to editors of other wikis even during and after their travels": I was thinking, if something alike "OSM notes" would be useful for this. Basically some "Suggest change" floating icon for article? Maybe even something that would just post the suggestion into the talk page would suffice? And ideally we'd have some list of such suggestions, to efficiently process/reject those... This may only be useful for less-frequented areas, because big cities are usually sufficiently covered and changes are not even needed. -- andree 08:05, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have also watched the response to the m:Proposal for Closing Wikinews and the related m:Public consultation about Wikinews. I don't think that Wikivoyage need fear that we're next on the chopping block.

I found the numbers in the m:Proposal for Closing Wikinews to be informative, and if you are interested in facts and the criteria that the Board uses to evaluate success or failure (e.g., "Alignment with Mission"), then I suggest reading it. Here are a few things I learned:

Summary:

• Wikivoyage has a lot more readers than Wikinews.
• Wikivoyage creates more articles than Wikinews.
• Wikivoyage communities are bigger than Wikinews communities.
• Wikivoyage communities are more active than Wikinews communities.

Long version:

Only 20% of Wikinews page views go to humans. In three months, all the Wikinewses combined got 10 million page views from human readers. English Wikivoyage alone got 30 times this in the last three months. Most of the "visitors" to Wikinews are clearly not looking for news articles, because 90% of the most popular search terms are in Russian and for baby names. (I'm not kidding: "Japanese female names", "Korean names", "beautiful names for girls Muslim", and so forth.)

It's not surprising that human readers don't visit the sites, because Wikinews writes almost no articles. For example, when I checked in ~July, the German Wikinews had written just one (1) article in the entire previous month; it was a slightly TOUTy article from a newbie about a minor politician. Almost everything at Russian Wikinews is bots copy/pasting free content from other news sites – which, as Wikivoyage knows better than most, kills SEO. Search engines index the pages (spider bots are 70% of the traffic to Wikinews), but they rank it low. For example, the featured article at enwikinews is about German unemployment; searching for information about 'German unemployment 2025' puts it on the second page of results – and that's a good result. If you copy/paste the article's full headline into other search engines, Bing puts Wikinews halfway down the first page, and both Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo put Wikinews on the second page. We don't expect a simple search on "London" to rank Wikivoyage high, but if you search for one of our longer or more unique page titles, like Itinerary of the Opera dei Pupi, Wikivoyage is often on the first page (for that example, Google lists us first).

The English Wikinews reported early in the discussion that they have improved their output: they had been officially publishing 8 news articles per month, and they had recently achieved the milestone of 9. For comparison, here at the English Wikivoyage, we created about ten times that many articles in the last month, which is particularly impressive when you remember that a newspaper could easily write a hundred news articles about even a smallish city in a month, while we can pretty much only create one article ever for that same city. One of the committee's problems with Wikinews is that if you produce one news article every three or four days, you're not really achieving the goal of educating people about what's going on in the world.

One of the reasons for this lack of content creation is that the core communities are tiny (e.g., Chinese Wikinews is largely written by three editors; German Wikinews is basically one editor). At the most active English Wikinews community discussion page, there are a couple of discussions about their future. There are more Wikivoyagers talking about Wikinews' future in this discussion right here, than there are long-time English Wikinewsies on the whole page.

Many of the communities don't seem to keep up with basic maintenance, either. Right now, the English Wikinews, which is the biggest by number of registered editors and admins, has 18 articles up for "speedy deletion", several of which are tagged as pure vandalism, in the main namespace, and have been waiting a couple of days for an admin to delete them. They have 17 human admins. It only takes one to check and empty that cat every day or two. (The same cat here is empty, of course. Some of our admins obviously watch Special:RecentChanges and zap vandalism pages on sight.)

If you want to go read the discussions on Meta-Wiki, keep in mind that lot of the comments are Wikinews editors dealing with their emotions. One editor said that Wikinews was valued because it felt like a job that you couldn't be fired from. The overall discussion feels like a workplace conversation right after the company announced long overdue layoffs.

What I think we could learn:

• Optimize for long-term success. Like Wikinews, and unlike Wiktionary, our content needs to be updated regularly. That means that a viable Wikivoyage needs more editors than a viable Wiktionary. The movement as a whole should probably raise the barrier to creating new language editions in general, and specifically for projects that need up-to-date information. We can prevent painful closures by preventing overly optimistic openings.
• If you're not growing, you're shrinking. We should consider opportunities for recruiting. School clubs to update their local area? Ask the WMF to fund an advertising campaign for new editors ("See what Wikipedia's sister travel guide got wrong about your city"?!)? A presentation at a tourism conference? Have an annual "Wiki Loves Tourism" campaign? Start work earlier on our birthday contest?
• Consider some changes. One of the recurring themes in the Wikinews discussions is that the long-standing rules hinder article creation. Maybe we should reconsider some of our long-standing rules. For example, as raised above, should we continue to prioritize paper printouts?
• If we don't face unpleasant facts, it will eventually be done for us. We could institute a review process for the smallest Wikivoyages, with a plan for helping them. We know what a functioning Wikivoyage community looks like. What if long-time Wikivoyagers from a couple of different languages could go to, e.g., the Hindi Wikivoyage and say: this is a widely spoken language, with tremendous potential. And with almost no articles and almost no editors, you're basically failing. What can we do to help? And if the answer is that nothing works for that language (which may be true for small languages, but probably won't be for Hindi), then we should propose closure ourselves, instead of waiting for an outside group to tell us what to do.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Regarding the last point, I have repeatedly opposed the creation of smaller language Wikivoyages but keep getting shut down, much of it because Wikivoyage is apparently one of the few projects that actually grow post-incubation (how true this is I remain skeptical about). I wouldn't be opposed to creating a policy that ensures that a set number of articles are all present before launch – something like maybe all 200 or so countries, some certain global cities, and important parks and wonders. //shb (t | c | m) 23:34, 6 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@WhatamIdoing: thanks for the input. These are some great observations. If we could create some kind of event that attracts editors from our sister sites, that would be terrific as per some earlier comments here, many of them aren't aware of what goes on here. Despite our differences from Wikipedia, I believe that many WP editors would enjoy the editing process here. I started at Wikipedia but the idea of being able to have the article sections already laid out for me (Understand, See, Do, etc.) combined with the replacement of citing sources with real-world knowledge is what originally attracted me to Wikivoyage. That said, I still edit at Wikipedia as well, so I think the same could lead to positive engagement from other writers at sister sites. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 02:24, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also I cleaned up the CSD category on Wikinews (local policy allows for it) and it's wild that an English project has vandalism unchecked for so long – not something you see for a wiki with 17 sysops. //shb (t | c | m) 04:19, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's incredible to me as, just a few years ago, I remember Wikinews being a good, up-to-date source for major news events. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:27, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

The English Wikinews was largely run for years by a single person, who has died a few years ago. This doesn't really explain why the others are in poor shape, but they have struggled at enwikinews to organize themselves.

Businesses sometimes talk about a "bus test": What would happen to the company, if this key employee got hit by a bus/was suddenly out of the office and unreachable? (I've even heard of a few that simulate this by sending a manager on a holiday with no warning.)

A possible 'lesson learned' for us is never become overly reliant on one person. That could mean each of us deciding to do a little more (e.g., I check Special:RecentChanges a few times a year: Could I do more?) or a little less (e.g., if one admin thinks they're the only one checking a backlog categoriy, maybe they could post a note here at the travellers' pub that says "Hey, is anyone else keeping an eye on this cat? I'd love it if someone else was checking it every day"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh yes, I am aware of Pi-zero – he did dedicate an insane amount of his time to both enwikinews and enwikibooks (the latter where I became familiar with him) for sure. //shb (t | c | m) 19:46, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh okay, that explains a lot. I do think we have more diversity here, although we've lost some reliable admins in recent years. But I think we have a diversity of expertise, with a couple admins good at dealing with touts and content issues, and others good at code and templates (looking at you shb). --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 20:20, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

OSM directions in listings

[edit]

Latest comment: 24 days ago40 comments7 people in discussion

As part of the few discussions we've had above for possibly modernising this site, something I experimented using the {{listing}} template was adding a direct link to OSM directions if a listing has coordinates (both the lat and the long fields need to be filled in). It's not Google Maps, Waze or Apple Maps by any means and I'm not sure how many people (if any) actually use OSM's directions feature, but it is something.

Unfortunately, the nature of the sandbox templates (which is in a half-broken state) meant that I found it far easier to just use the main template itself, but that does mean that you can see this change directly for yourself on any listing template. From what I've been able to find using OSM help pages, the way I've written the URL tries to ensure it uses your device's current location in the from field. It can be manually turned off using |osm=no if needed (see Canberra/Acton#See for an example) and you can change the default mode of transport and the routing application it uses.

There is a bit more that needs to be done to fully implement this, but I would ideally want to hold off from doing it until there's sufficient consensus. However, most of what readers will potentially find useful has already been implemented and you should be able to see this change on any listing with coordinates.

//shb (t | c | m) 01:07, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

This sounds like a really interesting idea. I think I'd like to see a mockup first, if that's possible, such as an experimental template and start with that. But it would be some great progress. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 02:25, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SelfieCity: I couldn't do a mockup because the sandbox templates are half broken (and {{marker/sandbox}}, which all the sandbox templates rely on, was deleted) – but you should be able to see it in action on any page with listings if you purge your cache. //shb (t | c | m) 04:02, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh, okay. I see now. A couple things: first, the concept is indeed excellent. That said Google Maps might be a good idea because (and maybe it's just me) as soon as I click to go to OSM, the map is inundated with those red "needs fixing" markers. (And I'm logged out.) I think the markers would be extremely confusing to users who aren't familiar with OSM.

Second, I'm not sure people will realize what the button is for. I think (Directions) or (Get directions) might be better because it was only obvious to me because the button is new and I had read this discussion. I doubt most casual readers click those buttons because, for a start, the Wikidata link would be remarkably confusing to a non-wiki editor and is listed before the new link to directions. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:23, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

About the red flags on the map. You can see them because you opt-in . Probably by clicking on the "add a note to de map" button. You can turn off the red flags by clicking on the layers button , scrolling down the right bar and un-selecting the "map notes" button. Mmorell (talk) 07:59, 9 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

This would pretty OK, but I'd say the main missing feature (here and in the normal dynamic map) is that it doesn't show/use the current user position... -- andree 10:15, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, the main downside of OSM is that it does require user input for their own location. I would kinda prefer to do it with Google Maps (which can also be very reasonably implemented), but I'm on two fronts with Google Maps (which does show your own location): travellers are far more likely to find that useful so per WV:TTCF, it would be the more logical choice; however, it somewhat feels a bit odd to pick out just one mapping service, though I suppose it can be justified considering that it's not possible to have direct links with Apple Maps or Waze. //shb (t | c | m) 10:45, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I honestly don't think it's a huge problem. It's clear from the text "from" that it's where you type in a start location, and while that isn't on the cutting edge of GPS technology, it's a still a major improvement over us providing no directions at all. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:26, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Shb, how are you thinking of using Google Maps? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:30, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Similar to how the OSM button currently works, except using Google Maps instead (and your location would be determined using your device settings – which depends on how you use Google Maps IRL). //shb (t | c | m) 19:43, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also I am well aware that this will also be a change to our external links policy...but there are always exceptions to everything (which are needed if we want to modernise our site). //shb (t | c | m) 19:46, 7 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm less concerned about that than whether we'd cause some problems for ourselves by relying on a monopolistic corporation that's been heavily fined in Europe and might run afoul of who knows who. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:37, 8 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek: It's a question I had too, also because I have a reputation IRL for never using Google Maps because they keep breaking perfectly fine things, so I end up using Waze when driving, Apple Maps when walking and NextThere for public transit (it's a niche Australian public transit app). That said, Google Maps remains the most popular mapping app in most countries so I do think it makes the most sense per WV:TTCF, no matter how shady or monopolistic they can be – and I suppose we can still maintain the OSM link for those who aren't a fan of Google (also sorry for late response, I was interstate all week). //shb (t | c | m) 23:41, 11 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I just added Google Maps directions as well, adjacent to OSM directions. I'm not sure how effectively it works on all devices, but you should be able to see "OSM directions" or "Google Maps directions" in the hoverover – do you also see what I'm seeing on my end? I'll upload screenshots in a moment. (cc SelfieCity and andree.sk) //shb (t | c | m) 00:34, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi. I tried this feature with my cell phone , and showed directions from my current position to the place I picked in wikivoyage. I only had to allow the app to use my positioning.

