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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

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

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

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

Another way to handle this usage of "commune" would be to put an explanation somewhere & have a redirect pointing to it, as we do for the Philippine administrative unit barangay. I think this is the right way since it avoids both leaving a confusing term unexplained & cluttering multiple articles with the same explanation. In this case, though, there are two complications. "Commune" has another well-known meaning in English & our explanation must deal with that. (see Gîte for a possibly relevant example) Also, where do we put the explanation? France? & Italy? Europe? Pashley (talk) 04:47, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, a disambiguation like Gîte might be good. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:31, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

We still need the disambiguation targets. For pensions, France#Sleep etc. would be the obvious ones, perhaps having a link forward to Sleep#Pensions, if the word has about the same meaning in several countries. For commune, I don't think we explain administrative entities in the Understand of country articles, but it might make sense in the cases were the entities matter for the traveller. In Finland#Regions, we have a discussion from the cultural perspective. Over here there are too many overlapping regional administrative entities that might be relevant to explain compactly; the municipalities are important, but I have regarded that word as globally understandable. What's the difference between French commune and municipalité? –LPfi (talk) 07:23, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I refer you to the French WIkipedia. Martinvl (talk) 18:49, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

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

Why you might change someone else's comment is less important than the fact that you can. If you want to host a discussion forum, the users need a reason to be confident that they won't wake up in the morning to find that their name has been placed under a comment they didn't write. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

That means that x-number of users with at least patroller tools need to commit to moderating the forum(s). Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:21, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Or it means using software that does this automatically, by design. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Moderation will be needed, regardless, just as it is needed on any other Wikivoyage page. I don't get why you think there will be more users editing other users' posts on new forums than anywhere else on Wikivoyage. Do you think they will attract a lot of users and therefore be big targets for vandalism? If so, attracting a lot of users is great! Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:18, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

No, I think that people unfamiliar with wikis are weirded out when they see how a talk page works, so it may discourage potential participants from posting anything in the first place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:44, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Would new users even need to know how a talk page works, though? Speaking more broadly, I feel as though the reply tool, now that it's been fully implemented, removes a lot of that barrier that previously existed with needing to know wikitext to contribute: indenting, signing a talk page, adding a new topic – all of which the reply tool does very well nowadays. //shb (t | c | m) 07:55, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think it's pretty simple. We have buttons on several discussion pages (including this one, if I'm not mistaken) that say: "Click here to add a new topic". Then you write your post, and these days, it even signs it for you. Combined with the reply tool, I really don't see why someone would struggle with this. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:17, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think that just being different could be a barrier to some used to other commenting tools. The reply tool is very useful, but doesn't handle all situations well, and long chains of replies get squashed to the right.

The issue of other people's comments being editable could be addressed with a video explaining how page history works, and how anybody can always use Compare selected revisions to see exactly what was originally posted, and if that is not what is now shown to see who changed it and when. AlasdairW (talk) 16:01, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh for sure, but I don't think it's prohibitive. I think the challenge is making people aware of such a page in the first place. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 16:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

The mobile experience is different, too, and I'd expect a lot of newcomers to be on mobile devices. (Also, no push notifications or the other 'features' that keep people coming back to the site.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you really wanted to do something like this, I'd suggest software such as https://forum.movement-strategy.org which not only lets people use their Wikivoyage account but also has features like built-in machine translation, so that everyone can write in their own language. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I support this idea about travel forum, as long as it doesn't turn into a spam fest. It's a brilliant idea to use this approach to bring more people into the Wikimedia environment (and hopefully convert some of them to regular editors for Wikivoyage and other WMF projects). We're not Wikipedia and we can chart our own path. Travel guides are inherently more casual and conversational than encyclopedia and we should embrace it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:18, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Our roots as a travel guide rather than an encyclopedia (especially mid-2000s) attracted the widest editing base, even if it wasn't as dedicated as our community today. The best world is one in which we have both communities co-existing: the dedicated base from the Wikimedia side, and the casual traveler-contributor. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 16:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek, SelfieCity, Nvdtn19, OhanaUnited: Sorry, I'm very late (been quite busy with irl assignments – still plenty more to go but I need a break :P) but a mock demo at User:SHB2000/Travel forum. Feel free to edit or add anything to it, but my idea is that once it's up and running, to promote this by leaving it up on the sitenotice permanently. //shb (t | c | m) 10:18, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

How is this different from the current Wikivoyage:Tourist office? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:41, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

The tourist office is only for travel questions; it isn't really a place to share travel experiences the same way subreddits like r/solotravel are. //shb (t | c | m) 21:19, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you very much for creating this mock-up! May I edit the language slightly? Also, if we want people to feel free to post anecdotes, we should specifically mention that as something they can do, as it's different from the rest of the site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:29, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes please :). //shb (t | c | m) 21:32, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Given there have been no further comments, any objections to moving the travel forum in project space tomorrow? //shb (t | c | m) 08:33, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry for the late reply :( but hey SHB, I still find your travel forum details a bit vague and still doesn't specify what's the difference between it and Wikivoyage:Tourist office. I see r/travel rules have some rules that we can also apply here, you might want to refer to it? eg, no copy-pasted AI answer.

About the difference between TF and TO, I can suggest some details: TO is for specific and factual travel questions (e.g., "I need a hotel in Paris under $100/night for these dates", "What's the best way to get from Rome Fiumicino airport to Termini station?"), while TF is for open-ended discussions, sharing stories, asking for opinions, and talking about the experience of travel (e.g., "What's your 'perfect' day in Paris?", "What was your most memorable train journey?" or "Discussing the pros and cons of solo travel.")

Also we should advice questioner to provide contexts (eg. vague questions like "Where should I go?" will get better answers if you state your interests, budget, and travel history).

For general question about Wikivoyage, it should be in WV:Arrivals lounge instead. Nvdtn19 (talk) 14:30, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

My previous experience as a moderator of a site with online forums is that we can't expect people to be meticulous in deciding which forum to post in and may have to be prepared to move things if we have different forums for different topics, especially if they're closely related. But I don't agree that the new travel forums should be only about open-ended discussions, such that someone who wants to offer the recommendation to take one train line, rather than another, and explains why by posting about their experience should be confused about where to post. I also think requests for restaurant recommendations based on x, y and z criteria should be fine to discuss in the new travel forum. At some point, we may want to divide the travel forum into several forums, but let's see how much volume we get, first. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:54, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with this. Maybe some day the tourist office will become a subpage of this, but I think at the moment I'm with you [Ikan] that we should be prepared to take on anything. //shb (t | c | m) 23:16, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I also used to be a moderator of a forum, and sometimes I was unhappy when someone posted something in the wrong place. This is also true on Wikipedia, a question about how to use Wikipedia should be on Teahouse rather than ANI. So now I'm thinking there will be possible options: consider merging tourist office into the travel forum (this will expand the scope and we don't have to think about dividing the forums), the other is to divide the travel forums (but perhaps that only suitable when TF is getting more attentions).. I think we should apply option 1 at the moment first, what's about your ideas? Nvdtn19 (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd support merging the Tourist office with the new forum. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:36, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Forum is now at Wikivoyage:Travel forum. (I'll get the ball rolling with a small travel plan of mine upcoming next week later today) //shb (t | c | m) 07:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Late, but I've basically done everything needed to merge the tourist office with the new travel forum, except redirecting the tourist office to the forum. I'll do that once the existing discussions are archived. //shb (t | c | m) 08:56, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

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 [1] 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

@Nvdtn19, when you ask for "review" I suppose you want a feedback. My main feedback was to eliminate the "!important" because it complicates future modification.

