Of course, length doesn't guarantee usability. An article about a destination can go on for pages and pages and still not give enough of the information you need to survive there. Each article should cover its subject with the appropriate depth or breadth. But if you do not know how to get there, or where to stay if you do, then the article is not very useful. Such an article would still be an "outline", even though it has a lot of content.
In general, usable articles are not really complete articles, however. They may not offer many options for where to eat and sleep. They may not contain much information about nightlife or shopping, for example. Or they may be lacking much helpful information about the destination in general, or nearby destinations. This prevents them from being considered true "guide" articles.
See also: Stub articles, Outline articles, Guide articles, Star articles.
Identification
[edit]The criteria for what makes a "usable" article varies depending on the subject. A city article is expected to have some hotel and restaurant listings, but that doesn't make sense for an article about an entire region, which should instead have a listing of cities in that region. National parks may be leave-no-trace camping and wilderness; an article for a small, isolated remote village may indicate a lack of hotels (or restaurants) and suggest alternatives. Obviously the criteria for a travel topic or phrasebook would be even more different.
See Wikivoyage:Article status for an overview of article status criteria, or the following links for usable criteria for specific article types:
- Wikivoyage:City article status (also for districts and rural areas)
- Wikivoyage:Region article status (also for continents, continental sections, and main city articles for cities with districts)
- Wikivoyage:Country article status
- Wikivoyage:Itinerary status
- Wikivoyage:Travel topic status
- Wikivoyage:Phrasebook status
- Wikivoyage:Park article status
- Wikivoyage:Airport article status
A complete list of all current "usable" articles can be found in Category:Usable articles.
What to do with them
[edit]Tag
[edit]If you find an article that meets the criteria for "usable" but hasn't been tagged as such, or if you improve an article to the point that it qualifies, please tag it appropriately.
There's special markup in our software to mark something as a usable article. Unlike the "stub" tag, which is generic enough to apply to any kind of article, we have different tags for the different kinds of articles. For example, the tag for a usable article about a city looks like this: {{usablecity}} which makes this appear on the page:
The other kinds of "usable" tags are {{usabledistrict}}, {{usableruralarea}}, {{usableregion}}, {{usablecountry}}, {{usableairport}}, {{usablepark}}, {{usablediveguide}}, {{usabletopic}}, {{usablephrasebook}}, and {{usableitinerary}}.
You can add one of these messages at the bottom of the page. This tells adventurous readers that the article might be adequate for them to use, but acknowledges that it's not up to the standard that we hope all Wikivoyage articles will eventually achieve. Also, it invites them to add whatever they can to make the article better.
Upgrade
[edit]If you find a "usable" article about a subject you know a bit about, or if you're planning a trip and doing some additional research beyond what you find in the article, you can help upgrade an article to an actual "guide". Find information to add to any missing or sparsely-populated sections. Add more options for places to eat or sleep (especially different kinds: add a budget hostel if the existing listings are all for five-star hotels). Also, if the existing information isn't formatted clearly, or doesn't look like our style guidelines, fix them up.
The specific criteria varies depending on the kind of article (i.e. city, country, etc.) but the general theme of a better-than-just-usable article is that it is more or less complete, covering every subtopic that a good guide should, and with enough detail that people can pick and choose which information to act on. At that point it's a real guide, and the tag can be changed to {{guidecity}} (or whichever kind of guide it is).
- Re-evaluate outline to usable upgrade tasks
- Ensure all listing have coordinates
- Check all external links are valid.