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Latest comment: 12 days ago29 comments7 people in discussion
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!
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. OhanaUnitedTalk page05:10, 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
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!
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. OhanaUnitedTalk page01:41, 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
@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
I have to say this is coming through very nicely. I mean I somewhat expected it to go well, but not this nicely. I can very much see this becoming an annual event on this site permanently. //shb (t | c | m)11:30, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just a final FYI that there's only 7 more days left to submit any articles. That's not to ignore that 7 days is a reasonably long time, but I won't be assessing any articles improved if it's not explicitly in the table. //shb (t | c | m)11:55, 25 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
'"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.
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
Latest comment: 2 months ago8 comments6 people in discussion
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.
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
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.
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hey all, as you might be aware I've been trying to modernize the listing editor which I have been struggling to keep up to date with recent updates to MediaWiki (including the Parsoid rollout). It currently uses jquery.ui which is an old library that was deprecated in 2017 for MediaWiki and the old version of the code has already broken on various Wikivoyage language projects (thankfully not this one!)
Given few people these days have familiarity with the library and support for the library could be removed at anytime, I have been working on moving it to Vue.js which on the long term would make it a lot easier to maintain through reduction of code and easier to read files, fix bugs, as well as improve overall site performance.
I am at a point where I think I've got the balance right and would like to invite testing before I unleash it on more people.
The Chinese New Year article gives advice about how to experience the holiday as a cultural attraction; the Golden Week holidays article covers practical aspects of travelling during these periods when so many other people in China are travelling too. Maybe there are officially three Golden Weeks, but the Labor Day holiday isn't a full week (at least it wasn't this year), and I don't think it's as big a deal as the other two. For the title, "Golden Weeks in China" is fine with me. —Granger (talk·contribs) 02:41, 15 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Meaning some students of mine are finishing their work now (behind deadlines), and asking for review at https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Requests_for_comment#Article_review_requests (to be clear: some students still have not asked for a feedback there, despite it being a deadline in late November or so... so check again in a day or few, as I am reminding them to do this).
I can "make them" read the reviews and (hopefully) fix things for a few more days, more or less up to XMAS time, after that the grades will be finalized and the students will vanish.
I see the first issue has already been solved. As for the second, it's a known and tracked bug from Parsoid (the code that renders articles). If my memory serves correctly, it's been pending for a fix for over a year at this point. If I knew how to fix it, it wouldn't be there any more.
Also, as an aside, {{Mapshapes}} typically is used to embed transport routes into articles. The route should probably be merged into that if possible to avoid having loads of dedicated templates for individual transport routes. ― Wauteurz (talk)20:05, 18 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Good to know. I think that route is special, being one tourists might take. Adding other routes makes it harder to maintain, and clutters up the map. Cmglee (talk) 07:17, 19 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't think my point came across correctly. I did not suggest that you add more routes. I'm suggesting that you, instead of inserting a single bus line through a dedicated template, insert that bus line using a template that is already used widely on this site and is made with that exact purpose in mind. Other lines can later on be added with another instance of {{Mapshapes}} if desired. Since the template also uses the group parameter, it can also be hidden from certain maps. In other words, no map clutter has to be made. ― Wauteurz (talk)23:52, 19 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
So, for {{Mapshapes}} the bus line needs to be linked from OpenStreetMap to Wikidata and vice versa, and for that data to appear on Wikivoyage can take a while. If you want to go that route (which I would recommend), Mapshape's template page explains how to achieve that.
Working with what you've already made, the Commons .map files can be inserted using {{Mapshape|type=page|wikicommons=Penang CAT bus route.map}}. {{Mapshape}} also uses the group parameter, so you can filter which mapframes do and do not include the line. ― Wauteurz (talk)11:25, 21 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have the impression that my question in response to RolandUnger's remark "show and group parameters could help" was not noticed. So, I repeat: The group parameter is available for {{marker|...}}. Why is it not available for {{listing|...}}, {{see|...}} and more? --FredTC (talk) 00:40, 23 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
|type= and |group= are not the same. |type= (buy, do, drink, eat, go, see, sleep, city, vicinity, or listing) regulates marker properties like the marker color and the affiliation to a map layer, whereas |group= defines the affiliation to an individual map. The group parameter is really not implemented in Template:Listing/Module:Listing. --RolandUnger (talk) 07:07, 23 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago17 comments4 people in discussion
Hello everyone,
I have recently worked on expanding and revising the Toucheng article, including updates to existing listings and the addition of sections such as Buy, Climate, History, and Festivals.
I would be very grateful for any feedback or suggestions you may have for further improvement.
If possible, I would appreciate any feedback as soon as convenient.
@Hong Da Hyeon: Check the links (marked as dead links) for Toucheng Leisure Farm and Ocean Lounge Guest House. Make sure listing names are in English, and Chinese names are in the alt parameter. Add websites and phone numbers to restaurant listings wherever possible. Add coordinates to listings in "Sleep". Add some content to the "Go next" section mentioning nearby destinations travelers could also visit. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 18:06, 22 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Don't delete the templates at the end of the article (geo, article status, etc.) — these are critical for keeping the article recorded in the Wikivoyage system. I have reinstated them this time, but please be careful in the future.
Please make sure listings such as 島的對面 串燒&居酒屋 have the title in English. The Chinese name can be filled in the alt parameter. The section "Eat" looks good, but not "Drink" or "Sleep'.
@Hong Da Hyeon: one other small thing I just noticed. Could you add short descriptions for Gengfang Southwest Coastal Scenic Area and Xietian temple? With those details, I think the article will be up to guide status. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 03:47, 23 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I edited out the phrase "in Toucheng" from "X is a restaurant in Toucheng" in the "Eat" section. Everything listed in the Toucheng guide is in Toucheng by default. Any other unnecessary location information should be removed from this article, and indeed any other article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:41, 23 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 21 days ago10 comments2 people in discussion
In Hirosaki, I selected Neputa Village listing and trying to sync between WV and Wikidata. The dialog box doesn't disappear after I selected the items to sync even though the sync went through[1]. And it seems to add an entry each time I click on the sync button. OhanaUnitedTalk page05:34, 27 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Confirmed fixed somewhat. The dialog box disappears now. But when it's synced, the latitude field contains both latitude and longitude. It's also pulling the wrong Wikipedia link despite the Wikidata entry being correct.[2]OhanaUnitedTalk page19:31, 5 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
How can I reproduce 1? When I enter a Wikipedia title, I can obtain the Wikidata entry by clicking "WP". When I save it appears to be present in the article. Jdlrobson (talk) 11:39, 19 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hey unfortunately a bug crept into a recent version (v3.15.0) of listing editor which was adding new listings to the top of the article. I just noticed it and quickly fixed it. It was up for 24 hrs.
I was hoping to use RecentChanges to find all edits impacted the bug but realized I can't do that as we don't tag edits made by the listing editor. If someone could create a new tag in Special:Tags I can look at setting that up in future!
@Jdlrobson, I've had that happen off and on for years. I've wondered if the trigger is (1) first make an edit with Extension:VisualEditor, (2) then add a new listing. But I can't trigger it reliably. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Discussion on Meta about problematic project to edit Wikivoyage
Maybe some of you will want to read the project page and the discussion I'm having with Lucy Iwuala. I don't mean for anyone to gang up on her, so don't do that, but I shouldn't be speaking into a void with none of you knowing what we're discussing. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:24, 30 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
We had this conversation before in April 2024. As I pointed out in that conversation back then, someone who's unfamiliar with our project didn't do consultation with the community before running an event. This time it looks like a "good intention, bad execution" event. OhanaUnitedTalk page04:43, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I’d argue that there is a limit for how much we should tolerate events that are in good intentions. These events only waste time from project regulars trying to clean up all their mess for limited new travel content. If these bad executions are repeated (as has been the case with various Nigeria expeditions from this same group of editors), I sadly think we shouldn’t hesitate to potentially explore implementing community bans. //shb (t | c | m)05:37, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
What is a community ban and how could it be done? I'm not seeing it. Besides, the whole problem is that we didn't know about this project in advance, so it took us a while to deduce what was happening and figure out how much of it was plagiarism and/or violated WV:What is an article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:47, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Community ban is basically synonymous with a user ban. There’s a few other things Lucy has done that I do not feel the slightest comfortable with her organizing an event on this project that I will nominate her for a user ban when I come home. //shb (t | c | m)13:40, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I disagree with bannng Lucy. In the discussion, she's been cooperative and is doing what we are asking. The issues the Nigeria team have made are genuine mistakes, not bad faith vandalism, and can be corrected in the future if the event is repeated.