Thanks for the suggested code, now the overlay is nicely shown in both light and dark mode.

@Jdlrobson, I know that JQuery.ui is deprecated, but as long as we use it, would be a good idea to have a nicer interface. Andyrom75 (talk) 19:41, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Jdlrobson: It'd be a very large amount of work to redo something that is still working. You sure that you'll be able to getting rid of jquery without breaking anything? Btw, my overall impression of Codex is that it's still unfinished, i.e. it does not have feature parity with previous mw:MediaWiki front end frameworks such as mw:OOUI. Nvdtn19 (talk) 05:25, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

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

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

Hello,

My edit to the Sandbox page was just blocked by the anti-vandalism filter. I am a new user and I was only trying to test the editing features and learn how to contribute. My action was constructive, not harmful.

Could you please review and whitelist my edit? Thank you for your help! Kk778 (talk) 07:38, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

You have made 6 edits to Main Page/Sandbox. My question is: Why? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:43, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello Ikan Kek,

Thank you for reaching out. I apologize for the confusion caused by my multiple edits to the Main Page/Sandbox. I am a completely new user who is unfamiliar with how the wiki editing system works, and I was using the Sandbox to practice basic wiki syntax and editing functions.

I did not realize that repeatedly saving test content — especially text that may have appeared random or incomplete — would trigger the anti-vandalism filter or be perceived as disruptive. My only intention was to learn how to edit and eventually contribute constructively.

If possible, could you please advise on the proper way to practice editing, or suggest where I should conduct such tests without affecting important pages? I would greatly appreciate your guidance.

Thank you for your understanding. Kk778 (talk) 07:49, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello Ikan Kek,

Thank you for your message. The reason for my multiple edits is that I am completing a school assignment which requires me to learn and practice how to edit on a wiki platform using the Sandbox.

As a new user, I was experimenting with the wiki syntax and saving my progress to see the results. I now understand that my repeated saves, with content that may have looked like test text, triggered the anti-vandalism filter. I apologize for the confusion. My actions were entirely for educational purposes.

Could you please advise on how I can proceed with my assignment, or whitelist my edits so I can continue? Thank you for your understanding and help. Kk778 (talk) 08:24, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

You can use the Wikivoyage:Graffiti wall. If that's not sufficient, you can create sandbox subpages of your user page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:42, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

What would you like help editing, though? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:45, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I concur with Ikan – use the graffiti wall to test editing as the main page sandbox doesn't have a bot to routinely clear the page content like the graffiti wall does. //shb (t | c | m) 10:02, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

(Jargon: What some wikis call a "sandbox", we call the "graffiti wall" instead.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:45, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Why is this so wholesome. Oak lod (talk) 15:42, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also you may want to put further questions on the arrivals lounge. The link can be found in the green box at the top of the page, or just click here. (Also, you can use four tildes (the ~) to insert your signature.)

Oak lod (talk) 15:49, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Last week my students completed the activity asking for a review at Wikivoyage:Requests_for_comment#Article_review_requests, but that page gets much less traffic than here. The few students who erroneously asked for feedback here got it (thanks), but the ones who correctly asked there generally got nothing so far. Can you take a look? Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 13:24, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

It looks like several students still need a reply. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I nominate you. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:47, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you in advance (or post factum) to whoever finds the time and will for that. There's still ample time for student to fix any issues, so the feedback has a solid chance of not being wasted (this will become much more problematic next month...). Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 12:54, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SelfieCity - friendly ping (and thanks for a ton of other recent reviews...). Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 12:57, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Hanyangprofessor2: unfortunately, many students choose to ignore the feedback that regular contributors provide, which reduces our incentive to help the students. Ground Zero (talk) 22:08, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ground Zero Sadly, this is true for most new editors in general. If you tell me which students repeat the errors, I can double down on warnings, and as usual, a good wake up message is a week or so block for repeated offenders, which can often wake them up. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 02:01, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ps. I'll add that from my perspective, it looks good. As in, whenever a student asks for feedback at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hanyangprofessor2 - and I have plenty of such requests - I check what they edit, and their talk page on Wikivoyage, and if there is any feedback unanswered, I tell them to reply to it. And I generally see they do it. Now, I also am sure that there are some students who do not ask me for feedback, and likewise they ignore the feedback they get. After all, I regularly fail, hmmm, 20% of my classes (I'd have to double check TBH), and others get a score below A. As we discussed before - there is no way to force students (or any new editor) to do things correctly. Some will be motivated and learn. Others will be lazy and/or cheat. C'est la vie. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 02:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ While this is true for new editors in general, you ask for feedback on your students' work, and your students ask for feedback on their work. Providing feedback takes more time and effort than fixing or rolling back edits. When that feedback is ignored, it makes regular contributors feel like providing feedback is often nit worth the bother. Here are two examples where changes requested have not been made: 1 and 2. Here are examples are students who have repeated errors after they have been explained and students who have corrected their errors only after repeated messages/explanations: 3, [ https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/User_talk:JinhanC 4], 5, 6, 7, 8.

While there is no way to force students to do anything, getting feedback from other volunteer editors depends on that feedback being worth providing. Often, it is just wasted time.

The quality of the edits this year has been much better than last year. Where students pay attention to the assignment page, they make fewer of the annoying formatting errors, so we can provide better feedback on the content. You will notice that I often copy and paste advice from your assignment page into comments for students who are not paying attention to the assignment page. (The addition of formatting for phone numbers is useful.) Ground Zero (talk) 13:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry that I missed that ping. I'll take a look at the newer requests. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:27, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

From what I can see, I have responded to many of the recent ones, or Ground Zero has. If you'd like to point out specific ones that need feedback, let me know. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:29, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's very diligent of you. Like Ground Zero, I find it very time-consuming to read through an entire article and make a numbered list of comments on it, so my approach tends to be to comment on things that get my attention, such as when I am patrolling new edits, either by posting to the article's talk page and/or the talk page of the user who's primarily editing the article.