I'm worried by the fact that if you include lat=,Long= it works fine , but if the item is positioned by adding the wikidata code it DOES NOT WORK. And I try position places using wikidata as much as possible, even editing OSM to add the wikidata code to a place, in order to use it in the listing I'm creating at that moment. Mmorell (talk) 07:48, 9 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's designed to only display when the lat and long fields are explicitly filled in – unfortunately, I'm not that well-versed with Wikidata properties to know how to fetch coords from Wikidata. :( //shb (t | c | m) 10:05, 13 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It’s working! --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 02:40, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I just tested it with Apple CarPlay (even though I don't normally use Google Maps) and goodness does it feel very seamless! If only we had a mobile app, would've been even more seamless. //shb (t | c | m) 03:02, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Google Maps icons are now showing up in listings for destinations in China, where Google Maps is almost completely useless. I do not think this is a good idea. —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:42, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

You can still use the OSM link for China, though (same goes with South Korea) – it's not a forced choice. //shb (t | c | m) 03:49, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

To be clear, I like the new OSM links, but Google Maps links are useless and confusing clutter for destinations in China. Even in other articles, I think it's questionable to indiscriminately promote a proprietary, for-profit mapping service in every listing, but for China articles I think there's no question this is a mistake. —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

An alternative solution could be to turn Google Maps directions by default off (while OSM directions are on by default) – that would solve both those issues while still allowing the use of what is the most popular navigation app in most of the world. //shb (t | c | m) 04:05, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm actually I think I might have a way to disable it on all China/SK pages by default – it would require using the page's Wikidata item to supress all Google Maps links but I think it can be done. Give me a few days. //shb (t | c | m) 04:34, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It seems to bump "last updated date" to a new line, instead of immediately right after the map links. Can this be fixed? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:54, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Done, should be fixed (you might need to clear your cache). //shb (t | c | m) 04:58, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've now fixed it for China and South Korea (which should work so long as the Wikidata item has P17 defined). I do get your reservations (especially as someone who does not like Google Maps), but statistically more travellers are likely to use Google Maps than any other mapping service (and there is no possible way to link Apple Maps, Citymapper or Flitsmeister); in my view, it's a necessary evil we have to make if we want to effectively compete with Expedia, LonelyPlanet or Tripadvisor (and an issue that was raised here). //shb (t | c | m) 06:54, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Google Maps icons are still showing up in many of the listings in the first article I checked, Shenzhen/Center. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:16, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seems the issue with that article is it's not connected to a Wikidata item at all. //shb (t | c | m) 22:26, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It was worse: all Shenzhen district articles had this issue for this reason. I tried to connect them to the largest district articles but I do not know Shenzhen. It's not a fault with the module in this case because generally all Wikivoyage articles should be connected to a Wikidata item. //shb (t | c | m) 23:07, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've removed three of the Wikidata connections, which were incorrect. The "East", "West", and "Center" districts are Wikivoyage's invention, made by combining multiple administrative districts, so there are probably no existing Wikidata items for them. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:55, 15 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

If there is no existing Wikidata item, you have to create them – however, it's very standard to connect them to the largest and/or most relevant district (I went by area) such that it appears on the sidebar on sister projects. The practice is not "incorrect" as you claim, though. //shb (t | c | m) 14:05, 15 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Works for me too, but I have a feeling some people will have a problem with too many icons (perhaps a drop-down could be used).... :) It'd be great if e.g. on android, there could be some URL that user can redirect to any app (OsmAnd/Mapy.com/Organic maps etc.), but I can't find a way to do that. Perhaps would be doable using the special app, though. -- andree 19:11, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd be good with a dropdown – but I'm not sure how that could be implemented or even if it can be implemented in the first place. //shb (t | c | m) 14:06, 15 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that, ultimately, we need to commit to either OSM or Google Maps. Likewise, I think Wikidata shouldn't be visible to those logged out. It's really an internal tool, and removing it for logged out users would reduce the clutter. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 18:44, 15 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think the issue we'd run into by committing to either one is we're always going to have people who will take issue with the use of Google Maps (even in a majority of the world where Google Maps remains the most popular navigation app) and OSM isn't of much help to most travellers (no specific app, no seamless integration with Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, cannot be downloaded offline), and providing both is the only way to give users a choice. //shb (t | c | m) 12:13, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Good point. Is there any way to track how much those links are used — to be clear, not to track who is using them but just how much they are used? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 01:27, 22 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't believe so, at least not to my knowledge. :( //shb (t | c | m) 02:25, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@andree.sk, SelfieCity: So turns out there's now a new beta feature that Apple seems to be trying with their web version, making it possible to display such links in the same way Google does (and suppress for China/SK). I do wonder if it'll genuinely be possible to create a dropdown and make it not suck on mobile. I think 3 would be pushing the limits and wanted more opinions before testing it. Maybe possible tweaking the site's css/js such that it's only a hoverover dropdown on desktop? //shb (t | c | m) 07:29, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that would be a good idea. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:49, 28 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think for the timebeing I'll have to place Apple markers as an icon similar to Google and OSM for now – but when I get some more time maybe I'll get the dropdown menu working. //shb (t | c | m) 22:40, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Electric cars

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Latest comment: 1 month ago11 comments6 people in discussion

I started this on the talk page of English language varieties, but it is probably of wider interest:

Battery electric vehicle‌s (BEVs) are becoming more common around the world, including in English-speaking countries (though leading states like Norway or the People's Republic of China are of course not). Do they have an influence on car-related terms or even sections on travel by car? Are they worth their own article or subsection? In German at least, I have for example heard Fahrpedal (lit. "driving pedal") or even Strompedal (lit. "electricity/electric pedal") instead of gas pedal PragmaFisch (talk) 22:13, 8 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've been including information about EV charging availability, local charging standards etc when I update "Driving in X" articles. In terms of language, though, EVs don't differ meaningfully from ICEs, pretty much the only words you'd need to know are "charge/charger". Asamboi (talk) 11:16, 10 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I do wonder whether we should have a specific article about travel via electric vehicle, discussing where charging points can be found in various countries and how they operate by country. Especially as BYD cars are becoming widespread. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 17:48, 10 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I just know the basics, but wouldn't for example gas pedal need to be changed, or could it carry over as a colloquial term? An article on Travelling by electric vehicle itself is an interesting idea though. PragmaFisch (talk) 12:22, 12 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah. I think an article specifically about travel by electric vehicle could mention the differences in terminology across countries. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:10, 12 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think gas pedal is just a colloquial term? Not too sure because it's called the accelerator (or the accel) where I am, which would have no difference in EVs. //shb (t | c | m) 23:24, 12 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Here's something we might want to add to any such article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/13/extreme-nausea-are-evs-causing-car-sickness-and-what-can-be-done says that some passengers have worse motion sickness in EVs than in other cars. I could imagine trying out an EV as a rental car on a trip. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 13 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Some information on electric vehicles could be added to our general articles like Driving and Renting a car. Long distance journeys need to be planed differently. If you (and maybe another driver) are driving for 12 hours in a fuel car, you only need to stop for 5 minutes to refuel and this can be separate from refreshment stops. In an electric car, you may need to plan longer breaks at charging points. AlasdairW (talk) 21:43, 13 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ideally you'd probably want to plan your lunch breaks around charging breaks. Still would be way less ideal for a roadtrip, however. //shb (t | c | m) 23:52, 13 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

When I was young, I could easily sit in a car for 12 hours with only the occasional hurried stop.

Now, an ideal roadtrip would involve stopping at least every two hours. There would definitely be a leisurely lunch, and if I needed to be 12 hours' away, there'd probably be a hotel room in the middle, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Personally I try and take a break every 3 hours or so if I'm traveling with someone else, but if I'm driving solo that becomes 2 hours. I think I'd probably max out at 8 hours in one day solo (and maybe 14 if I'm with someone else)...but I definitely wouldn't do any of that in one go. A good lunch in the middle would be a must, maybe a hike along the way too. //shb (t | c | m) 08:59, 20 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: Whey to go: Is cheese the new reason to travel?

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Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250905-is-cheese-the-new-reason-to-travel Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 16:41, 10 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

We, in fact, do have an article about Cheese. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 17:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I didn't realize this. I have been less active in all Wikimedia projects these days. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:18, 10 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Fun

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Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

m:Wikipedia 25/Easter egg experiments looks like something we might want to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 14 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Would be a fun idea indeed. //shb (t | c | m) 13:25, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Adding audio to a Phrasebook

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Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hello! Please I need help with a situation. We are working on a project to add the audios of the phrases that we have on the Igbo Phrasebook. It all started off well but on the long run, some of the file all turned red without the audio being displayed.

I really need help with this. I think the page is loaded/heavy, how can this be resolved? Aminwa 21 (talk) 21:39, 17 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Look at the thread immediately above this one, where we're already discussing the problem. Thanks for all your work! Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:30, 17 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh wow! Thank you so much for pointing this out, I really appreciate. Aminwa 21 (talk) 06:33, 18 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Server switch - Your wiki will be read-only for a short time soon

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Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will switch the traffic between its data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster.

All traffic will switch on 24 September. The switch will start at 15:00 UTC.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

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You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 24 September 2025.
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Please share this information with your community.

Trizek (WMF) (Discussion) 15:41, 18 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Chicago Expedition???

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Latest comment: 1 month ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Looking at the expeditions menu, I realize they’re all for continents. There’s a few for states/countries, but not many. I propose making a Wikivoyage expedition for Chicago for three reasons:

• Chicago is a world city, global.
• Chicago is vast.
• All of Chicago could use improvement.

PhilDaBirdMan (talk) 00:10, 19 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you want to get this started, I certainly don't oppose it. However, per Wikivoyage:Plunge forward, you can go ahead yourself and make any edits you feel are lacking in the article. You can also start a checklist in your userspace if you'd like to keep track of what you feel needs improvement. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 01:21, 19 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

So it’s like Wikipedia: i can do stuff myself within user page, or i can try to rally people together with a tattered project.

I’ll make a expedition. PhilDaBirdMan (talk) 01:35, 19 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

To add onto what SelfieCity said, while you're free to do so, I will say it's very rare to have expeditions for individual cities. I think you're better off creating an Illinois Expedition with a subpage for Chicago; the byproduct of that is all other Illinois articles also now have an expedition. //shb (t | c | m) 06:36, 19 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also, unless I'm very much mistaken, Chicago and several district pages are star-level articles, so while updates are needed, overall improvements to the articles in terms of writing or organization are hardly among the more urgent tasks on this site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:23, 19 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Okay, ill keep that in mind. PhilDaBirdMan (talk) 11:00, 19 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, just go for it and update the article as needed. I have added what I can, including the information about Chicago-style barbecue (which most tourists or even white locals won't encounter because they don't got to the African-American neighbourhoods), but feel free to make some stylistic edits. The dog2 (talk) 16:01, 19 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Back to top button on mobile

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Latest comment: 1 month ago7 comments4 people in discussion

One of the things I've always hated when reading this site on mobile is the lack of a back to top button. While it is always possible to just scroll up, this gets real annoying and degrades the overall user experience, particularly for longer articles (especially large cities). It's also something I wish was a thing on desktop too, but Vector 2022 does solve that so I don't see it being a huge priority.

I'm envisioning something where such a button (hopefully with a smooth transition) appears the moment you scroll 250–300 pixels beneath the top on the bottom right corner (since users are less likely to accidentally click on it since most people are right handed). The overall addition should not cause any negative issues to user experience and it's something that's fairly common on a lot of mobile websites nowadays anyway.

Thoughts on this? //shb (t | c | m) 02:00, 20 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sounds like a good idea. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 02:06, 20 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

This sounds like something for the m:Community Wishlist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 20 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think it might be doable tweaking the site's .css too. //shb (t | c | m) 00:11, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

In zh.wikivoyage, they have a gadget that show a button to quickly navigate to the top or bottom of the page (see voy:zh:MediaWiki:Gadget-scrollUpButton.js), and this gadget is currently enabled for everyone by default. I think that might helps. Nvdtn19 (talk) 00:20, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've asked someone off-wiki if they could implement such for mobile – shouldn't be controversial and policy permits for it. //shb (t | c | m) 11:37, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's now done and works really nicely – cheers DR. :) //shb (t | c | m) 22:13, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

About Template:Mapbanner

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Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments2 people in discussion

This template currently has "Search full texts" button, which might not be a thing you guys would expected to show. I also see there's a CSS that aims to hide this in Template:Mapbanner/styles.css, but it seems this CSS doesn't works. To fix that, just changing |type=search to |type=search2 in the template. zh.wikivoyage and vi.wikivoyage are also doing this to hide that button. I can't edit that template myself since it's protected. Nvdtn19 (talk) 00:12, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Nvdtn19: I have granted you template editor perms – feel free to make the changes as you see fit. //shb (t | c | m) 00:21, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I've fixed that myself. Nvdtn19 (talk) 00:26, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cheers – I've also given you the perms permanently because you're a sysop on viwikivoyage too (for recordkeeping purposes). //shb (t | c | m) 00:28, 21 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Abuse filter 38

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Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello all, could we check abuse filter 38 discussion please? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 01:35, 22 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Question about Page Name

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Latest comment: 28 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion

I've created a new page for the city of Anyang in South Korea. However, since a city with the same name in China already exists on Wikivoyage, I named the page 'Anyang city.'