Lucy sits on the Regional Grants Committee. Members on the committee make funding decisions for grant applications in the regions, providing knowledge and expertise to applicants to support successful movement activities (emphasis are mine). I think we all agree that this event is harmful to Wikivoyage and unsuccessful due to most articles created being out-of-scope or copyright violations. Although the role is likely voluntary (i.e. not compensated), the event was covered by prizes that is likely paid through a grant by WMF. Given that she edited this project, she really should have known what is acceptable and what isn't, and should have proactively identified these issues with the event organizer. Is there a way to communicate to grants team that inexperienced editors with minimal Wikivoyage editing should consult with the community first and seek approval prior to approving the grant? In my real life work, I evaluate grants on Northern Canada research projects that includes Indigenous population. If the proposal doesn't consult with the stakeholders and local community members, the grant proposal gets a really low score or downright rejected. User:Piotrus/User:Hanyangprofessor2 does his classes the proper way: giving us a heads-up in advance, helps communicate rules to students and resolve issues soon after it emerges. This is the proper way to run engagement events. The WikiForHumanRights 2025 in Nigeria is a bad example of how an event was run (no notice, organizer abandons their duty to monitor, community has to spend time and effort to cleanup). How can a member of the regional grants committee not spot this issue? OhanaUnitedTalk page15:53, 1 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Why is no Wikivoyager on the Regional Grants Committee? Is there a way to appeal above their heads? Who is just above them on the Wikimedia hierarchy? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:48, 1 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
How would we ban any of these projects effectively if a huge part of the problem is that we usually don't know about them in advance and just figure out they're going on because of the nature of a group of recent edits? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:52, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Grants are usually not given if the lead organisers are blocked on at least one project with good reason, which is why I've brought it up in this thread before (though I now realise that wasn't super obvious). Or we could potentially explore making Wikivoyage:Organising events a full policy (a step up from a guideline) and mandate the notification (or the organisers risk facing a block, hindering their ability for future grants). Saves us a lot of time cleaning up their mess. //shb (t | c | m)02:21, 4 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Absolutely. Let's make that a policy going forward and make it absolutely clear that they need to get and take into account our input while the project is proposed and not later. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:06, 4 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Could this be framed such that it's a requirement for grants involving Wikivoyage from the grant side without needing to change guideline on our side? We're already a small project and I don't want to impose more roadblocks to innocent event organizers who will further bring more editors to our project just because WMF grant recipients didn't follow the rules. OhanaUnitedTalk page05:32, 4 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
It would be good if it could, but as User:AlasdairW pointed out, this project was not funded, yet it still caused havoc on this site. So requiring due consultations for funding is not sufficient. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:13, 4 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
It seems obvious that any project that wants to make substantial edits to a WMF project like Wikivoyage should consult with the community. WMF has a long history of accepting poor grants, some of then little better than scams, as long as they come from Global South or some broadly understood unpriviliged group :( This is just one of many, many examples (and that coincides with their reduction of funding to important stuff like WikiJournals). Now, everything can be done better, and nothing is perfect; so it would be nice to figure we can improve this. Side note: I do not get any funds for my class project, in case anyone is wondering, it's all done by me in my capacity as the volunteer (the university doesn't care either). One would hope that folks who actually get $$$ for this could try to at least match volunteers... Piotrus (talk) 06:06, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@OhanaUnited: I agree that what's happened is wrong — I'm only advocating against banning the organizer, not for supporting the event in its current state. I agree that we need to see changes from participating events. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 17:31, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@SHB2000 and also for the record, I feel like you have other personal grudges or whatever that hinders you from approaching this issue from a a neutral point of view even when it is clearly stated that this project was not organised by me neither was the page in question created by me. I find this offensive and would appreciate you approach this discussion neutrally without getting me mix-up in issues and if perhaps you have a personal problem with me, I suggest you reach out to me via my email, let's discuss rather than tarnishing my image and my name.
And for the record, based on this long thread, it is obvious that the people engaging in this thread has limited knowledge of the roles of Regional Funding Committee member with regards to Rapid Fund. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 13:06, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
You are the only name on that page that we recognized, you have a fair amount of experience on this site, yet you don't seem to understand basic things about it and instructed participants in a way that clearly did not produce good results. No-one has a "grudge" against you, and if you're mad at us for having this discussion that you didn't know about, you now understand how we feel about your being involved in the planning of an event that caused havoc here without ever informing us about its existence! There is no userban thread for you and if you notice, most of the discussion was against the idea and in my opinion it was dropped, but you are not helping yourself by how you reacted here, but more importantly by not even promising to give us advance notice of any future Wikivoyage-editing event you are involved with or know about! Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:35, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
You [Lucy] also couldn't even have the basic courtesy to even admit your projects were problematic. I did indeed drop the idea, but now your behaviour in this thread by failure to take responsibility makes me reconsider, certainly not helped by your past track record either. //shb (t | c | m)21:35, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@SHB2000 now you keep on getting me mixed-up once more. Now, I see no reason to claim ownership of project I am a trainer to and not even the creator of the page in question. I didn't see you dropping the idea in any of your comments so far and you have proven me right again that you might have a personal disposition in this context, hence your insistence on dragging me in to take responsibility for an action that has been specifically stated that I was not the originator of.
And I still say it again, if you have personal issue with me, do well to use my email and get me in the know rather than making allegation of past track record I am yet to figure out. It will be better you present your case in a clear statement so that I will admit my error than dragging my name to the mud. I expect that is what assuming good faith interprets to. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 22:15, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Instead of being defensive, you should confront the fact that there have been 3 major editing events involving but organized from outside this site having to do with Africa, and instead of helping us have a larger amount of reliable coverage of that vast continent, all 3 events have been disasters. You have given us no reason to hope that you will inform us at any point about another such event, if you are part of it or know about it. So what are we supposed to think about you? And now you're picking fights here, which -is- a basis for a userban nomination if someone wants to start one. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:37, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hi @Ikan Kekek I responded to your suggestion of reaching out to the community and informing them about an upcoming WV event here. And from all my interaction with the community right from the onset of my contributing to the WV, I don't think there has been any point at which corrections are suggested and I declined.
What @SHB2000 translated as my fight is my requesting for what crime I committed that was not part of the current discussion he brought up. Which would have saved us all the stress if he had stated it earlier. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 23:50, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Ikan Kekek in this instance, I can only interpret is as a grudge as what I also expected from whoever that tagged me to first check who created the page in question and not just the name which was stated as TRAINER. If you can also go back to that discussion thread I responded of taking your advice into consideration and the next thing I saw is a question of what do I mean. Now tell me where I am getting it wrong in my response. Corrections were dished out which I also adhered to and even going to the said page to delete what was added by the user and now you are telling me that I am not compliant.
Your bringing this up here and saying that you're not bringing it up for me to be ganged up is quite understood, but I also believe that I should have been tagged so that I will be able to follow the conversation and clarify whatever accusation that will likely come out from this discussion. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 22:24, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@SHB2000 before you go ahead and make this kind of accusation (which I will interpret it as), I would also appreciate you go ahead and list out other ATROCITIES I have committed that would warrant me a ban so that I and others will know about it. I will also, expect you to adhere to the friendly space policy when you start listing out all my sins. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 12:53, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm sorry, but I don't believe you're in any position to talk about "adhering to the friendly space" when in that same breath you try to hunt for a possible conflict with another Wikivoyager. Not to mention that it's all about a message that they, just a few hours later, admitted being wrong about. Others have already suggested you familiarise yourself more with our project. I would like to suggest for you to add WV:FUN to your essential reading. Cherry-picking remarks just to get angry at someone is unbcoming of anyone with any kind of authority. ― Wauteurz (talk)22:18, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Wauteurz I didn't see any form of resolution on the part of @SHB2000 based on his response as when he was being informed that I was not actually the one that created this page. Now, for any none Wikivoyager stumbling on this thread, it is quite obvious that his response in this discussion is not one borne out of correction, as his first statement capture... as if I am on their radar and now is a perfect time to go at it, hence my citing the friendly space policy which I believe in this scenario I did not see being adhered to. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 22:31, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
SHB can defend himself if he so desires. I'm not here to do that for him. I like to think I know him pretty well though, and I belive he will not throw baseless accusations out into the open like that. I invite him to back them up if he wishes to.