But I'll note something that some student editors do that is worth thinking about how to nip in the bud next time: they like to make concluding statements in listings like "Perfect for spending sunny days with the whole family" that violate Wikivoyage:Don't tout, WV:Words to avoid and the house style of this site, which is to present information and let travelers decide for themselves. That said, it's fine to say that a restaurant has excellent or tasty x and y, but not that it's "perfect for socializing with friends" and the like. Moreover, it needs to be underlined that hotel listings must not tout a "good location" or mention that the hotels are "near" anything they aren't literally next to or across the street from, and that the "directions" tab is for brief parenthetical points such as the cross streets or the name of the nearest subway station, not long, multi-sentence directions from the nearest main train station. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:41, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

For your information. We just placed a checkuser request. Your user NXP is ours ist in the list. -- DerFussi 14:27, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

No action needed. The account made 0 edits and is globally locked. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 14:51, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also users will appear locally registered even if they've visited the wiki once. That doesn't mean we're obliged to do anything about it, though sometimes we do if the username is indicative of a cross-wiki LTA. //shb (t | c | m) 21:47, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

New York Times has an interesting article on guided tours and tourism which exposes less proud views of well-visited cities, such as poverty and political opposition. Can this inspire us? Stockholm environmentalist tour mentions the dilemmas of a city which presents itself as sustainable while expanding a network of six-lane highways. /Yvwv (talk) 02:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Some people might find that type of thing interesting. I would add it in with a little message/disclaimer telling the reader what the purpose of the tours are and what to generally expect.

Oak lod (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think we already have some of that, for example our Rio de Janeiro article includes some info on favela tours and we have an entire article about Organized crime tourism. Mrkstvns (talk) 15:20, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Right. I think we should tread carefully on these so-called "anti-tourism tours." I haven't read the article, but at least as far back as the 1920s, rich white people would go "slumming" in Harlem dressed in furs and pearls. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:04, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Let's bring back our cherished traditions! Wikimedia Small Projects is excited to announce the return of Wikivoyage 13, and this time, we've got two fun activities lined up:

• Wikivoyage Asian Month: In collaboration with the Wikipedia Asian Month User Group, we're thrilled to host the second edition of this event. You can find more details at this link.

• Wikivoyage Loves Venezuela: Partnering with Wikimedia Venezuela, we're launching the inaugural edition of this event, focused on creating and enhancing articles about Venezuela. Ends Dec 31.

As always, we'd love to hear from the en.wikivoyage community—are you interested in helping organize Wikivoyage Asian Month, Wikivoyage Loves Venezuela, or maybe even both? Your participation can make these events even more special!

Regards, Lord Ravager (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sounds interesting. I don't really want to be an organizer, but I would be happy to participate by adding content related to both Asia and Venezuela. Good luck with the event! Mrkstvns (talk) 15:27, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm happy to grade the articles for Wikivoyage Asian Month, hopefully using the same criteria as we did last year. //shb (t | c | m) 22:04, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree with using last year's envoy criteria. In fact, I would say that the global criteria scoring is overly complicated. I don't think we ever used the points system to determine a "winner". Ultimately, the goal is to improve the content of the project. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:10, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree – I think while it's nice to have a winner, most people who contribute to WAM do so for the fun of it, not to win the competition. Winning is just a nice added bonus for whoever contributed the most articles. //shb (t | c | m) 05:21, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I’m all in favor of the idea. However, I think we should focus on Asia. Travel to Venezuela is strongly discouraged by governments around the world, and the risk of getting kidnapped as a tourist is high. It’s just not a travel destination given the current crime epidemic there. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 05:54, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think it's fine to still improve our coverage of Venezuela, even if few people will be actively travelling there at present, but at the very least we should have someone who is hopefully from Venezuela to assess those articles. //shb (t | c | m) 07:18, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sure. But if we want to focus our efforts where they will be the most helpful to tourists, I think Asia is our best bet. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:51, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

If this happens on English Wikipedia, please let me know and I'd advertise this to my students. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 12:19, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hey everyone! I'll break my replies into a few parts:

• Just like last year, each community has the freedom to set its own local standards based on what works best for you. No worries if you prefer not to follow the global criteria!
• Selfie City: We understand the situation in the country is pretty chaotic right now. We're doing this to help bring more Venezuelan content to other Wikimedia projects—eventually, we hope the crisis will be resolved, and sharing useful info about Venezuela isn’t a bad thing at all.
• Hanyangprofessor2: This is the version of Wikipedia Asian Month that's tailored for Wikivoyage. You're more than welcome to join the English Wikipedia edition of Wikipedia Asian Month.
• Since Mérida celebrated Japanese Culture Week, we decided to kick off Wikivoyage Asian Month last week. But hey, if your community wants to start a bit later, that's totally fine—no pressure at all!

Regards, --Lord Ravager (talk) 00:51, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Lord Ravager Thanks, I made an announcement to the students. If there is ever an English (or Chinese) Wikivoyage event like this, please let me know. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 02:07, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'll create a page for this tomorrow or later tonight, hopefully we can kick it off next week (lots of irl matters this week for me :/). //shb (t | c | m) 00:43, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Hanyangprofessor2 Pretty sure that the English Wikivoyage event will go ahead (I just don't have the time to create the page). The Chinese Wikivoyage event page has already been created but the rules are still pending. Based on what I read, the Chinese edition is reducing the difficulty from every 4000 bytes of improvement for 1 point down to 3500 bytes/point to account for Chinese being a higher information density language. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:41, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seems like a reasonable criteria for zhwikivoyage. //shb (t | c | m) 01:46, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@OhanaUnited, Hanyangprofessor2, Lord Ravager, SelfieCity: Done – see Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage 13. The only thing that hasn't been decided on yet is the start date. I'm personally willing to accept all submissions from tomorrow (so that Piotrus' students can participate) – your thoughts? //shb (t | c | m) 02:59, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd be happy with that. Piotrus' students do a lot of marvellous work! I know we complain about some of the recurring mistakes, but the amount of excellent, colorful content they add is great! Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:11, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Piotrus' student projects tend to be one of the better organised group projects on this site and the outputs, even if they require some cleanup from regulars, is always a net positive. //shb (t | c | m) 03:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes! I'd add that I hope to work with a professor to create a similar endeavor for a class he's teaching in the spring. I'll be a guest lecturer to guide the students if it does happen. That project will be focused on the U.S., and particularly Florida. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 03:40, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Good luck with that! Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:03, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000 thanks! I would also like to mention that, in line with what Plotus is doing, we have an educational program focused on eswikivoyage at a school in Mérida, Venezuela. It might be excellent to document these educational initiatives (past, present, and future). Regards, Lord Ravager (talk) 21:03, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ooh, that's nice to hear. It definitely would be nice to document them for sure (though some seem to be hosted on Meta which might make that tricky). //shb (t | c | m) 21:15, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I’m thinking we could set up a global page for Wikivoyage educational stuff—maybe call it "Wikivoyage Education Program" or something like that. I’ll handle that in the next few days. Also, I’ll work on designing a logo for Wikivoyage’s anniversary since it’s been a while since I’ve done one. Lord Ravager (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Make sure to check the instructions for students I have on my user page - I expect they'd be useful for any instructor. I also have an academic paper on teaching on Wikivoyage I hope will get published somewhere (so far it has not been lucky, sigh). Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 12:14, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SelfieCity The above was for you, forgot to ping. Good luck with your class! Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 12:14, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you; I've announced it for the students. Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 12:12, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