Is this a good name? If there is a better option, please let me know. I would be happy to make the change. Thank you. CHAEBIN89 (talk) 05:44, 22 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Is that the same place as Anyang (Gyeonggi)? Because that Anyang is also in South Korea. I think the best title ultimately would be Anyang (South Korea).

Don't worry, though, moving pages is quite easy — you don't need to cut and paste the content to another page. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:13, 22 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@CHAEBIN89 @SelfieCity I think that's the same location, yes. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 13:27, 22 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have merged the two articles. Ground Zero (talk) 15:15, 22 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ground Zero Thank you Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 06:41, 3 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Best places to be an expat

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Latest comment: 30 days ago11 comments7 people in discussion

If you were going to migrate to another country, what would be your top pick as a place to move? BBC posted an interesting article that recommends 10 top countries for expats: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250922-the-best-countries-for-expats-in-2025

What do you guys think? Are those places you'd want to live out your life? Mrkstvns (talk) 13:50, 24 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

If I have to choose among the 10 top countries, I would prefer Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, UAE and Vietnam, as I live in India. China is a difficult choice as I rely heavily on services that are banned in the country, including social media sites like Facebook and X. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 15:28, 24 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm surprised to see Mexico and Colombia but not Costa Rica. I think this is a subjective list. France, Spain and Italy should also be higher in my view. I don't know much about Southeast Asia. China seems like a bizarre pick for living abroad unless you speak Mandarin. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 18:51, 24 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I would assume cost-of-living concerns is a much larger issue in western Europe hence why they aren't higher. //shb (t | c | m) 00:09, 25 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

There's some discussion & (possibly obsolete) links to other lists in Retiring abroad.

I've lived in China & travelled about Asia a fair bit. I find the Philippines much easier than elsewhere in SE Asia because so many people speak English. India & perhaps Sri Lanka or Bangladesh would appeal for the same reason. Pashley (talk) 19:03, 24 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm surprised to see mostly tropical countries listed in these days of global warming, though for example, Colombia has highlands. Also, a couple of them are dictatorships: to me, the idea of moving to China right now is bizarre. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:11, 24 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

In my view there is no one answer. There are two major questions that need to be answered before one can even start to look at the situation objectively.

• Firstly, is one looking at a short-term stay with a permanent base in one’s home country or a long-term stay where one’s permanent base will be in the host country?
• Secondly, where is one’s home country and what s one’s citizenship? This determines a number of things including taxation and ability to return home should things go wrong (for example, if one is incapacitated, will one be able to get assistance in one’s home country or does one need to rely on the facilities in the host country.
• Thirdly, at what stage is one in one’s life? The needs of the recent graduate are different to the needs of the person raising a young family, which again are different to the needs of a mature person whose children have “flown the nest” and the needs of a retiree are different again.

In short, there are a multitude of issues, not all of which affect everybody. What might be “best” for one is not necessarily “best” for another. Martinvl (talk) 21:03, 24 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It seems like the article focuses on working professionals specificially, as an "expat" refers to a working professional who lives outside their native country. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 01:46, 25 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

We have some stuff at working abroad & digital nomad. Pashley (talk) 02:25, 25 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Almost any expat site might have a discussion of this for their particular country or region. e,g. I recall a discussion on Raoul's China Expat Saloon that ranked Xiamen & Suzhou very high & mentioned many others. Pashley (talk) 22:35, 29 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Expat is short for expatriate, who is anyone who lives outside of their native land. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:34, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: How a Travel YouTuber Captured Nepal’s Revolution for the World

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Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-travel-youtuber-captured-nepals-revolution-for-the-world/

Additionally, for those who don't know: Wired have published a lot of great reportage lately. While they are primarily technology-focused, they interpret that broadly. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:57, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

Reducing the VfD time period

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Latest comment: 29 days ago19 comments7 people in discussion

Happy October, everyone. A quick TLDR of this proposal: it's a proposal to reduce the VfD time period from 14 days to 7 days.

I've been thinking about this for some time and slowly documented the number of days a VfD discussion goes on for. As you can see from the chart, very few discussions ever exceed the 7 day mark, with three of those discussions that went over 7 going for 8 days, one for 10 days, and three over 14 days (24, 31 and 36). This means that out of our 41 nominations, only 4 were between the 7–14 day period. The other 83 per cent of discussions all went for under 7 days.

This, in my view, is problematic for various reasons – it goes without saying that based on the stats, most discussion happens in the first week or so; having the nomination period extend up to 14 days just unnecessarily prolongs the period.

Another issue with a 14-day voting period is that it increases the backlog – backlog, isn't just how many pages get nominated for deletions. In a lot of cases, the outcome of a VfD is what determines if page needs cleanup (especially the copyvios/AI-generated articles) – if you absolutely know that an article will be deleted, then it's not worth cleaning it up. 14 days, however, makes this process longer.

I also don't think reducing the length removes fairness either – 7 days is still a long time to weigh in. It's also more consistent with other projects such as Meta or the English Wikipedia. Just about nothing makes sense to keep the 14 day period. //shb (t | c | m) 04:30, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I tend to be skeptical of this proposal. By its nature, this is a site of travelers, so if we reduce the time for discussions, it's likely that someone who was on a trip and might have been outside of Wi-Fi and cellphone signal range would have missed a chance to participate. I think we've already made exceptions for obvious cases of articles without any information, and if not, I'd support those being given no more than 7 days, but anything that needs discussion or realistically might be saved by some editing should be given 14 days. I can think of lots of cases of itinerary articles that were saved by some editing that might have taken more than a week to be sufficient to convince a consensus. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:32, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Based on past precedent, we've been fairly gracious for users who are travelling and are working on articles, so I don't think reducing the time period will change much – but I would be okay with having a grace period for such articles. //shb (t | c | m) 06:41, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

But there are also users who are not working on articles but could miss a discussion they would have taken part in. I recall that kind of thing happening, anyway. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:54, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

What would be the benefit of this change? I've read the two paragraphs starting with "This, in my view, is problematic", but they don't seem to explain what makes a 14-day period worse than a 7-day period. —Granger (talk · contribs) 12:00, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Heaps – unnecessary backlog and increased uncertainty, so greater efficiency. VfD in its current form is incredibly frustrating to use and the stale nominations (from almost no input after the 7th day) adds unnecessary clutter (I've held off nominations for this reason before because I know it's going to have less participation if there's more clutter on the VfD page). //shb (t | c | m) 12:22, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Conversely, we should really be asking the inverse – what benefit is there to keeping things in limbo for 14 straight days when the stats show that this is unnecessary for over 80% of nominations? //shb (t | c | m) 12:23, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I do lean in favor of this proposal, though to be honest, I’m not sure why we have a set timeframe at all. In any other discussions on-wiki, a consensus, whenever it is achieved, decides, and it seems to me that deletion discussions should be the same. Such a change would enable clear-cut cases (like some recent redirect discussions) to be resolved within a few days while contentious cases could still take whatever time is needed. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:56, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm okay with 7 days when the discussion is not active and there's no real point of contention. But I do think people should be given a fair shot at having their voice heard. In my opinion 7 days should be the *minimum* time the discussion is open, but if a discussion had posts added in the previous 2-3 days, then it should be left open longer. I see in the stats that there were some discussions that went on for 10 days, 24 days, 30 days. Mrkstvns (talk) 14:00, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

To answer the question about the benefit of 14 days, it's that fairness to a traveling group of discussants is more important than rushing to decisions. And the question to me isn't how long it takes to make most decisions: it's not sacrificing the ~20% of decisions, which is still a substantial number. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:10, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think the proposal we should be discussing instead is whether to require 7 days for articles that have nothing in them but "X is in Y region" or whether to officially allow them to be summarily deleted without discussion. Or had we decided on that already? Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:18, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I’m not sure, but I agree that we should allow those to be summarily deleted. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:27, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe not the same day they're created, though. Sometimes people create very brief articles (e.g., just the first sentence) and then edit them to expand them. We don't want to delete the article while someone's in the act of expanding it. But if it's been around for even a day or two, that's unlikely to be a problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree. For a new user, just creating a barebones outline with "X is in Y region" may feel like a solid first step. (Years ago, I introduced someone to Wikivoyage who then started a new article that way.) It would be discouraging to make that first step and then have it deleted before you have the chance to add more content. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:23, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I also agree. It's probably best practice to check with the author first and give that person a few days to respond. Then, when no response is received, make the nomination and delete after a few days if there is support for deletion.

That's the timeline I'd have in mind. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 19:06, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I also agree with this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:25, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with that too – unless it's an abandoned stub (which is an entirely different issue since the scope of those articles is unclear), I tend to typically wait at least one month before nominating for deletion. //shb (t | c | m) 21:59, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's still worth noting that of that 20%, half of them went over 14 days – meaning the question of 7 vs 14 days affects very little. That really just means that only 10% of nominations will actually be affected based on this year's stats. //shb (t | c | m) 23:41, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I tend to lean towards keeping it at 14 days per Ikan Kekek and Mx. Granger. Feels like a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. It's important to give editors who may be away on short trips or otherwise busy an opportunity and time to voice their opinion. 14 days is a nice sweet spot allowing that and not letting stale discussions hang around on the VfD page. We don't have a massive log and we already have the speedy deletion process for urgent requests like copyright violations and outright vandalism. Gizza ^(roam) 00:23, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Religious diets

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Latest comment: 9 days ago8 comments5 people in discussion

1. "Religious diets" or equivalent sections should include information for fasting Hindus. When Hindus fast, they must maintain a lacto-vegetarian diet without cross-contamination.
2. Can't people on religious diets simply buy their own ingredients and cook their own food when certified food isn't available? This is not like eating out where certification is favored; observers cook the food themselves. For example, strict kashrut requires at least some Jewish intervention.

Faster than Thunder (talk) 15:27, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

As a Hindu myself, I say that the information regarding Hindu fasts should go to Hindu-majority areas, just like the information on the Ramadan goes to Muslim-majority areas. For countries like India, Nepal, Mauritius and Fiji, the information goes to the respective country articles. For Sri Lanka, it goes to the Hindu/Tamil-majority provinces and districts. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 16:13, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hindus might travel during fasting periods, so they may need information for their dietary restrictions. Faster than Thunder (talk) 16:37, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Strict kashrut does not demand the involvement of Jews in any aspect of food or beverage production unless some form of grape wine is involved, but does require some form of rabbinic supervision to certify that laws are being followed, except to my knowledge in the cases of inherently kosher items such as fresh fruit and vegetables that don't have visible signs of insect infestation and most alcoholic beverages other than wine. But to reply to Sbb: if we limited information on the availability of kosher eateries and processed food to only places with Jewish majorities, our articles would be much less useful to kosher-observant Jews who want to or have to travel outside of Israel and maybe a few Chasidic communities and such. So why shouldn't we also try to similarly cater to Hindu travellers? I think that would be a good idea whenever someone has the knowledge and inclination to do so. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:15, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with you. We should include info for fasting Hindus despite the low number of fasting days throughout the year. Faster than Thunder (talk) 17:43, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

We assume that people subscribing to a religion know their own religious rules. Our role isn't to inform them that they can cook for themselves. Our role is to point out appropriate services (e.g., a kosher restaurant, a halal butcher, a grocery store) and let them make their own choices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Right. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:48, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are too many kinds of Hindu fasts (and other fasts and diets) to include them all on every page. It can be a dedicated travel topic but I oppose incorporating this level of detail all over Wikivoyage. There are fasts where grains are avoided, fasts where salt is avoided, and even short 24-hour fasts where water is not consumed. It's highly divergent based on day and subculture/community/region. And there are so many other religious and dietary traditions around the world. The major ones (vegetarian/vegan, halal, major allergies, etc.) are currently sometimes mentioned and I would prefer that to remain the status quo. And FWIW, many people on the "non-contamination" fasts or diets (Hindu or otherwise) simply avoid major travel during those periods. Gizza ^(roam) 00:43, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: The perils of letting AI plan your next trip

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Latest comment: 10 days ago13 comments6 people in discussion

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250926-the-perils-of-letting-ai-plan-your-next-trip

Roundup/discussion at /.: https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/06/0434206/what-happens-when-ai-directs-tourists-to-places-that-dont-exist —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:06, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Somewhat off-topic, but I asked a chatbot to divide West Bengal into regions for tourism, and I found the following result:

• North Bengal (Himalayas and Terai): Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Kalimpong
• North-Central Bengal (Rarh-Varendra transition): Dakshin Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Uttar Dinajpur
• South-Western Bengal (Rarh region): Birbhum, Bankura, Jhargram, Paschim Bardhaman, Paschim Medinipur, Purulia
• South-Central Bengal (Ganges Delta): Nadia, Hooghly, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, Purba Bardhaman
• Greater Kolkata: Hooghly, Howrah, Kolkata, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas
• Southern Bengal (coastal region): Purba Medinipur, South 24 Parganas

There are multiple issues with this approach:

• Although "Bengal" is often used as a shorthand of West Bengal here in India, the name is usually understood to mean a large plain region covering West Bengal, Bangladesh and others. However, it's not a big deal unless you talk about "East Bengal" or "Southeast Bengal".
• There are overlaps in South-Cental Bengal and Greater Kolkata regions.
• The two coastal districts Purba Medinipur and South 24 Parganas are not connected to each other directly on road or rail, instead relying on Kolkata and Howrah. So covering the two as separate regions makes more sense, and we have enough cities for this.