It's your behaviour that I commented about though. I'd suggest you reflect on that instead of others' behaviour. This started as a simple discussion which you've now made all about yourself. We're all here to make a travel guide. How about you? ― Wauteurz (talk)22:56, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Lucy, I'm sorry, but did you somehow completely glaze over this? And I concur that if you're going to cite the Friendly space policy, you should at least apply the same courtesy to others yourself (which also, by the way, is a guideline for in-person events, not on-wiki, where our own policy takes precedent). //shb (t | c | m)23:20, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@SHB2000 I read this. I also expect fairness to be allowed to clear myself from whatever that you already allotted me. And if seeking for clarity on what you have mixed me up with is now tagged as fighting, then I wonder how one can clarify herself from issues like this. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 23:32, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Sure: serious copyright violations on enwiki, suspected paid editing (and your behaviour in that thread is the exact same you're exhibiting here...some things don't change I guess?) and writing an AI-generated U4C nomination (these are all things I found within 2 minutes). All of these things only waste the community's time, and while these are cross-wiki, what it demonstrates to us is that your behaviour fundamentally has not changed. We're a much smaller community and have fewer resources to be dealing with disruptive behaviour – disruptive behaviour you seem to be overtly defensive of, as indicated by your replies to Ikan. //shb (t | c | m)23:30, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@SHB2000 I'm glad you're bringing all these up here. Which I believe would have been very fair of you to have pointed it out all these while so that I can know where I err. I also believe that each of the pages tagged has my responses for everyone to read.
Even when events are badly organized, they have the potential to bring us new long-term contributors. There is value to us being hospitable even when we have to enforce important rules. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
In theory, but can you think of any truly helpful users who have become regulars as a result of bad projects organized outside of Wikivoyage without consultation with us? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:06, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agreed, the number of new productive long-term editors we’ve gained from these poorly
To be fair, though, that's true of any expedition with a specified time duration, including the previous one in South Korea. However, that expedition still had a great impact on our coverage in several Asian countries.
And to be fair, I don't think any of my students became contributors (I don't keep tabs, but at least here, we would notice them). 99.99% of such projects pretty much are about one off effor; a few folks can make an occasional edit here and there, but to get a proper highly active volunteer, that's... one in a million? Don't expect it to happen. Piotrus (talk) 06:08, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's probably less than that, since Wiki Edu classes have had fewer than a million students and more than one reasonably active long-term editor (maybe not consistently 100 edits/month, but more than 100 edits/year). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 3 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I had forgotten the specifics of that thread - thanks for linking it! But this has been a repeated problem with campaigns to add content on places in Africa without discussion on Wikivoyage beforehand. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:37, 31 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have been looking at some of the grant applications on meta:Grants:Regions/Sub-Saharan Africa. One of the questions being answered in applications is "11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community." Some application have said that they announced their plans on meta:Talk:Wikimedia User Group Nigeria, which does appear to get any actual feedback.
I think we need to have a clear policy on how we expect to be consulted before grant applications are submitted. This could be an addition to Wikivoyage:Organising events or a separate similar page. It would be better to have a dedicated page for the consultation rather than doing this in the pub. Then anybody can readily note an objection if a grant application is made for something involving WV without consultation - members of a grant committee should be able to quickly see whether or not our policy has been followed.
Thanks very much for looking into this and for your thoughts! I think it's fine for there to be a dedicated page to discuss possible editing events that would take place on or include Wikivoyage, but the thread on that page should also be linked here or possibly on Requests for comment for greater visibility. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:25, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Level of participation, borrowed from w:Public participation (decision making) I think I found the grant page for the current funded project, which is meta:Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/WikiForHumanRights 2025 in Nigeria (ID: 23478676). It lists semmy1960 as the applicant and Lucy being the trainer and reviewer for Wikivoyage. semmy1960 only has 191 edits in our project and has not edited here since January 2022. @AlasdairW Sorry for being blunt here. Posting a notice on the meta:Talk:Wikimedia User Group Nigeria doesn't really count as consultation or engagement with the community. That page appears to be lightly visited and monitored, as shown by lack of replies in overwhelming majority of the 580+ conversations in the past 4 years on that page. This type of informing or consultation ranks low in the public participation, and sometimes characterized as "tokenism" or "checkbox exercise". In my view, the "Wikivoyage Nigeria Awareness:Promoting Open Travel Knowledge" (POTK) would have scored higher than the "WikiForHumanRights 2025 in Nigeria" (WfHR 2025) that we're discussing because POTK organizer, Favourdare123 has more Wikivoyage experience than semmy1960 or Lucy. Favourdare123 has over 1000 edits here and last edited in November 2025. This highlights another uncomfortable question for the grant committee's evaluation process. Why is POTK, a project requiring fewer funding, well-planned and experienced contributor/organizer's rapid grant funding being denied while WMF funds projects with newbies training newbies? OhanaUnitedTalk page19:58, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
It sounds like some clarification might be in order to differentiate between "talk to your organization's members" and "talk to the project/website you plan to contribute to". Both of these could be "talk to your community".
I think what we're looking for is a step in the process that says something like "If you're planning to hold a training event or contest, please add a link showing that you announced this plan on the wikis where the editing will happen"?
How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
Often, this kind of notification includes relevant affiliate members and on-wiki communication notification spaces or listings of events, but the exact places varies depending on the project and Wikimedia community involved. What I am hearing here is a need for applicants to provide more direct notification on Wikivoyage, and potentially to revise the language of this question to make this requirement clearer. To support this, what page(s) are best to use for informing Wikivoyage community members about proposed events? One other related matter I wanted to note is that community notifications for Rapid Funds often result in no community feedback for the organizer. This is not necessarily a problem, but we still feel it is important to for organizers to extend an opportunity for community feedback and comments on funded projects where needed. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 8 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I JethroBT (WMF), that sounds correct. We think that there needs to be a small clarification in the general process.
This page (our "village pump") is the best, most visible place to post about editing events (or anything, really) for the English Wikivoyage. I believe this is true for all the languages of Wikivoyage, but of course each language requires a separate notification, because they don't read ours, and we don't read theirs. Notifications don't need to be elaborate ("Hey, we're planning an event. See m:Link if you're interested in the details" will do), though for this particular Wikivoyage, event planners should expect us to give them lots of friendly advice.
I don't think that Willy's account is active here, so the ping probably didn't go through. Please pass him a link in Slack or e-mail when you have a moment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@WhatamIdoing: Thanks for this response, and I've already contacted him separately about this matter. I also wanted to offer one other consideration for the future. While Wikivoyage is focused on less compared to other Wikimedia projects in funded work, we do see it sometimes come up in proposals. Depending on how many proposals we receive, it could mean that this board will end up receiving a lot of individual notices from organizers. This might be OK for now, but in the future, if it ends up creating a lot of clutter so that it's challenging to read other notices or discussions relevant to Wikivoyage, the community may want to consider designating a separate place in the future specific to proposed events. Just something to keep in mind for the future. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think we could handle an average of one notice per week on this board, but if we need to split it off, we might point them at the talk page for Wikivoyage:Expeditions.