The first new subsea habitat in 40 years is about to launch. Should we cover this, or other such sites? Where? Pashley (talk) 05:55, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

The article says that it is to be used by scientists doing research, so I would say that is outside of the scope of a travel guide. Ground Zero (talk) 15:39, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. But web search for "underwater hotel" turns up quite a few & those might make a good travel topic.Pashley (talk) 15:49, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

That would be a good topic. Ground Zero (talk) 16:50, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps generalise it to include things like the underground hotel in Shanghai or the one that is mostly ice in Finland. Pashley (talk) 02:24, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

We already cover dive sites. "Deep" habitat will be at 50 m off the Florida Keys. Probably worth a marker once it's on site, as although only researchers will visit, the structure might be visible to recreational divers from 30 m. Grahamsands (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is the local name for the Sea of Japan in Korea, and it's not recognized internationally. I was confusing it with the East China Sea, I fear I have put the wrong sea name in some articles, and sadly, if so, I don't remember which ones and would need to look at everyplace along the east coast of Korea, but you all can be alert for this, in case you come across it. I believe the local name for the East China Sea in Korea is "West Sea," but I stand to be corrected. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:24, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

In my continued attempts to try slowly modernise this site, something I've been testing out is to get a grey background when you hover over a regionlist item. After quite a few attempts to troubleshoot this, I've finally got this feature successfully running. Unfortunately the way {{regionlist}} is coded means that I've essentially had to push this on the actual template to test the feature. Nonetheless, you should be able to see this in action on any article with a regionlist (examples at Toronto, Lower Darling or Texas).

The main benefit of this is that it adds a dynamic element, giving a more modern feel and give more of a 2025 look to {{regionlist}}. At the moment it's just a test, though; curious to hear overall thoughts on this. //shb (t | c | m) 10:11, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I should mention that at the moment it only works on light mode – I'm not sure how to add css to support dark mode simultaneously. //shb (t | c | m) 10:18, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000: I have successfully implemented the dark mode version of the hover background effect using the @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {} block. I have used it to implement the dark mode in some of my off-wiki web projects on GitHub. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:07, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh awesome – cheers Sbb. :) //shb (t | c | m) 21:14, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hang on I just noticed that it stopped working on light mode. I'll see what's causing this. //shb (t | c | m) 21:18, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, it works for me on both light and dark modes. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 01:50, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Nvdtn19 fixed it. :) //shb (t | c | m) 03:18, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I like it. It may not be a remarkably important change, but it is definitely an improvement.

Who would maintain this code? Could it be handed off to the mediawiki developers? Pashley (talk) 14:50, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I like it! Are there thoughts on making the grey area a clickable button, maybe to follow the labelled link or to emphasize the shape on the mapframe? Gerode (talk) 17:44, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've thought about that, but I'm not entirely sure how to implement that. //shb (t | c | m) 21:16, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

It looks good, but until it can be clicked, it's bad UI (esp. with the hand cursor). And I'd say also if it doesn't highlight the map elements (hard to do with static pictures :) ), it has limited advantage... -- andree 06:34, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

With temporary accounts now well underway, we need to decide how to grant TAIV (shorthand for temporary account IP viewer). I made a draft at User:SHB2000/TAIV, but we need to discuss how to properly assign this user permission, noting that whatever requirements we set cannot be lower than the WMF requirements (wmf:Policy:Wikimedia Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy) – which at present, is minimum 6 months + 300 edits and must be explicitly requested (which means it cannot be bundled with any other user group, nor can it be automatically granted).

I personally think the only local addition we should make is that users requesting TAIV must either be an autopatroller, a patroller, or a template editor, since that is our local requirement that we use to determine trust.

Thoughts? //shb (t | c | m) 09:50, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

My inclination is to stick with the WMF minimums (disclosure: I was one of the people making recommendations to the Legal folks about where to set those numbers; you can probably thank/blame me for the 6 month standard).

Mostly I suggest sticking with the minimums for simplicity's sake, but also for practicality. What if we get a cross-wiki anti-vandal patroller, who doesn't have/need/want those other things? If we don't trust someone, we can and should just refuse to grant the permission.

The main addition I'd suggest to your draft is a reminder to admins/granting folks that they should not grant this permission to anyone they don't believe to be an appropriate candidate for any reason. If you think someone's not going to do well with this user right, or even if you have some vague misgivings, then don't put your name down as the admin approving it. Let that be done by someone else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@WhatamIdoing: I thought of that too, but most x-wiki vandal patrollers can get the patroller permission assigned to them on request, if they don't have GR already (which comes with global TAIV) – meaning functionally it wouldn't be any different, except we'd have policy-based grounds to preventing frivolous requests by overeager users from obtaining TAIV. I don't feel too strongly about it, so if y'all think that we shouldn't have a minimum autopatroller/patroller/TE requirement, then I'm happy to omit that.

I do agree about admins who should be able to reject a user on the basis that someone might not be the right fit for it; I'll add that down. //shb (t | c | m) 22:22, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also since TAIV requests must be explicitly requested, I am wondering if we should create a separate page for TAIV (and other non-admin permission requests) – maybe something like Wikivoyage:Requests for permissions. //shb (t | c | m) 03:30, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think we should create separate pages for any process, until the central process page is both obviously and frequently overloaded. More pages = fewer effective watchers = less community oversight.