That's why I have decided to split the state into the following regions and subregions:

• North Bengal [has an article]
  • Darjeeling (district)
  • Kalimpong (district)
  • Dooars (bottom-level region): Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri
  • Northern Plains (bottom-level region): Dakshin Dinajpur, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur
• South Bengal [no article, will create one]
  • Hooghly
  • Howrah (district)
  • Kolkata
  • Murshidabad (district)
  • Nadia
  • North 24 Parganas
  • South 24 Parganas
• Southwest Bengal [has an article]
  • Jhargram (district)
  • Paschim Medinipur
  • Purba Medinipur
• Rarh [has an article]
  • Bankura (district)
  • Birbhum
  • Paschim Bardhaman
  • Purba Bardhaman
  • Purulia (district)

Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 05:56, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

There's also a case that some tourist who blindly trust ChatGPT when travelling and have to get 'bitter ending'. I saw an article about this [1] in a Vietnamese newspaper some days ago. Nvdtn19 (talk) 07:09, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I just read that article and honestly...wow, just wow – people put that much trust in AI? (I can believe that...it's just, my mind cannot comprehending spending that much money all dependent on AI). //shb (t | c | m) 07:28, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Just doing some back of the envelope math based on how old you must be with your account age: yes. A friend of mine is a college professor who is also in her early 40s (as I am) and she routinely has students who turn in classwork entirely done by an LLM. No attempt to even try to comprehend the homework, just feed into a chatbot whatever the homework is and turn it in without even looking at it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:31, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I suspect that experience breeds trust. It gave me the right answer before, so... WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:30, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Would very much be this for sure. //shb (t | c | m) 21:23, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Actually crazy haha – do some colleges in the US not have AI checkers enabled on Turnitin? At my uni here you'd never be able to get away with submitting anything via AI, it'll either get picked up (quite accurately) or the responses outputted are so terrible for the topic that what AI outputs is so unusable that you're bound to fail anyway. Maybe it's just me who's been very cynical of trusting AI from day 1, but that's still mindboggling to me. //shb (t | c | m) 21:23, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I'll say that my line of work directly involves this, so if you're curious I can give you the full rundown.

To briefly sum it up, do American uni students submit AI written assignments? All the time, but they often get caught by both TurnItIn and professors who notice the poor writing quality of the assignments. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:50, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The AI checkers have far too many false positives and false negatives. It's trivial to find stories like "I put the Declaration of Independence in an AI checker and it's 98% sure that an LLM wrote it!" stuff. Plus, virtually by definition, you'll never know how many false negatives slip by. So I do know that educators routinely use them, but they are very hit-or-miss, likely because they are themselves based on AI models that fundamentally cannot be entirely accurate. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:42, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Interesting – I did have a friend who had their assignment recently falsely flagged as being 30% AI-generated, but all he had to do was present his Google Docs history to the course convenor and that was it. Maybe it's just my uni that does get overly concerned with prestige a lot (and I mean, a lot – it's a Go8 uni for the record), and it's not in upper management's best interests to have their degrees be meaningless if the system is easy to cheat, but still very interesting to know about. //shb (t | c | m) 22:57, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

To the extent that you're motivated to learn about this and have an iron stomach, you can read a lot about the literacy crisis in American education and how there are some really shocking anecdotes and data about secondary school students graduating with little to no ability to read and write. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:17, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh I'm definitely aware – but I never expected it to topple over into college. //shb (t | c | m) 23:20, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Filter 38

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Latest comment: 24 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

To any available admins, please take a look at filter 38. Thanks, //shb (t | c | m) 23:16, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: Indefinite backpack travel

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Latest comment: 24 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

https://jeremymaluf.com/onebag/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:40, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Articles being edited by my students this semester

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Latest comment: 18 days ago16 comments6 people in discussion

Most students have chosen their main projects: Anseong, Anyang (Gyeonggi), Asan, Busan/North, Busan/Suyeong, Cheongsong, Dujiangyan, Gimcheon, Gimpo, Goheung, Gumi, Gurye, Gwanggyo, Hadong, Haman, Hapcheon, Huaibei, Hwacheon, Ichikikushikino, Jangheung, Jiaozuo, Jingzhou, Kitahiroshima (Hokkaido), Ko Racha, Linfen, Miryang, Mokpo, Muan, Nan'ao Island, Nanhai (Foshan), Pingdingshan, Ruijin, Ruzhou, Sejong, Seoul/East, Seoul/Gangnam-Seocho, Seoul/South, Siheung, Taebaek, Tangshan, Tongnan, Uiwang, Ulleungdo, Xishuangbanna, Yeoju, Yesan, Zhongmu County. As usual, it may be a good idea to watchlist them until end of the year. I am giving feedback to students on my Wikipedia user talk page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hanyangprofessor2). If there are any issues, you'd like to bring to my attention at article talk pages, or student talk pages, please ping me. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 08:42, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ps. If anyone would like to volunteer to receive extra pings for me due to their familiarity with Wikoyage manual of style, or Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, or Japanese locations, please let me know. Occasionally I try to ping relevant Wikivoyage experts (you folks) when replying to students, but frankly, I am not active enough here to always remember "who's who" (I'll make a ping-cheatsheet for myself based on replies here, if any :P). Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 08:51, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm happy to be pinged for Chinese locations.

From the list you gave, Xishuangbanna stands out as a popular destination where our coverage is already decent, so it's especially important for the student working on it to make sure their changes are genuine improvements.

As for Nanhai (Foshan), it's worth noting we currently cover it in the Foshan article, along with all other districts of Foshan except Shunde. I'm not sure if it makes sense to split Nanhai off, and if we do, it would leave the Foshan article as an awkwardly discontinuous combination of Chancheng and the outlying districts of Sanshui and Gaoming. If the student wants to create a new article for Nanhai, this is probably worth discussing at Talk:Foshan. —Granger (talk · contribs) 12:35, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

For a city of supposedly 7 mil people, I am very surprised with how little content we have for Foshan. I don't know much about the Guangdong area, but from the perspective of someone who isn't familiar with the area, I'd find it more useful if the information were condensed together rather than to have a separate article for only one district of the city. //shb (t | c | m) 12:48, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The current population of Foshan is about 9.7 million and around a third of them live in Shunde District, which we cover in a separate article. STW932 (talk) 16:32, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Xishuangbanna is a region article, so the student may need to be reminded that individual listings belong in the city articles. STW932 (talk) 16:37, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

That article is supposed to be edited by @Redyeoni who is retaking the class and seems to have forgotten about it (no edits at all this semester...), sigh. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 16:20, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000 @STW932 @Mx. Granger I am not sure if you support or not splitting that article. I'll ask the student in question, @SUN JIAYI's, to start a discussion at Talk:Foshan and propose a division of that town into districts. Since we already have Shunde, I think adding more districts makes sense. Right now it is mentioned at Foshan#Towns (as the only entity); which seems not ideal... Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 16:23, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm undecided, as I don't know Foshan well enough to really have an opinion. Does Nanhai feel like a separate destination with its own identity, or like part of central Foshan? Would we split off this district by itself or would we divide the whole city into district articles? Why not add the information to Foshan for now and split it up when there's enough information to support multiple fleshed-out articles? Those are some of the questions to think about. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:36, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I don't like partially districting cities. It's messy. But it's of course complete reasonable to propose a complete districting scheme for a city of several million. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:41, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Ikan here. //shb (t | c | m) 22:31, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Me too. The biggest problem with splitting off Nanhai District is that you would then have a huge physical gap between Foshan's central district (Chancheng District) and the two outer districts of Sanshui and Gaoming. So doing a separate article on Nanhai cannot be justified unless you are also going to create separate articles on Sanshui and Gaoming. STW932 (talk) 23:13, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Definitely, unless there are enough listings to district the entire city. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:46, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seen as how I wrote the Dynamic map guide especially for your students' use, I'm more than happy to be pinged and approached for anything ado with those dynamic maps. I currently am unable to actively patrol their work because of my own work though, so I hope that's not an issue. ― Wauteurz (talk) 21:15, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Hanyangprofessor2 Is Ziyi Deng one of your students? They appear to be drafting an article about Yueyang's central district. See User:Ziyi Deng/sandbox STW932 (talk) 12:29, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@STW932 Yes, I spotted it few days ago and recommended them to change their topic to Yueyang instead Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 16:25, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: I’ve Gone to Look for America: Conversations and revelations about an ailing nation along Interstate 95.

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Latest comment: 22 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

https://magazine.atavist.com/2025/america-i95-conversations-trump —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:39, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Have your say: vote for the 2025 Board of Trustees

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Latest comment: 16 days ago29 comments4 people in discussion

Hello all,

The voting period for the 2025 Board of Trustees election is now open. Candidates are running for two (2) seats on the Board.

To check your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Learn more about them by reading their application statements and watch their candidacy videos.

When you are ready, go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote.

The vote is open from October 8 at 00:00 UTC to October 22 at 23:59 UTC.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair, Elections Committee

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:49, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Picking two candidates out of four with two candidates disqualified for no good reason. What a joke of an election honestly. Would highly encourage reading the Meta page I linked as well as m:Objections to the 2025 WMF Board election removals/Arab Community. I still voted, but if any of you are planning on voting, I would highly encourage giving those pages a read first. //shb (t | c | m) 08:13, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, do you actually know that there was no good reason? Or are you just assuming there's no good reason, because you don't personally know what it is? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

We might not know the full reason, but Lane already came out and disclosed the reasoning why to the best of what they were able to disclose and I find the WMF's reasoning utterly unconvincing. This is barely even touching the surface with Ravan whose reason hasn't been officially confirmed but highly likely due to her open stance on Palestine. Being barred from participating in an election just a few days before voting for your political views or because of your involvement with criticising the WMF really comes out as authoritarian, even more so when there is now a huge disconnect between BoT members and the general community. It speaks a lot for the WMF's lack of transparency at the very least. //shb (t | c | m) 23:33, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

This isn't really "an election" in the sense of the winners definitely being placed on the Board. The WMF's Board is self-perpetuating. This is like an opinion poll, which the Board chooses to conduct, but which does not require them to do anything.

Consequently, if the Board has already decided that they weren't going to put these two people on the Board, would you really want them to let you vote, and, if they did "win", then say "Surprise! Guess what? We decided a week before the election that we weren't going to put this person on the Board, but we thought that we'd just let you vote anyway, in the hope that you wouldn't favor them and we could blame their non-appearance on the Board on the community instead of on ourselves." WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Neither situations are desirable and only goes to show how out of touch the Board is with the broader community. //shb (t | c | m) 02:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Board's job is to do their fiduciary duty to their charitable purpose. "Being in touch with the broader community", no matter which minority you choose to consider "the broader community", is not their job. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps that is why they are ever so increasingly becoming deeply unpopular, as evidenced by those pages I linked. //shb (t | c | m) 03:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Board's job isn't to be popular, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

So why do they bother to do this non-election? Also, are any non-self-perpetuating members of the community guaranteed to be on the board or normally put on it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:07, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Why do they bother? I think they get some value out of seeing who's the most popular with the affiliates and individual community members. I think that they want to have affiliate and community members on the board, and this is as good a way as any other to narrow down the list of candidates. The public process may help with the vetting, since a background check isn't going to pick up some things that you'd want to know. A background check will let them find out about things like drunk driving convictions or being in debt to a level that could present a bribery risk, but a public announcement gives them a chance to hear about things like, say, creepy behavior towards women at events. (I give these examples in the belief that none of them are relevant to any of the current or former candidates.)