I thought we had agreed above that all proposed events involving edits to this Wikivoyage should be announced on the talk page of Wikivoyage:Organizing events, with a link to the thread here in the Travellers' pub, but let's make a clear decision. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:24, 9 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago12 comments5 people in discussion
While trying to update only the Wikidata item of the Dumurjala Sports City listing at Howrah#Do, a bug clears the Bengali name in |alt= as well as its location in |address= (diff). I have faced the same issue minutes earlier while updating the AJC Bose Indian Botanic Garden listing at Howrah#See, where the location got removed after updating it (diff), and I had to revert it afterwards. I'm using Vivaldi currently. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 12:03, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I confirm that I just had the same bug in Mahjong#Buy. I first used source editor, then used listing editor to fill in more info. The listing editor showed most fields as blanks. As soon as I submitted, my previously filled parameters were wiped. I had to reinsert the same parameters again in listing editor to save. If I click on the same listing again, the listing editor shows most fields as blank again. Pinging @Jdlrobson since meta:Wikipedia 25 is coming up in 2 weeks (drawing the largest crowd each year thanks to public-facing banners) and there will be new editor training activities happening all around the world. This bug will be an impediment to edit-a-thons and trainings. OhanaUnitedTalk page21:43, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree. I was in WikiConference North America 2025 in October and my takeaway from chatting with developers is that it should be migrated to gadget because it's used in 5+ languages (the documentation says it's currently deployed in 11 Wikivoyage languages) and to ensure sufficient technical resources are allocated. OhanaUnitedTalk page06:05, 3 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@OhanaUnited It is a gadget... currently only maintained by me. Do you mean migrated to an extension? The work I am doing would make that an option as I really dont want to be the only one maintaining this. I just need to get it over the finish line with beta testers.
I set up your user script, but didn't end up using the feature as I usually make edits in source.
I would like to be able to opt-in once to be a general beta tester, and then devs can push changes to me from time to time as needed. I don't know what's feasible for implementing that - maybe a user role, or asking for a one-time script install? mw.storage.set( 'beta-tests', ...)Gerode (talk) 17:22, 3 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'd like to opt in all advanced users of the site to the beta before pushing changes to all users.
I could potentially push the beta to all Checkuser / administrators since those users tend to be active here and very quick to let me know about issues. Would that make sense? Jdlrobson (talk) 18:34, 3 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago5 comments5 people in discussion
Why are the maps in {{geo}} and {{mapframe}} different? (Ie in geo the markers have different shapes for different categories, vs in mapframe they're all the same pin shape)
I'm sure there's probably some historical explanation for this, but as a new user, it just feels kind of weird. Personally I much prefer the {{geo}} map. Is there a solid reason why they're different, or is it just an oversight? AskMeAboutGalway! :) (talk) 17:57, 3 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge, {{geo}} mainly exists for printing maps, whereas {{mapframe}} is for web use. Though I have seen the geo map being used as the main map on itwikivoyage, so maybe there's some other explanation to it that I'm not aware of (cc @Andyrom75:). //shb (t | c | m)09:00, 4 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I often open the geo map in another tab when looking at an article. One useful feature of the geo map is getting lat/longs of a location by right clicking on it. A problem is that geo maps don't show markers for listings that only have the Wikidata field, but missing lat/longs. The numbers can also get out of sync as a result. AlasdairW (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
{{geo}} uses external/legacy poimap2.php script, whereas {{mapframe}} uses kartographer framework shared with wikipedia. I doubt anyone maintains/uses the former, esp. outside WV. I too would like e.g. the special icons for restaurants (instead of just color), but... somene would have to implement it :) -- andree20:11, 7 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
As User:AskMeAboutGalway assumed it is for historical reasons. At the time when the Kartographer was established all Wikivoyages used previous map tools developed by user Mey2008 since 2012. Later the Kartographer was used in the English Wikivoyage only to show mapframe maps and full-screen maps after clicking on a marker. So, there was a mixture of old map tools like {{geo}} and mapframe. Only at the German Wikivoyage old map tools were replaced by new Kartographer tools. Of course, the way to generate the maps are different: {{geo}} produces an external link to a different server where the map is generated by the PHP script poimap2.php. In case of Kartographer this has to be done with JavaScript in the local wiki. That's why I wrote the de:MediaWiki:Gadget-MapTools.js. If the map/globe symbols is getting a click event then the JavaScript-based map generation is started. The most important advantage of the latter is that the map is identical in style containing all features like mapshapes.
The old map tool is searching for markers in the mediawiki source code instead of the HTML code. If there are no written coordinates then this marker will be ignored. The JavaScript is using a JavaScript variable named wgKartographerLiveData which is part of the article and which contains all information including the type/group names like see, sleep etc.
My phone is Oppo with a browser just called Browser (cannot find a maker), as well as the Chrome browser. Both browsers have the problem. On my Windows computer I use MS Edge and if I switch the page to Mobile view, there is a similar problem, in this case collapsing the section does not work. FredTC (talk) 09:11, 11 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
On my Windows PC, I have switched to mobile view on both Chrome (default browser) and Edge, and the V button works flawlessly. Maybe check your browsers and your mouse/touchpad/touchscreen. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 09:46, 11 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Switching to 2022 did not change a thing. So, I have the same problem with two different devices and three different browsers. FredTC (talk) 10:33, 11 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
The legacy parser is not compatible with the listing editor.
You have two options
1) Change the value of "Use the new Parsoid wikitext parser" to default in your preferences.
Both options will address the issue. I noticed this but didn't think anyone would be using the old legacy parser on mobile. I can patch the listing editor to disable automatically if for some reason you are intentionally avoiding Parsoid. Jdlrobson (talk) 03:19, 12 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, I did the first one. I switched it off because there was no explanation why I should/could use it or what it does. But I'm still curious what in the problem-pages caused this problem, because most pages did not have the problem. FredTC (talk) 05:06, 12 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 28 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
So I was trying to make a user page that listed the places I've been to.
But when I tried to save my changes, it said something along the lines of 'this action was deemed blah blah blah" and it gave me a code (I think it was LTR 43 or something). I don't really know what to do now, just asking for some help. Sumotherperson (talk) 02:53, 13 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Sumotherperson: Hi, I've made the change you tried to make. It seemed to have been caught up in the abuse filter, but I'll try and properly investigate that tonight. //shb (t | c | m)03:35, 13 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
FYI: These four U.S. cities were voted among the most inauthentic in the world
I haven't been to Las Vegas, so no comment on it, but most of the U.S. and worldwide cities on the list are absurd. I get that there are tourist attractions in Boston, but a lot of people live and work there and it's its own place, not some kind of Disneyland, and for that matter, there are very good tourist attractions that are not tourist traps there. And really, London? I'm surprised New York didn't get on this list from ignoramuses who have seen nothing but Times Square. How the hell does Chicago get on a list of inauthentic places? Are you kidding? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:20, 14 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Las Vegas? I get it. Venice? Kind of. The rest of them? Chicago is only inauthentic if you spend the whole trip at Navy Pier. Their methodology is ridiculous. Gerode (talk) 01:16, 14 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Proposed new directive on Wikivoyage-editing events - participation needed
Latest comment: 23 days ago10 comments4 people in discussion
Hi, everyone! We are working on a new draft of Wikivoyage's editing event policy page and need participation in this discussion. I think it's important because this is one way we will present ourselves to people from outside of Wikivoyage, so we want it to be as clear and readable as possible and want to get the tone right. Please have a look at Wikivoyage talk:Organising events#A draft of a substitute for the text on this page. (By the way, should that be Organizing events? I think we default to American English on policy pages.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:04, 14 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's wonderful! And you just did. Because you are such an experienced Wikivoyager (and now an admin), no-one would have minded if you hadn't announced it because we can be confident that it will go well, but the way I see it, there's no down side to doing so. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:38, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
No they don't. In the draft, we are stating that a teacher familiar with core Wikivoyage guidelines should give us at least a week's notice for a class editing project, and one who is not familiar with them should give us at least a month's notice. I agree that we should have notice for edit-a-thons, but it does not follow that sensible distinctions cannot be made. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:43, 15 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, Ikan, they do. "The same rules" can mean things like "experienced people a week and newbies a month", but they can't be "The rule is experienced people a week and newbies a month – oh, except for you, because you're my friend and I trust you". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:56, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
In fact, I do prefer to give a heads-up to make sure that our tools and plugins are not broken before an event. It doesn't leave a good first impression towards our project (nor making it easy for beginners to edit) if I tell them "sorry, this part is broken and there's no estimated timeline for the fix". OhanaUnitedTalk page05:25, 18 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I support this, which should be fairly uncontroversial. The only real way to tell at the moment whether someone used the listing editor is the formatting of the edit summary, but changetags are far better in my opinion for this. //shb (t | c | m)21:10, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I support it. We had it in it:voy (now disabled) and it was useful especially during the initial phase to find & correct erroneous behavior caused by temporary bugs. Andyrom75 (talk) 14:50, 21 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
One curiosity: in it:voy we have the tag "Listing Editor" "Defined by the software", while here in en:voy there is "wikivoyage-listingeditor" "Applied manually by users and bots". @Jdlrobson, I suppose the second one has been created using the Create button.