Wikivoyage:User rights nominations is not necessarily just for admins, so we could use that page, if you didn't like to have it at the Pub. It might be nice to encourage the idea that whichever central page is chosen is the normal process, but that requests could be made personally to an admin. That might reduce the embarrassment of an admin needing to personally reject an editor when another admin would be willing to grant it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

The issue with WV:URN is that it is only for perms that require nominations and I don't think the pub is a particularly good place since we don't archive pages here. This is also fairly anecdotal, but I have received some requests off-wiki (usually either via Discord or email – don't remember how many, but it's quite a few), way more than I do for similar requests on Meta or Wikibooks. I suspect that's because our current advice of just "ask an admin" is pretty unintuitive and also looks downright embarrassing if you ask an individual admin but don't receive a response, and this issue has been avoided elsewhere by having a dedicated page for it.

As for more pages, I don't think it's that much of an issue. I expect it to be frequented as much as Wikivoyage:User ban nominations, but I would argue that a separate page would mean more oversight since all requests are on one single centralised page and not on individual admin talk pages, email requests or swept away somewhere. //shb (t | c | m) 08:36, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Does Wikivoyage:User rights nominations ban self-nominations? Should it? If not, then it'll be fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

We should probably rename that page if more than anything if we are gonna keep requests there. //shb (t | c | m) 21:26, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

As a result, I do not see a need to require a certain user right before asking for TAIV either, because it's up to the admin to determine whether the threshold for trust is met. Leaderboard (talk) 07:25, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Should it be made a recommendation, then? //shb (t | c | m) 07:52, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

On the one hand, it's kind of common sense that if you do have these extended user rights, then we trust you, so there's no need to say it. On the other hand, if we do say "recommended to have ____", then we're implicitly saying "not recommended for anyone else", which is probably not exactly true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:08, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, true – I suppose we could quibble around with the wording a bit to imply that. I'll see what I can do once I have a bit more time. :) //shb (t | c | m) 08:37, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

A recommendation sounds fine to me (so you have a better chance if you have the right, but it's not like an auto-deny if you don't). Leaderboard (talk) 10:10, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've also added a sentence stating that if you don't meet the recommendations and are unsure to still consider requesting, which should hopefully let users who are unsure to still consider requesting and not get put off by that message. //shb (t | c | m) 10:40, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Given the lack of any further comments, I've gone ahead and moved the page. Since there is no consensus on the specific location, I'm going to create a subpage for the requests for now. //shb (t | c | m) 02:20, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also sent the mass message to all autopatrolled users with over 300 edits. //shb (t | c | m) 10:06, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I just traveled from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) to Hargeisa (Somalia/Somaliland) overland. I did it using local transport only (for example, from Jijiga to the border I sat on a bucket). This route attracts interest because it's a way for people to visit Somalia (at least in the de jure sense) without having to go to Mogadishu. However, when attempting to research how to go about it, I realized that the information on the internet is quite sparse and outdated. I ended up having to figure most of it out myself. Would there be any support for an Addis Ababa to Hargeisa overland (or whatever title) article? I could probably spend my downtime writing it. Brycehughes (talk) 20:42, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

For what it's worth, I think there is a wiki (WikiOverland) dedicated to this topic. But I'd support having an itinerary for that. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:12, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Very cool adventure. I would love to read about it. Ground Zero (talk) 21:15, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Selfie City That's for "overlanding", i.e. using a 4WD vehicle and going places. To disambiguate the term, I meant "over land", e.g. using trains and buses (instead of flying). Brycehughes (talk) 21:21, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I see. Would "Addis Ababa to Hargeisa via public transport" better? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 21:24, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, probably. Or something like this: Alexandria to Cape Town by train and bus. Brycehughes (talk) 21:26, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

You could also stick with the title you suggested, and maybe someone will add some info about using your own or a rented vehicle. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:40, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe they'd contribute but I wouldn't hold my breath. Overlanders (4WDers) are a bit of an exclusive travel community due to high entry costs. Brycehughes (talk) 08:55, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe Addis Ababa to Hargeisa by land would avoid confusion. Ground Zero (talk) 16:32, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that works! Now that I've posted here let's see if I can get the inspiration to actually write it... Brycehughes (talk) 19:18, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Same – would be really interested (and hopefully this is some good assignment procrastination for me this week :P). //shb (t | c | m) 19:51, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

This week might be pushing it heh. Now I need to figure out how to get back to Ethiopia. Brycehughes (talk) 20:00, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

To take Brussels or Bruxelles? ~2025-33545-94 (talk) 10:24, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

What's your question? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:51, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I believe the question is "Shall the English Wikivoyage use the French name for the capital of Belgium?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:55, 15 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

If so, the answer (in short, no) is to be found on the Wikivoyage:Naming conventions page. We use the English name and put the French and Flemish names in parentheses. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:48, 15 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi, everyone. There is a deletion requests thread for all photos of this square showing the Martyrs' Monument at c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Martyrs’ Monument, Beirut. One is currently used in the Beirut article. Discussion at Talk:Beirut#A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion has been inconclusive. User:LPfi and I are negative about or unsure whether the image currently shown at the beginning of the "Understand" section of the Beirut article (at least on my browser) is the most useful one to upload locally for fair use. Would anyone, especially if you know more about Beirut, like to look at the photos covered by the Commons thread I linked and decide on which photo we should upload before they are probably all deleted from Commons? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:39, 15 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Does anyone use the Firefox browser on iOS or Android? Jijiga, Tibesti Mountains and TAZARA Railway do not load correctly, in the sense that I am unable to expand their sections (I use Firefox on iOS). If anybody has Firefox on mobile, could they confirm that this is an issue? Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 16:13, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Jdlrobson: Any chance you could help out here. //shb (t | c | m) 21:06, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

FWIW, I haven't noticed anything like this with Firefox on Android, with the default Vector 2022 skin. Gerode (talk) 19:15, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have been unable to replicate this @Brycehughes on Firefox mobile. Does it occur for you in safe mode? e.g. this url. If not it could be a gadget running on your user account. Try disabling them all to make the issue go away. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:05, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Jdlrobson You're right - it works with safe mode, so it'll be either a gadget or something in my custom js. I'll have to spend some time going through it all. In the meantime, I may just use your safe mode URL param (thanks for that, it was helpful). Sorry for the bother! Brycehughes (talk) 10:47, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Participate in the discussion there. Faster than Thunder (talk) 03:15, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello users, is there a reason on why would the Temporary Accounts replace IP editing? Why is that a purpose to mask IPs? And how could this improve the privacy of an unregistered user? ~2025-34593-63 (talk) 20:08, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I believe it's due to privacy laws (especially GDPR in Europe Union). But the wiki software can't do "if IP is from EU then use temporary account, otherwise display IP". For a better explanation, check out the MediaWiki's page on Temporary Account. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:45, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Precisely this. //shb (t | c | m) 21:39, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Not only because of legislation, but actual privacy issues. The IP address can disclose the device you used, or at least that you edited from a certain location. The most obvious problem is that somebody who uses their employer's internet connection could get in trouble (for WVikivoyage: an edit about services not living up to promises, posted from the local net). -LPfi (talk) 14:20, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Note, however, that some highly trusted users can see the IP address when this is required for dealing with abuse. See Wikivoyage:Checkuser. Pashley (talk) 03:52, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Pashley: btw you should be able to see IP addresses of temporary accounts since all sysops have TAIV. You can enable this feature at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal (under IP information – just tick the box which is really just a long way of saying to not publicly link temp accounts with IPs). //shb (t | c | m) 04:06, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello. Reminder: Please help to choose name for the new Abstract Wikipedia wiki project. The finalist vote starts today. The finalists for the name are: Abstract Wikipedia, Multilingual Wikipedia, Wikiabstracts, Wikigenerator, Proto-Wiki. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Thank you!

-- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Please review my article. Here is my article [2] Jeng88 (talk) 05:48, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Are all the dynamic maps showing the entire world today, at least for iPhone users on Safari, except (sometimes?) in edit mode? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:25, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I haven't been getting that issue – also using Safari on iOS 26. //shb (t | c | m) 23:19, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

We have articles like gemstones & carpets, both of which I worked on & enjoyed it. There are also some on more specific topics: Diamond rings in Antwerp, Purchasing a kimono, etc.

I think an article on pottery would make sense, though I don't know enough to write it. We already mention pottery in many places. China alone has enough centers for an article -- Dehua, Jingdezhen, Yuzhou, Yixing etc, -- & there are many others; searching for "pottery" turns up dozens.

Volunteers? Pashley (talk) 11:27, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd be interested to see such an article on pottery, too. I don't know enough to write about it, but I'll be interested to see what's included in such a pottery article. //shb (t | c | m) 11:49, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Not sure whether they are strictly included in the term "pottery", but tiles (e.g. workshops in Iznik and Kütahya, and used in decorating mosques and monuments in much of the Islamic world) and faience (Delft) could also be covered in such an article. Vidimian (talk) 17:55, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps make the title the more general term "ceramics" with redirects for tile, pottery, porcelain, ...? Pashley (talk) 20:14, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

(On Ceramics) - The UK certainly used to have large ceramics producers ( Stoke on Trent area), although my experience is that modern high end ceramics tend to be smaller niche independents now?.

(Off topic)- There are also other high end crafts to consider, like Glassware ( Dartington, Venice, Waterford).

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:20, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Native speakers call it the Amazigh languages. As such, could someone rename the page Berber phrasebook to Amazigh phrasebook?~2025-36346-42 (talk) 14:59, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Native speakers also refer to italiano, Deutsch and Bahasa Melayu. However, this is English-language Wikivoyage, and we use the name that's most used in English: see WV:Naming conventions. So no, this renaming cannot be done based on your argument. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:30, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ikan is correct; it should not be renamed. However, adding a redirect at Amazigh so that a search for that will find the article seems reasonable, so I will create that. Pashley (talk) 23:03, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

https://theankler.com/p/ghosts-in-the-balcony-crowd-pleaser-letterboxd-issue-1 —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:54, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

A review of US cinemas (movie theatres) - maybe some of these should have do listings in the cities concerned. AlasdairW (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi all,

I've been using Wikivoyage for years, but much more as a user than contributor. For ages now I've struggled to find a way to map out things when on the go, so I decided to write an app to do just that. It's only on Android, and is called Voyage Map. You can find it here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.okane.voyagemapper

I'd love to hear any feedback about it. For now, it's quite simple. It allows you to search near your current location, or search for a place and load articles nearby.

Once in the Map, you can click on a black pin (essentially an wikivoyage page) to get some info about the place. Then you can map the sights that are on that page. I limit it to see and do tags, as well as marker tags with type of see or do. Sights are green pins, and if you click on that, you get some info about the sight.

And that's all for now. I've got lots of ideas for improvements, but it's about finding time to do them.

Cheers, Stephen Sokratees9 (talk) 22:36, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Sokratees9 Ooh, this sounds interesting. I'd like to try it but I'm an Apple user. :/ //shb (t | c | m) 00:34, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've no idea how to develop got Apple right now, but I think I could work it out in the future Sokratees9 (talk) 22:06, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

From what I know, developing on Apple is a pain (with Swift) – and their US$99/year fee to host apps on the app store is the cherry on top. //shb (t | c | m) 03:25, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is cool! There was a big discussion not too long ago about the desire for a WV app, so it's exciting to see movement on that. The Travel Guide feature of the OsmAnd app is just good enough to be useful, but I don't think anyone from the WV community is involved in that anymore.

As minimal as your new app is, it already feels pretty close to being useful for walking around a destination. Here's a few things I'd like to see next:

• Pins for Go listings, so I can find train stations and such.
• A more precise-looking pin marker, instead of a wide bubble that sometimes covers up important details like street intersections. I caught myself doing a lot of zooming to get around this.
• An easy way to pull up the article after adding a bunch of sights that cover up the article's marker.
• A way to jump to the section of an article containing the pin I clicked on, so I can read any prose or context.

I'll play with this app some more on my next trip! Gerode (talk) 00:51, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wasn't familiar with the travel guide feature in OSM. I'll need to check that out, but also I'm glad to see progress on a new Android app! --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 05:29, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Since a lot of you were pretty invested in the last discussion we had on the future of Wikinews, m:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Sister Projects Task Force/Results of the consultation about Wikispore and Wikinews has finally been released. It combines both Wikispore and Wikinews, but to save you some clicks, the summary for Wikinews is as follows:

Archive all editions of Wikinews, preserving their content.

The implementation (including the timeline, archival method, etc) are the responsibility of the Product & Technology department, but the process should be sensitive to local project contexts and follow inclusive, transparent processes.

The Wikimedia Foundation should support and provide resources to groups exploring new paradigms for Wikimedia news content, such as the proposed “Wikinews Pulse” centralised multilingual headline portal. It should set a fixed timetable (e.g., one year) for these pilot initiatives to demonstrate progress, after which results should be publicly reviewed and further recommendations made.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Wikinews will not exist for much longer in its current state. I suppose it was inevitable, particularly being the only project where even content 1 month old becomes irrelevant (making traditional metrics used to measure progress like number of articles irrelevant), and at least the concerns with how SPTF poorly handled this was heard.