Nobody is guaranteed a position on the WMF's board. The outgoing board is entitled to reject any or all candidates (and to throw them out later, if they seemed okay initially but the rest of the board decided later that they disliked having someone on it). However, they voluntarily created a requirement in the bylaws to have "a" community- or affiliate- nomination process for some board seats. Technically, it can be just about any process the board chooses, on any schedule the board chooses, and repeated as many times as necessary until they find a candidate they are willing to accept. However, we've never needed to have more than one round in the past, and as a general rule, whoever gets the most votes is usually the one whom the board appoints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:22, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for explaining. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:32, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I should say, though, that some of your responses have helped me to understand that there is a big problem that ought to be addressed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

To me it's just sad that this whole controversy even happened – expressing your views on an international conflict should never result in a disqualification. If she was really controversial, the community would have expressed that anyway. There was no need for the WMF to intervene and the fact that they continue to defend this decision is worrying. //shb (t | c | m) 12:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that expressing some views ought to result in disqualification. For example, I don't think that an internationally known non-profit organization whose flagship website is supposed to be neutral is best served by elevating to the board a woman who expressed support for Hamas (NB: not Palestine, but Hamas) and who publicly supported the view that rape victims were lying.[2] Opposition to genocide is consistent with the mission; support for rapists and terrorist groups is not. The current Board has a duty to advance the mission, and sometimes that means, among other things, discouraging the kind of politicking that would result in potential voters knowing about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I would agree that that should be disqualifying, but has the board explained that that was the reason for the disqualification? Furthermore, if her views have been known for a long time, why did they wait so late to disqualify her from running? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:08, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

AIUI the process last round (from the POV of the candidate) was:

• announce candidacy and start allowable types of politicking,
• individual contributors vote on the long list,
• affiliates vote (from the list shortened by the previous vote),
• background checks and the board disqualifies any inappropriate/unwanted candidate that happened to be at the top of the list, and
• whoever is at the top of the list is officially appointed by the current board members.

They got complaints about individual voters needing to research too many candidates and affiliates not simply rubber-stamping the individual results, so it did not surprise me when this year they reversed steps 2 and 3.

Then they tweaked the process to do background checks before the final vote. I would not be surprised if this second tweak was because someone realized that at least one candidate would be disqualified.

One board member has provided a personal explanation on the wikimedia-l mailing list. I am not aware of (and would not expect) an official statement. (I would be disappointed if they did so, in fact, because that would constitute a heavy, official condemnation.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:50, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Was there no way to disqualify her earlier? I appreciate the link to the post by that one board member. The disqualifying reasons for both disqualified candidates are reasonable, but I think the process was problematic and that there should be more and earlier communication about the reasons for disqualifications. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:51, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's the other issue – spending months campaigning, only for the WMF to say you're disqualified just a few days before the election, is very poor form. If they really were controversial (and I still don't buy the reasons for a whole other slew of reasons), the community would have voted them out anyway. The community and voters aren't stupid. //shb (t | c | m) 23:25, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

When I mean few days, it was only known when the WMF decided to not list them on the ballot box – it was very late and quite frankly indefensible. //shb (t | c | m) 23:26, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Right, but on trusting people to vote out someone on the basis that she has voiced support for Hamas and is a rape denier for political reasons (I haven't read the links, so I'm not making a direct accusation) is an unacceptable hazard for a foundation dedicated to a lack of points of view affecting its most famous and active site, and I would by no means trust a majority to vote her down on that basis. It also wouldn't really make sense to let people vote for Bluerasberry if the board would refuse to seat him, regardless, on the basis of conflicts of interest if he won. So my issues are with the process, the timing and the lack of prompt, transparent communication. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:33, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe it's just me having a hard time trusting what Victoria says (this isn't something exclusive to me ftr), I guess. //shb (t | c | m) 07:42, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

TL;DR: If you're not interested in bureaucracies, you can safely skip this.

Well, looking at the dates, probably not. For simplicity, let's just stipulate that it really was all about the accusations against the lone woman in the affiliates' shortlist and that the information in the JP article was unknown to the board/WMF staff until its publication. (I don't actually know whether any of that's true.)

The JP article was published on 10 August. I assume that this was treated like any other communications crisis involving the board. That would mean that the next step was to get the whole board and various staff together to make a decision about whether and how this discovery ought to affect the process. Since they (obviously) decided it should, they probably had to get a formal Board vote (usually done by e-mail), and write an explanation about what's changing. Giving them about 10 calendar days to do all that does not seem unreasonable. m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025/Announcement/Change to the order of the selection process was posted on 21 August.

Remember that voting was originally supposed to start on 27 August, so from the POV of the team handling this process, they had at most 17 days from the date of the JP article until voting starts. The earliest they could have said anything about this was 17 days before voting, aka halfway through the official four-week-long campaigning season.

If you're certain that the board will reject this candidate in the end, your question is whether you want to pull her from the list before, during, or after the voting. None of these choices are going to popular, but the main complaint is that they're doing it at all, rather than the timing. I've seen nobody saying anything even remotely like "If you'd announced this 17 days before the original voting dates, I'd think it was a good idea, but since you announced it 5 days before the new voting dates, it's a bad idea."

Once they had the decision and made the initial announcement about doing the background checks earlier and the voting later, they still had to actually do the comprehensive background checks. Those take time. I'd expect multiple weeks for this. This isn't a quick "push a button, get an answer" thing, especially for candidates in LMIC countries, and because they wanted to review more than just the basics (What if the JP article was exaggerated? what if her account had been hacked? Would you want to "transparently" smear her name in public, only to discover that it was a false accusation, or that other candidates had similar problems?).

I would not be surprised if the new voting dates were set in conversation with the background check company: If the background checking companies promised to complete all the background checks by 30 September, I would have planned to hold a board meeting on 1 October to decide whether we need to act on any of the results, inform all of the candidates on 2 October [I assume this happened; it would be more humane], and publicize the results on 3 October.

We can complain that this announcement came five days before the new date for the beginning of voting, but it's also 37 days after voting was originally supposed to start. Leaving all the candidates in limbo (because until the voting is over, they don't know whether they safely can commit to other projects for the next two years) and delaying voting longer than strictly necessary is not nice, either.

This means that the practical options are:

• Don't do real background checks, because they're too slow. (We tried that in the past; it wasn't good.)
• Don't do a background check for her; just reject her in August. Then have a vote and risk discovering, after the voting is over/when you do comprehensive background checks for the winners, that one of the winners also needs to be rejected for unrelated reasons.
• Do the background checks and start voting ASAP afterwards. (That's what they did.)
• Do the background checks and then delay the voting for no particular reason (maybe "to let people calm down"?).

IMO they made a reasonable choice about the timing, and it's possible that they made the best choice from among a handful of not-so-great options. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for explaining all of that. The remaining problem is that that explanation is from you here, rather than directly from the board to all Wikimedians. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:15, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ditto (and I do appreciate the explanation btw :)). //shb (t | c | m) 00:30, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

{outdent}

You're welcome. Keep in mind the potential difference to that candidate between a detailed official explanation and a comment from some person on the internet who apparently has an interest in how bureaucracies work.

Everything the WMF officially says about her is at risk of appearing in comprehensive background checks for her for the next couple of decades – potentially torpedoing job offers for decades to come. If they explain their concerns in comprehensive detail, it could result in future employers saying "Wow, they re-wrote the whole process just for this? She must have posted something really bad." What I say (especially since I'm deliberately not using her name) is unimportant.

The WMF has a long history of not explaining certain decisions. One reason for that is this problem:

• WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Alice. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
• WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Bob. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
• WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Chris. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
• WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block David. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
• WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Eve. I can't tell you why, but let me assure you, it's not because of child porn.
• WMF: Hey, everyone, we had to block Frank. I can't tell you why.
  • Everyone else: Die, you monster child porn purveyor!
    • WMF: Hey, I never said what it was for?!
      • Everyone else: Yeah, but your silence says as much as your words.

In this case, as in many others, they are giving the candidates a chance to tell their own stories. They know, from past experience, that there is a risk that the candidates' interpretations may be biased. (See also: all the times that sanctioned editors post "the" e-mail message they received from WMF Legal but accidentally-on-purpose forget to mention all the e-mail messages that preceded it.) It also has the effect of causing some people to think that they have the whole story, and that the decision really was wrong. But I see this as an effort to avoid causing avoidable harm to the rejected candidates, and I think it is an honorable approach.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's an honorable approach, whereas all decisions on this Wiki concerning user rights above patroller are a matter of public record? Why should only what the board does be secret, with no official statement whatsoever? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:11, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

What the board does is not secret. The official statement is at m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025/Announcement/Change to the order of the selection process. There is an official explanation at m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025/FAQ#Questions regarding the August 21 announcement.

Making the votes for Wikivoyage:User rights nominations be public is our choice. Not every wiki makes that choice. For example, the English Wikipedia is gearing up for their 2025 ArbCom elections, and it's done by secret ballot. Individuals can talk – just like individual members of the WMF's board can (and have done in this case) – but the collective group speaks only through secret ballot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

One of the misunderstandings I've seen in multiple other non-profits is that what a board does is different from what individual people say during a board meeting. For example, back in the pre-social media days, I heard regular complaints in one organization from a handful of people who were very concerned about "transparency", meaning that it wasn't good enough to know whether the board passed the resolution or authorized the expense (what a board does), or even to know the names of board members who eventually voted for or against it; instead, they believed that a board meeting should work like a national legislature, and every word that any board member said during a meeting, and sometimes even how they said it, should be disclosed to all members, so they could criticize board members who advocated for the wrong view, who asked questions they thought were stupid, etc. Board members don't usually volunteer because they want to have a jerk picking apart the exact words they used in a meeting. When that becomes typical, the board stops being able to work directly together, and instead turns into a "telephone game": Alice wants to talk about issue X, so she calls Bob and Chris; Bob and Chris each separately talk to David and Eve and Frank; Frank and Eve call Alice, and by the time the board officially meets, the only thing left to be said is "All in favor?"

(One of the "transparency" advocates eventually got elected to that board. If memory serves, he provided his own unofficial summaries of who said what for a few meetings and then was "too busy".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Qustion for the adding pub in Yeoju

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Latest comment: 19 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Hello, I'm develpoing yeoju. There were many parts missing from the article. So I add See / Do / Eat.

When writing the Eat section, I referred to the restaurants recommended on the official Yeoju City Hall website. However, I'm not sure what criteria I should use when writing the Bar section. Wkddmstjr05240524 (talk) 04:32, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Have you ever visited or lived in that area? If you have, I suggest putting your favorite restaurants or other places in the article. Sometimes I will write things like this:

• Lee's Golden Restaurant. Very good barbecue. Short walk from subway. The staff speak only Korean.
• Ko's Family Restaurant. Good place for families with children.
• Kim's Tourist Restaurant. American food. All waiters speak English.
• Chong's Little Flower Restaurant. Small restaurant with just five tables, but very good jajangmyeon noodles. If you don't speak Korean, just point at the pictures on the menu.

This way you can help different people find the best restaurant for what they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:40, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

In addition to what WhatamIdoing mentioned (which is really good advice), we don't really any any objective criteria for what restaurants are listed. If a restaurant is noticeably bad then yes it does make sense to omit it (see WV:ANR), but otherwise please do plunge forward! //shb (t | c | m) 23:49, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

WMF board reform

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Latest comment: 20 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The m:2025 WMF Board reform petition affects people from across the movement, so I'm posting this here for visibility. I've only made a few dozen contributions to wikivoyage myself, so if this isn't the right place to post about it, please let me know. Clovermoss (talk) 20:54, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Would absolutely recommend giving this a read. Absolutely shameful how out of touch the board is with the movement and community (and no, I cannot be convinced otherwise). //shb (t | c | m) 22:05, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Please help merge and redirect lake articles created by User:AWA MODESTA MENYIAM

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Latest comment: 19 days ago9 comments4 people in discussion

I've bought us 1 day by blocking their account. I've done some research and merged and directed several articles, but this is time-consuming work, so I could really use your help (in other words, I'm done for the night and hand it over to you all). Sometimes, a web search doesn't show that there are lakes by the names they're giving, but instead waterfalls, or that a different name is prevalent. Anyway, none of them fulfill Wikivoyage:What is an article, nor does Ekom-Nkam Waterfalls, previously created (see Talk:Nkam: both articles should be merged and redirected to Bamenda, in my opinion). Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:42, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

This user is translating articles from French Wikivoyage, hence the weird formatting and broken templates. Needs to follow our policies, regardless. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 10:43, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The more of Awa's edits I read though, the more confused I become. I do wonder if AI is being used to write at least some of the material, because it doesn't fully line up with French Wikivoyage. I still don't understand the abundance of templates that don't exist here. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 10:48, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've indef blocked them from creating new pages (possible using multiblock). Hopefully this gives us some time to work with to clean up their mess and hopefully they fix up the mess they created in the meantime. //shb (t | c | m) 12:58, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