Yes, if you have the ability to uniform them that would be great @Andyrom75. I don't seem to have that permission! I don't mind what the tag is - as long as one exists! :-) Jdlrobson (talk) 00:52, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Jdlrobson, since I wasn't able to modify the one in it:voy (because it's "Defined by the software"), I've substitute the one in en:voy. Now both tags are "Listing Editor". Andyrom75 (talk) 08:26, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
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Given that almost all this site's dive articles were written by Pbsouthwood, we need to evaluate what we need to do here. I asked him to share the sources he used and whether he closely paraphrased them like he did on enwiki on his talk page, but I haven't received a response in over a week. Given the sheer number of dive site articles he's created, I don't love the idea of manually digging through them all, but I would also prefer re-writing them to deletion. This is a case where I genuinely do not know what to do, except that something needs to be done. //shb (t | c | m)22:48, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
User:Pbsouthwood has not contributed to Wikivoyage since 11 October 2025, or to any Wikimedia project since 9 December 2025. Their history of contributions to Wikivoyage shows periods of high activity interspersed with long breaks. I suggest using the "Email this user" function. It would be a shame to delete those articles, but I am not interested in re-writing them. Ground Zero (talk) 23:34, 16 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do we have any concrete reasons to believe that this problem extends here? Any examples? There is systematic pressure at enwiki that pushes people towards close paraphrasing ("if it's not a copyvio, then it's original research") that doesn't exist here.
Also, close paraphrasing is mostly a problem of plagiarism. AIUI we only run into copyvio territory when it's extensive. If you start with a website that says "This is a great place for diving", and you write "This is a fantastic place for diving", then that's close paraphrasing but not a copyright violation. If you did the same slight rewording for a dozen sentences in a row, that would probably be a copyright violation. But if you do this for one sentence from Alice's almanac, the next sentence from Bob's book, a third sentence from Chris's compilation, etc., through a dozen sentences, then that's probably not a copyvio of any of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
If close paraphrasing isn't considered copyvio (i.e. cause legal issues), that would indeed save us a lot of time for sure (though I would want to see if anyone else also agrees with this). //shb (t | c | m)08:00, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Likewise. As far as I'm aware, Earwig's copyvio tool only picks anything that is an exact match, meaning we'll have to wait for Pbsouthwood to tell us what sources he used. //shb (t | c | m)08:21, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have a few questions from those discussions, as admittedly I don't know about how Wikipedia's arbitration process works for copyvio.
First, why did it take over two years for this case to go to arbitration? Is that normal? I see the issue was raised in 2023, and the case was a month ago.
Second, I'm a little confused — in those cases of paraphrasing, when PB paraphrased too closely, did he cite the original source at all?
Third, since we rely on personal experience rather than citations, if the answer to the above question is "yes", I'm not sure that applies here because of our model. Presumably he wasn't using sources for his work on Wikivoyage, and hence there would be nothing to cite or paraphrase. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:27, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
As for why it took so long: The English Wikipedia's official standards are unevenly enforced and have changed over time. Some years ago, we elected an admin on the basis of his great work in articles, especially for having multiple Featured Articles that closely followed sources and avoided original research. We elected him to ArbCom because we wanted great content creators on ArbCom.
And then we banned him for exactly the same thing, except this time we called it "close paraphrasing" and "copyright violations".
My favorite fairy tale/folk tale is from China. It's called "The King's Favorite", and it runs something like this:
"The king's favorite mistress was a beautiful woman. One day, her mother fell ill, and when she heard about this, she immediately commandeered the king's carriage so she could rush to her mother's side. Now the law said that anyone who rode in the king's carriage without his permission would have a foot chopped off as punishment, but when the king heard of her actions, he praised her: 'What filial devotion! She has risked amputation to do her duty to her mother.' Another day, the mistress and the king were sitting in the garden. She took a bite of her peach, and it tasted so good that she offered it to the king. He later said, 'What true love! She gave up her own pleasure for my sake!'
Some years later, when her beauty began to fade, the king was less pleased with her. One day he said to his vizier, 'Why do I put up with that woman? Didn't she once run off in my carriage without permission? And another time, she gave me something to eat that she'd already taken a bite out of!'"
"The thing that is praiseworthy today may well be the thing we ban you for tomorrow" – I hate how true this is, which is what I admire about what might be literally any other project that isn't called enwiki. //shb (t | c | m)21:21, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I believe it's because while it was raised in 2023, nothing had really changed by the time it went to ArbCom. For the third question, we just need to know how closely he paraphrased the articles – we might not exactly cite sources, but we do rely on third-party sources and if all his articles come from one single website then close paraphrasing is problematic. However, with Pbsouthwood's absence from this site for a few months now, I'm not sure how we're supposed to obtain those sources he might have used to write the dive articles. //shb (t | c | m)21:27, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Is it a problem that we rely on users' good will to credit their sources in edit summaries? Have we made a mistake by not allowing inline citations? Those are rare in travel guides (I believe the Touring Club Italiano's guidebooks had some, but they were very scholarly), so they are not used here as a matter of style, but the lack of any type of citations for these articles, if there indeed aren't any in edit summaries, leaves us kind of up the creek. Are there sources he cited on Wikipedia that might be sources of dive articles here? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:13, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't think it's exactly a mistake – for over 20 years the lack of citations hasn't caused any other issue on this site, and even then it's pretty unorthodox for travel guides to have them as you mention. It's possible that those sources he cited on Wikipedia may have also been used here, though it is also possible that his dive articles are all original research (which would ideally be the best outcome here since we need to do nothing). //shb (t | c | m)23:25, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
This all said, it seems a lot of dive guides seem easily fixable. Almost all the dive guide articles contain the following lede:
This listing of dive sites of [placename] is part of the regional guide for [placename] which is intended to provide the already qualified scuba diver with information which will help to plan dives in the waters of the [place], whether as a local resident or a visitor. Information is provided without prejudice, and is not guaranteed accurate or complete. Use it at your own risk. Expand or correct it when you can.
If needed. I think such an intro is easy to write oneself, with no need for plagiarism. The temptation to use text from elsewhere arises when you need the facts, and then close paraphrasing is easier than to write own text including those facts.
I don't think we need to do anything unless we find evidence that there is a problem also here at Wikivoyage. The legal risk is with the editor who introduces copyright violations, and with those reusing the content in a way that harms the copyright owner's business.
Avoiding problems for reusers is our responsibility, but unless some comprehensive source has been systematically plagiarised – then probably including disposition etc. – I assume that individual too close paraphrasings do not seriously cause harm to any of the copyright owners.
Are there any links to the sources that Peter is supposed to have copied the text from? From the examples that are brought up on the Wikipedia discussion pages he has clearly used text from other sources but paraphrased it rather than copy-pasted it. So I would not say that those cases would be copyright violations unlike some cases we have had here by new users. It's also interesting that the case has been open since 2023, with references to discussions from 2016, and the recently created evidence page is empty. --Ypsilon (talk) 12:17, 18 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
No, that's not quite right. Overly close paraphrasing can be plagiarism and copyright violation. It's possible to have a copyvio without having any plagiarism at all (basic DVD pirating) and plagiarism without copyvio (writing your own thing, but failing to credit the source of your ideas). These are completely separate evaluations.