//shb (t | c | m) 00:33, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Truly sad. We'll see what the Board says. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:06, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm more sad that it had to die this way. Maybe that's just me knowing that Wikinews wouldn't have much of a future from the start, though. //shb (t | c | m) 01:15, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

And there won't be any revival of my short-term stint in Bengali Wikinews Incubator, and I actually helped it grow enough to be considered as a valid project. However, due to the lack of interests to work in time-sensitive environments, and given my growing interests outside Wikimedia, I have reduced my Wikimedia activities significantly, which includes quitting the Incubator project. However, I will remain active in Commons, Wikivoyage, and Bengali Wikipedia as long as I can, as my interests in those places haven't gone yet. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 06:10, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sbb1413: I hope that you continue to contribute to Wikivoyage. Your contributions have done a lot to strengthen our coverage of Indian destinations. Ground Zero (talk) 13:41, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think there was ever any way that closing Wikinews would make the (few) dedicated participants happy.

There was a study among cancer patients some years ago. They rated their doctors for communication skills. The researchers then asked the cancer patients what they understood of their medical condition (e.g., whether the cancer is likely to be cured), and separately, they looked up their actual prognosis. If the patient correctly understood their realistic chance of survival, they rated the doctor as being a "bad communicator". If the patient was going to die from cancer, but they falsely believed that the opposite, then they rated the doctor as a "good communicator".

I mention this because there is no way to tell people that their project is going to die, without them thinking that the way you told them is bad. (Also, if any of your loved ones praise their oncologist for being a good communicator, then you should start planning for the funeral.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:46, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

@SHB2000 @Koavf Honestly, why does the fact that Wikinews will not exist for much longer in its current state? Compared to Wikipedia, WikiVoyage, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and Wiktionary, this site had less contributors than any big projects out there. Why aren’t editors contributing more to Wikinews, instead of Wikipedia? ~2025-37882-94 (talk) 12:53, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Can you reword that first question? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:03, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Because Wikinews is the only project where content that's been left for more than a few days becomes irrelevant. Article count is meaningless, and quite frankly, I'm not sure if I'd want to contribute to a project if my edits aren't going to be read after a few days. //shb (t | c | m) 21:04, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

nvm that TA is a cross-wiki LTA. //shb (t | c | m) 21:06, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Airbus issues major A320 recall, threatening global flight disruption. Do we need to say anything about this? Where? Pashley (talk) 07:55, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Probably not, based on this:

'"The timing is definitely not ideal for an issue like this to arise on one of the most ubiquitous aircraft around the (U.S.) holidays," Mike Stengel of AeroDynamic Advisory said.

But due to the quick repair time, many jets can be fixed between scheduled flights or during overnight checks, he added.' Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:29, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps not, but several airlines here in the Philippines have cancelled flights & people on expat Facebook groups are howling.

Reuters: Airbus A320 recall disrupts Asian travel as carriers scramble to patch software.

Guardian: Jetstar cancels 90 domestic flights across Australia after global Airbus A320 recall Pashley (talk) 09:22, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

The thing I'm wondering is whether by the time a warning is added, it will have to be deleted. If there are particular places or airlines that are badly affected, and you are ready to keep on top of this, so that the warnings are removed the same day they no longer apply, go ahead and add some in relevant articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:07, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

That aligns with my view. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

My thoughts too. //shb (t | c | m) 04:30, 30 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Why is this text appearing at the ends of destination articles, followed by no time? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:14, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ikan Kekek: Sorry, I've been testing something experimental (with the hopes to eventually turn this into a proper wishlist proposal), but my internet has been cut out for a few hours now (did so as a module since you cannot have userspace modules). I'll fix it once I get my internet back. //shb (t | c | m) 04:31, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's causing some harm now, but if it can be fixed soon, that's tolerable. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:37, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Done – should be all fixed now. From what I can see I don't think this proposal idea can be technically implemented, at least not from what I have tried. //shb (t | c | m) 04:39, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

By the way, I'd favor the text "Local time at destination." Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:40, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah that reads better – made the change, though you'll probably only ever see it if there ever happens to be a means of fetching specific subitems of a Wikidata property. //shb (t | c | m) 04:45, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you were using a template, it won't work for logged-out users because of the way the devs handle page caching. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah that was one of two issues I noticed: the other being how poorly standardised the P421 field was on Wikidata – some of them would use UTC-05:00, others would use IANA formats (such as Australia/Melbourne), some would use the name (such as Eastern Standard Time), and there is no feasible means of filtering those out to only pick out the IANA format from Wikidata. Works quite well at Special:PermaLink/5170569#Get in if everything is formatted correctly. //shb (t | c | m) 21:59, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

What is the difference between WikiVoyage and WikiTravel? Why are these two wikis, and how did WikiTravel came first, before WikiVoyage? ~2025-37882-94 (talk) 12:48, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Please see Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage and Wikitravel for details. Vidimian (talk) 12:56, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

(that user is a cross-wiki LTA who I've blocked) //shb (t | c | m) 21:07, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I had a hunch but I had already hit the save button by that time. Thanks for taking action. Vidimian (talk) 10:01, 3 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello everyone,

I have recently been working on improving the article Dujiangyan by expanding its content, structure, and practical travel information based on Wikivoyage guidelines.

At this stage, I would like to kindly ask whether the article is considered ready to be upgraded to a travel guide, or if there are still any major issues or areas that need further improvement.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback or suggestions from experienced editors.

Thank you very much for your time and help! Chensiwen (talk) 06:09, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have marked it a Usable city for the moment. It is a good usable article, and is close to being a Guide City. I don't have time at the moment to go through it in detail, but a couple of points: In Get Around, I would have liked more information on the buses, as the link to the map gave me "Content not available in your region". I don't like the hugging a panda image, and we don't usually have composite images. AlasdairW (talk) 11:27, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have added a detailed text-based bus description to the Get around section, including coverage range, payment methods, and language accessibility, so that international readers can use it without relying on restricted maps. Thank you again for the helpful suggestion. Chensiwen (talk) 13:25, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

No, it's not. I haven't looked at it in detail, but it has basic problems like section headers that are bolded and don't have correct capitalization. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:22, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your feedback. I have reviewed the current version of the article and, based on the present formatting, I was not able to find any section headers that are bolded or incorrectly capitalized. It is possible this referred to a previous version.

If you could kindly indicate which specific header still needs correction, I would be very happy to fix it immediately. Thank you for your time and help. Chensiwen (talk) 16:08, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, because User:OhanaUnited fixed them earlier today. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:01, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi. On the page Destinations Browse to a specific destination I can't find the marker for Bjelovar. Can you please help me with that?--Fraxinus (talk) 09:02, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

The article is only 3 days old. I think it takes some time (days or even months) for newly created articles to appear in Destinations. AlasdairW (talk) 09:22, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

It takes more than several months. I have created new pages in April 2025 and they have yet to appear on Destinations map. Does anyone know if it's automatically updated or require manual update? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:42, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

According to a previous comment from @RolandUnger, it requires manual update. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:00, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi all,

Is there any reason why a number of major sights in the See section of some articles do not have lat/long coordinates? For example Altes Rathaus & Spielzeugmuseum and Neues Rathaus in Munich Altstadt (there are 9 in total). Is it because it would make the map too congested? Or it is since they are on the periphery of Marienplatz (which itself does not have coordinates)? Or just because no one put them in? I've not often seen this on other pages, so am not sure if it is a common policy across wikivoyage.