In view of your points about inaccuracies that suggest weird AI usage, do we need to reverse my merge/redirects from (non-)articles of theirs and delete everything? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:10, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure re: AI. It seems to me that's partially original content and partially AI. Some facts do appear accurate, like some of the driving distances and general information. It's more that in the case of Nkam where for example: "Souvenirs and handcrafted items (wood carvings, woven baskets, and stone sculptures) may be available from local vendors at the entrance." sounds super AI, as though the user wrote the Understand section and then wanted to fill all the sections with content and used ChatGPT to write something for those parts. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 20:52, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think Lake sanaga should be moved to Douala Edéa National Park, as it appears to be entirely within the boundaries of the national park. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Why shouldn't it be deleted? Could you comment at Talk:Lake sanaga? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:20, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd like to see that national park become an article as much as anyone else, but there's no way the current article on Lake sanaga can be turned into a national park article without someone with local expertise. I think deletion makes more sense, but if someone wants to start an article on the park, I have no objection whatsoever. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:02, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wikivoyages purpose

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Latest comment: 17 days ago10 comments4 people in discussion

Does anyone actually use this for travel, or is it just a hobby for people to make guides? I dont think anyone uses these. Maroontruths (talk) 18:45, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

They very much do. Take a look at Reddit or all over the internet (or just statistics on the number of people who read our articles) if you're curious. But this seems like a strange place to ask that question! --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 18:47, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

OK, I just haven't seen anyone use it Maroontruths (talk) 21:05, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

You're wrong, but if that's what you think, why are you editing here? That seems like a comment a troll would make. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:49, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I was asking a question, you just want me banned since day one for no reason. Give me one reason you hate me so much Maroontruths (talk) 21:06, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

You're wrong again. I don't "hate" you. You got inordinately angry at me for deleting a non-article and giving you a clear explanation of why, and you decided at that point to be extremely hostile and abusive toward me. Have a nice day. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:49, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ikan, I posted in one of the Abuse Filters and you may want to take a look at that. I think there could be a very straightforward explanation to this user's behavior. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 01:04, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't get it, I've not done anything wrong to anyone ever. Maroontruths (talk) 20:51, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Wikivoyage is a hobby for me, and I use it for planning trips and while I am travelling. It is one of the sources I use for travel. Ground Zero (talk) 01:06, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

thanks for the reply Maroontruths (talk) 20:51, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Request for feedback on document, Gimcheon

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Latest comment: 17 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Hello everyone, I’m currently writing this article as part of my Understanding Small and Big Data course project. My page has now reached a city-level overview, and I would like to receive feedback or assessment from experienced editors. Here’s the link to my article: [3] I’d really appreciate any comments or suggestions for improvement. Thank you for your time and help! 🙏 --Jeong GiYoung (talk) 02:02, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Jeong GiYoung: Thanks for asking! On the whole, it looks excellent. Thank you for including detailed descriptions and coordinates for each of the listings, along with directions. Check the phone numbers as some of them still don't have the area codes at the beginning.

Do any of those restaurants or hotels have websites? If they do, adding the links to those would be nice.

I also reinstated some templates at the end, or maybe they were never there in the first place: IsPartOf, city article status, and geo. These are necessary for how we count the number of articles on the website and categorize them all, so make sure not to delete them. Thank you! --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:37, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SelfieCity Thank you for your feedback! As you mentioned, we have unified the phone number into the international code form, and we have completed the additional place where the website is located. --Jeong GiYoung (talk) 04:43, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Looks good! Thank you. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:38, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Request for feedback on document - Hadong

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Latest comment: 17 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hi everyone, I’ve recently expanded the Hadong article by adding detailed listings under “Do,” including a new Festivals section highlighting local events such as the Wild Tea Festival and Cosmos Flower Festival. I’d appreciate any feedback on structure, tone, or formatting to help bring it closer to Wikivoyage’s style for well-developed destination articles. Thanks in advance! —Ddongha (talk) 06:17, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ddongha: The article looks good except for "Get in", which needs more information about those places, and likewise in "Cope". If there's some more prose about getting in, like what roads or railways enter the county, that would improve the article as well.

As per above, I will reinstate some templates at the end of the article, or maybe they were never there in the first place: IsPartOf, city article status, and geo. These are necessary for how we count the number of articles on the website and categorize them all, so make sure not to delete them. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:42, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

One other comment — some of the markers, particularly for restaurants, appear to be in a different province. Are these in Hadong County? If not, they should be moved to the correct county or city article. Make sure all the listings in the article are actually in Hadong County. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:46, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wikivoyage:User rights nominations

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Latest comment: 1 day ago30 comments8 people in discussion

Two contributors have been nominated to be given Checkuser rights. Checkusers can examine user IP address information and other server log data. The tool is only used to protect Wikivoyage against vandalism and disruption. This is an important administrative role. Contributors are encouraged to consider these nominations and vote for or against. Ground Zero (talk) 01:18, 15 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

We have only 7 votes so far, which would mean that the nominations would fail. I ask again that contributors consider the nominations and express your opinion for or against. Ground Zero (talk) 02:04, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Just to underline why it's important: Checkuser rights are new to Wikivoyage, and require 25 or more votes per nomination, and at least two people have to be nominated for Checkuser before the rights can be assigned to anyone. Even if you are indifferent, letting yourself be heard in the nomination would help to implement this role which is very valuable for fighting vandalism. ― Wauteurz (talk) 08:44, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also, as a small suggestion, I think it'd be useful to add a sitenotice about the vote while it's ongoing, since far from every user follows the Pub closely. ― Wauteurz (talk) 08:47, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wouldn't be a bad idea, honestly (though I will abstain from doing it myself). enwikibooks did this a few years ago when Leaderboard ran for CU (albeit unsuccessfully). //shb (t | c | m) 09:29, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Consider it done then. Should this be a problematic move, then it's reverted easily enough. ― Wauteurz (talk) 19:48, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Where did this "25 or more votes" requirement come from? That means that basically every high-volume editor who is currently active has to participate in this discussion. Have we ever had 25 people involved in a vote for a user right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm positive the answer to that is "No." Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:06, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

It comes from meta:CheckUser_policy#Appointing_local_CheckUsers: "with at least 25–30 editors' approval". If we are still having difficulty getting the numbers, it may be useful to show that we have promoted admins with less than 10 votes, so we can ask for a relaxation of the minimum. AlasdairW (talk) 22:47, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it is indeed a global policy, and the purpose of that is to make sure that small wikis don't appoint local CUs. Checkuser is a steward-granted permission, so individual wiki circumstances are usually not taken into account (and exceptions are rarely granted) – and if we can't get to 25 votes in a reasonable period, the nomination is usually considered unsuccessful (this happened to Leaderboard's enwikibooks CU nom a few years back). //shb (t | c | m) 06:04, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

We have 33 admins (including bots), and it would not be unreasonable to personally invite the long-time high-volume editors. (You can always ping me if you get to 24 and just need one last vote.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

You know...I'm very surprised it's reached 19 (or 18 in SC's case) in the span of a week. Honestly thought that both nominations would fail like the recent enwikinews or enwikibooks nominations in the past few years...but no, both might actually pass. A week is plenty of time for another 7 more votes. //shb (t | c | m) 04:57, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

And now we've reached the minimum number of votes needed. Finally. //shb (t | c | m) 12:04, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Thank you to every who took the time to vote. This is a demonstration of the strength of the Wikivoyage community. Ground Zero (talk) 12:17, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seconded – appreciate the vote of confidence. :) //shb (t | c | m) 12:36, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm going to plunge forward and overhaul the Wikivoyage:Checkuser page and create Wikivoyage:Requests for checkuser. I don't think this should be controversial at all, but for the record I'm going to use the format used on Meta (which I personally think is the easiest to use). //shb (t | c | m) 00:30, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Done – WV:RfCU now exists. //shb (t | c | m) 01:54, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Should we have more than two Checkusers?

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Sorry for missing the initial discussion since I was attending WikiConference North America and had to deal with this security incident. I am wondering if we should do some long-term planning by having more than two Checkusers on this project (since our sockpuppets have also been around for a long time and unlikely to go away). The CheckUser policy emphasizes checks and balances by requiring at least two editors with Checkusers at all times. If we only have two and one of them resigns, retires from the project or becomes inactive long term, we may have to rush to appoint a new one. We can alleviate this risk by having more than two. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 14:29, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Good idea. Is anyone else interested in being Checkuser? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 15:16, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I support a third for this reason. shb (t | c | m) 20:01, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also for anyone else willing to become a CU, you also need to sign wmf:Legal:Wikimedia Foundation Confidentiality Agreement for Nonpublic Information (instructions on how to here). It's a very easy process and you can just give your wiki username if you really wanted to as your signature and really just a long agreement for saying "I won't disclose private information to anyone that isn't a checkuser or steward". //shb (t | c | m) 22:34, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm thinking about it. I'm less concerned about signing confidentiality agreement since I already signed it in the past, but I'm more concerned about mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA) usage. I have seen firsthand how troubling it is when my friend left her phone in an Uber while travelling in New York City. She couldn't login to Uber or call Uber support to contact the driver to retrieve the device back because Uber detected "suspicious activity" from the travel. While I do use 2FA for my banking, it's not like WMF has an office in my city, show my ID to them in-person and have my 2FA reset if something goes wrong. And since I travel to Northern Canada quite often, I don't know how frequent the 2FA is going to request me to verify. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 13:48, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't believe 2FA is a requirement for checkuser (or oversight)? AFAIK, it's only required for perms that allow you to edit .js/.css pages which at present is only stewards, global sysops and interface admins, and checkuser doesn't. //shb (t | c | m) 21:51, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

According to the page, it says "For legal and security reasons, the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to require two-factor authentication for this role." Anyhow, if I do run, do I need someone to nominate me for this role? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:46, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, interesting, this must've been a very recent change that I wasn't aware of. I don't think anyone needs to nominate you for the role, but I can if you want. :) //shb (t | c | m) 04:21, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes I would appreciate if someone nominates me. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:30, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Done //shb (t | c | m) 04:20, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

2FA offers scratch codes, which you can (and probably should) write on paper for just that sort of circumstance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The blue banner box advertising this is being shown to logged-out editors/in private browser windows, which is probably not a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't worry too much about anons voting – those IPs (or TAs, now, I should say) voting on those nominations was a specific case of block evasion. Either way, it would have still been very likely that stewards would ignore IP votes. //shb (t | c | m) 22:16, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Abuse filter blocks

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Latest comment: 12 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

We had a previous discussion on this here, but that discussion died out, but I'm reviving this discussion to enable the block feature on the abuse filter, using the same conditions agreed upon in that discussion. With an increase in recent LTA activity, constantly enabling and disabling the prevent user from taking action is not only worse for catching false positives, but also an incredibly bad use of time. //shb (t | c | m) 01:44, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata

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Latest comment: 11 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Nothing to do with English Wikivoyage, but can someone connect the Greek page https://el.wikivoyage.org/wiki/%CE%A0%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B8 to the Wikidata item for perth ~2025-28966-50 (talk) 10:30, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

1. Navigate to Perth on Wikidata.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Wikivoyage section.
3. Click "edit".
4. In the empty box at the bottom of the list that says "wiki", type in "el", and select "ελληνικά", then type the name of the article into the box to the right, and click "publish".

Ground Zero (talk) 11:56, 19 October 2025 (UTC) [ce by LPfi]Reply

Done The Perth WD page is semi-protected, so this needs to be done by somebody who has done enough edits on WD to be Autoconfirmed. Can somebody who know Greek please check that this has worked correctly. AlasdairW (talk) 13:30, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seems to work as intended on my end. //shb (t | c | m) 06:00, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

South Australia on Wikidata

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Latest comment: 11 days ago7 comments4 people in discussion

Excuse my English, I translated this.

I noticed someone just posted about a Greek page being connected to Wikidata.

Since that worked for them, I'd like to ask that the page https://bn.wikivoyage.org/wiki/দক্ষিণ_অস্ট্রেলিয়ার be moved to দক্ষিণ অস্ট্রেলিয়া (the extra র at the end should be removed) and for it to be added to the Wikidata South Australia since I am not Autoconfirmed yet.

Thank you. ধন্যবাদ. Have a nice day. মহালভা হেন্দ্রভ (talk) 02:31, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have done that. Ground Zero (talk) 02:35, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. I very much appreciate it. Do you also have the ability to move the page, as it is mispelled? মহালভা হেন্দ্রভ (talk) 02:37, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that I have done that now too. Please check to make sure that I got it right. Ground Zero (talk) 02:39, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, you have indeed done it. Very much appreciated. মহালভা হেন্দ্রভ (talk) 02:45, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Although I'm currently inactive in Bengali Wikivoyage, I can still help users there when needed. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:41, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I too can help with uncontroversial maintenance if needed. //shb (t | c | m) 12:02, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Help us decide the name of the new Abstract Wikipedia project

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Latest comment: 5 days ago6 comments5 people in discussion

Hello. Please help pick a name for the new Abstract Wikipedia wiki project. This project will be a wiki that will enable users to combine functions from Wikifunctions and data from Wikidata in order to generate natural language sentences in any supported languages. These sentences can then be used by any Wikipedia (or elsewhere).

There will be two rounds of voting, each followed by legal review of candidates, with votes beginning on 20 October and 17 November 2025. Our goal is to have a final project name selected on mid-December 2025. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Thank you!

-- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:43, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

For folks who don't know what this is:

We have a number of standard sentences that we frequently write in articles (e.g., "Smallville is a town in northern Ruritania with a population of 10,000"). Imagine that you could start an article by just putting in a sort of 'template' (the call them functions) that would pull the contents from Wikidata for you. You could copy it to plain text, keep some or all of it connected to Wikidata (e.g., if the population of the town changes), or decide that you don't like it and write your own sentence (or try a different 'template'). And, importantly, once the 'template' existed, we could do this in any language. It would speed up article creation and sharing content between all the Wikivoyages.

It may be a couple of years before we can even test this, and I think it will have lower utility for English-language projects than for smaller ones, but I think there is a lot of potential for basic assistance in this project. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The population figures could be useful. That’s something that gets out of date here. Likewise, for large businesses such as airlines that go bankrupt, a Wikifunction connection could be useful. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 20:58, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, keeping the guide up-to-date is a problem & automating some of that is a fine idea. Not just numbers from Wikidata, perhaps also things like exchange rates or hotel prices.

Natural language text might not be the only output format. That can be a fine thing, but it is also a notoriously difficult problem & some data might more naturally be presented in a table or graph. Pashley (talk) 21:57, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I imagine this will more so help smaller-language Wikivoyages (as WhatamIdoing said) way more than it would here, especially since about a third of them seem to be very dead. //shb (t | c | m) 22:26, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Exchange rates seem like a good idea.

Or maybe some pieces of the cautionbox? Simple (subject-verb-object) sentences like "There was a flood on [date]" and a relevant external link could help many languages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Usage of "commune" on this site

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Latest comment: 5 days ago21 comments6 people in discussion

This term is used a lot for French and Italian villages: to take a random example, in Fa'a'ā, it's stated that "Fa'a'ā (or Faaa or Faa'a) is a commune on Tahiti." I think this is wrong on an English-language site. In English, "commune" means only a community that has collective ownership of property. Does anyone disagree? It was not until I took my first trip to Italy that I came across the use - in Italian (comune) - of the word in anything other than a context of collective ownership of community property. I recognize that it will be hard to keep editors from continuing to misuse the word, but not misusing it and editing out its misuse would help readers to understand what they're reading. A similar case is with the word "pension", which means a monthly (or perhaps biweekly) payment for retirees and is not a type of lodging in English. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:48, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

If people think that using the "official" name is helpful (e.g., if you're likely to get directions that sound like "you need to take an Uber to the next commune"), then I'd leave it in but add an explanation: "Fa'a'ā is a commune (town) in Tahiti".

If we don't think visitors will hear the official name, then I'd just change it to a well-known English-language equivalent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives one of the meanings of pension as "a usually fixed rate boarding house", so I think its use as a type of lodging is recognised in British English. It also has "a French territorial division" as the first meaning of commune, with "a communal settlement" coming third. AlasdairW (talk) 22:36, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

While dictionary definitions can be useful, the plain language defintion that most people Will understand will be the one that Ikan Kekek described. For other uses, we should treat commune as a foreign word, i.e., italicized and translated, as we would for ciudad or ville. Ground Zero (talk) 23:01, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with GZ. //shb (t | c | m) 23:10, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The word "commune" is not a foreign word, so writing it in italics would be incorrect. One way around the problem is to create a template "{{commune}}" which would expand to "[[:en:Commune#Administrative-territorial entities|Commune]]".

When I tried this expansion in Wikivoyage, it did not work, but when I tried it in the Afrikaans Wikipedia it worked as expected (See here). A similar template "{{Pension}}" could be created which would link to "[[:en:Pension (lodging)|Pension]]". We could equally well link up to the associated word in Wikidata. Martinvl (talk) 21:08, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd be happy with that. We'd have to be careful not to do a global search and replace, though, because there is probably some mention of retirement pensions somewhere (Retiring abroad, if nowhere else), and no doubt, "commune" is used to refer to collective ownership of property in the past (such as was the case with some 19th-century religious communities in the U.S.) and probably in a few cases in the present. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:24, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

But before we do this, we have to remember that we don't do those kinds of inline Wikipedia links on this site, and if we start with these terms, a slippery slope is easily imaginable. Also, one demurral: French-language commune and Italian-language comune are foreign words. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:28, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have created Hotels#Pensions to say what a pension is in a couple of lines - please expand or correct. I also see that Sleep uses the term pension without saying what it is. AlasdairW (talk) 22:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

This should be written "[[Hotels#Pensions|pension]]" so that a sentence could read "The town has many small pensions." I suggest that we create a template which would do this substitution as it is much easier to remember the text "{{pension}}" that it is to remember the full expansion. A template has the added advantage that if the source text is changed, then we need only make one change to the template. Martinvl (talk) 21:09, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, that's very useful. Is there a way to make the redirect work with "pensione" also? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:47, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

If we are happy with what it says, I think it would be better to create a redirect Pension or Pensions. We generally avoid unnecessary use of templates templates, and readers will readily find the link in the search box. I don't think we should give an explanation of a pension every time it is used. AlasdairW (talk) 21:49, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I meant including pensione in the template, but a redirect as you suggest would work. Do we need a disambiguation if retiree pensions are covered in Retiring abroad? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Isn't it even better to explain words that readers may misunderstand in an article, rather than making them click through to another article? Ground Zero (talk) 01:16, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

You are right. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:50, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

While I appreciate that some might not like links to the English Wikipedia, I do not think that the argument holds for links to Wikidata - after all Wikidata has links into Wikivoyage! The strings "[[:Wikidata:Q3266850|commune]]" and "[[:Wikidata:Q1065252|pension]]" expand into "commune" and "pension" respectively. Using Wikidata has the added advantage that if the artcile is translated into another language, the link is still valid (even if it is redundant). If we do go the Wikidata route, it would be almost mandatory to create templates. Martinvl (talk) 20:46, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

In my experience, people are very confused by Wikidata pages. For translation purposes, a Wiktionary link might be better than Wikidata, but the obvious solution is to provide a brief description in the Wikivoyage article. Then it works offline too. That's not a high priority for me personally, but I know that matters to other contributors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree. //shb (t | c | m) 22:21, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that a simple redirect is a better, more newcomer-friendly idea than a subst:able template. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I looked at both Wkidata and Wikitionary options. While Wikidata might be difficult to navigate, the definition that we are looking for is right there so there is no need to navigate it. On the other hand Wikitionary gives all the meanings so the information given might well be confusing and leave the user none the wiser. Martinvl (talk) 21:33, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Looking further into pensions around the world, it appears that pensions in South Korea are a bit different, where they are cabins with kitchens. In Japan they differ from Minshuku in having Western-style rooms. I think that we need to put a localised description of a pension in the Sleep section of country articles of those countries where they are common. AlasdairW (talk) 22:13, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

United States of America naming

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Latest comment: 9 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Given how the US page is fairly high-profile, some more inputs on whether it should be renamed to just United States would be appreciated. Discussion at Talk:United States of America#Name. //shb (t | c | m) 06:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Korea and Cambodia

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Latest comment: 8 days ago10 comments6 people in discussion

Hi. Given that Korea recently banned their citizens to travel around Bokor Mountain (Kampot), Bavet and Poipet, and advises citizens of this country to leave Sihanoukville, is it necessary to update relevant articles so that tourists can stay informed? Nvdtn19 (talk) 16:07, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's a travel ban, that means if Korean continue traveling in those areas, will indeed face penalties. Nvdtn19 (talk) 06:16, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

One article with background. The targets seem to be job-seekers rather than tourists. Pashley (talk) 18:35, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

We would normally handle a situation like this with Template:Cautionbox in the destination article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think we should have a cautionbox. We're a site for travelers, not just tourists. We have articles about Working abroad and Studying abroad. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Absolutely. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:42, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes & probably in working abroad as well as destination articles.

For the destinations, one caution at country level or many in region/city articles? Ideally I'd say one with links from affected areas, but is that practical? Pashley (talk) 00:19, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's difficult to say. Maybe we should see which pages get the most views in the region? It's often fascinating how one town's article receives virtually no views while an article for somewhere nearby receives hundreds a month. I think it's due to SEO and search engines. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:37, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah search engine optimisation results in really weird stats like these. //shb (t | c | m) 12:48, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

We have Template:Overseasjobscam but at present it's only used on country-level articles. I think links from affected areas with the overarching warning being in the country or region article, is probably the easiest solution. And yes agree with adding it to working abroad as well. //shb (t | c | m) 12:46, 23 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Request for feedback_'Gumi'

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Latest comment: 14 hours ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Hello everyone,

I have recently completed updates and improvements to the Gumi article on Wikivoyage.

I would greatly appreciate it if experienced editors could take a moment to review the article and provide feedback or suggestions for further improvement.

Thank you very much for your time and support. Hong Da Hyeon (talk) 06:03, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for expanding the article. I have only had a quick look, but did notice some areas for possible improvement:

• See has a list of Other attractions. It would be better to have some details, preferable full listings. Are there primary links for any of the See listings?
• Geumosan Market should be moved to buy unless you expect most visitors will just come to look, not buy.
• Is the Lotte Department Store a department store or a shopping mall?
• In sleep, add links to the hotel's own website.

AlasdairW (talk) 13:01, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your response. I have made all the revisions, and I would appreciate it if you could review them. Hong Da Hyeon (talk) 00:28, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Request for feedback: Yueyang

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Hi everyone! I have been improving the Yueyang article as part of a class project at Hanyang University. I’ve added sections on climate, city layout, and history, and I would really appreciate any feedback or suggestions to make it better. Thank you! — Ziyi Deng (talk) 13:13, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi! Here are some steps that would improve the article further:

1. We have a template that we use for representing climate information. To create this you need to insert the template "climate chart" into the article and copy over the data from the table into the chart.
2. All sections after "See", but especially "Eat" and "Sleep" need to use the listing templates {{eat}} and {{sleep}} with listings of specific restaurants and hotels in the city.

--Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:28, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Module:User rights nominations

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Latest comment: 4 days ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Hi. I just wrote this module, whose only functionality as of yet is to count the number of current nominations. Could it be integrated into MediaWiki:Sitenotice somehow? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh (talk) 21:59, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think it might be worth adding to MediaWiki:Recentchangestext. //shb (t | c | m) 23:05, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sounds good to me. Maybe I could add a dumb number-to-text function (11 and higher resulting in More than ten) so that it will also work in MediaWiki:Sitenotice? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh (talk) 23:18, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

For what it's worth, sitenotice for user rights nominations is something we've only done this time for checkuser nominations (which we probably won't have for a good while), so I do think it's very likely that after two weeks it's not going to have any user rights nominations – whereas with Recentchangestext it'll always be there and may potentially be helpful for sysop/IA nominations. //shb (t | c | m) 23:26, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: Thanks for the information. I have submitted an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Recentchangestext. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh (talk) 23:47, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

About Wikivoyage purposes?

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Latest comment: 11 hours ago30 comments10 people in discussion

I found there's an user writing in their own userpage and comment about Wikivoyage purposes (of course, not me). They wrote that: "comment more on Wikivoyage: in this day and age, I find Wikivoyage to be impractical, it's plain and old. One bad thing about Wikivoyage is that it's written by people who have never traveled to that place before. The content there is also really unattractive, lacking reviews, real-life experience videos, and a specific tutorial. Tourism is not a stable kind of knowledge, it changes very quickly and no member here can update it all in time. This is definitely going to be a dead project." Is that view practical? Despite their comments, I see that many of the articles here (especially travel topics) are valuable references. As a long-term contributor to Wikivoyage, I have mixed feelings, but I tend to oppose their views. What do you think about this issue? Nvdtn19 (talk) 18:18, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Are you referring to the discussion above? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:23, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I know that discussion. The commonality is that both of them does not contribute much to Wikivoyage, so may not have realized how meaningful this project is. Nvdtn19 (talk) 23:42, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have mixed feelings about that comment, but we will become a dead project if we don't get a mobile app for sure, though. //shb (t | c | m) 23:45, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

That to me should be the priority right now. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 00:09, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

After Commons (which only has an Android app) and maybe Wikidata, IMO Wikivoyage seems like the next project where it most makes sense to have a dedicated reader app. //shb (t | c | m) 03:21, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

It made sense like 20 years ago... Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:44, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Apparently the WMF doesn't see this the same way. :/ //shb (t | c | m) 06:05, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

OsmAnd, the longstanding map app built on OSM data, does have Wikivoyage integration. I think you can check it out on their free tier. It's not great in its current form, but I've found it useful in a few situations. Does anyone have context on how that integration came to be, or if our community has any relationship with them? Gerode (talk) 17:15, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

See also Wikivoyage:Goals and non-goals. Pashley (talk) 03:55, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Parts of this resonate with me. I don't pay much attention to Eat and Sleep listings, for the reasons that user describes: the content goes stale fast, it's unlikely that every listing was informed by a user's experience (much less a user with good taste), and in 2025 there are just much better and more dynamic tools on the internet for that kind of stuff. Also, which goes back to a short thread someone posted here a few months ago, there's little room for storytelling in WV articles, which is the most natural way to engage with content. I haven't been inspired to plan an entire trip around something I found in a WV article, because even a good article isn't as gripping as other forms of media.

I disagree with that user for other types of content. The Grand Canyon and the Colosseum have been there for thousands of years. Much of what I go to see only needs to be well-written occasionally, and then peppered with minor updates as users visit them. And while I can find a million other write-ups on the Grand Canyon and the Colosseum, far too often those other write-ups are either promotional advertising, overly fluffy, "here's what I did on my 3-day weekend", gamed for 5-star reviews and SEO, or personality-driven. The best WV content is current, comprehensive, hype-free, non-gamed, and useful at-a-glance, which is a valuable combination of traits that I can't find in other formats. (AI is starting to come close, but it has a nasty habit of BSing me.)

I'm fairly new here. I can back to the site a few years ago, after not really using it for a decade. COVID kinda killed travel blogging, and since then I just haven't been able to reliably find everything I'm looking for on social media groups, short-form video, long-form video, or enshittification-era Google. WV had a couple articles for a trip I took that was not on the well-worn influencer path, the content turned out to be highly useful, so I updated the articles when I got home to pay it forward. I got in the habit of doing that for my next trips, and now here I am ranting. If we get enough other people do that, then WV still has the potential to add something unique and valuable to the travel information landscape. Gerode (talk) 04:46, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

You are welcome ? ~2025-30521-69 (talk) 14:34, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

For what? Are you saying you're a block-evading sockpuppet? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:57, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Probably just a run-off-the-mill vandal. //shb (t | c | m) 23:04, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

When planning for travel, I use as many sources as possible and that includes Wikivoyage, even for Eat and Sleep listings. I find that every source of information (real life friends and family, Tripadvisor, the hotel booking/travel agent websites, Google Reviews, official government/tourism websites, YouTube vlogs, Reddit/Facebook groups and other forums, influencers on Instagram/Tiktok, various AI from ChatGPT to DeepSeek, travel documentaries and books, Lonely Planet, acquaintances you meet in person during your trip and of course Wikivoyage) complements each other and don't consider any single source to be good enough to completely stand on its own. Gizza ^(roam) 23:33, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I will say that I rarely add "Eat" listings for places where I have not eaten myself, and I stand behind every listing I add for eateries I've been to, so you can rely on those. Of course, few if any of you know my taste. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:17, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree. I also rarely add listings for places where I have no interest in or have never been to. But anyways, Wikivoyage is just a wiki, not a social network that can contain reviews, storytelling, or real-life experiences video, so we shouldn't underestimate its purpose. These things is out of project scope's. Wikivoyage should only be treated as an additional source, as there are many useful sources for travel. It's better to look for information on various sources before traveling instead of focusing on just one source. But anyway, I think there should be a certain strategy to improve this project so that it doesn't die, if not then we will be left behind. Nvdtn19 (talk) 05:57, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

In some ways, I miss the days when food discussion sites like Chowhound and eGullet were reliable sources of restaurant information. Nowadays, it's pretty much all sites like Google and Yelp. We help where we can, but on the early 21st-century food discussion sites, you could follow someone and get a sense of what their taste was, and bad recommendations tended to get panned in discussions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:50, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sometimes I've wondered if we should legitimately have a travel forum on Wikivoyage where we (and casual contributors) can just share our experiences and initiate discussion, kinda like what r/travel or r/solotravel but on a site that is not Reddit – I've found those those two subreddits incredibly helpful when travelling to a new destination and wonder if this might draw on some new users. //shb (t | c | m) 08:33, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd be in full support of that. I believe that a discussion forum that enables users to share their actual experiences would orient our focus back toward travel and increase website engagement. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:14, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Me too. We'd have to decide how it would be different from the pub, the tourist office and the arrivals lounge, though, and whether we would fold some of those into it. Why wouldn't we host it here, on our own site? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:09, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, it's okay that WV isn't everything for everyone, and the way I use it doesn't have to be the way everyone else uses it. There's no use trying to compete head-on with OTAs and restaurant review aggregators that can scale to millions of users and turn bits of low-effort content from them into valuable tools. And I can't think of a way to make WV as visually compelling as a social media video from a professional influencer.

I think there's room for anecdotal content in a way that doesn't detract from the "tightness" of guide articles. For example, it would be useful to see a selection of "A Long Weekend in Bangkok"-style personal itineraries, trip reports, or image galleries like I see on Reddit and Facebook, perhaps in a "comments"-like section at the bottom of an article. Judging by what's available on the wider internet, it's what a lot of people are looking for, even though I largely agree with our policies that discourage it for our articles. I've had idle thoughts about writing "Weekend in Bangkok" style guides for my home region in my User space, where zero people will see it. Gerode (talk) 17:39, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

About "Why wouldn't we host it here, on our own site?": Because wiki software is not fit for that purpose. For example, it allows people to change each other's comments, which is surprising and generally considered unacceptable for a discussion forum. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

As someone who was once a moderator of a site where people had 24 hours to edit their posts and then could request permission for an edit, all this requires is moderation, which we will need, anyway. And yes, I did note the difference between editing other people's posts and editing your own. Either way, wherever these forums would be hosted, we need to have control over moderation. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:15, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think it will be too hard to set up – such a page (probably Wikivoyage:Travel forum) would just need to combine elements of this page (the pub), the tourist office and the arrivals lounge, all of which already exist. Maybe a few more instructions for users not familiar with the MediaWiki interface and that's it. Nowadays you don't really need to know MediaWiki syntax for discussions with the reply tool now fully implemented. //shb (t | c | m) 01:18, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Since the Pub is more about the site, we might want to keep it separate. I don't know. But I think it could be good to have several forums under one umbrella. That's how the food discussion sites I used to frequent worked. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:57, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'll fiddle a demo in my userspace sometime tomorrow and see how something like this could be implemented. //shb (t | c | m) 02:15, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

"it allows people to change each other's comments", while it's technically possible to change, I don't understand what the purpose of changing someone else's comment is? Most people don't arbitrarily change each other's comments and have their own opinions, even on this page. And if there are changes, they are just minor, such as fixing spelling mistakes, or deleting violation contents. Nvdtn19 (talk) 02:55, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Exactly. Just like we don't accept substantive changes to people's talk page posts, we wouldn't accept them in forums. It's no different. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:29, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Definitely – quite literally the only difference is that we're using MediaWiki software, not dedicated forum software like Reddit or Whirlpool. //shb (t | c | m) 03:49, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Listing editor now see-through?

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Latest comment: 30 minutes ago16 comments5 people in discussion

Anyone else getting this issue? Screenshot is of Thessaloniki. //shb (t | c | m) 12:21, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Works normally for me. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:26, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

For the record, I'm using Google Chrome on macOS and use vector 2010 globally. I tried testing this on Safari (logged out) and while it isn't see-through, I see something that isn't see-through but similarly off. //shb (t | c | m) 12:38, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

The second screenshot (I assume that's the one you feel looks off) looks okay to me from a technical standpoint. I know the color scheme of the editor was updated a few days ago, so that's why it looks whiter than it did before.

I'm also using Google Chrome, but on Microsoft Windows. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 12:43, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah the second is Safari which looks off but not the end of the world – first is what's truly terrible to use (on Chrome). Also pinging @Andyrom75, Nvdtn19: if either of you know what's causing the listing editor to do this. //shb (t | c | m) 12:44, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000, colors have been changed by @Jdlrobson to not have problems on dark mode.

Maybe there is room for slight color change. I've added an image with the original colors for reference.

Similar thing will occur also on the listing color, even if without such big impact.

PS: the transparency was caused by a "tentative patch" where the background-color wasn't set. Andyrom75 (talk) 15:05, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry. I have been primarily testing on the default skins Vector 2022 and Minerva so overlooked skins where CSS variables are not defined. Thanks for the fix @Andyrom75 I have reflected these upstream. Jdlrobson (talk) 15:48, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Awesome – thanks to both of you. Works on my end perfectly now. //shb (t | c | m) 03:32, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm leaning towards using the third option (original colors), as it's obviously looks better than other designs. Currently in Thessaloniki, when I click the "Add listing" button while in light theme, I still see the background overlay editor has the same design as the second image (new colors), and it also has an ugly background [4] when switching to dark theme. If you want to go back to using original colors, then might consider applying CSS in MediaWiki:Gadget-ListingEditor.css:

.ui-widget-overlay {
    background: #000000 !important;
    opacity: 0.7 !important;
}

After adding this CSS, the editor will looks like this when using light theme and like this when toggling dark theme. Nvdtn19 (talk) 02:42, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Jdlrobson @Andyrom75 Could some of you review this? Nvdtn19 (talk) 05:50, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Nvdtn19, the effect is desirable and similar to the original behavior. I'm in favor of this patch. Have you already checked if "!important" is mandatory? Andyrom75 (talk) 08:11, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Nvdtn19, it seems that works without it.

I've applied a slight change on your proposal, trying to follow the original intent (put a overlay with the opposite color of the background to have a contrast):

.ui-widget-overlay {
    background-color: var(--background-color-inverted, black);
    opacity: 0.7;
}

Andyrom75 (talk) 09:14, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Jdlrobson, @Nvdtn19, I've made some tests to have a different (better?) effect on dark mode applying @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme: dark) customization but apparently it doesn't work. When I specify the alternative @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme: light) it use only the light definitions, if I remove it, keeping the general definition (stated in the previous post), it use only the general one. In practice, the dark customization is always ignored. Am I doing something wrong? Andyrom75 (talk) 09:40, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Andyrom75: Sorry, but it seems you didn't get me? I mean, just add the suggested CSS without anything changed. I have tested myself in viwikivoyage (where I'm also a IA there), and can confirm that works. For now, just add the exact line I mentioned, then clearing cache and wait a moment for the change to take effect. Also, it's not necessarily to use !important, you can remove it if you want. Nvdtn19 (talk) 10:10, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you want to set a different style for dark theme, then may use this code:

html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .cssid {
	/* your customization */
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    html.skin-theme-clientpref-os .cssid {
      	/* your customization */
    }
}

Nvdtn19 (talk) 10:22, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hey @Andyrom75 as I said to @Nvdtn19 I am currently focusing on getting rid of jquery.ui and getting a native Wikimedia dark mode support which has been my ultimate goal when helping with this code to stop it working altogether. The dark mode has been a distraction from that goal. The current dark mode experience is fine please lets just leave it as is. Jdlrobson (talk) 14:46, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seeking volunteers to join several of the movement’s committees

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Latest comment: 16 hours ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Each year, typically from October through December, several of the movement’s committees seek new volunteers.

Read more about the committees on their Meta-wiki pages:

• Affiliations Committee (AffCom)
• Ombuds commission (OC)
• Case Review Committee (CRC)

Applications for the committees open on October 30, 2025. Applications for the Affiliations Committee, Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee close on December 11, 2025. Learn how to apply by visiting the appointment page on Meta-wiki. Post to the talk page or email cstwikimedia.org with any questions you may have.

For the Committee Support team,

- MKaur (WMF) 14:13, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

For anyone who might be interested:

• AffCom is about organizations. If you create a non-profit organization and want official affiliation with the Wikimedia Foundation as a chapter, user group, or thematic organization, then these volunteers make the decision about whether to accept your org.
• Ombuds is about privacy. They check on the Checkusers and deal with some kinds of harassment complaints. People from a wide variety of cultures/countries/languages/genders/religions/etc. are always wanted, because if they get an inquiry from a Spanish-speaking Afro-Latino gay man, then they'd love to have a Spanish-speaking Afro-Latino gay man to respond to it, or at least someone who matches one of those characteristics.
• CRC is about office/global bans. This group doesn't see utterly hopeless (criminal) un-ban requests (the Legal team handles those), but they're the last stop for the other banned users. My impression is that this group only gets a handful of significant cases a year, and that most requests are denied.

Most people who join these committees say that they learned a lot about the movement from it and that the experience is positive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Frankfurt

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Latest comment: 21 hours ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Is anyone familiar with Frankfurt? I have made a proposal to districtify the city here. Comments would be appreciated. Ground Zero (talk) 17:45, 30 October 2025 (UTC)Reply