This story might help: When I was a kid, maybe about 10 or 12 years old, my mother wanted me to write a story. (I think she was trying to find something for me to do, aside from bugging her.) I'd recently read a story that I liked, so I re-wrote it "in my own words". The original story was set in an airport in a particular city. Mine was set in an airport in a different city. If the original story's main character was named Bob, then mine was named Chris. In the original, it was snowing; in mine it was sleeting. If the original character drank coffee and had black hair, then mine drank tea and had brown hair. And so forth. Almost every sentence was basically the same, except that I changed superficial details.
That's (extremely) close paraphrasing and plagiarism and copyright violation. Specifically:
It's close paraphrasing because the individual sentences were very similar.
It's plagiarism because I presented it as "my own" story "in my own words", when it was actually someone else's story with some minor changes to the wording.
It would have been a copyvio because it re-used a substantial amount of a copyrighted work, and if I'd published it, it wouldn't qualify for a fair use/fair dealing exemption. (Since I didn't publish it, it qualifies for the personal use exemption.)
But:
If I'd said "here's my slight re-write of someone else's story", then it would not be plagiarism.
If the original story had been in the public domain, then it would not be a copyvio. (You can't have a copyvio of non-copyright works.)
In other words, if I'd done exactly the same thing with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it still would have been close paraphrasing, but it would not be plagiarism and not copyvio. Since I did it with a modern story and pretended it was mine, it was close paraphrasing and plagiarism and (if ever published, would have been) copyvio. They'd both have been close paraphrasing, but the classification for the other two categories would be different because the underlying facts are different. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 18 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Plagiarizing a public domain book is still plagiarism in an academic sense if you don't credit your source. I was a professor for decades and my parents were both professors, so I'm actually familiar with this, but you explained everything really clearly, with this one exception. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:50, 18 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yeah this was my thought too. You definitely will not get by in a university with close plagiarism; the only exception here is that we allow the use of CC-licensed text with only attribution, something you cannot do in an academic sense. //shb (t | c | m)22:10, 18 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I can see how my Wizard of Oz example was unclear. I meant that if I'd re-written a bit of that old story and said that it was a re-write of that story. Thanks for pointing that out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
So if I'm reading everything correctly, this is what I infer:
Close paraphrasing regardless remains a problem, however, concrete sources are needed;
If all the dive articles were written from Pbsouthwood's personal experience, nothing needs to be done – this just needs confirmation when Pbsouthwood returns to the site;
No articles need to be rewritten significantly or deleted for the timebeing;
If any copyright/legal issues arise for whatever reason, Pbsouthwood is the main user responsible, not the general Wikivoyage community.
Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, there's no evidence right now of any problematic writing by Pbsouthwood on this website. I agree with your assessment of the situation. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 01:11, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree, and I would add: Obviously, any time anyone points out a copyvio problem (whether that's of the "copy/pasting a whole paragraph" type or the "extensive close paraphrasing" type), we always address that. We are presently unaware of any such problems (related to him or anyone else), but we always welcome actionable reports. Each editor is responsible for their contributions in a legal sense, but the community takes responsibility for getting rid of known/proven copyvios. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 20 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 22 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion
It seems that listings no longer have anchors for the wikidata entities (nor for the alt entries, the anchors for which have been missing for a longer time). I remember some discussion on the theme a while ago, but I don't remember any arguments for removing them.
The missing anchors mean that links à la Bergen#Q257558 or Bergen#Fantoft stavkirke don't work. I have tried to include links of the former type to any listings in travel topic articles (such as Nordic music, where this church is mentioned).
Links to the "name" of a listing still work, e.g. Stockholm/Norrmalm#Avicii Experience, but those are inherently unreliable for non-Anglophone countries: the "name" may be the native one, then replaced by an ad hoc translation (as we should use "the name in English"), then replaced by another translation, perhaps adding some specification, perhaps removing a redundant specification (Oslo Opera House sounds redundant in Oslo), then the specification may be re-added or a better translation found.
So we now have at least hundreds of links directing people to the page where a listing may be found – perhaps by another name than in the linking article – instead of to the listing. I hope that the anchors can be reinstated (including the one for "alt", as that one often is the canonical name in the native form, and thus the best we have for POIs without wikidata entries).
(I sincerely hope that people who add listings to travel topic articles would start creating and linking main listings in destination articles, instead of just listing the POIs in the travel topic articles, having readers bypass our destination articles or search in vain for the page containing the main listing.)
@LPfi, I've added the anchor to the Wikidata instance (now Bergen#Q257558 works properly); I agree that is the best way to construct an anchor because the Wikidata instance it's unique. I'm a bit skeptic on adding the anchor on the alternative name because sometimes it's used for templates (e.g. IATA) or styles (e.g. italic) or even multiple names (e.g. local name + acronym -or viceversa-).
Generally speaking I'm not so in favour of using the listing anchor because there's no special tool to check if a anchor doesn't exist, in order to fix it. I suggest to link the section thanks to the fact that Wikivoyage has standard models/sections for each article. But this is just my mere opinion. Andyrom75 (talk) 11:55, 19 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks.
When adding a link, I check that the listing exists, and usually that the link actually works. I assume that POIs that have a Wikidata entry don't disappear too often, so ones that anchor is used, link rot is not too frequent. Of course, the page can be moved or the listing moved to another page, but linking the section instead does nothing to solve those problems. The link to the listing itself makes it easy to check whether the listing is there (under the name by which it was linked); linking the page or the heading requires the reader to check the listings for whether any of them is a match – and the listing may have been moved to another section (see/do changes are common). –LPfi (talk) 15:02, 19 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Annual review of the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines
I am writing to you to let you know the annual review period for the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines is open now. You can make suggestions for changes through 9 February 2026. This is the first step of several to be taken for the annual review. Read more information and find a conversation to join on the UCoC page on Meta.
Latest comment: 19 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello. Which is the correct designation on Wikivoyage for stating an amount of money of the UAE? Is it 10 dirhams, AED 10 or AED10? As it is mixed up a lot of times in the articles of the UAE and also neighboring Oman. Would be cool if somebody can fix it, who is experienced in doing that in a fast way. ~2026-42785-8 (talk) 05:33, 22 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 days ago14 comments8 people in discussion
Recently @Toran107: has been adding or updating climate data in many articles. This info is useful to travellers & in general the work is praiseworthy, but it does raise a number of questions.
The additions are mostly taken from WP. What are the criteria for when we want such data here (I think quite often) versus just leaving that to WP?
Is this fire-and-forget data or does climate change mean it will need maintenance checks & sometimes updates?
Climate data is data, so does it belong on Wikidata rather than either WP or WV, let alone both? How many copies do we now have, given that both sites have multiple language versions & others like simple WP might have copies as well.
How might wikidata handle climate data & how might we use it?
Recently Toran added a climate chart to Cebu City & I immediately deleted it since that article says "For climate information, see Metro Cebu." & the Metro article has a chart. Clearly both the addition & the deletion are debatable.
More generally, what is the right granularity here? Which articles need a chart, which "For climate information, see ..." & do some need nothing at all?
One obvious example of articles that don't need climate charts is most city district articles. I say most because San Francisco is so full of micro-climates that a different climate chart might be needed for the Mission compared to Twin Peaks and the Sunset. But here in New York City, one climate chart in the article for the entire city should be all that's needed, though I could conceive of articles about neighborhoods like Coney Island warning people about storm surges, high surf and so on. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:57, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm of the opinion that they should go in city pages (and be removed from region pages) because region articles almost always have multiple weather stations for different towns. And in some cases, data can different significantly and it does not have to be a metro Vancoover siuation. Most regions the stations often differ signficantly enough where rounding to the nearest digit fails to eliminate the difference.
District articles typically don't need charts because there are not weather stations in each neighborhood that collect long term data to calculate averages; usually station granularity is around at the city level and not the neighborhood level. As such the city level is the preferred location to stick the charts in. Even in Metro Vancouver there are only 3 weather stations currently active and the rest are no longer active anymore (and therefore are older data than the most recent period), so putting charts in districts generally doesn't make sense in most cases. Toran107 (talk) 01:32, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I usually suggest keeping climate information at the city articles and not the region/district ones. Yes, there are climate data of Bidhannagar in Wikipedia, as there's a weather station in Bidhannagar (Kolkata-Salt Lake). However, since it is covered under Kolkata as Kolkata/Salt Lake, it is probably unnecessary. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 04:11, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would personally just omit climate data for towns that don't have weather stations, but I'm also not the right person to be answering this as I seldom add climate-related content. //shb (t | c | m)07:55, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
We skip them. If the density doesn’t justify one for each of them then we don’t need to duplicate the chart as it’s unneeded. Usually it would just be the major town or just the town with an airport. Not every village will have a station so we don’t need a chart for each village. Toran107 (talk) 15:49, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't think presence of weather stations should be the determining factor here; that constrains what we can do but does not indicate (let alone define) what we should do. Perhaps WP should have data for every station but we probably shouldn't. We just need information, sometimes just prose but often a chart, that will be informative for travellers.
If a whole region, or even country, has much the same climate then arguably we should describe that in the region article & omit charts in lower-level articles. Mongolia might be an example. Pashley (talk) 09:32, 26 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I did not find the climte section in the article on Mongolia very helpful. How hot does it get? How cold does it get? When JD Vance made a recent trip to Greenland, his first comment was how cold it was. (Maybe he should have consulted Wikivoyage before he left! :-) ). I believe that a picture (or a chart) is worth a thousand words (Maybe that is just me) so I suggest a reprentative climate chart in a region with a text description of how the climate might change. For example, in the United Kingdom one might show a chart for London (see right) and write
“
As one moves westwards from London towards Cornwall, the difference between summer and winter temperature decreases while the rainfall increases from 640 mm per annum in London to 1200 mm in Newquay (Cornwall). Temperatures in country areas are about 2°C than in the major cities. As one moves northwards from London, temperatures decrease and in the Scottish Central Valley (Glasgow and Edinburgh) they are about 3°C less than in London. During the winter months, snow is common on high ground and in Scotland and sking is popular in the Cairngorns (but the snow is not always reliable.
I think I agree with Pashley that when a whole region is approximately the same, putting that information in a regional article is okay.
I don't think that a difference of a whole degree between weather stations/cities matters. We're already looking at the average of 30 days, and daily variation is a lot more than a difference in rounding. For example, New York City#Climate says January has highs of 40 °F/4 °C. Today's weather report says 20 °F/-7 °C. In fact, maybe these climate boxes need information about how much variation is expected (the range, rather than the mean average). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 27 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
The problem with charts on regions is it opens up room for conflict for when the largest city is not geographically representative of the region. In Special:Diff/4825280, there is a link to a forecast for a location in the middle of the region, but it is not the largest city. If the chart displays data for the largest city, then the data doesn't necessarily represent the region. If the chart displays data for a location in the middle of the region, then it is not useful for travellers arriving or spending time in the major city. Because of the room for debate which location gets to "represent" a region, it's best to keep individual charts off of region pages unless multiple charts are included, or alternatively just stick to only using maps to display temperature/rainfall/biome data on region pages. Toran107 (talk) 06:14, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Also I agree with Pashley. When the difference between locations is trumped by variation in weather, I don't see any need for location-specific charts. This includes areas like Finland Proper, where Turku as a city has a bit higher temperatures overall, and the inland, as being away from the coast, more reliable snow cover in winter and slightly more variation in temperatures. Those differences can be told in words. A few degrees of difference in averages don't define your experience.
If we could show the variation, that would be a lot more useful. It doesn't help that the chart says -5°C when it's -20 when you arrive (which was about true in the recent days – and shown to be expected by the non-standard chart in Turku#Climate).
@Toran107, see "when a whole region is approximately the same". When "the largest city is not geographically representative of the region", then the "whole region" isn't "approximately the same", right? So that region would need separate charts in different locations. The weather in the Great Plains, on the other hand, doesn't change much between cities.
For example, Kansas has five cities whose airports have >10K passengers each year, and here's the average daily min/max for those cities:
They're all about the same, right? Anyone of a certain age can probably hear the weather man intoning "Highs in the upper 40s and lows in the 20s overnight". The whole state has this kind of climate
Again: They're all about the same, but they're nothing like what the average daily temperature for the month suggests. It wouldn't matter which weather station's average you used in the whole state, because none of them would have included this Thursday's actual weather pattern.
If I have read w:en:Wichita, Kansas#Weather data correctly, if you're planning a trip to Wichita far in advance, you should be expecting the weather to fall somewhere between 8 and 72 °F (-13 to 22 °C). That again is probably true for the whole state. I wish there was a way to represent that variation in the climate charts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
My main issue is that when a region only needs one chart; or if we decide charts go on region pages rather than city pages; is that then the choice for what location to show as representative for the whole region becomes extremely arbitrary as in Special:Diff/4825280; where anyone could decide or disagree whether the single chart should be represented by the largest city or a location in the geographic center. For this reason, city-specific charts shouldn't be on region pages and should be found on city pages instead.
I also see a tendency for region pages to be bare-bone stubs or outlines, while city pages tend to more fleshed out and more usable. So it'd be preferable to keep the city-specific charts in the city pages where people are more likely to see or find them; and also since I'd think most people arriving in a particular region whether by air or by train would tend to arrive in the largest or major city first. Toran107 (talk) 22:15, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
We have an article on the topic here MDWiki:Nipah_virus_infection. Thankfully spread appears to require direct contact, rather than being airborne like COVID.
So "screening" is basically thermal cameras checking to see if someone has a fever at the moment they walk through. WHO for example says "The World Health Organization has stated that temperature screening at entry or exit points is not an effective method to limit international transmission of SARS-CoV-2." Ie safety theater to keep you entertained at airports and so they can say they are "doing something" Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:29, 28 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 days ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Using some AI vibe coding and decent amount of reviews, I was able to put together a tool that we could use here. Basically it's a "Cart" for travel destinations. Myself, until now I used competitor page to put together travel itineraries - but this could very well replace it. Additionally, the tool could work as "To visit" list.
Notable features:
any/most WV marker can be dragged into it, its wikidata and lat/long will be saved; drag'n'drop supported to reorder stuff
the data is stored in mediawiki user-specific JS storage, so it should be available from all logged-in sessions
export to JSON/GPX/mediawiki text, import from JSON; I was thinking the mediawiki text could be later used for people who want to create travel itineraries maybe
map of the current trip
after grabbing https://openrouteservice.org/ API key, one can ask it to calculate distances (by car or feet, probably others) between the POIs
After some quick use, I have to say it's great and can very much see this as a tool being published for all desktop users. A few minor things, though:
How is the "route" feature supposed to be used? I tried entering at least two cities in a few ways but I still keep getting the must enter at least 2 cities error.
Is it possible to interim save such a route in your userspace?
Will support for public transit integration be included? I don't imagine this to be easy (especially compiling multiple countries' and public transit operators' timetables together), and I don't know if it's doable with OSM data either.
1) seems to work for me, maybe you can export/share the JSON and I'll check what's wrong...
2) not yet, I'll check if it's possible to somehow export the paths in some reasonable format
3) in principle, we could configure it to use some open GTFS data on per-city (e.g. in Prague I know for fact that complete routes are available), probably depends on how free the access is. The question is if the users would use it. But if we would head towards making WV one-stop tourist guide with more whistles included....
I'll test the stuff a bit more and if it turns out useful, I think indeed I'd put it out there, to get some feedback... Thanks for giving it early try! -- andree18:13, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I tried to make the tools as non-invasive as possible and made it public, to get more feedback. If you guys want to disable it, go into your preferences/Gadgets. If there's a consensus to remove it or not make it default enabled, we'll do it...... :) -- andree21:02, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I suppose it is useful, but I also think it indeed is intrusive, so not suitable for being activated by default. As I type this, I don't know how to close or move it, and it keeps de-iconifying, obscuring the text I am writing (yes, I can scroll the page so that the input box isn't covered, but it is still annoying). –LPfi (talk) 21:31, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It shouldn't de-iconify on it's own, maybe some interaction with some browser extension, skin or Parsoid...? The only problem is, I'd say about 95% of people don't even know there are some gadgets in the settings. So if it's not on by default, almost noone will know it even exists. Especially the random visitors, for which I intended it the most (to keep them here) :-( -- andree21:42, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Maybe then I'll add it to the icons at the top of of the article, instead of a floating icon, that's pretty tame, right? -- andree21:55, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Of course, unless it's on by default, few will find it, but it needs testing by regulars. I'll do some testing later, until then I cannot say what should be done. The de-iconifying happend when I used the reply function, on typing. –LPfi (talk) 22:26, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
There's a fairly serious privacy issue; making IP addresses public makes it too easy to identify users. That might be dangerous for anyone posting something their employer or their government wouldn't like. Temporary accounts are much better, though they do not even come close to providing secure & complete anonymity. Pashley (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
For sure – trusted users (accounts over 6 months + 300 edits, admins, bureaucrats) have the option of seeing IP addresses to identify any IP abuse so functionally this change means very little for those who would benefit seeing raw IP addresses. //shb (t | c | m)00:18, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'd imagine it probably improved IP editing as you now carry the same temporary account with you (for 90 days at least) since TAs are attached to your device cookies, not left with multiple IP addresses lying around. //shb (t | c | m)23:28, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
We currently have an article awkwardly titled Downhill snow sports that, aside from a token mention in the lead, talks exclusively about skiing and snowboarding.
Latest comment: 8 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, everyone.
I've finally finished checking all the submissions for Wikivoyage:Wikivoyage 13 and the results have been amazing. So many articles improved, especially from South and East Asia this year.
Latest comment: 6 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I was wondering if this is a valid travel topic. After all, quite a number of tourists are interested in visiting the townships of South Africa or the favelas of Brazil. In both cases though, you are generally advised to go with a local guide and not wander into the slum alone. The dog2 (talk) 21:00, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Is there enough general advice to fill a travel topic, and would that advice be equally valid in South Africa and Brazil? We do have Slum Tour sections in some city articles, eg Manila/Tondo_and_San_Nicolas#Slum_tours, and I expect that is possibly the best place. I have visited the slums of some Western cities, but have done that discretely on my own. AlasdairW (talk) 22:33, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
The SPTF is disbanded after running the public consultation for closing Wikinews. Well, I think Wikinews users still have to archive the content since the SPTF's decision doesn't get negated by being dissolved. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:28, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Task forces are meant to be short-term groups. Of course it was disbanded when its work was done. And as Sbb says, that doesn't invalidate any of its findings or negate any of its recommendations.
BTW, it's always been the Board of Trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation, and not the SPTF, that will be deciding whether to archive Wikinews. There are about four board meetings a year, and they also pass resolutions outside of meetings. The most recent meeting was in December, so it's possible that the decision has already been taken, but from a general how-boards-work POV, I'd actually expect it to happen in the next meeting. They'll probably want to make that decision before they set the budget for the next year (which is traditionally their second meeting of the calendar year), because their decision might affect the budget (e.g., one-time expenses if they decided to support a fork to a new organization). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
A bit of a late reply, but I do think it's safe to say Wikinews is dead. Despite issues with the consultation process, I don't think there's anything saving it now (and like you I also expect the decision to come anytime in the next upcoming month or two). But I do really hope that Board takes feedback from this, were a similar task force in the future to be appointed (and definitely not with 2 sanctioned/self-sanctioned members and 1 very inactive user out of 6). //shb (t | c | m)21:47, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
The task force only had five non-Board members on it. One is a former WMF board trustee, one is a former steward, one practically is the French Wiktionary, and the other two I don't know well. One of those got into some trouble last year, but if it were possible for the WMF to magically know, in 2023, that an editor would be desysopped in 2025, then I think those powers could probably be put to better use than merely not appointing him to a temporary committee. (Victoria, who posted the list of appointed volunteers, is a community-selected WMF board trustee, having been a top vote-getter in 2021 and 2024. If you think that's a problem [I don't], then remember that the next time you hear someone saying that all WMF trustees should be elected by editors.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 14 minutes ago21 comments7 people in discussion
After 13 years, many Wikivoyage listings are still in plain text, rather than templates. This means they can't have coordinates, they're often badly formatted because they don't use our templates (Eat, Drink, Sleep, See, etc.), and they don't have a lastedit parameter so the date of information is unclear allowing them to become out of date. I try to fix these manually, but in some cases (Amandola) the task is just too daunting. I bet that half of the businesses listed there are defunct. without templates
I think we used to have a bot that did just this. Could we create a new one? Listings would still need to be checked, but this could save a lot of time and make our listings more time-relevant, the biggest critique of our website from outside of Wikivoyage. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:52, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
That sounds like a great idea, but I would ask that the bot not fill in the lastedit field, but leave it blank. We would not want a bunch of listings imported from Wikitravel to be automatically converted to templates indicating that the listing was last updated on 4 Feb 2026 (for example). I have been trying to apply templates to new listings without templates that have been added to a couple of England articles (by an experienced editor). It's a job and a half. Ground Zero (talk) 22:06, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do you have some representative list of such pages? A bot is not a problem to make, but to make it reliable and not do breaking edits is something different... -- andree22:06, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Listings are often but not automatically a good way to convey info, so unleashing a bot will generate text that only a bot will ever want to read (and perhaps that day is dawning). As the experienced editor that GZ just had a little poke at, I'm bound to observe that the System Architects of WV have endowed us with half a dozen different formats for presenting info. It is not for us mere mortals to know their sublime intent, but I suggest we should continue to make use of them all. Grahamsands (talk) 22:54, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Lists of untemplated restaurants, bars and hotels look like the stuff that was imported from Wikitravel in 2007. When I use Wikivoyage for travelling, I ignore undated entries because they are usually outdated cruft. I think Wikivoyage should be doing better than that in 2026. Ground Zero (talk) 02:49, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I understand, but I think that for the sake of creating a bot, we shouldn't let ourselves be sidetracked by that concern. We have articles and business listings from 2007 that actually are unchanged. That's the main problem my proposal is attempting to fix. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:55, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think in some cases, it's fine to list POIs as markers or simply in bold — I've noticed you do this in articles, and personally I don't have a problem with that. My concern is more with articles pulled from WikiTravel which use their old format. These are the "dinosaur" articles rather than the newer drafts. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 22:57, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
The only bulleted items in Yellowknife#See are the Aurora Borealis, and the Great Slave Lake. If someone did assign coordinates to the aurora, they would be wrong. As the lake covers an area larger than Wales, coordinates would not be useful. Ground Zero (talk) 14:25, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
All of the stores listed in Buy are templated. The bulleted items are things that you might consider buying, like Caribou-skin mittens, so they would not have a template with coordinates, date, address, telephone. It would be a problem for a bot, but the concern I am raising is about businesses that are listed without dates. Ground Zero (talk) 17:19, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm imagining a bot that is applied on a case by case basis, not sitewide. I don't think it would need to be used on decent articles like Yellowknife, where minor fixes if needed could be made by a human. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 13:36, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Non-decent articles probably need more than bot-tidying. A human should make the major fixes. Of course, if they want a tool to do some of the work automatically, I don't object, but listifying should not be the only thing done. Most restaurant and hotel listings not edited since 2013 should probably be removed rather than listingified, unless they can be at least tentatively verified. –LPfi (talk) 14:00, 9 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just run that by me again. The problem is that we have far more outdated entries than editorial input to update them. Many are not time-stamped: you and I would know that these are especially likely to be outdated but the casual reader is left guessing. The proposed solution is to deploy a bot that would fix none of them but create far more, as it would listify entries that are fairly recent and those that are not time-sensitive, such as landmarks. That's the idea, right? Grahamsands (talk) 19:43, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
We have two separate issues here. One is listings that are not dated. That's a problem, but it needs to be fixed with user input.
I'm talking about entries that were imported from WikiTravel and aren't even in a listing template. Should we just leave them as timeless messes? At least if they're in the template, they can be updated more easily... --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 20:52, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
This website uses the Wikivoyage API to get and display all the information you see. This is the MediaWiki API, which is a general API for accessing data from Wikimedia projects. You can find information about it here: MediaWiki API.
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)