I'm writing an app to map wikivoyage data, and not having these isn't great, but I can probably look them up via the wikidata tag (if a value exists). But it would be nice to have them in the wikivoyage data. Obviously I can add them myself, but I do not know how many thousands (or millions) of sights across wikivoyage might be missing Lat/Long where it should be easy to add.

Another option would be to write a robot to pull in the lat/long from the wikidata entry (which most of these examples have) to fix any missing coordinates. Anyone have experience with doing that? It'd be something I'd be interesting in learning about, but don't have an idea where to start.

Thanks, Stephen Sokratees9 (talk) 14:08, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's because no-one has added them. If you add the wikidata code to the listing, markers will appear on the map. This is often easier than adding the coordinates, but both work. Ground Zero (talk) 14:07, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Explicitly adding coordinates is useful if you want to mark a river, lake or some similar large attraction. For example, LakeGeneva is about 20 km wide and Wikidata gives its coordinate about 10 km from eithr shore. If you want to place a "pin" on a map of Lausanne a few hundred metres offshore rather than 10 km offshore, then use coordinates. Martinvl (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

For eat/drink/sleep listings, though, most of the time you will need to manually add coordinates, since Wikidata items don't exist for them. Unfortunately, no quick fix as far as I'm aware, unless someone has the technical skills to write a bot to fetch coordinates automatically. //shb (t | c | m) 23:14, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Please don't. Stephen guessed right first time, it would congest the map into a blue smush and no-one would find anything. For instance you can no longer find Viktualienmarkt street because Viktualienmarkt "Buy" has been plonked on top of it. For Marienplatz, I marked Frauenkirche because it's the most prominent structure for miles around, and a city icon. Find it and you can't help but see the adjacent POIs. These pages will merit review when the new U-Bahn line opens in spring. Grahamsands (talk) 09:40, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

What? Are you arguing against the addition of new coordinates to listings because it clutters the dynamic map? If so, that's not the site's current consensus. //shb (t | c | m) 10:23, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Coordinates are a means to an end, to help folk find places. If they obstruct you finding places then don't add, ttcf.

What we lack is a co-mapping function, so that markers could be repeated without obscuring the first instance. As it is, since Viktualienmarkt stands in Viktualienmarkt then rigid application of policy means you put a second marker and this becomes the only one visible. My preference is only to mark once, but in a large city page the reader has to scroll back up to find "See #2" before they can pinpoint the buy / eat / do occurrence. I've no idea if this is technically feasible? Grahamsands (talk) 10:49, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

In the ideal world, one would add coordinates everywhere and they would show where useful. In practice, coordinates for a market at a square, or a restaurant in a shopping centre, is not worth adding, as the market or restaurant can easily be found at the location (normally squares or restaurants in shopping centres don't get listings at all, but if it happens to be a Michelin one…). I usually add lat=NA|long=NA and link to the listing of the location (square, shopping centre) in the directions parameter. The downside is that somebody looking at the map will only see the buy listing for the shopping centre, not the eat for the restaurant – they need to check the Eat section for that.

The maps should probably allow for an importance classification, so that only main POIs would show by default when you zoom out. We don't have any such classification now, but I assume it could be implemented, with the numbers added when somebody gets frustrated by the map view of a certain city.

–LPfi (talk) 14:08, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

As per the latest tech update, it seems that two-factor authentication is now available to all users on this site. Seems per mw:Product Safety and Integrity/Account Security#FAQ, bureaucrats will soon likely have to enable 2FA, though no specific mention of local sysops. //shb (t | c | m) 23:28, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

In yesterday's NARWHAL (North American Regional Wiki Hub and Lab) meeting, it was mentioned that since there will be high volume of travellers in summer 2026 to attend the FIFA World Cup, it's suggested that Wikivoyage to improve and translate the contents of 2026 FIFA World Cup page and the 16 host cities in all Wikivoyage languages. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:03, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if we could turn that into an editing event. Maybe for the birthday celebration? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I was going to say this, too. Out of the 16 cities, SF is a star, Seattle, Guadalajara, Boston, NYC and Vancouver are guide articles, while LA, Houston, Kansas City, Mexico City, Monterrey, Atlanta, Miami, Philly, Toronto and Dallas are only usable. Maybe it would be good if we can get some of those usable articles up to guide as a goal we can work towards for an editing event. //shb (t | c | m) 00:10, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry I'm not clear on this, but @WhatamIdoing: what do you mean by the birthday celebration? When would that be? --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 05:33, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Work on the city pages will have lasting value, while the event will come and go. Perhaps the most urgent for WV-EN are host cities for English-speaking overseas fans, as they will be looking for accommodation and related travel info right now. Three that leap out are Foxborough Mass, Arlington (Texas) and East Rutherford NJ. Grahamsands (talk) 16:02, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wikivoyage's birthday is in January. We have sometimes tried to run a banner to encourage other (e.g., Wikipedia) editors to contribute here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I love images, but I know that according to Wikivoyage:Image policy, they should be kept to a minimum. However, under "Photos of businesses" it states:
"If a business has its latitude and longitude specified through either the {{marker}} template or one of the {{listing}} templates ... it is possible to add a photo of that business to the dynamic map using the |image= parameter."

My question is: are these images exempted from the minimum images rule? I.e. can I add an image for every listing on the page using |image=. Thanks in advance. AskMeAboutGalway! :) (talk) 16:19, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

As per my interpretation, yes. You can add an image for every listing on the page using |image= without violating the policy. That's what I do to keep fewer images visible on prose, as per the spirit of the policy. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 16:49, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. The guideline on minimal use of images applies only to thumbnails visible on the page. It should be noted that those images in all cases except for locally-uploaded fair use images have to be hosted on Wikimedia Commons. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:26, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your reply! I had a feeling that was the case, but I just wanted to make sure. I wonder if this could be added to the Wikivoyage:Image policy page, as I feel the wording is a bit unclear and wouldn't be surprised if others found it confusing too :) AskMeAboutGalway! :) (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

Good idea. Would you like to start a thread at Wikivoyage talk:Image policy, just to control for the unlikely event someone objects to clarifying that the "image" URLs in listings are an exception to the minimal use guidelines? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is welcome, as the current wording could be summarised as "Miserable Use of Images". It fails to make the positive case for images that grab readers and keep them reading. Grahamsands (talk) 21:33, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply